Coffee heat rising

Angst

Merry Christmas…i guess

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Christmas treeWelp, Merry Christmas one and all. Think some spiritual thoughts…that will take Herculean effort. (So we invoke one ancient culture’s religion when we see our own, as interpreted by its fundamentalists, has failed). Personally, I find it a shade difficult to choke up much merriness, given that we’re watching our country crash in flames.

Thank God I’m too old myself to be called into active military duty, or to have a kid young enough for that. The mess the Trumpites are making in the Middle East sooner or later will come back to bite in a big way, and at that time a mere force of mercenaries will not suffice. Expect to see your sons and daughters — or grandsons and grand-daughters — called up for active duty within the next decade. To say this bunch has plunged the country into chaos is, my friends, an understatement.

Or maybe we ourselves will want to join up, if the military will take us. God knows, we’ll need the money.

Watching what appears to be the start of the Bush Crash redux, I have exactly zero confidence that a collapse of this magnitude is going to do me any good in my enforced retirement. What I do feel confident of is that it will leave me with nothing like enough in savings and investments to support me through my dotage. It is almost certain, thanks to the lunatics who put a seditious fool in the White House and inflicted their set of wackshit discredited economic theories on us all, that I will not have enough to live on for the rest of my life.

During the 1970s, I watched my father’s savings — an amount he thought would support him comfortably through a lengthy retirement — melt away under an inflationary blowtorch. Now we get to watch my generation’s retirement savings disappear, too.

Lovely.

Oh well. There’s not a thing we can do about it. If you haven’t hunkered down yet, financially speaking, it’s too late now.

Remember what I told you, some time back: Politics is economy; economy, politics.

In one last gasp of optimism, tonight I’m singing with the choir for the evening service and then for the midnight service. That will be fun. The church tends to overflow on these big religious holidays. Though it’s not exactly empty the rest of the time, on Christmas and Easter people flow into the parking lots.

We — the women’s chant choir — sang for Compline last night. It’s a very short but very lovely service. The entire thing is sung, much of it in chant. It’s  relaxing and soothing, something that’s much needed these days.

In between the two Christmas Eve services, we have a potluck dinner. That should be fun. I’m hoping SDXB will show up for that and for the late service. Connie the Long-Haul Trucker is in Moab, headed toward the Valley as fast as she can fly for as far as the gummint will let her drive in any one 24-hour period: expects to reach the truckyard about 10 a.m. tomorrow. So she will miss the Xmas festivities, but will be here to see her family on Christmas day. That’s something. I guess.

Cassie the Corgi continues to have her ups and downs. Yesterday was a definite up. Today she seems to have crashed, along with the Trump economy. {sigh} Not only can she barely hobble around but (to continue the endlessly amusing simile) she seems confused. It’s like she’s not sure where she is. She’ll get outside and look around, appearing utterly flummoxed, like she’s wondering Where am I? What is this place and what am I supposed to be doing here? Eventually she’ll pee on the ground and then stumble back in the house, evidently only slightly enlightened.

That’s today. Yesterday she was downright peppy and for a moment was actually running around the backyard (very, very briefly) after Ruby.

So one is led on a merry psychological chase, in which one moment you think gosh! maybe she COULD recover somehow and the next you’re figuring where to dig her grave.

The neighborhood is brightly decorated. One street is completely lined with luminarias. Young people love to gussy up their places for Christmas, which is a delight. I personally am too lazy to feel inclined to climb on a ladder to hang up lights, then climb up again to take them down and then make myself crazy wrapping them back up and putting them away. Never have been much for conspicuous decoration, myself. But that doesn’t keep me from enjoying other people’s displays.

Luminarias line a garden path as part of Hispanic celebration of Christmas

 

 

Uhmmm? Is there something we should know?

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😀 😀 😀 The new handyman showed up today to install a back porch light fixture that replaces the motion-sensitive one that morphed into motion-insensitive. And…well…there’s something weird here. This guy SO MUCH resembles my son that if he were just slightly less chatty, you would think the two of them were separated at birth. The way he looks: check. The way he talks: check. The things that interest him: check.

Well. Not identically. But one could imagine that they sprang from the same sire, about 12 or 15 years separated.

And. Uhm. Therein lies a tale.

About at that distance of birth-date separation (around 15 years), when I was thinking of exiting the relationship with D-XH, along about midnight one fine evening a friend of mine who was kinda “fast” was in a girlie bookstore where, she swears by every Bible that can be stacked, she saw then-DH cruising around.

At the time I thought, Oh yeah? Sure! Right, sistah!

But…

At this point, he and I were not sleeping together. He could easily have slipped out of the house sometime between, say, 10 p.m. and midnight without my knowing about it.

Holy sh!t. Tell me this is ridiculous, willya?

