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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

She Shouldn’t Have Died. He Shouldn’t Have Had to Suffer…

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It’s a ridiculous thing to say in hindsight, of course:

My mother should not have had to die from the effects of her smoking habit.

She was in her 40s when the word came down that smoking would kill you. But…by then she’d been smoking since she was in her early 20s — maybe longer than that. She was massively addicted to nicotine.

I understate not:

The poor woman couldn’t pass an hour without a cigarette. In fact, hardly 15 conscious minutes passed that she didn’t have a goddamn cancer stick in her mouth.

The word came down…when? in the late 1950s? early 1960s? that tobacco smoking causes cancer. But by then, she just fukkin’ didn’t care.

First, I think she didn’t believe it: anything Big Brother said must have some manipulative motive, right?

But then, even if she did believe it, I seriously don’t think she cared.

By the late 1950s, early 1960s, she was so firmly addicted to nicotine that she might not have been able to shake the habit if she’d wanted to.

And she didn’t. She’d made up her mind that she liked smoking. That it was part of her daily life (ohhh literally: from before she lifted her head off the pillow until she mashed out that last cancer stick of the day, along about 10 or 11 p.m.). And she was just flat NOT GONNA quit.

And she didn’t.

Nothing would stop her habit from killing her. Least of all her effin’ doctors.

Women in this country, being women and therefore natural-born hypochondriacs, are ignored when they claim to be sick. There, there, dear…it’s all in your pretty little head. And that’s exactly what she got.

If there ever was a time between the time her cancer symptoms surfaced and the moment a quack allowed as to how she was very, very sick indeed — terminally so — it was long past by the time she encountered the first quack who bestirred himself to listen to her.

Cigarettes and other tobacco products should have been taken off the market the moment their carcinogenic effect had been proven.

Yes: then, as today, a poisonous product still would have been peddled on the black market. But my parents, like a surprising number of other humans, wouldn’t have purchased an illegal product even though they were addicted to it.

My father managed to shake that devil from his back.

My mother: not so much. The goddamn cigarettes killed her…in a spectacularly ugly way. And blighted my father’s life, when he had to care for the love of his life as she died hideously in their bedroom in Sun City.

She never saw her grandson (by then I was pregnant with him). Her addiction mattered more.

She never cared how much her husband suffered, taking care of her. Her addiction mattered more.

She never seemed to care that she was dying. Her addiction mattered more.

A tobacco-induced death is not just an ugly way to die. It’s a GAWDAWFUL way to die. And the people who get rich inducing it are not just murderers: they’re torturers.

They tortured her. And they tortured him.

Things That Shouldn’t Have Happened

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My father: Good God!

I look at his life and think of it as tragedy. Truly heart-breaking tragedy.

  • His mother going off the deep end
  • His bigotry: given that THEY WEREN’T WHITE!
  • That he dropped out of school
  • My mother, the love of his life, killing herself with tobacco
  • Me thinking that I was better than him: what a little twit!!
  • Why didn’t he go to work for Metzgers Dairy in Texas, as his brother did? The brother became an executive with that outfit.
  • Actually, he did have a delivery route for them, when he was a young pup. Why didn’t he get further?
  • Apparently, it was spending hours watching the rear ends of horses as he delivered milk around the countrified environs of Ft. Worth, then a hick town in the middle of nowhere.
  • So, it was off to join the Navy!
  • And from there, to move on to the Merchant Marine.
  • Why did he dislike queers…uhm, gay men…so much…but also enjoy the company of teenaged boys to a surprising degree? What WAS he trying to say to us? Or…to not say?

Every glance at the man’s life brings up a slew of questions. But…isn’t that so of everyone?

Possibly he and my mother shouldn’t have moved to Sun City, here in balmy Arizona. If they had stayed in Southern California (whence they came), would a competent doctor there have recognized her cancer in time to save her?

Probably not.

Smoking tobacco should never have been legal. The accursed, poisonous stuff should have been banned the minute it was proven that smoking that shit causes cancer, and that it is addictive.

Some doctor should have had the wherewithal to at least TRY to talk my mother into quitting.

My father should have insisted that she quit, at the same time he did.

Their horrific experience in the Sun City nursing home, as she lay dying, should have been actionable. We should have sued that outfit.

Why didn’t DXH, a partner in a heavy-hitting law firm, suggest that? Probably because I’d already taken up with TJK and so he didn’t give a damn about my family.

My father shouldn’t have had to transport my mother 20 miles from Sun City into North Central Phoenix to get decent nursing-home care.

