Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Wow! Let’s Get This Straight!

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This afternoon I learned that someone near and dear to me has been telling people that I get sauced up on booze and then climb in the car and cruise around. Let’s get this straight:

I do not drive after I have been drinking. 

Yes. I do drink alcohol. Sometimes I do get sauced up. But I’m not in the car driving around in any kind of sauced-up state.

How do I feel confident about saying that?

Because I very rarely drive after dinner. And generally I drink only wine or bourbon: with dinner.

Dinner goes on the table after all the errands are run, after all the hoo-haw is done. My social life is such that I tend not to go out of the house in the evenings. Thus, if I’ve had any alcoholic beverages — which 99.9% of the time will be wine, taken with a full meal —  I’m not likely to be driving after consuming.

A couple of years ago (more, by now…), I did get into the habit of having a glass of wine or a bourbon & water in the afternoon, around a large mid-day meal. Did I go cruising after consuming this? Not likely: I would have had noplace to go. Why not? Because all of my errand-running and chores would be done before I started fixing and consuming a middle-of-the-day feast.

At one point, however, I realized that this was not a good habit: First, because it had me eating a lot more than necessary and therefore putting on some serious pounds; and second, because it indeed was leading me to drink wine or whiskey before all the day’s activities were done. So, I quit it.

Thus I can  testify, with real confidence, that I do not sit around getting sauced and then jump into the car and drive off into the sunset.

No idea how I can prove this assertion. Because I live alone, there’s no one here to testify whether and when I get sauced up. But surely, if I were cruising to the grocery store through an alcoholic haze, by now I would have accrued a citation or three. And no such things appear in my driving record.

What IS the matter with people, to say a thing like that about an old lady?

Gettin’ Old…and Stayin’ Free!

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My roommate at the University of Arizona had an aunt in Tucson who allowed herself to be persuaded (by my rm’s mother) to tell the university that we two girls were going to live at her house. (In those days, undergraduate girls were required to live in the dorms, unless they stayed at home.) We promptly moved into our own apartment. And lo! We escaped the Hell that was the University of Arizona’s dormitory system.

Well, that’s about how I see our present-day old-folkeries: as institutions of Hell. I most surely don’t want to live in such a place. NEVER AGAIN! I cherish my aloneness. I love living in my house. And when Ruby barks (corgis surely CAN bark!), she doesn’t bother anyone.  When a neighbor chooses to turn their TV to “blast,” the damn thing is far enough away that the racket doesn’t penetrate my bedroom walls. Or any of my walls!

So…how to stay out of some awful place designed as a prison for the useless elderly?

Back in the Dark Ages, old buzzards often – maybe usually – moved in with an adult child’s family. My great-grandmother, for example, lived with her daughter, whose own son and daughter-in-law lived within walking distance.

That, you may be damn sure, ain’t gonna happen in our time and in our space! 😀

Fastest way possible to drive my poor son nuts!

But…but…waitaminit here!

WHAT IF you didn’t live with the offspring, but rather within walking distance? Or within a few minutes’ drive time?

That would give the adult kid easy, fast access to you – and you access to them.

And…in my case, what would it do for me?

Well, it would put my heroic son within a few minutes’ drive – or even walk. So, he could rescue me from myself, when needed. Conversely, I could easily reach his place, even on foot, making it possible (even easy) to pester the bedoodles outta him. 😉

Seriously: it would make it easy for me to take gifts of food and other treats to him. Easy to haunt him when I have some PITA that needs a grown man to handle. Easy for him to pick me up and schlep me to the dentist (or wherever).

And thereby it would facilitate my living at home as long as possible: preferably until I croak over.

Voilà! I get my privacy and peace & quiet. He gets his mutther where he can keep an eye on the ole’ bat.

Welp…all those bennies are, in fact, a shade on the optimistic side. My son has, of all things, a JOB (remember those?). He works out of his home for a large international insurance company. This, as you might imagine, does keep him busy.

Very busy,

So he can’t be trotting back and forth to my house or chauffeuring me around the city.

Fortunately, the corner of this city where I live happens to be well stocked with conveniences. Within a couple of blocks, we have an Albertson’s (supermarket par excellence), a more or less competent computer store, a Walgreen’s, a T-Mobile, a Bookman’s…. on and on and ON. About 90% of the time, you really don’t need a car to supply your needs here.

Gilding that lily, the swell new lightrail train comes right up into the ‘Hood., northbound from the downtown district. And the city is building extensions that will carry passengers east and west  and, eventually, further north into the middle-class suburbs along the freeway. In another few years, I’ll be able to get out to the university without ever touching an ignition key.

Mercifully, the time for me to need to commute to campus has passed…”mercifully” because no, I do NOT enjoy being groped by fellow passengers on those trains, or hooted and yelled at by jerk drivers as I stand at a bus stop. But if few minor irritants bother you, these trains ARE the Business.

Now…admittedly, there are some benefits to locking yourself into an old-folkerie.  In my father’s case, for example, one day he sat down for a huge mid-day meal in the dining hall and…promptly had a stroke!