It is scary weird how much this young man looks and sounds like my son, only about a decade & a half younger.

Cripes. I think I’ve come unstuck from reality…

Enough, already!

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Yarnell dreamin’ again: I have SO had ENOUGH, already(!) of the gawdawful racket that comes with living in the lovely city.

The damned helicopters are hovering over the freeway, where some guy rolled his work vehicles and dumped nails — yes, NAILS — all over three northbound lanes. They’ve got the freeway shut down and are routing traffic up Conduit of Blight Blvd to Gangbanger’s Way, creating a massive rush-hour traffic jam. This would be a massive jam if it weren’t 7 in the morning. It’s hard to imagine what a mess they must have just now.

So sirens are wailing, helicopters are roaring, and the damn train on Conduit of Blight is going BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG!!!!

I hate this racket. The sky is not supposed to roar. We were told the damn train boondoggle would be quiet (it is not). Between the cops and the ambulances, this area never is free of sirens howling.

Y’know, I love my house and my yard and my neighbors, but when you can’t enjoy the place because the ambient racket hurts your ears, you have to wonder why you’re staying. Especially with the city about to institute yet another scheme to dump transient drug addicts in your lap.

Interestingly, housing prices in Tucson are somewhat lower than they are here. I was surprised to learn this. The Oro Valley, an area on the northwest side of Tucson, has the lowest crime rate in the state, and yet the housing prices are similar to those in my part of the ’hood.

Tucson is surrounded by mountain ranges. If it weren’t for the city, it would be an exceptionally beautiful spot. Check out this little hovel, for example. How would you like that view off your back patio? I don’t much care for the late-model architecture — detest walls that don’t come up to the ceiling and dust-catching “plant shelves” — but one could live with it if the place were quiet and the views spectacular.

For what I could net on this house, I could buy a comparable place in Tucson, on acreage. There’s an area called Casas Adobes with houses whose vintage is more my speed. This place, for example, could be made more or less acceptable simply by getting rid of the owners’ ugly furniture. It’s cheap enough (if $312,000 can be called “cheap”) that I would come away with an even trade, after the expenses involved in unloading my house.

Problem with Casas Adobes, I suspect, is cued by those bars on the windows. Almost every house for sale in that district has bars on every window and door. And that’s telling you they have a crime (and probably a transient) issue. Trulia’s crime map makes the Casas Adobes itself look OK, but the area just to the south is not good at-tall. Well. The “area just to the south” is the entire city of Tucson. Which is, it must be admitted, mostly Chez Pitz.

On the other hand, the advantage of Tucson — as compared to lovely Yarnell or Prescott or Wickenburg — is that it is a city. It has a cultural life. In fact, because the University of Arizona (which resides in Tucson) still resembles a real university — as opposed to the learning-factory model of Arizona State — the university does support quite a vibrant cultural life. Tucson also hosts a major medical center, with one of the only top-ranking hospitals in the state. Tucson has a church, St. Phil’s in the Hills, whose music program appears to be similar to All Saints. Probably not as large or as elaborate. But there it is. None of those things hold forth in little burgs around the state.

Something to think about…

Happy(?) Thanksgiving

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Never fails, does it? All real emergencies, terrors, clogged drains, and minor inconveniences invariably happen on a holiday. Or, at best, on a Sunday.

Not so reliably on a Sunday, though: too many resources are open and available on Sunday.

But Thanksgiving? Christmas? The Fourth of July? Ohhhhh yeah! Whatever can go wrong will go wrong…on a major holiday!

Early this morning the dogs and I climb off the bed. Cassie seemed OK but tired, which wasn’t surprising because we spent yesterday evening at my son’s house. She doesn’t sustain even the most routine exercise well anymore: lately, if I try to walk her around the corner and back — about a tenth of a mile — she tires but seems OK. But the next morning she seems exhausted.

When she walked outside to do her thing, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But within the hour, she couldn’t stand up to eat her food. She just stood over her dish, shaking all over. She seemed almost paralyzed: couldn’t or wouldn’t walk, and though she was sort of standing, it was more like huddling upright. I had to lift her onto the doggy bed pillow, and then position her so her nose would not be pressed into the stuffing and suffocate her.  Even reclining, she continued to shake all over and she seemed unable to move on her own. It was almost like she’d had a stroke.

My son and I are supposed to go to our friends’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. This, we might add, is a bit of a BFD.

So the emergency vet’s receptionist said the wait there right now is several hours. And how much does a trip to the emergency vet cost? “A hundred dollars.” And that is  just to walk in the door.

If Cassie is dying, I figure she might as well die here as there.