DXH and I shouldn’t have blithely acquiesced to my father’s proposal that he marry the Dragon Lady, after my mother had died. We should have suggested he wait for a year. And during that year, we should have socialized with him, taken him on trips, had him meet people.

I should never have taken up with TJK. By the time my mother got sick, DXH probably didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us.

Hmmmm…. Y’know…about a third of my life shouldn’t have happened…

Home or Old Folkerie?

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Sittin’ around the house thinking….

Am I gonna be able to stay in my home until I croak over?

Or will I be forced to sell this place and lock myself up in one of those prisons for old folks?

You know whereof we speak: “life care communities.” All the rage for keeping elderly delinquents off the streets these days.

Welp, y’know… Those institutions had just come into vogue as my parents entered their dotage. My father, having gone to sea all his life, was not the slightest bit daunted at the prospect of selling their little home in Sun City and consigning himself to the care of an institution.

But…my mother would have none of it! NO WAY in hell was she going to put herself in a nursing home before she needed it!

Little did she know how soon she would need it. She died on my birthday in her 65th year.

The cancer so generously gifted to her by the world’s tobacco companies killed her….less than a month after her 65th birthday. The nursing home was rolling her, in her hospital bed, down to the Medicare ward when she passed.

She was decently cared for in the nursing home…probably because my father drove in from Sun City every day. walked in the door when they opened at 7 a.m., and sat there beside her bed, watching, until they threw him out at 11 p.m.

But…

Frankly, I think my father was right: They should have imprisoned themselves in Orangewood, the “life-care community” of my father’s choice, before she got sick. He had discovered the existence of such places about eight months or a year before she fell ill, and he’d tried to persuade her to move into one. She would have none of it.

And…

Well, I don’t blame her. Personally, I loathe institutional living. Truly, truly hated living in the dorm. And that is why I don’t want to move into one of them. Too much like living in prison…

After she died, he promptly sold the little house in Sun City and forked over most of his net worth to move into Orangewood. And I can assure you that he liked it there. Well: except that he made a key and unreconcilable mistake: he married a horrible dragon lady who, once she had him trapped with a wedding ring, made his life miserable.

No, he wouldn’t divorce her, because

a) He was afraid she would “get all my money” in divorce proceedings; and
b) He was afraid of the gossip a divorce would create among the other prison inmates.

Dragon Lady was outgoing and busy: she was extremely popular with the Orangewood natives. And he probably was right: if he did divorce her, he no doubt would want — if not need — to move out of that place. But…those “life-care communities” glom ALL YOUR CAPITAL. He probably wouldn’t have had enough money to get himself into some other place, plus all the money he had given to Orangewood was basically disappeared.

Result of that: he lived out the last few years of his life in utter misery.

***

Would my father have been better off if, instead of institutionalizing himself, he had hired people to come in and take care of him at his place in Sun City?

Putting aside the fact that he was too tight to do that…let us think about it:

* Here, Pool Dude keeps the drink pristine. My father’s Sun City palace had no pool. However, because it was so poorly built (basically uninsulated), its AC bills were far higher than mine. So one might regard SC power bills, compared to my house, as a wash…in the pool.

* Wonder-Cleaning Lady comes in every two weeks and renders the house spotless. Because there are no kids or cats here, the place stays reasonably clean between visits.

* Gerardo wrangles the landscaping — which, because it’s xeric, doesn’t demand much. It has an automatic watering system: I don’t even have to do a hose-drag to maintain the place.

* I have no problem caring for a small dog. Ruby is basically effortless, as roommates go.

Given that my father’s house was paid for, to have stayed in Sun City and hired a yard guy and a cleaning lady wouldn’t have cost him anything LIKE what Orangewood cost. Not even if he hired someone to come into the house daily, check on him, take him to the grocery store, maybe prepare a week’s worth of meals for him.

Zillow estimates my house’s current value at $484,100. Borrowing against that would buy a WHOLE lot of service from Pool Dude, Lawn Dude, and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven. Years’ worth.

And again, let’s remember, he didn’t need either a pool dude or a lawn dude…

Now, what did my father get at the honored old-folkerie?

At Orangewood: a two-bedroom apt.  They refuse to tell you the cost on their website…which ought to tellya something….  As I recall, it took the entire proceeds of the sale of his house to get him into that place. The apartment was tiny: I would describe it as an elaborate studio apt. It didn’t have a real kitchen — just a counter with a minimal stove and a sink. The living room, dining area (if you could call it that), and kitchen occupied one (count it: 1) room.

