Coffee heat rising

Angst

Old Age: Live Free or Die???

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Is it possible to live independently in your dotage, right up until you die?

* Maybe, depending on how you define “independent.”
* Maybe, depending on how much cash you can fork over to an “independent living” outfit.
* Maybe, depending on how long “right up until you die” is.

Just heard from Semi-Demi-Exboyfriend, who (as you may recall) is living in Sun City, a depressing age-limited, race-limited (de facto) suburb on the west side of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

SDXB is pushing 85. He’s been in excellent health all his life and continues to take care of himself, in his own home all by himself.

New Girlfriend, we’re told, has sold her home out there and moved into an old-folkerie — these days, euphemistically called a “life-care community.” He sees the advantages, and as we speak is considering selling his nice little home in Sun City and imprisoning himself in one of those places, too.

And there are advantages. After my mother died, my father moved himself into one of those places, then called “Orangewood.” That probably was one of the best favors he could have done for himself…and for me.

For me? I didn’t have to take care of him!

  • He did not at any time live in my home.
  • He did as he pleased (more or less); I did as I pleased.
  • Our lifestyles remained independent, to the extent that we did not interfere with each other.
  • When he had his stroke (I was present at the time), medical people were right there, on the grounds, to care for him, and a medical clinic was right there to provide effective, experienced emergency care until an ambulance could carry him off to a hospital.

And that last one? It was HUGE. It meant there was no delay in obtaining experienced, knowledgeable medical care for him: right then and there.

So…is it time for me to start thinking along the Old-Folkerie lines?

Hm.

Well, quite frankly, nothing could strike me more as ANATHEMA.

No. I do not want to live in an institution. As a college student, I loathed living in the dorm. The elbow-to-elbow lifestyle just doesn’t make it for me.

So the question is…Is there a way to extend the time that I can keep living in my home until I’m totally bedridden or until I die?

In today’s America, it’s not at all clear that any such thing is possible. Unless they’re very wealthy, most young and middle-aged Americans have to work, and work full-time. That’s not an option.

This effectively limits care for the elderly either to institutional living or to hiring a full-time care-taker.

Neither of those is a very affordable option.

Nor, really, is it taking care of them yourself a desirable option. How well do you get along with your parents…seriously? How well do they get along with you? Even if you could afford to quit your job and stay h0me to care for an infirm elder (which you probably can’t…), how long do you think you could hang onto your marbles in that circumstance? Or as an old buzzard: how long do figure you can tolerate having your adult kids tell you what to do and when to do it?

Uh huh…you see what I mean, right?…

So I’ve been thinking how can I manage to take care of myself — without inflicting that care on my son — until I’m ready to make the Big Leap into the Other World?

Hmmmmm….

Let us try to explore this matter, in upcoming chapters of Funny about Money.

Duck! Cover! Or something….

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Pour a cup of coffee; prepare to sit down on the back porch to take the morning air; and you get RRR-R-O-O-O-A-A-R-R-RRR!!!!

Cop copter charges over the house. Circles around the ‘Hood,. Roar roar roar….

Meanwhile, twenty miles away, out at Luke Air Force Base, a squadron of fighter jets practices take-off and landing: rrrRRR-O-O-O-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R!!!!!

My mother, who used to take her morning coffee on the back porch of their little Sun City house, professed to love the sound of fighter jets taking off and landing by Dawn’s Early Light. All very patriotic, no doubt…but definitely not my favorite symphony score.

The atmosphere has quieted down a bit now. Whenever it gets to be after 9:00 a.m. — at which hour I can turn left out of the ‘Hood — I’m headed to AJ’s, there to buy some more coffee. And melon. And bread. And dog treats… and… Argha!!!  The endless grocery list!

