Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Passworded Out!

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Gawdlmighty, every freakin’  thing you need to do on the Internet now demands a password. And by damn, they all have to be different!

No way can I even begin to remember all these things. So they’re typed out and taped to the shell of my laptop.

Okay, okay: it’s not THAT big a deal. Just now only three sets of secret codes are taped to the computer. But it’s annoying.

Very annoying.

Speaking of annoying, we’re told some sort of social workers are supposed to show up here this morning — within an hour or so, far as I can tell.

> Who these folks are: unknown
> What agency they’re from: unknown
> Who sicced them on me: unknown.

Soon as they show up, I’ll have to demand that they show me some credentials. But…who knows whether those will be real or counterfeit?

Whether they represent some sort of threat or risk to me: also unknown. Is someone trying to stampede me into an old-folkerie? If so, who might that be and what grounds might they be advancing as an excuse to lock me up?

Anyway, I sure could do without it.

This morning’s weird antic means I can’t take poor li’l Ruby (or poor li’l me) for a walk before it gets hot outside.

Assuredly, I am NOT a happy camperette over this. I do NOT like officious types poking their noses into my business; I do NOT feel obligated to discuss my personal issues with strangers, and I highly resent having these people show up at my door to demand…what?

Made even less happy because, as you know and I know, the likelihood that these people are looking for excuses to declare me incompetent to live on my own is exceptionally high. Gets higher with every minute that my age proceeds toward 90… So somehow I’ve got to make myself look competent, competent, and ultra-competent:

  • The house must be picked up
  • The furniture must be dusted
  • The bed must be made
  • The breakfast dishes must be stashed in the washer
  • And…and…good morning, America! 

I am NOT in the mood to cope with a lot of housekeeping ditz this morning. Or any morning: that’s why I hire a cleaning lady! 

Unfortunately, she hasn’t been around for almost a week, so I’ve got to retrace her steps and tidy up everything. And I don’t wanna. All I wanna do is finish my morning coffee!

What concerns me most about this, though, is the possibility that whoever tattled on me is angling to get me committed to an old-folkerie. And that is something I regard with horror.

I most surely do NOT want to live in an institution! I hated, loathed, and despised every minute of living in our college dorms. Not because the dorm-mates weren’t nice, not because the dorms weren’t maintained well enough…not because of anything other than that I deeply, profoundly dislike communal living.

Give me a cave in the Himalayas and I’ll be fine! 😀

 

Jobs We’re Glad We Don’t Have!

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Egad!!!!!  It’s a chilly 100 degrees out there: rather cooler than it feels. As we loaf in the shade, who do we see across the road but a crew of men flinging themselves around in that unholy heat. Actually, they have a flatbed truck and a large hoist, with which they’re hauling a whole-house air-conditioning unit onto the neighbor’s roof.

And migawd, WHAT a job!

Definitely, indisputably one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have!

LOL! Another job I’m mighty glad I don’t have is wrangled by my excellent neighbor straight across the southerly street: He drives a cab for Uber.

HOLEE mackerel! In this heat!! And in Phoenix’s unholy L.A.-style traffic!!!

It’s almost too horrible to contemplate.

Seriously: Phoenix traffic really is gawdawful. Drivers here roar around like lunatics. Add the heat and the crowded conditions, and you have a freakin’ nightmare.

So…one COULD, with some degree of logic and sanity, argue that my son did me a favor by purloining my car.

As a practical matter, I’m discovering that I don’t need to own a car(!!!): this neighborhood is swarming with Uber drivers! That’s above & beyond the guy who lives right across the street. We’re told that a half-dozen hold forth just in the few nearby square blocks.

If that’s the case, then there really is no reason to own a car!

And that is something this ole’ California driver finds just plain downright astonishing.

What DXH and I used to find truly astonishing was that in London, we truly had no call to own a car. When we got over there for the three-month period we dedicated to the research I was doing for the Robert Sidney book, we discovered that between the Underground, the city busses, and the local taxicabs, we didn’t need to rent a car at all!

That saved us a ton of money…to say nothing of vast stores of aggravation. Driving in London is almost as much fun as driving in New York City.

***

Whew!! The guys across the street got the AC unit back on the neighbor’s roof. Looks like they’re gonna have to re-lay some or all of the shingles. Doesn’t THAT sound like fun, in 110-degree heat!

LOAFING: The best of all possible occupations!

Sole & Separate: Keep It That Way

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Stumbling through the afternoon heat, out and about on the neighborhood streets. Not one of my brighter ideas eh?