Median monthly cost of “independent living” in Arizona is $2,738.

He couldn’t have afforded that. ONE YEAR would consume almost a third of his life savings. That’s $32,856/year, bare minimum. Without maintaining your car, without going anywhere, without even buying clothes. Basically what was happening was that he was forking over ALL of his Social Security, plus a substantial chunk of his savings.

It certainly would not cost $35,000+ a year to hire someone to come in and take care of my house. The total cost of everything — maintenance, car, groceries, utilities, pool care, and general living expenses — may come to something like that. Or not…. just now I’m not drawing anything like that out of savings, but I get a decent amount of SS. Not enough to live in middle-class grandeur, but certainly not so little that I would starve.

What that suggests, IMHO, is that moving into one of those places would cost as much as — or more than! — I would have to spend to stay here and hire people to come in and help me. The money I take out of savings, in most years, is recovered because the remainder stays in professionally managed investments.

I would be better off — and my son would be better off — if I can manage to stay in this place until I die, or at least until a few months before that happens. Proceeds from the sale of this house would nicely plump up his retirement savings. Or he could sell his place, invest any profit from that, then move into this place and invest the monthly amount he’s been forking over to his mortgage company.

Speaking of the value of a shack, my parents’ house in Sun City last sold for $255,000: two and a half times the amount of my father’s life savings. Lest you think that was bargain, the place was about the size of the first apartment DXH and I moved into. I think they paid about $8,000 for that house.

Indeed, that first apartment may have been bigger than the SC house…it certainly was no smaller.

Our apartment:

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
Walk-in storage closet in kitchen
2 bathrooms????? Can’t recall…maybe not, though

SC house

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
2 bathrooms
Don’t recall a storage closet, but think there was space behind carport
Lots of wasted space in hallway

The SC house last sold for $255,000!!!!!  2 1/2 times the total nest egg that my father saved for his retirement!

Quack Day

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A-n-n-d…speaking of doctors, as we were yesterday…in a few minutes I need to head off to a dermatologist. One of my fingernails is lifting right off its bed — for, as far as I can tell, no good reason. I haven’t hurt my hand, and none of the other nails are doing that.

Well…no: not so. You could argue that the thumbnail is starting to do the same thing.

Hmmmmm…. An infection, maybe? Far’s I can remember, I haven’t stuck my paws in any caustic solutions. If I had, you’d think all the nails on that hand would be acting the same way.

This guy is a partner of the beloved Young Doctor Kildare, who once again has left the practice of medicine to take up the leadership of a charitable organization. I hope he and I get on (I adored YDK!), because these are my “doctors in the wild,” as the Mayo calls them. That is: doctors who do NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic.

😀  The Mayo is truly wonderful. But their doctors’ offices are located halfway to Payson. No kidding: they’re on the far northeast side of Scottsdale, almost an hour’s drive from here.

So I’m not inclined to safari all the way out there for just any li’l ailment that I don’t consider life-threatening.

***

So it was over to said local doc. No satisfactory explanation or diagnosis was given. But they want me to go to a neurologist.

And of course, getting in to see this worthy entails a whole new set of endless hoop-jumps! Goodie!

How do they get people to go to doctors at all, these days?

I am JUST NOT UP for this kind of hassle now.

So instead of hurrying home and making a new appointment with the new guy, I cruised up behind YDK’s offices, into a sprawling middle-class housing development of ticky-tacky stick-and-plaster homes.

My dear (late, absconded) friend Elaine and her (now late) husband lived there. I helped them fix up and paint the house when they moved in, which was how I got a good, clear, horrifying look at the place’s construction. What junk!!!! 

And when you drive around (and around and around and around and…) in there, what you see is square mile on square mile of junk.

How the Hell do developers persuade Americans to buy this stuff?

😀

In theory, it ought to be a nice place to live...but…but… Heh: but if you happen to look closely enough to see how the houses are built, you want to RUN away. The structures are as flimsy as flimsy can be. Really: if you’ve ever done any work on one of them, you know that “flimsy” overstates the quality of the construction out there.

So what you have in lovely Moon Valley is mile on square mile on square mile of tossed-together ticky-tacky. Expensive tossed-together ticky-tacky.

Well. Not spectacularly expensive — most of it isn’t, anyway, though there are some fancier(-looking) areas. But these are people’s houses. Houses that are supposed to last a generation or three.

