Coffee heat rising

Angst

Ruminations on Ruination

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door…NOW!

Seriously: the Dawg and the Human just sat down to take in the morning slack — coffee mug in hand, computer atop lap — and it dawns on the Human: Do not sit there with the back door hanging open, dammit!!!  Nay verily, not even if the screen door is closed and locked.

‘Cause, as we know, any clown and his/her little brother can kick or yank that screen open.

Sounds paranoid, eh? But I do hafta say: it feels more and more unsafe to me, living here in lovely Arizona. Especially in its (un)lovely cities.

Day or two ago, a Tucson woman was murdered at her home, apparently by a nut case. So…sitting around your house or patio taking in the morning air is decidedly NOT advised. Surely not around here.

So many of our fellow citizens are off the rails here in this crazy-making 21st Century — and it’s so easy for them (and us) to stock up on firearms — that really: You’d be nuts to loaf in your family room with the back door hanging open.

I never used to feel especially unsafe in my home, certainly not in the daylight hours. But lately that has changed…and I don’t think the change is a function of age.

No. It’s a function of the steadily growing insanity and violence around us. Not that humans haven’t always been crazy…but really, it does seem a lot more pronounced than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Sometimes I think I should move out of uptown Phoenix — surely the suburbs would be safer. When I mentioned that to a cop during the great home invasion adventure, he remarked that there aren’t any places in the Phoenix metropolitan area that can be regarded as safe.

Really…when you re-read the post I put up at Funny after that little adventure, you hafta ask yourself: Why am I still living here???

What the HELL is the matter with me that I haven’t moved somewhere else? Somewhere far, far from here! Really: this house should have been on the market the next day after that episode…

But…but…WHERE would I go that’s any better?

Sun City, that fine mausoleum on the west side? 

Well, no: this kind of stuff happens out there. My mother lived in white-lipped terror all the time she and my father owned their Sun City manse. And I’m not interested in living in a ghetto for the aged and the cranky. No, thanks.

A box in the sky? One of the high-rise apartments along Central Avenue or in Scottsdale?

Well…I’ve lived in such a place. And…no thanks. Don’t wanna do that again. I’m just not in to communal living.

No communal living, eh? Well, then: how about back out to the ranch, just outside the wide spot in the road called Yarnell? Right up on the Rim…cool weather, lots of cows and sheep, plenty of room for the burglars to spread out comfortably?

Hm. Yeah, I did love the ranch. BUT: we didn’t live there 24/7. It was more of a weekend retreat for us. And y’know: I don’t think I would want to live out in the middle of nowhere 24/7. Besides, if a burglar/rapist/murderer can visit you in your city subdivision, what’s to keep him from visiting you on your remote ranch?

Basically…where there be humans, you be not safe.

Yeah: I’m afraid that’s a fact.

Or, alternatively:  I’m afraid. That’s a fact.

😀

 

 

The nightmares never stop

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O Gawd!  There really IS a point when it’s time to hop off from the merry-go-round that is life!  WHAT a flickin’ nightmare just living has become.

My poor son — make that my HEROIC son — has been dragging me from pillar to post: doctors, therapists, thisses, thats, and whatnots. Seems to be no end to it: we just go on and on and ON.

This evening we’re back from the physical therapist,  where what I accomplished was to spavin the hip even worse than it was already spavined. Ohhh my GAWD does this stuff hurt. 

No kidding: I hurt; I hurt; I hurt; and then I hurt some more. And frankly: I ain’t gonna be able to handle a helluva lot more of this!

JAYZUZ!  Just get sat down, and ringie dingie dingie ringie dingie dingie… a clear and present phone solicitor.

But with all the sh!t that we’re going thru just now, there IS an outside chance that this could be a real call from a real person.

Human Answers: Hullo. How may I help you?

Scam Artist Answers: Hullo. May I speak to Mr. or Ms. Human.?

Human replies: GET THE F*** OFF MY PHONE, GODDAMN IT!!!! Shrieked as loud as humanly possible into the phone.

Dammit. 

Need to get an airhorn to blast at the bastard phone solicitors. Hmmm…wonder if those things can be had from Amazon?

****

Mwa ha hah!  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. There’s a whole collection of “air horns loud” 😀

Ohhhh yeah! Gotta order up one of these.

Hmmmm… Wonder if there’s a way to blast the phone solicitor without deafening oneself…  Yeah…

Suppose you got a sturdy wooden or steel box, set the phone receiver down in that along with the air horn, closed the box, and then let the air horn have at the ba*tard.

Hmmmm…that doesn’t look very promising. There’s gotta be a way, though.

Let us think on this…

Securing the Security…

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Lookit this hair-raising tale! 

This charming incident happened just down the road, in Tucson. Holeee shee-ut!

The victim is a famous person — or near famous, connected with the Today show. But y’know…it could be any of us. You or me or…who knows?

It’s a good reason to be sure you secure your exterior doors. And I do mean seriously secure them. Make it damn hard for anyone to push their way inside when you go to answer the doorbell.

One way to do this is to install heavy-duty security screens with similarly heavy-duty deadbolts. This is what I’ve done at the Funny Farm.  Mine are of this ilk, easy to get at Home Depot and to hire someone who knows what he’s doing to install them.

There’s a lot of choice out there, though. Look around for one that suits your taste, if you have nothing better to do. For me, the trick was to find something simple and clean-looking, reasonably priced to install, and as close to impregnable as possible.

Perps, I figure, don’t want to spend a lot of energy and effort on breaking in; so, when they see something like this, they’ll move on to the next house.

Annoying as Hell, in my not-so-humble opinion, to have to fortify your doors like they belonged at Fort Knox. But…better that than letting some jerk break his way in.