But now I don’t know what to do about the Thanksgiving thing. I hate to leave her here to die by herself. But…on the other hand, I don’t know that she will die today. She has her ups and downs (though rarely as extreme as this). This isn’t the first time I’ve thought she was on the way out. Apparently these swings are a function of the adrenal gland tumor. Weakness, shaking, collapse, lack of energy, panting, rapid breathing are all symptoms of the thing. So, we might add, is “symptoms seem to come and go.”

There isn’t much I can do for her except let her rest. And frankly, other than putting her down right now, there’s not much a vet can do for her, either.

So I’m sitting there on the bed e-mailing this intelligence to my son: writing her obituary, as it were. And I hear {click click click click} up the hallway. Ruby is standing right there, so it ain’t her. Cassie has managed, somehow, to pull herself to her feet and she’s staggering up the hall toward the kithchen.

She’s walking and she’s stopped shivering all over. And…next thing y’know, she eats a whole plate of dog food..

Well, she staggered outside briefly. Then disappeared. Had to set Ruby to searching for her, which is a trick because one thing a corgi ain’t is a search dog. I’ve worked on the “find” command with that mutt until I’m blue in the proverbial face, and she still only vaguely gets the idea.

Found the patient inside, again unable to walk, shaking again. Picked her up and carried her back to the dog bed. She’s resting and has stopped shaking, at least as long as she’s reclining.

Okay, let’s try to think rationally here.

  • She doesn’t appear to be in much discomfort, except that she’s too weak to walk. That she ate an entire serving of dog food indicates that she’s not in a lot of pain.
  • I’m going to have to have her put to sleep in the next few days or, at most, weeks.
  • Therefore it doesn’t make a lot of sense to rack up a bill of hundreds of dollars to take her to an emergency vet.
  • Nor does it make sense to spend all of Thanksgiving Day sitting in a veterinary waiting room for something that ultimately can’t be helped.
  • If she’s going to die today, my being here will not change that.
  • But she’s probably not going to die today, given that she was able, eventually, to get up and eat, and given the pattern of ups & downs.

Unless things change a lot for the worse, I think I could safely go to our friend’s house. There’s little or nothing I can do for the dog here.

Next week, though, I’m afraid it’s going to be The Time. If she doesn’t pass through the veil today, I’ll have to take her up to one of the vets tomorrow or Monday.

This Event will present a whole series of new decisions:

• Do I get another dog?

If so, what kind of dog?
From where?

• Do I stay here in my house, or move away from the recrudescent Tony Situation?

If I’m right about what Tony is up to (let us hope not!), then I will need to get another German shepherd or similar protective, aggressive dog. There’s a reason I didn’t replace Anna with another GerShep: I’m too old to train and handle a large, high-drive dog safely. This fact inclines us to say “move away.”

• If I move, where do I go?

• Some friends are trying to sell their two-bedroom patio home, by way of moving themselves into an upscale old-folkerie. It’s a nice little house, centrally located, and I would buy it but for two things:

§ One of the reasons they’re moving is that they have a certifiably lunatic neighbor who has made a lot of trouble for them. Out of the frying pan, into the fire!!
§ It needs about $15,000 worth of renovations.

• Well. And there are some other things:

§ It’s two houses in from Central Avenue, a noisy main drag.
§ It’s in an HOA. I do not want to deal with an HOA.
§ The little development borders the canal, which is a superhighway for drug-addicted bums.
§ It’s within (loud) earshot of Sunnyslope High School, where the band practices and football games blast forth during the fall semester.
§ They’re asking more than it’s worth, IMHO, especially given that it needs new flooring, a new security gate in front, new landscaping, a gate on the west side through which to roll the garbage can by way of keeping the peace with the crazy next door…and on and on.

• For what I can pay, that leaves either Sun City or Fountain Hills, neither of which are within reasonable driving distance of my life.

If I stay here and Tony starts to do his thing again — frankly, I’d put money on it that he’s up to just that — then I will need to get a dog that’s big enough to be some protection. That represents a) expense and b) hassle. I’ll also need to add to the armory: really, I need a shotgun, because I’ve become too goddamn lazy to drag the pistol to the range and practice.

A new shotgun will cost several hundred bucks…as nothing compared to the cost of moving. I have some friends who are into armaments and so may be able to find someone who knows someone who’d like to sell Dear Old Dad’s heirloom. Unfortunately SDXB has already unloaded (heh) his. But a few hundred dollars is, indeed, as nothing compared to the cost of moving.

I might be able to get an older, fully socialized GerShep from the German Shepherd rescue. But that poses its whole new set of questions:

• How will Ruby take to a new room-mate?
• Given enough provocation, will this proposed GerShep exterminate Ruby?
• The German shepherd’s lifespan is nine to eleven years, during which one can expect to have to deal with some very expensive ailments. Do I really want to do that again? For a dog that I may have for, say, five years at the outside?

Here’s the Kid. And so, away.

 

Open the Window and Let the Damn Sunshine In!