The Sprouts, which carries far more fake-gourmet items than the Albertson’s supermarket across the street, leaves enough to be desired to make the 20-minute trip to the overpriced AJ’s worth the journey. For one thing, I do NOT like being pounced and panhandled in the parking lot — pretty much inevitable at the neighborhood Sprouts. The Albertson’s has posted an armed, uniformed guard out front, which makes one feel safer there. Now…if only they’d carry a larger array of yuppified products, they’d never get rid of me. 😀

But they don’t. To get the fancy treats and overpriced dog food, I have to travel to the AJ’s. To get the rich black coffee: AJ’s. To get a piece of steak that’s worth the exorbitant prices most stores are now charging for beef: AJ’s.

****

SDXB on the phone. He and New Girlfriend live in Sun City, directly under the flight path of those Air Force jets. And like my mother, they regard the racket as “The Sound of Freedom.”

No doubt they’re right.

Too bad, though, that Freedom can’t turn down the volume a bit! 😀

SDXB loves living in Sun City, as my mother did when she was holding forth out there. It takes, I think, a certain mentality to like that lifestyle. Personally, I’ll take the sound of kids playing over the melody of F-16 engines blasting. But whatEVER: each to his/her own, eh?

Speaking of the which — sound, that is — the serenade of not one but TWO emergency vehicles wafts in through the screen door…. WTF d’you suppose is goin’ on out there now?

Looks like it was a good thing I dawdled over this blog post and killed time yakking with SDXB before I started out for the store. Fifteen or twenty minutes earlier, and I could’ve been in the middle of whatever that mess is.

***

And I would have missed the beloved Pool Dude, who just showed up at the door to collect his well-earned wages.

What a nice man! Probably a paroled murderer…but what the heck. He does a primo job of murdering pool algae.

Seriously: when a dear friend’s son got in trouble with the law (irrationally: not his fault!) and was thence thrown in the slam, we learned that one job regarded as “good” for paroled convicts is pool maintenance.

And considering what Pool Dude is earning — f’rgodsake, I just paid him $400!!! — if you worked at it and were even moderately competent at handling money and billing, you could in theory make a decent middle-class living at it.

Well, OK: part of the 400 smackers was for a large bucket of chlorine tabs. That stuff is expensive as hell, and if you’re buying a better quality product, it’s even more expensive than that. And the bucket the guy got — presumably from a pool product wholesaler — weighs more than I can pick up. So presumably it will be some months before we have to buy more chlorine.

Welp. I’d better get up and get outta here before the lunch crowd gets on the road.

And so, AWA-A-A-A-Y!

Adventures in Internet Life

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Monday Evening…

All the Internet connections in the neighborhood are down. Down, down, downy-down-down.

This means I can’t use any of the phones in the house, all of which are fake land-lines. Right now the only way I have to call 911 or try to reach any other kind of help is through the accursed iPhone.

Problem with that thing is…well, make that problemS …

 Main one: I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to use the dratted thing. It is SO arcane and so contrary and so effin accursed that I just can NOT make it work. Even dialing 911 is highly problematic.

Fortunately, Luz – the Cleaning Lady from Heaven – happened to be here. She was able to call the accursed phone company from her cell, so we got the outage reported. And she called the WonderAccountants, who live across the street: they confirmed that yes, their phones are out, too. And we were able to call my son, who expressed his annoyance at my stupidity.

And now I have no way to call for help if I need it …well, I guess I could run outside and scream HAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLPPP!!!!! at the top of my voice. But that’s about it.

Well. I do have an iPhone, but it’s so complicated I can’t figure out how to use it.

Nor can I get online in Firefox.

Ohhhhh well… tappity tap in Word. Maybe someday the computer will connect to the Internet, get me in to WordPress, and let me post to Funny about Money.

 This is the second time we’ve had a neighborhood-wide Internet outage. The last time, actually, it was district-wide. The only way I was able to get online, finally, was to drive down to AJ’s, several miles to the south of here. Buy a cup of coffee and park at one of their tables. Connect to the Web through their system.

