Coffee heat rising

Angst

Coyote Morning

by
Urban coyote

Out the door around 7:30: the little dawg and I head out for her favorite route, circumnavigating the park.

It’s a beautiful morning. Clear, not too smoggy, cool enough to be just this side of cold but not really cold. And as we trot along, who should we come nose-to-nose with but…oh yeah! Wile E. Coyote…

Ohhh shee-ut.

What could make a more delicious breakfast than a 30-pound corgi?

Fortunately, I happen to have in hand  a shilelagh that passes as a walking stick — carried for just such an encounter.

Dayum.

Wile E. is the reason I can’t just let Ruby out in the back yard to do her thing, whilst I go on about my business fixing breakfast or dinner. The local coyotes will ghost right over your six- or eight-foot backyard wall and take off with your dwarfish dog.

At any rate…we make our way past the local wildlife without incident. Short-cut through Lower Richistan without incident — probably because a fair number of workmen are out puttering around. Make it back to the house without incident. Hallelujah.

ohhhh well. Give me a four-legged predator over the two-legged variety, any time.

😮

Wednesday in Hell…

by

My son is on the way over here to pick me and up and drag me to the Mayo Clinic. Again.

Hope today’s appointment is at the hospital, here in town. Many of their doctors maintain their offices at that place, which is 45 minutes closer to my house than is the Mayo’s palace in Scottsdale.

Since the Mayo aims at an affluent, well-insured audience, they place their clinics and doctors’ offices in upscale parts of the city. That’s all very nice…but our particular upscale neighborhood doesn’t happen to be in either of the two ritsy-titzy locales that the Valley’s Mayo Clinic occupies.

So any trip to a MayoDoc means an endless trudge through cut-throat traffic. It’s an awful drive at any time of day; a rush-hour trip is a species of Hell.

This is why I took up with Young Dr. Kildare, who had an office just up the street. Unfortunately, he and his partners have closed that practice, and he’s moved to Sun City.

Bad sign. When my mother was out there dying, we got more than a superficial taste of the medical care available in Sun City. That’s one reason I wouldn’t retire out there on a bet!!

So, so, SOOOO not in the mood(!!!) to hassle with doctors today. Especially not after an hour’s rush-hour drive. Ugh!

What a fine way to start your day, hm?

Holeee Shee-ut…

by

Waiting for the cops to show up.

And waiting…and waiting…and waiting….

Some charmer was sniffing around the front and the east side of the house. Seems to be gone now.

After SDXB chased off his burglars — caught them in the living room and waved his pistol at them — he called the cops. Said it was over 40 minutes before they showed up. At two in the morning…

That was a couple years ago…and one of the immediate causes for his moving to lovely, boring Sun City.

No sign of a gendarme here. Haven’t been tracking the wait time….

**
Okay
They finally appear.
***

Well, one lonely cop shows up. By the time he gets here, there’s not a soul around. Ruby is quiescent. Presumably our visitor has moved on.

I hope.

Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!
Dammit, I have got to get out to the range and practice with my father’s pistol!!!

More to the point, I probably need to get a shotgun. Much easier to hit an uninvited visitor.

Cripes! Here’s a cop copter, a couple blocks to the north of us. That suggests Josie must have called them, too.

A uniformed officer showed up at the door about ten minutes after I called. That’s darned good  response time — usually it takes them at least twenty minutes to surface.

Phoenix…
What a garden spot!

Fundamental Questions of Olde Age

by

What am I doing?

What am I supposed to be doing?

Who the Hell am I?

And why am I here?

Yes. There we have the fundamental questions
that confront the aging mind.

😀

Was just about to fly out the door and trudge down to the ever-pricey AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store, there to buy some swell stuff for the mid-day dinner. Charging around, it occurred to me to wonder…

* Waitaminit! What’s in the freezer?
* Waitanotherminit!! Whats wrong with this spectacularly fancy piece of spectacularly expensive steak?

and…

* Is there some REASON I can’t add this fresh, crisp asparagus to the menu?
* What??? No potatoes? Really??? What’s wrong with a fistful of freshly cooked pasta?