Some of them, you’d be amazed to see last a decade, to say nothing of a generation.

****

Ohhh well. Here’s a rather interesting passage about a new theory of Alzheimer’s, speaking doctoring. It appears rather little is really understood about the condition…and it’s a condition that’s spreading to drastic proportions.

****

Tuesday
August 20

And now it’s quarter six, after several more sleepless hours. Might as well get up and walk the dawg before it gets hot.

What a life! Such as it is…

Heah Come de Storm…

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Eeek! We’re looking at a serious storm a-rollin’ in, right this minute. Wunderground expects our lovely weather to chill down from the present 106 degrees to a crisp 86, with thunderstorms, a few of which may be “severe.”

Ya don’t say, Jose?

Jeeminee, you should see that sky!

Welp, as much as can be battened is battened down. The BBQ is secured (…i hope…). Pool level is about 1/2 inch low, so if we get some serious rain it shouldn’t overflow much of anything. Gerardo’s gents have kindly pruned the palm trees, so we ought not to get too much of that kinda debris in the drink. Ruby is in the house and perched on the bed, where she presumably will feel safe…or as safe as a dog feels in any wild-a$$ed storm.

It’s dead still out there right now…never a good sign right before the thunder starts to roll.

a-a-a-a-a-n-d… Here’s another good reason to live in Arizona, not in other sylvan vales of our great nation…

You have to be told this? REALLY?????

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It looks like my son has conceded the Battle of the Mayo Clinic Old Folks’ Chatfest.

This is a weekly meeting in which we all sit around a table and agonize about how we can’t remember our names, much less where we put our shoes. This morning I’m told it’s OK if we don’t make the 40-minute trudge out there for that eye-glazing purpose.

What a bore! And what a waste of time: 80 minutes of driving time, plus two or three hours diddled away listening to a tribe of elders recite how they couldn’t remember to eat their breakfast. If it were not excruciatingly boring, it would still be excruciating. And so far, I have not heard one thing — not a single strategy! — that would help one remember the crucial trivia of everyday life. You know: when are the bills due, did you water the roses, did you buy whole-bean coffee or ground coffee: the daily ditz of a world dominated by trivia.

And I do need to cling to the skill or mental functioning that helps one remember where the car is parked in an underground garage.

The simplest strategy is absurdly simple: WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN ON A NOTEPAD OR WHITEBOARD.

Duh!

Most of the time that’s exactly what I do. Occasionally, I do neglect to scribble down a to-do or a to-buy or a to-call or a to-pay.

Yes. 😀 Yesterday I did lose my car in the Mayo’s underground garage. And frankly, it never would have occurred to me to write down where it was parked. I’ve never forgotten any such thing in my life!

On the other hand, yesterday’s exploit had a particularly shiny silver lining: the campus cop who helped me find the tank was just about THE cutest and most charming critter I’ve ever met.

😀

Must remember to drive out there and lose the car again….

Today I’m supposed to schlep to the dermatologist’s, wayyyyy on the OTHER side of the Valley. I can’t remember (yep!) why I made this appointment. It may be a routine visit, but I doubt that. There’s a patch on one arm that has become de-pigmented: the normally brown skin is white as a piece of typing paper.

Apparently this phenomenon is called vitiligo. It seems not to be precancerous, not to be life- or health-threatening, and…not to be especially treatable.

:-0

aaaaaaaaah SHIT! Just spilled coffee all over my computer and slopped it on the arms of the leather chair where I was loafing. And all over me.

The damn stuff has soaked into the chair. Can’t wipe it off. Can’t dab it up.

So….ohhh goodie. Looks like I’ll be buying a new family-room chair.

The place where I bought this one has closed. That means traipsing all over the Valley searching for a store that carries similar (now no doubt very unfashionable) furniture.

Ugh ugh ugh ughity ugh!!

Well, with that mess dabbed up, now there’s no time left to scribble here. Better get up, get dressed, and start driving driving driving…

…nope! WRONG! … It’s only 8:40 a.m.

😀  Not to say :-0

or

{GASP!}

LOL! I thought the present time was an hour later than it is.

Which is not a good sign, I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not something I can change. And — conveniently — it also means I don’t have to get up and charge around to get dressed and paint the face.

But in the Quitcher Bellyachin’ Department: a MIRACLE!! The spilled coffee did NOT stain the chair’s (already brown) leather! YAHOOO!

Now all I need to make my day is another ride around the Mayo’s parking garage with that gorgeous young security guard…

😀