Coffee heat rising

Angst

Dim Light on the Horizon?

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Okay, this afternoon the weirdly spavined back has decided to act a little better.

Why, I do not know. Time and the river flowing, I imagine.

This is the first time in three weeks or so that the pain has slacked off a bit. At any rate, it does offer SOME hope that this little frolick will settle down and go away.

My gawd: it has hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, and HURT some more, day in and day out over the past several weeks. Can’t even imagine what I did to myself: must have slept cattywampus one night and wrenched something back there.

Anyway: patientia! 

If it actually is healing on its own, it’s doing so very, very slowly. So if I’m to gut this out, just let it get done and go away, it probably will take another two to four weeks to reach a fully, magnificently pain-free state. Hmmm…matter of fact, these folks say it can take up to six weeks for a back sprain to heal.

Uh huh…that sounds like it’s about par for my course.

So…figure we’ll give it another three weeks or so before having (yet again!!!) recourse to the Mayo Clinic, with its hour-long drive (each way) and its arrogant doctors who treat you like you have an IQ in the negative numbers..

{sigh}  I just hate going to doctors. And especially am repelled by the Mayo.

Yeah: they ARE among the best…indeed, they may be THE best. But gawdlmighty, the custom of peering down their noses at you is about as annoying as it gets. Drive half your life…to see a doctor who behaves as if she thinks you’re a step removed from a moron.

Well, if the thing continues to improve, maybe we can avoid another encounter with God’s Greatest Gift to Half-witted Patients. We shall see…

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Here we are in Coyote Hell again. 

Actually…I get a kick out of the coyotes and do not consider their presence to be Hell-making. But ooooh my, how they terrorize the local gringos. Get on the neighborhood Facebook Page and it’s oooohhhh eeeeeek aaaaawkkkk eeeeek ohhhhhh!!@!!! Squalls of terror from all directions.

Humans sure are stupid, aren’t they? Especially the ones that live in cities…  😀 Nary a one of our FB correspondents seems to register that a coyote is more scared of you than you are of it.

Just now — the loveliest cool of the day, when Mr. Coyote is likely to be out taking the morning air, I would not leave Ruby to roam the backyard alone. She is, after all, a tempting little morsel.

But let the heat come up, and Mr. Coyote will repair to the shade of the shrubbery and the trees. And he will not bestir himself to chase after a ludicrous thing like a corgi.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is here. She likes to have the back door open while she’s working. So Ruby is out on the patio, loafing in the shade. For the nonce, none of her wild cousins are visiting, and so I reckon she’s safe enough. Hope so, because just now I’m altogether too lazy to get up and establish myself out there.

Mmmmm…. I figure the best thing about pain is that it reminds you that you’re alive. And just now, by damn, I am SOOOO ALIVE! 

The spavined right hip joint is particularly lively… HOleee shit, does that hurt!

***

Just now, if I were a responsible human bean, I’d get off my duff and stroll over to one of the three(!!!) grocery stores within reasonable walking distance. But really, I do suspect that I’d find myself crippled by the time I got halfway to the nearest one.

{heh} Good excuse, ain’t it? 😀

I may ask WC-L to drive me over to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s.

Or maybe not.

***

What a weird thing it is, to realize that now — today, here in Two Thousand and Aught-Twenty-Six — I cannot remember off-hand what I wanted to buy at the grocer’s. Am I that superannuated, that worn-out that I can’t remember a grocery list of two or three items????  AUGH!

😀

When I first moved into the “Hood,” lo! these decades ago, I was a young pup surrounded by aging, long-time North Central Avenue residents. Now I’m the Old Bat — the historical relic — and all the neighbors look like they were born about ten days ago.

And oh! How can you not love them! Our beautiful young people: the handsome young marrieds, their adorable children…gosh, what a joy!

I wonder if the old ladies who lived here when I moved in — the dignified and historically experienced Mrs. Wilson, the lively and eccentric Fran, the great old gals on the street behind us — enjoyed us as much, when we moved in here as a wave of Yuppies.