Man! Speakin’ of stupid ideas: as my brain cooked, my mind wandered to my father’s ill-fated marriage to the hair-raising Helen: the woman he took up with after my mother died.

You wanna talk about mistakes? Lemme tellya MISTAKE!

Couldn’t have been much better for Helen, either: the two of them must have been magnificently miserable after they moved in together. But him? My gawd! What a dragon lady that woman was! 

He had been unendingly happy with my mother: for decades. They were deeply in love. She was a compliant and loving woman. And they tended to think along the same lines…or at least, if they didn’t, she stifled her thoughts and made herself agree with him.

Helen, au contraire, was a woman of strong will and her own opinions. No one told her what to think, and no one told her what to do. Particularly not some guy. 😀

He was utterly bereft after my mother died. The result: after he met Helen at the old-folkerie where he moved, he stupidly proposed marriage.

Guess he imagined one woman was much like another. That, as we know, is far from true. The result: several years of utter misery for my father.

He refused to divorce her, because — wailed he — “she’ll get all my money!”

I was too stupid to come up with a counter to that. I should’ve said Daddy! Your daughter is married to one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. She’s not gonna get all your money…or any of it! 

But no: nary a word from me.

That, to produce an excuse for me, came after years of having had the sh!t beat out of me. True: I was kinda afraid of my father, even as an adult. So I wasn’t inclined to gainsay him. If he thought she’d get all his money, well…no doubt she’d get all his money. Right?

Big mistake. I should have advanced my dainty little foot and spoken up. But…well…I figured that even if he heard a word I said, he wouldn’t be swayed. He would do what he would do because…that was what he did.

As a practical matter, with that lawyer in the offing he probably would have listened to me. Or at least have taken an afternoon to meet with said lawyer and discussed the matter. So…because I kept my mouth shut, he lost a substantial part of his shirt. My bad, eh?

Well, anyway: after decades of prior marriage for each of them, they didn’t think of looking at new  matrimonial arrangements in any unconventional way. So…off they went to the altar in the typical manner: blending all their worldly goods as community property.

Don’t do that, folks.

What you want in a second (or later) marriage is sole and separate property. And you want to keep it that way!  Talk with a lawyer BEFORE you tie the knot; understand what you’re doing and be sure your lawyer reviews things properly.

If my father had done that — well, to be fair: if the two of them had done that — their lives would have been a lot happier and a lot calmer than they turned out to be. And they could have untied the knot fairly easily, with lots less pain. 

April 22, Continued!

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Gerardo the Lawn Dude’s crew just shot out the front gate, headed for their next customer. Good lord! Do those guys ever WORK. 

This house’s yard isn’t even that huge — much of it is occupied by the swimming pool, and another third of it by the paved front patio. It still takes them upwards of an hour (i lose track!) to rake and blower and rake some more and shovel and haul and clean and trim and shovel & haul some more and…on and freakin’ ON! That is not a job I could do even if I were male and healthy enough for it.

Forked over a hundred bucks to them….which is more than their usual fee. But IMHO what they did today was more than their usual ungawdly slug of labor. I sure couldn’t do it. Wouldn‘t do it. They are amazing gents. 

What now, for the rest of the day?

If I had any sense, I’d walk over to the Sprouts (remember: my son having purloined my car, if I can’t get somewhere on foot then I have to hire an Uber driver).

But…well…sense is not my strong suite this morning. Nope

Don’t feel like traipsing around in the heat, and so I ain’t a-gunna. Tomorrow morning I may stroll down to the Albertson’s (same distance, but don’t have to cross 7 lanes of homicidal traffic to get in the front door) and restock the supplies.

And “in the heat” is the operative term: It’s overcast and HOT and muggy out there. Just walking across the yard works up a sweat. The Albertson’s is open at the crack of proverbial dawn, so if I start the hike as soon as the dawg is fed (that IS at the crack of proverbial dawn!), I may be able to get down there and back without an attack of heat prostration.

Hmmmmmm….  When you spend this much time loafing, a lot of weird thoughts cross your mind. One of them, just now, is the idea that not owning that car is saving me so much money that I probably could afford to hire taxicabs to take me everyplace I go and still come out ahead financially.

No kidding.

Hiring someone to drive you hither, thither, and back may not cost as much as owning a car, paying taxes, insurance, and maintenance on it, keeping it filled with gas….paying to park it…hmmm, indeed….

No kidding, indeed: I’ve just about decided not to replace that vehicle at all. Why bother if I can get everyplace I need to go behind hired drivers? Without doubt for less than I’ve been spending on the Dog Chariot!