Sometimes I do wonder what’s wrong with me. At least this noon I escape the vicissitudes of old-age brain haze (for once!!), come away with what will be a very nice dinner, and not have to shell out another dime for it.

***

Y’know…ten years ago — even five years ago — it would never have occurred to me to traipse out into the (pricey!!!!) wilds to buy the makings for today’s mid-day feast. I would have known what was in the fridge. I would have known there was no need to go charging out in the traffic and scoop up $30 worth of fancy food and wine at AJ’s.

So…

Now we scribble while we wait for the kettle of water to come to a boil for the pasta. We swill wine by way of passing the time. And we wonder which drain our IQ points trickled down.

<<sigh>>

Worrying about SDXB and NG (New Girlfriend). He says she’s under the weather…apparently seriously so.

This is highly worrisome: first because she’s a lovely person and does not deserve to be sick; and second because he’s transparently in love with her and needs to have her in his life.

***

And in the Department of Weirdness…

Last  night I dreamed of returning to the sweet middle-class Berkeley  neighborhood where the relatives who raised my mother lived. And…

…how much I miss those women
…how much I miss Berkeley
…how much I miss the San Francisco Bay Area
…Oh hell! How much I miss my mother

How dast she smoke herself into the grave?

If heroin peddlers and cocaine peddlers and even marijuana peddlers are regarded as criminals, why the Hell aren’t tobacco peddlers legally recognized as the craven murderers that they are?

Ah well…movin’ on.

Maybe we’re all craven murderers? is that possible?

Daydreaming on in this vein, I found myself remembering Berkeley and the oh-so-long dead relatives, so vividly that they seemed almost real, almost here: and I wondered WTF is wrong with me.

If this is senility, my friends…then senility is freakin’ weird!

One Effin’ Nightmare After Another…

by

Main Nightmare of the Day: SDXB’s excellent New Girlfriend is enjoying an Adventure in Medical Science. Trying to get thru to him on the phone today to see how that’s going and offer moral support: can’t get through.

Can’t tell whether it’s my phone (think it is) or his phone or the effin’ phone company at work. Call an operator. Spend half an hour or 45 minutes on a runaround. NOTHING is fixed. No phone service. No way to reach SDXB easily.

His annoying “automated phone answering system” message takes you NOWHERE. Nothing you do gets you anywhere.

Try again: end up in the same fruitless runaround.

This leaves me SO frustrated I can’t even remember the several other aggravations of the day. F*** It! Let’s just go to the grocery store and diddle away some cash on a new bottle of wine.

How do I hate life in the Twentieth Century?

Let me count the ways….

Just a LITTLE peace and quiet, puhleeze?

by

Uh huh... 7:46 p.m…. and it’s

ROAAAAARRRR roooarrrrr buzzzzzzzzzzz whizzz roar buzz…

Cop helicopter overhead. Dayum! Am I tired of this routine or tired of this routine?

He buzzes around in circles over the northwest section of the ‘Hood: right above the house where SDXB and I lived together for a couple of years before parting ways, then buying our own shacks here in the neighborhood.

Lovely: I guess I should be glad we split up and moved away from that corner.

SDXB, I’m sure, is very glad he moved to Sun City, where the local crooks rarely feel it’s worth the effort to stage a home invasion.

Not altogether, though.

LOL! I can remember the panic my mother enjoyed when they had a couple of guys who would climb up on top of a car in a carport (there were no enclosed garages in that garden spot), slide open the ceiling hatch, climb into the attic, make their way across the rafters to the area of the living room, cut a hole in that ceiling, and hop down into the living room. Yes: dwelling in the land of the somnolent and the half-dead did not guarantee freedom from burglars.

😀

Hm. Sounds like the cop copter has already flown away. Must have chased our boys on down the road.

We live directly south of one of the highest-crime ZIP codes in the state. Every now and again the action spills over into the ‘Hood, which provides us a little entertainment.

Ruby will bark at our guests, but weighing only abut 20 pounds does naught for her potential as a threat. Really: one does need to be armed in these parts.

Arizona. What a friggin’ garden spot!