Oh, well. I’m old now. Tomorrow they will be. So it goes.

The House on the Park

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Every time Ruby and I head out into the’ Hood and circumnavigate the park, we pass a house that makes me think We need to move out of this place! 

It’s a beautiful house: two stories, facing right on the park. About as upscale as you can get.

But…

A friend of mine was living there with her husband. They were high-school teachers: quiet, conservative types. One day they answered the door when somebody jangled the doorbell.

Two guys were out on the front stoop. They shoved their way into the house, grabbed my friends, tied them up, dragged them upstairs, and threw them into a bathtub. There the two resided, in terror, while the home invaders ransacked their house.

Eventually the thugs exited and my friends managed to work themselves free of their bonds.

Not surprisingly, said friends promptly sold that house and moved as far away as they could get while still remaining in the Valley.

And THAT is why I think I should follow them out of these parts.

Yeah. I mentioned that thought to a cop who was working the crime scene that day. And he said, “Don’t do that! We come to these things all the time: almost every day, all over the Valley. You can’t move away from it.”

Jayzuz!

Well, I figure he should know what he’s talking about, and so I did follow his advice and stayed put.

Still: it gives me the willies.

What a critter the human is! What a society we live in!

Speaking of the which: here we have R-O-O-O-O-A-R! ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!! 

Cop helicopter blasts in. Takes up his position over the neighborhood just to the north of us. And charges back and forth, forth and back, back and forth…roar roar roar! 

Get up. Close and double-lock all the doors.

keeerap! Am I tired of this!!!!! 

Trouble is…like the cop said: You can’t get away from it. 

Hah! I’m IN!!!

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Click on “Firefox” to open Funny about Money, and get an aggravating pop-up: “Choose a Firefox profile to log in.”

I don’t WANT a Firefox profile, goddammit!!!!!  I just want to get into my silly little blog!

Arrrrrrrggggghhhh!  Life in the 21st Century: one goddamn aggravation after another!

Oh, well. For reasons unknown, the system has let me in. We’ll soon see whether it’ll let me load a post to FaM.

I wonder if life in, say, the 1960s seemed as aggravating to my parents, who came to majority in the 1930s and ’40s. Can’t remember them grousing ALL the time about this modern inconvenience and that unnecessary hassle. But…hmmm… Surely, it must have seemed just as alien to them as the accursed 2020s seem to me.

{sigh} I don’t recall my mother grousing as much as I do about this hassle and that headache. But come to think of it, she did encounter hassles and headaches incident upon modernization.

Another Day, Another Jab in the Hip…

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LOL! The spavined hip remains…spavined! Well…actually, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It does still hurt. As in HURT. But…nowhere as much as it hurt yesterday.  The pain does seem to be going down a little.

My guess is (Doctor Hay Speaks!) that the worst of the pain will be gone after about another three days.

Just now, it’s a whisper on the nerve-wracking side. Horribly light-headed! Feel like I just might faint.

Why, I can’t imagine: it doesn’t hurt THAT much. But weirdly, somehow I’m dizzy and my heart is pounding and it does indeed feel like I could pass out.

Why I would feel like my head is about to float off into orbit: that escapes me. Haven’t had so much as a sip of booze all day: no wine, no whiskey, no nothin’ in that line.

Soooo….what’s with the crazy light-headedness? Seriously: it doesn’t feel like anything near enough pain to make me pass out. Hmmm…pulse seems to be pounding a bit fast…why??? Ears whistling….woooooooooooooooo!

Probably ought to repair to the ER. But my poor son has been SO HARASSED with this stupid stuff, I do hate to call him and ask him to deal with some new episode.

Should I walk up to the ER? Doubt if I can get that far, on foot and alone.

Hmmmm….  Let’s try reclining on the sofa…phone in hand. Assuming I can get that far….

WHOA!!!

