Coffee heat rising

Angst

Arrrgh!!!! I hate computers!!!!!

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Round and round and round and ROUND Robin Hood’s Barn trying to get back online and back into Funny about Money.

WHAT an AGGRAVATING time suck!!!!!!!

Dammit! Now I’m so frustrated and so upset, I’ve forgotten what I was gonna write about!!

LOL! I hate computers. 😀

Ohhh well….  On the subject of nothing much: Ruby and I hiked all over the ‘Hood this evening. Beautiful night. Beautiful houses. We’re incredibly lucky to have landed in this tract.

We walked by one especially lovely house that until recently was occupied by a gentleman who used to sit out in the front yard and putter. He was a sweetie! Apparently he and his wife moved, though…or, more ominously, one of them passed away. No sign of either resident lingers.

They are much missed.

As for their handsome house: it’s for sale.

Too close to Main Drag North for my taste — the noise would be interminable and obnoxious. So, even if I could afford it, I haven’t inquired. And believe me: that house, I could not afford! 😀

Most of the ‘Hood is well outside my price range. Ruby and I live in the low-rent precinct, which is on the top end of what I could afford. Actually, values have shot up since I bought here: what were once normal, middle-class tract houses are now priced on the high side of ridiculous.

Oh well: we’re brought back to the long-range goal: to pass this house along to M’hijito. If I can hang onto it…if I don’t get consigned to some prison for the elderly…he will inherit this paid-off shack, lock stock and proverbial barrel. That will present him with some appealing choices:

* To stay where he is (he has a nice, centrally located house) and sell or rent this house, thereby collecting several hundred grand

* To sell  his own place, get completely out of debt and move into this paid-off castle

* To sell his place, invest the proceeds in the stock market (or some such), move in here, and watch his investments grow

* To sell it all and RUN!

Interesting….

Fire Central!

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Gosh…am I glad we’re not still in Southern California.  That’s where I was born, yea verily. Though I grew up overseas — in Saudi Arabia — when my father retired, we moved back to the States, where we ended up in Long Beach, part of the vast L.A. sprawl.

Never cared for Southern California, myself. Smog is not to my taste. Nor are the noise and the traffic and the overall atmosphere of Looney Toons. But boyoboy! Today those fires would tear it for me!

I imagine my mother would have packed us up — well, “us” would have been “her and me,” since my father continued to make a living going to sea with the Merchant Marine — and we would have headed up the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area. She would have barged in on our relatives in Berkeley, and there we would have stayed until the drama subsided.

They would have put up with us for awhile, I expect: a couple of weeks, probably. Much longer than that:  ????  Unknown. But I suppose if she were really scared, she could have rented a motel room for us.

Anyhow…awful glad not to be there now!!

Another Fine Day in Southern California

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Holy mackerel!  THIS is going on right in the vicinity of where my parents and I lived in Southern California. Really: it’s right down the road from where our apartment building stood.

My father would have been at sea, of course — he was an oil tanker captain. But by now my mother and I would be at her grandmother’s house in Berkeley: several hours’ drive away from the present scene of the drama.

Apparently thousands of people have been evacuated from the region. Or relegated to shelters…doesn’t that sound like fun!  My mother would have been terrorized!

My father, o’course, would have been off at sea. So she and I would have been left to cower at home…or to jump in the car and start drivin’ drivin’ drivin’.

Kinda doubt she would have betaken us to a motel. Most likely she would have driven up the coast to the relatives’ house in the Bay Area, and we would have camped with them until the drama subsided.

Mighty glad not to be in that melodrama this afternoon!

Unclear how long this is gonna go on, or how much risk of a real catastrophe exists. If it were me, though, I’d be sooooo far outta there! That’s for sure!

How Could She Do That?

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Y’know… It’s one thing to poison yourself.

But another thing altogether to poison your child.

How on earth could she have done that?  Why would she have done such a thing? Year in and year out?

My mother smoked. She didn’t just smoke a little. She smoked constantly. She was never awake when she didn’t have a cancer stick in her mouth. Not even in the shower! You knew when she awoke in the middle of the night by the stink emanating from her bedroom.