Not inclined to do that this evening, because I have no urgent need to access the Internet or send an outgoing message. But it’s infuriating, considering what we pay for this alleged service.

It’s also nervous-making, since I’ve never really learned how to use the iPhone and very much doubt that during an emergency I would be able to reach help on the thing.

*****

Now it will let me in to Funny about Money’s web page, but won’t let me into the dashboard. So I can’t copy this squib out of Word and paste it into WordPress. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to traipse down to the computer store and get one of their guys to persuade this thing to work again.

Well…. At least the electric is on. That’s something, I guess. The streetlights are on – dunno whether the traffic signals are working…and am not about to go driving around to find out.

*****

And…and!!! YAYYYY! Funny’s site is back up! Let’s see if we can get this scribble online…

Just one minute of peace…puhleeze, police?

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Argh!!! Cop helicopters buzzing all over to the northeast of us. NOW what?

They’re right over the canal, which suggests someone — very probably a kid — fell in. But…the area they’ve been covering — quite a few square blocks — suggests they’re after a perp.

LOL! Speaking of perps, WonderCleaningLady seems to have made off with my whiteboard pen. Now I’ve got to traipse to the store and buy another one.

My jaded point of view on life predisposes me to assume she stole it. That, of course, is BS. Most likely, she picked it up while dusting, dropped it in a pocket, and forgot about it. No: MOST likely is that I picked up, used it once, set it down, and now can’t remember where “down” was.

For me, though: the result is the same: gotta go buy another one. GRRRRRRR!!!

😀

The cops have retreated.

Whatever they were up to must have resolved itself fairly fast. Either that or the perp took off running fast enough to escape our boys.

WhatEVER. Close and lock the doors.

Ruby likes to roam in and out through the kitchen door. But sometimes that’s just not practical….

Moving: A Bad Idea

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So here I am: coveting the Old Neighborhood. Thinking how much I’d love to move back down into the historic mid-town Encanto neighborhood, where DXH and I spent the first 15 years or so of our marriage. Where M’ijito grew old enough to pass through the first several years of the tony private grade school where we sent him. Where I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation, got it accepted by a prestigious publisher, finished the degree, and thereby made myself unemployable.

Ahhhh, the good ole days!

Ruby and I traipsed all over the place this afternoon, from our old part of the district through the expensively tony Palmcroft neighborhood, into the park…round and round.

I loved our time in the Encanto/Palmcroft district, and greatly regretted feeling we needed to move out. Before we sold our beautiful historic home and moved up to the North Central area, DXH had told me we would put our son in the highly respected Madison schools, the best public school district in the state. I figured Cool! He could get a first-rate K-8 experience, meet and make friends with offspring of the prominent North Central set, and from there proceed with the other Richistani kids to attend the weighty and prestigious Brophy Catholic High School. Or, failing that, go through Central High School, without doubt the state’s best public high school.

Well. Uh…no.

Once we got moved, DXH refused to switch the kid into a public school. So there we were in Snobsville North, where I knew no one and no one felt any craving to make friends with white trash of my ilk.

(No, in case you haven’t figured it out: My parents were not professionals, they were not even college graduates, and they knew nothing about how to function as socialites…)

The marriage didn’t survive that fun period. I ended up  back south where the WT live, and then eventually skipped around to the far side of the tony North Central district, landed in some apartments on the north side, and extracted a full-time teaching job from Arizona State University.

At any rate, leaving the Encanto District to move up to North Central meant leaving behind beloved neighbors, beautiful historic houses, and a wonderful central location close to cultural and entertainment amenities. Eventually it also meant me leaving behind the marriage, the lawyer, and the trying social life…and the beloved neighbors, the beautiful historic houses, and the central city location with its proximity to cultural and entertainment amenities.

Ohhh well…

Since then, a lot of things have changed. A full-time job at the Great Desert University meant I could support myself. My parents’ dying, one at a time, meant I had no one to nag me to stay in the (highly advantageous) marriage. But their demise also left me with enough money to support me for the rest of my life. I bought into a decent neighborhood on the fringe of North Central, and here we are.