Google “Can ibuprofen cause vertigo,” and here’s what you get:

Yes, ibuprofen can cause vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness, though it is not a common side effect for everyone. As an NSAID, it can sometimes cause ototoxicity (damage to ear structures) or restrict blood flow to the inner ear, leading to vertigo, dizziness, and tinnitus.

LUUUUVLEEEEE!

Dammit!  I’ve been gulping ibuprofen for…what? the past three days? Hell, longer than that! The past FIVE days.

Wouldn’cha know?:

Honestly, I seem to be growing more and more sensitive to over-the-counter nostrums. This is the first time I’ve enjoyed what appears to be a reaction to ibuprofen. But…hmm…on the other hand, I wouldn’t normally dose myself with it for several days in a row.

So?????  Does that have anything even resembling significance?

Possibly: I may simply have OD’ed on the stuff.

……

hmmmmm….

Ear whistling seems to be backing off a bit. Both ears feel weirdly congested, but the loud WHEEEEEE is slowly fading.

What to do, what to do? If anything….

Hanging on for another few minutes: off to pass the idle time on the beloved Internet….

……

Next Google: Can Ibuprofen cause tinnitus?

Yes, ibuprofen, as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), can cause or worsen tinnitus (ringing in the ears), particularly with high-dose or long-term, daily usage

. This side effect is often temporary and reversible once the medication is stopped, as it often results from decreased blood flow to the cochlea.

Uh HUH! Wouldn’t you fukkin KNOW?!

……

Hmmmmmm….   What to do here?

What to do what to do….  Well…  As we sit here fussing, the ear howling is slacking off. It’ ain’t gone….that’s for sure. BUT…neither is it still wailing like an air-raid siren. Hmmm….

Welll…..it doesn’t look like this is gonna be fatal. (Hey! if it DOES kill me, at least the ear-wailing will go away!)

So I think it probably will be safe to wait another half-hour to sixty minutes, just to see what happens. If the wailing continues to fade, then I’ll just let it go…and never, EVER swallow another ibuprofen pill.

If the ears are still howling after a half-hour…then what? Guess I’ll just walk up to the local ER and see what they have to say about it.

Goody. 😮

A-r-r-g-h! Not to say OUCH!!!

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Wow! That really hurts!!! What exactly I did to bring this on escapes me: but just now, the right hip is SO SPAVINED I can barely hobble across a room.

Don’t recall doing anything to create any damage. So I imagine I must have slept crooked, and in doing so, sprained something in the groin area. WhatEVER: it does hurt colorfully.

Very tired of the never a dull moment phenomenon. Have you noticed that? All the damnfool things happen in a row: one headache after another after another…. That’s how things have gone hereabouts, over the past couple of days.

And now I’m so crippled I can barely hobble across the room.

What I oughta do is go back to bed. But…it hurts too much to limp to the back room where I can check the calendar, to see what I’m supposed to be doing today — other than loafing.

I have the worst feeling I’m supposed to traipse to the Mayo Clinic, on the far side of the galaxy. Ugh! How can I count the ways I don’t wanna?

If that’s the case — the traipsing, not the counting — my son will show up here shortly, all primed to drag me across the city.

And how CAN I count the ways that I am all doctored out? How happy would I be never to see another doctor again??? 

***

Welp! It’s quarter to noon. No kid. Hot diggety! That has GOT to mean the Mayo Clinic premonition was more like a hallucination. Surely do hope so.

Jet warplanes are zooming back and forth over the city’s northerly precincts: ZOOM ZOOM ROAR ZOOM!  What. A. Racket!!

When my parents lived in Sun City, a few miles to the east of Luke Air Force Base, my mother used to love to sit on her back patio, sip coffee, and listen to the early-morning commotion from those damn planes.

LOL! I remember remarking to her, one morning, how much I hated swilling coffee to that symphony. She corrected my socialistic error: “That’s the sound of Freedom,” quoth she.

Quoth I: Uhm…nooo, Mother. That’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Never seemed to register with her.

Ohhhhh well….