Within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm — just a few blocks, under a forest of shade trees — is a car rental place. Get in good with those guys, and…well…seriously, there WOULD be no reason to own another car. If they know me, they get paid on time, and they figure I’ll bring their heap back to them, very probably I could snare a vehicle whenever I feel in the mood.

Now, to add to that….  I do have to say that if I were my son and I had an 80-year-old mother, I do not think I’d want her driving around.

That sounds awful, eh?  But frankly, it would worry me.

As you age, your reflexes do slow. You lapse into — let’s admit it — a kind of fuzzy stupor. And you really should not be doing something where your life and the lives of people around you depend on the speed with which you react to the craziness around you.

And on Arizona’s roads? Yes, we are talking about craziness. Drivers around here are quite mad. As in dinga-donga!

Life is dinga-donga, that much is true…but there’s a limit to how much you have to engage it…

April 22

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Ungodly racket from the damn air base, way on the FAR side of Sun City. At least a good 29 miles away: roar roar roar roar ROAR. Don’t understand how people living out there can tolerate it, even for a few hours in the morning.

My mother used to sit on her back patio there in Sun City, serenaded by those blasting plane engines. She would simper over her morning coffee, “Ohhhhh, it’s the sound of fweedom!” 

Right, Mom, I dared not say: It’s the sound of World War III coming your way. 

Oh, well. At least we got Ruby’s doggy-walk out of the way, and before it has started to get hot out there. She’s gone off to the back bedroom, there to loaf. And…I suppose blogging is a form of loafing, too.

The (very sweet!) lady who inherited SDXB’s house by welfare-agency fiat is enjoying a fine predicament: The plumbing under the kitchen sink busted open and flooded the house!

Lordie! WHAT a mess.

So she and a daughter were trying to mop up, and trying to get the City to send a repair crew. One of those fine nightmares that none of us needs, eh?

Before SDXB came along and bought the place for a song, it was owned by some very flakey, very feckless folks who let the place go to rack and ruin. He fixed it up handsomely…and then practically gave it away as he fled our quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord.

Actually, he had lobbied me earlier to move out to Sun City. I’d lived there before with my parents, and wasn’t bloody well about to go back. So when things intensified here and I still refused to move out, he just sold up and headed west, leaving me behind.

Whatever excuse you need, eh?

Shortly, the Tony quarrel settled down, and now he and I are actually rather friendly — walked around the park together just the other day.

Must decide what (if anything) to do today. The dawg and I are in full-out Lazy Mode: it’s too damn hot out there to do much hiking, and without a car, I can’t even get to the grocery store without hiking through the heat.

Actually, I can: ask the guy across the street who drives an Uber. But…what? Pay someone to drive me 8 or 10 blocks? Gimme a break!

😀

There’s a corner shopping center much closer, I must admit. But the neighborhood over there is a little shadier: you’re likely to get hustled, and as a woman alone I don’t feel very safe in those conditions.

So…yeah: maybe I should have followed SDXB out to (un)lovely Sun City. But….no. Nope I truly hated living out there with my parents.

Been there.

Done That.

Ain’t doin’ it again. 

LOL! Why do people do this???

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Point in question: Why do cleaning ladies decide how your house is gonna be organized and where the things you use daily are going to be “put away”?

Does it not occur to them that you wouldn’t have left something somewhere unless you wanted it there?

😀

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is among those given to assigning places to my possessions and stashing them where — you got it! — where I can’t find them. Or where accessing them is as inconvenient as humanly possible.

Batting all over the place this morning trying to find where W-CL put the bath towels, the knife sharpener, the scissors, the calculator…what she did with the clean pillowcases, the toothpaste, and…why she left a bath towel neatly folded up on the seat of a family-room chair.

I am so, SO sick! Upshot: I just don’t have the energy or the patience to search from pillar to post for everyday gear that I’ve left out where I want it, where I can find it quickly when I need it, and yes, where it doesn’t belong. She picks up all that kind of stuff and puts it “away”: i.e., in places that I would never imagine looking for it.

Feels like it would be passing rude to tell her to just leave the goddamn stuff where I put it…because often I do carelessly leave things laying out where they don’t belong. She, being the tidy type, quite reasonably resists leaving the junk scattered around the house.

Ohhhh well. What seems “normal” for me quite naturally seems “weird” for you, and so it’s to be expected that a person whose job is to organize and to clean will decide where things to and put them there. Just wish we thought along closer lines….