But I still miss the lovely Encanto district. Cruising the area, I wondered: would I like to sell my house here on the fringe of Sunnyslope and move back downtown?

The answer is mixed. A lot of things are improved up here on the north end of North Central, as compared to the picturesque historic Encanto district. But a lot of things are de-proved, as it were…

Why move?

  • Sunnyslope is kind of menacing. It is, after all, a high-crime area.
  • We therefore have lots of noise from cop helicopters.
  • Then there’s the noise from the annoying lightrail train.
  • The noise from  traffic and sirens on Conduit of Blight Blvd amplify the racket.
  • And we do have some interestingly sh!t-headed neighbors.

Why NOT move?

  • I could in theory walk to two markets & a drugstore from here. My spectacularly superannuated great-grandmother used to walk that far several times a week in Berkeley: straight uphill. Here, though, to get through the heat and dodge the panhandlers and thieves, you have to drive to the stores or use Uber.
  • M’hijito wants this house.
  • I don’t know anybody downtown anymore.
  • Young people who don’t like older people infest that place — Encanto is Encanto because of the young people who covet the beautiful historic homes. Discrimination against elders is a real thing, and it’s likely to be far worse there in Yuppieville than it is up here in a more diverse neighborhood.
  • It’s even noisier there than it is here (she says,. as a plane buzzes overhead…).
  • One wonders: why spend that kinda money for not much improvement in lifestyle?
  • The pool here is an expensive nuisance, but it could be drained and decked.
  • The Romanian Landlord’s tribe are shitheads, but WGAS? And what guarantees that you won’t have shitheads there?

Many more nuances come into play:

  • Care of elders: soon enough, I may have to hire someone to come in to care for me, or else move into a long-term care facility.
  • This house is paid for and in good condition. If I pass it to M’jito he could move in here and have a palatial little shack with a pool and about four times more space than he needs.
  • On the other hand, who wants to pay for and ride herd on four times more space than you need?
  • Unloading this place and moving into a care facility might greatly reduce my taxes.
  • This area is really not very safe.
  • But then, neither is the area where M’jito lives. Toss-up!

The truth is, I don’t know which way to jump because it probably doesn’t matter which way one jumps. Either way presents a set of pro’s and a set of con’s.

So…we’re cast back on that reliable old adage:

When in doubt, don ‘t.

Oh…Emmm…Geeee!

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I can’t believe it!

Just heard from my “doctor in the wild” — i.e., an MD who is NOT associated with the Mayo Clinic.

Yeah: I keep a doc in the wild for two reasons. The main one: the Mayo is located halfway to Payson: damn near an hour’s drive from here. So that means every doctor visit entails almost two hours of driving through hectic traffic. I’ve taken to reserving the cross-country journey for ailments that I think are serious stuff.

The other reason: Doctors are only human. They make mistakes.

For that reason, I always get a second opinion. No matter what kind of Hell & High Water we’re looking at.

So, that being a fact supported by experience, when the Mayo suggested that diabetes or mebbe prediabetes (make up your minds, folks!) was hauling me toward Death’s Door, I decided to quietly get a “check-up” from Young Dr. Kildare’s crew.

His P.A. just called and reported that there’s NO SIGN OF DIABETES OR PREDIABETES OR ANY OTHER BLOOD SUGAR ISSUE in the elaborate set of tests they just performed.

Understand: it’s not the first time YDK’s team has beaten me about the head & shoulders with this annoying blood test. And…consistently, they say the results are well within the normal range.

So…

Umh….

So…???? What the HELL is the Mayo doing, delivering a diagnosis that directly contradicts other doctors’ conclusions?

Dare one ask if they’re fishing for long-term patients who will have to come back every few weeks from now until the sun burns out?

Naaaaahhhhhh…. Couldn’t be. Could it?