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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Another Day, Another Taxpayer-Funded Dollah…

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Mwa hah ha!  Social Security: what could be better?

Seriously, I do hafta say that I am mightily grateful for the wee Social Security income that trickles in each month. Yes, I do have enough in savings to live on as a retiree…for the time being. But…that’s assuming I do NOT acquire the insane longevity of my non-smoking forebears.

Yeah: the Christian Scientists on my mother’s side of the family lived into outrageously advanced old age — and by and large, they did so independently. They were well into their late 90s when they croaked over…and might have lived even longer if they’d been given to the blandishments of modern medicine.

Would they have wanted to? Ah. Yea verily: that is the question.

My son dragged me out to the Mayo yesterday, an annoying and time-wasting trip. Among the several sillinesses to which they subjected me was this…uhm…Olde Folke’s IQ Test. As it were.

And as it were, it was the stupidest thing you could ever hope not to encounter. Seriously: an unutterable and frustrating waste of time.

Frustrating because I had better things to do of an afternoon.

Unutterable because one probably should not openly express one’s opinion of such stupidity, especially not to the professional who is inflicting the stupidity on you.

When you come away from an encounter like that, you find yourself thinking “Them thar Christian Scientists had somethin’…”

Colder ‘n’ a Bigawd

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Jeez! It’s 42 degrees out there on the back porch. But for some reason it feels a lot colder than that. No doubt because it’s overcast — Arizona doesn’t do overcast well. 😀

Gray and a little damp.

Reckon that’s going to moot this morning’s doggy-walk. We’re already running way, wayyy late — it’s quarter to nine now. The human has gotta eat. And..and…??? Then what????

***********

And now it’s the next day. Clear and cold outside. The dog and I loaf in the bed, the Human knowing it needs to get up and get going but…well…too lazy to engage in any such ambitious throwings-around.

Diddling away time by looking up an old boyfriend on Internet. Mygawd, but you can find out a lot about people on the Web!

On the other hand…after a long series of come-ons, the damn site wants me to pony up cash to disgorge the information they claim to have on him.

😀   😮   😀

Forget that, White Folks!

Hilariously, my parents’ objection to this guy was that they evidently didn’t regard him as quite white. They were rabid bigots: no one who wasn’t white and Anglo-Saxon quite came up to their elevated standards. Nevvermind that my father’s grandmother’s people were Choctaw Indians… You never met a man who could hate with my father’s flair for hating.

Anyway, they hated Paul, I think because he was Bohemian by origin. Nevvermind that his skin was as white as mine. Nevvermind that he was born in the U.S. and grew up  in Chicago. Nevvermind that his parents and brother were born in the U.S. Nevvermind that he was busily getting a degree in public administration.

Indeed, he ended up going into academic administration…and, to my astonishment, here I learn that while I was running an academic publication at the Great Desert University, he was working in the university president’s office!

I had no idea! We must have crossed paths on campus many times, yet I never recognized him. I wonder if he recognized me?

O’course, by then I had a different name. A different major. Two advanced degrees. A kid. And fifteen or twenty extra years added to my face.

Eventually he resurfaces in Chicago, whence he came and where his family lived. Apparently he married and continued happily ever after. I surely hope so.

Life. Strange, isn’t it?

Apocalypse!

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Good Lord! Have you been following the nightmare news out of Southern California?

Sooooo thankful that we don’t live there anymore.

We moved to Long Beach, where I was born in another century, after my father changed jobs from Standard Oil to Union Oil. Upshot of that shift was that instead of shipping out of northern California’s East Bay (he was a merchant marine deck officer), he docked in Southern California.

Sooo…if the present apocalypse were going on 20 or 30 years ago, we would be right in the middle of it.

In Long Beach, my mother lived in terror of exactly the kind of conflagrations we’re seeing today. The potential for fires like these has always existed, though it wasn’t anything the normal person on the street thought about.

Arizona presents a similar potential, though as far as I can tell, it doesn’t apply inside the major cities. Well…not to the degree that it applies in Southern California. But that potential is one of the reasons I chose not to move up to the little mountain town of Payson when several of my friends did so. We do get some major forest fires…but because many, many fewer people live here, our fires don’t get the kind of publicity we see coming out of Southern California now.

But gosh, am I ever glad I don’t live in California now!

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…

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Ever look back on some damfool thing you should have done or, more to the point, shouldn’t have done and think…”coulda, shoulda, woulda,” all the while kicking your idiot self in the metaphorical tuchus?