One of this thing’s benefits, too, is that on a  nice day it lets me leave the front door open (with the security screen closed and locked, of course). Fresh air flows in: perps stay out.

I have one on every exterior door to the house, plus one on the side door to the garage. Nothing, of course, is absolutely perfect…but these things do go a long way to make you feel safer and more secure, here in the Big and Ugly City.

Kaput?????

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Well: we’ll see if Funny is kaput in the land of the flying computers…  AUGH.  It looks like my desktop is offline altogether, and the laptop is sorta offline…maybe kaput, maybe not kaput.

😮

To perfect that predicament, somehow I spavined a hip joint and now can BARELY limp up the hallway.

Hmmm… does that mean My hip is offline, too???  😀

Whatever it means, it sure as hell hurts!

Okay…

….TESTING….

Owwwwww!!!!

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Was it REALLY only a day ago that I was whinging on and on about the pain in the hip?

Feels more like about a year. HURT? Hoooleee Gawd, does it HURT! To get up the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen & front of the house, I have to stick out my arms and balance myself on the walls, s-l-o-o-o-w-l-e-e-e limping along. Every step — every s-l-l-o-o-w, interminable step — HURTS. 

M’hijito will soon be on his way over here to tote me out to the damn Mayo Clinic. Is there a REASON we couldn’t first (pleeze!) visit one of the nearby hospitals?  Hell, no! Nothing will do but the (putative) best: the Mayo.

The Mayo is in Scottsdale. On the freakin’ far side of Scottsdale: a good half-hour trek each way. And that’s just to get there and back. I can’t drive in the state I’m in (even had he not purloined my car some time back). And so now he has to take a half-day off work — which he sure as hell can’t afford to do — to drag me across the city.

What a fukkin’ waste of time and gasoline!

Young Dr. Kildare used to practice right up the road. He, however, fled our sylvan dales to take up his career in Sun City: halfway to California from here. So it’s as far to YDK’s office as it is to the Mayo…and M’hijito does NOT trust any doctors other than those at the Mayo.

Myself, I can’t tell much difference. A good doctor is a good doctor. A narrow-minded dimwit is a narrow-minded dimwit. Doesn’t much matter where they practice.

{sob!} What a gorgeous day. This is the time, this is the day to be walking with Ruby the Corgi from one side of Timbuktu to the other.

But nooooo. Here I am, barely able to hobble across the room, waiting for my excellent and long-suffering son to come pick me up and drag me out to the far side of Scottsdale.

Just the gawdawful drive out there and back eats up over an hour of his work day. And that doesn’t count trudging through the garage and across the grounds and around the clinic to get to the doc’s office. So that means any time he drags me out to the Mayo, he gets in trouble with his employer

Legally, an employer is not allowed to fire you for taking time off to go to a doctor — or, interestingly, for having to drive a sick relative to the doctor. So…he’s not likely to get canned for today’s excursion. But you can be sure he’ll be swamped with fell-behind work and nagged interminably by the bosses.

I probably could get the Uber driver who lives across the street to schlep me out there — to the tune of about a million bucks. But (he being no fool) M’hijito likes to be present at the pow-wows with the docs. Which is good: years of unpleasant experience have left me aversive as hell where doctors are concerned. And no doubt I often barely hear what they say…in my eagerness to get out of their office.

GOD, I hate going to doctors!

When I was an infant — this was a year or two before we went out to Arabia, and I just turned three when we arrived in those sandy realms — as an infant I almost died at the hands of a brilliant doctor. One evening, hospital staff told my mother I would be dead by morning.

Can you imagine?

Well, they seem to have been wrong. I’ve 0utlived her, the poor woman. And she lived almost to a ripe old age. Would have made it ripeness if she hadn’t smoked herself into the grave.

Tobacco manufacturers and vendors should be prosecuted as the murderers that they are…

Oop! Sorry: sidetracked!

But seriously: if you smoke, quit. Someone is getting rich on your dying. A number of someones, actually. Cut the ba*tards off in their tracks!

Oh well: speaking of tracks, I seem to be easily sidetracked this morning.

Ohhh damn. Here he is!

 

Ah hah! Back IN!

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Thought WordPress had locked me out of Funny about Money. But nay! Here we are!!

Actually, M’hijito is probably the one who got me back in. He’s in the study right now, wrestling with the computer and the Internet. Must say: you have to own a LOT more IQ points than I do in order to make this online stuff work. The frustration level is bracing.

Oh well…we’re back online. Fully.

Also bracing, in the Department of Frustration, is trying to work with doctors when you’re chronically ill. And that, alas, is the predicament in which I find myself.

One runs into any number of roadblocks, here in this predicament:

* Doctors often only half-listen to you. Consequently, they miss much of what you say.

* They are right and you are wrong. No argument, you!

* If you are a woman, you are by nature stupid.

* If you are a woman, you are  by nature wrong.

* Often they will prescribe an OTC drug — or even a prescription drug — without being fully aware of all its potential side effects. These side effects can be highly unpleasant, and some are even dangerous.

You see: this is WHY, over the years, I’ve developed an aversion to medical care. And to doctors. It also is why, whenever a doctor prescribes a drug, I look it up in the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference) before I gulp it down!  

When you do this regularly, often you realize that your doctor has not looked up a given prescription drug, does not know its potential side effects, and even — incredibly enough! — does not realize it should not be given for your specific ailment.

And that’s the issue: Too often, doctors don’t fully understand what they’re giving you. Not because they’re incompetent. But because they’re busy; they’re overworked; they’re going by what they’ve heard from a colleague or at some conference; and because they assume they know better than you. Especially if you’re a woman.

So, as you can imagine, I’ve about had it.