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Okay. I admit it: my mood has become altogether too goddamn glum. But…helle’s belles. Why not? We have a clown in the White House. California is burning down (and believe me: whither goes California, thither goes Arizona. Every time!). The ice caps are melting. Common sense has gone the way of the dinosaur…which, speaking of thither, is the general direction we can expect our near descendants to go. Hate has become stylish. Our educational system is in the trash heap. Decent jobs are to be had only in China, for those willing to work for prison inmates’ wages. Our idiot leadership and their bigoted fans imagine this will be fixed by blocking cleaning ladies, yard workers, and agricultural laborers from entering the country. You can’t buy a decent cup of coffee for love nor money. And my dog is dying.

Grump!

Somehow I’ve got to find a way to come out of the present blue funk.

This challenge usually involves spending more time around people. Though I must admit, people are not my métier. SDXB and NG wanted me to go with to the Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival, which I really would have enjoyed doing. But some other demand superseded…I believe it was that I had to take the dog to the vet. Again.

Nor, really, could one responsibly have left the poor little beast alone in the house all day.

If I were sane, I’d get off my duff and go for a hike in the mountain park. Except…well…the Phoenix Mountain Parks are no longer what you’d call a joy to visit. They’re SO thumped by the sheer volume of humanity tromping through them that you’d probably do better to go for a walk in a parking lot. Plus with everybody and her little sister yapping on cell phones everywhere you go, the endlessly annoying background chatter has become downright aversive.

Alternatively, I suppose one could accomplish something constructive. That’s always cheering. I could…

• Get the chipped paint on the entry to the living room matched, buy a can of it, and touch up the dinged wall.
• Do the laundry. Wheee!
• Post this week’s The Complete Writer chapter and update the TofC for that thing
• Retrieve the book proposal I left to languish out of brain-banging laziness, find a new potential publisher, write a new cover letter, and send it off.
• Go to the nursery or the Depot and buy some winter flowers to replace the summer blossoms that have croaked over.
• Or better yet, since  I now can’t afford to buy so much as a loaf of bread, beg borrow or steal some flower seeds.
• Figure out how I’m going to get enough coffee to last the rest of the month. Gets more and more cheering, doesn’t it?
• Prune the roses. A thrill a minute!
• Lock up Cassie and take Ruby for a very long walk.
• Bake some bread in the grill.
• Feed a few of the local homeless drug addicts.

Precious few of these are free… I do have some flour in the freezer, I think, so I could make bread. And a mess to clean up… Posting bits of various magnum opi is free, except of course for the web hosting charges. Mailing off book proposals: free, thanks to email…well, except for the associated connection charges, which, we might add, cost one helluva lot more than a couple of postage stamps, even at today’s inflated rates.

Hm. Precious few seem especially cheering.

Think I’ll go sit in the hall closet with the vacuum cleaner and close the door behind us…

My little pal…

 

Black Cloth and Ashes

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Two funerals in the past week or so, and now we have to sing at another on Friday.

California is burning down. Friends who live near or in the fire areas are, if not fleeing for their lives, in an uproar of terror for those whose lives are being upturned.

Yesterday I made an appointment to take Cassie the Corgi in to the vet to be put to sleep. Monday morning. She was in such bad shape she could barely walk, and could not step up over the threshold of the back door without being lifted over it.

Forthwith my son appeared, to argue against it. She was in such terrible shape, though, that I couldn’t take very seriously the argument that she might not be so bad off. He actually offered to pay the $1,000 it would cost to do surgery to remove the supposed tumor on her adrenal gland (without realizing, I think, how complicated and iffy that surgery is).

But…

But today, she’s sprung back! The limp is almost gone (she’s always had a little limp, but yesterday she was crippled). She’s barking again. Though she still has a bit of a tragic expression and she’s still bloated (a sign of Cushing’s disease), she seems relatively…cheerful, I suppose. She’s about 80% of normal.

So…now I don’t know what to do. It’s possible she was injured…maybe her back got twisted while she was being lifted onto and off of the bed. Or maybe something happened that I didn’t observe.

If she continues at 80 to 90 percent, I suppose on Monday I’ll have to cancel the appointment. Or maybe take her in and ask the vet if she can come up with something to treat her. There are a couple of drug treatments for Cushings that can extend a dog’s life. But they have nasty side effects that probably will make her plenty miserable in their own right. So…what? I substitute one horror for another? Why?

Meanwhile, the effort to freeze the supposedly benign tumor off my hand seems to have failed. It’s healed up and the scab has fallen off and it still itches frantically. At night along about 1 or 2 in the morning it starts burning, awakening me with pain radiating up the arm. Lovely. So I guess we’ll have to jump through that hoop again…or actually do surgery on it, after all, which probably is what should’ve been done in the first place.

So…helle’s belles. Who knows?