The past couple of days have been haunted by that less-than-charming state of mind:

When my father and his late-life lady friend came to me and ostentatiously asked for my permission for them to marry, What the F**K was the matter with me that I didn’t jump up and down hollering NO, DON’T DO THAT!??

What was the matter with me that I didn’t say, as calmly and rationally as possible, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!

Why the HELL didn’t I say Wait! Just WAIT six months and see how things shake out then?”

Why didn’t I say to my father, DADDY, RUN AWAY!

Welp. Some of us are just plain plug-stupid. And evidently I’m among that number.

Dunno why that episode has come back to haunt me of late. But yeah: over the past week or two I find myself reliving the (annoying!) episode when my father and the Dragon Lady came to me like a pair of 16-year-olds and begged my permission to marry.

WTF was I supposed to say? They were both adults. They both had been married before (twice, in my father’s case). They both knew what they were getting into. And they both knew that since in their 60s they were unlikely to spawn any offspring, it fukkin’ DIDN’T MATTER whether they married or lived in sin.

Well. Of course, about all I could do was give them my daughterly blessings.

Dayum! I must have been smoking something especially toxic that day.

The upshot of this little circus performance was misery. Years of misery for my father.

He was afraid to divorce the Witch. “SHE’LL GET ALL MY MONEY,” wailed he. Nevvermind that his daughter’s husband was a senior partner in one of the most powerful lawfirms in the Southwest. Ohhh eeek! SHE’LL GET ALL MY MONEY!

Holy shit. Some things matter more than all your money.

Why didn’t I tell him so?

I dunno.

Just stupid, I guess.

Argh! When was the last time….

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I felt this weary at 6:00 p.m?

LOL! Just this minute, I could very easily fall face-forward in the sack and conker out…

Alas, that would mean that along about 10:00 p.m. — tonight! — I’d be WIDE AWAKE with noooo hope of getting back to sleep…

Ohhhh well….

Dawg and I: just back from a mile-long perambulation of the park. Pretty quiet out there. Numbers of cute li’l kids playing. A couple of athletic teams bopping balls back and forth. The moon glowing brightly against a dark blue dusk sky.

Ahh, the young people are so fine, so much pleasure to watch. It really IS a beautiful neighborhood, full of excellent young folks alive with energy. My idea of energy is getting all the way around the park — about a mile — without conkering out.

The hound, being as lazy and as superannuated as her human. has taken up her position at the foot of the mattress and is busy conkering out. It’s only 7:00, but frankly I doubt if I’ll last much longer than she will… zzzzzzzzzz

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After Dark…

LOL! So there I wuz, going on about how beautiful the’Hood is. That was this afternoon. Now it’s coming onto 8 p.m., and what we have is BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Gunfire or backfires — or maybe a bit of both — resonating down from Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Honestly. This kind of sh!t makes the mausoleum that is Sun City look good. Which is sayin’ something.

Something horrible.

Ugh. I should have moved out to Sun City when SDXB did.

Trouble is, I hated living out there with my parents. The Silence of the Mausoleum is just not my idea of pleasant.

On the other hand…the whiz of ricocheting bullets is prob’ly not all that grand, either.

Phoenix: LA. East.
What a dump!

Been there… Yow!

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Holee mackerel!

I can remember smelling the smoke from fires like this when my parents and I lived in Long Beach — back in the Dark Ages. Quite a few ages have passed since those days…and now, here we are again.

Five major fires around L.A. and Malibu… What a horror show! Some estimates claim 11,000 buildings have been torched. Sure am glad I’m not there, these days.

Welp…I guess that yes, I’m glad I’m out of California. It doesn’t say much, though. Arizona is full of forest land, too, equally vulnerable to fires. So far, we’ve been (relatively) lucky. Almost surely, though, as the climate gets hotter and drier, we’ll see more and more fires like this: here, there, and everywhere.

Just look at this stuff. Among the many things that strike you: your dog will have to go to a special animal shelter: you can’t bring him or her with you!

Well…I’d be sleeping on the side of the road with the dog, thank you. But…it strikes me that if one doesn’t have relatives someplace within a far-stretch drive of where one lives, one should make arrangements well before the event for where to go and where to take one’s sidekick. Or always have camping gear stashed in your vehicle, so you and the critters can get up and get out, fast.

Another thing that strikes you: You should keep your gas tank at least 3/4 full. Probably better than that, if at all possible. It means you’d be traipsing to a gas station every time you turn around…but that would be one helluva lot better than running out of gas while you’re on the run from some catastrophe.

Probably also should keep a kit of your regular and emergency medications at hand — either in your car or right by the door you’d go through to get into the car.

Good times, eh?