And I was sick all the time I was growing up in her household. Constant, unending respiratory illness. Never stopping. Not until I got out of her house.

She smoked herself to death. And she damn near smoked me to death. Maybe she imagined it would be fitting and lovely for us to share a grave?

Yeah, I understand: it was an addiction. 

But you know, a person can beat addiction. Apply some knowledge and some will power, and you can take it down.

She knew exactly what she was doing. The word came down in the late 1950s: tobacco smoking causes cancer. And it makes the people around you sick.

Oh, yeah. She knew what she was doing. She did it anyway.

It killed her.

What a waste.

Eeeek-a-Dawg!!!

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Ohhhh my goodness!  This evening I truly thought the Pool Dude had left the side gate open, that Ruby had found it, and that she’d taken off for Yuma!

Couldn’t find her when I went to call her in for the night. 

The back door to the house, in lovely weather like we’re having now, hangs open most of the time, so she comes and goes as she pleases. Consequently, the side gate to the yard is normally closed and latched.

But…Pool Dude was here. What does he know of dogs and of gates???

This evening she disappeared from view. Didn’t come to call. Ohhhhhhh sheee-ut!

And yes, the side gate was unlatched.

Ho-leeee shee-ut!!

Called and called.

No dawg.

Went inside to put on the clodhoppers, so as to go out through that gate and trot off down the road, calling and calling and calling…no doubt fruitlessly.

Just when I got back to the side yard, though: she surfaced.

No, she had NOT run away down the road.

THANK YOU, GOD!!!!

* * * *

Whew! After this, forgodsake, REMEMBER TO CHECK THAT GATE in the wake of any workman who stumbles into the yard!!!!!

Passworded Out!

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Gawdlmighty, every freakin’  thing you need to do on the Internet now demands a password. And by damn, they all have to be different!

No way can I even begin to remember all these things. So they’re typed out and taped to the shell of my laptop.

Okay, okay: it’s not THAT big a deal. Just now only three sets of secret codes are taped to the computer. But it’s annoying.

Very annoying.

Speaking of annoying, we’re told some sort of social workers are supposed to show up here this morning — within an hour or so, far as I can tell.

> Who these folks are: unknown
> What agency they’re from: unknown
> Who sicced them on me: unknown.

Soon as they show up, I’ll have to demand that they show me some credentials. But…who knows whether those will be real or counterfeit?

Whether they represent some sort of threat or risk to me: also unknown. Is someone trying to stampede me into an old-folkerie? If so, who might that be and what grounds might they be advancing as an excuse to lock me up?

Anyway, I sure could do without it.

This morning’s weird antic means I can’t take poor li’l Ruby (or poor li’l me) for a walk before it gets hot outside.

Assuredly, I am NOT a happy camperette over this. I do NOT like officious types poking their noses into my business; I do NOT feel obligated to discuss my personal issues with strangers, and I highly resent having these people show up at my door to demand…what?

Made even less happy because, as you know and I know, the likelihood that these people are looking for excuses to declare me incompetent to live on my own is exceptionally high. Gets higher with every minute that my age proceeds toward 90… So somehow I’ve got to make myself look competent, competent, and ultra-competent:

  • The house must be picked up
  • The furniture must be dusted
  • The bed must be made
  • The breakfast dishes must be stashed in the washer
  • And…and…good morning, America! 

I am NOT in the mood to cope with a lot of housekeeping ditz this morning. Or any morning: that’s why I hire a cleaning lady! 

Unfortunately, she hasn’t been around for almost a week, so I’ve got to retrace her steps and tidy up everything. And I don’t wanna. All I wanna do is finish my morning coffee!

What concerns me most about this, though, is the possibility that whoever tattled on me is angling to get me committed to an old-folkerie. And that is something I regard with horror.

I most surely do NOT want to live in an institution! I hated, loathed, and despised every minute of living in our college dorms. Not because the dorm-mates weren’t nice, not because the dorms weren’t maintained well enough…not because of anything other than that I deeply, profoundly dislike communal living.

Give me a cave in the Himalayas and I’ll be fine! 😀