Staff members there recognized what was happening and called for help on the spot. MUCH faster than I would have been able to call, even though I was sitting right there beside him. And they knew exactly what they were talking about when they spoke with the operator. Help arrived within minutes…and it was help who knew what to expect and how to address the disaster under way.

That wouldn’t happen if I had a stroke as I was sitting at my dining room table here at the Funny Farm. Of that you may be sure.

Someone would discover my corpse a few days later – maybe. Probably gnawed on by a hungry hound.

At any rate: just now one option is, in fact, for me to stay right where I am.

Another would be for me to move closer to where my son is.

His place is within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Gourmet Market, a few steps from the lightrail, minutes from two major regional hospitals. So…if I lived near him, I really wouldn’t need a car at all. I could use taxicabs if there were some reason not to walk, and in a real emergency, an ambulance would arrive within seconds.

Heh heh! JUST what my son needs, right? For his muther to move in three houses up the road! 😀

Ohhhhh well… It’s something to think about. If not to laugh about.

Did She Know?

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Did she know what she was doing as she loafed around the house poisoning herself with cigarettes?

Did she know those little pleasure-sticks were, given her family background of cancer death after cancer death, bound to kill her?

Did she know how painful and ugly her exit trip would be?

Oh, yeah. She most certainly did.

If you could read during the late 1950s, you knew that tobacco causes cancer. She may not have understood that she was addicted to nicotine and so would have a gawdawful time trying to stop smoking. If she chose to stop.

  • She did not choose any such thing.

She knew her fog of tobacco smoke was making her little girl sick.

  • She didn’t care.

She knew smoking tobacco had been proven to cause cancer.

  • She didn’t care.

She knew what it was like to die of cancer: she watched her mother die horribly of uterine cancer.

  • She didn’t care.

What she cared about was that passage of minor pleasure, brought to her several times a day by the murdering bastards who grow tobacco and who turn its leaves into cancer sticks.

She saw her mother die horribly of a cancer doubtless brought on by the woman’s promiscuity. So yeah: she knew what it meant to induce a terminal disease in your own body.

One wonders whether she cared about the misery she put my father through, as he tended to her for weeks and months on her deathbed. Probably never thought about it…at least, not until she lay dying.

Well, I can’t be criticizing. Because I do the same thing. 

Not with cigarettes. But yeah: with wine.

As she dared to smoke a cigarette every time the mood struck her (which was often), so I dast to have a glass of wine with dinner every day. And then usually another glass of wine. And sometimes even a third glass of wine.

Horrors!

My cleaning lady (soon to be an ex-cleaning lady, as I’ll be canning her whenever I can find someone to take her place…) grew horrified and beyond horrified at watching me swill wine at mid-day, when I have a serving of meat, a salad, a side vegetable, and a starch (potato, rice, or pasta), accompanied  by a glass of wine. So she pulled a self-righteous little stunt on me.

Come noon the other day, the table was laden with a fine meal and an open bottle of wine. I’d stuffed myself and swilled down a glass and a half of cabernet. She’s slamming around the house, making it impossible for me to accomplish much of anything. So what do I do?

Wouldncha know?

I lay my head on the dining-room table and freakin’doze off. 

This, she takes as proof positive of my unregenerate alcoholism. So she whips out her camera and snaps a photo of me with my head down on the table, snoozing.  And she emails that to my son!

Proof positive: I’m a lush!

My son is abhorred! Not at her sleazy behavior but because I appear to be passed-out drunk at the dining-room table!

So now, convinced that I’m a drunk, he has purloined my car and parked it at his house (so I can’t kill any of my fellow homicidal drivers, right?). He has rummaged through all my closets searching for hidden wine (and stolen all two bottles that he found). He’s taken to supervising my daily habits….which is pretty stupid, because I rarely drink more than a glass of wine a day. Upshot: the only way I can get groceries is to walk to the nearest supermarket, dragging a rolling cart behind me.

***

Yea verily: now I need to get off the dime and find a new cleaning lady. And frankly, searching for an employee is NOT my favorite pastime.

Plus my dear son’s presumptuous superciliousness pushes me toward seeking something other than a new cleaning lady. Like…a new place to live, far far from unlovely Phoenix.

Yeah. I’ve started to think, with something verging on the serious, about moving to Sedona, Wickenburg, Fountain Hills, or Tucson. Or New Mexico.

At this age, the last thing I wanna do is pull up stakes and move far, far away. But on the other hand…this BS makes me mad enough that I’m tempted to do exactly that.

Still thinkin’about it. But thinking seriously….

BONK! And this didn’t occur to me…WHY?

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Y’know…having lived in sprawling Southwestern cities all of my adult life, this factoid never occurred to me. But…y’know what? YOU DON’T NEED A CAR TO LIVE IN A CITY LIKE PHOENIX.

Early adolescence in San Francisco, taught me that…well…yeah. You don’t need a car to live conveniently in the City, as my mother and I used to call SF. San Francisco has (or had, at the time) premier public transit. You’d never wait more than ten or fifteen minutes for a bus or train to come by.

But Phoenix, a hub of blue-collar dorkishness, is NOT like San Francisco. Not even close. Phoenix is more like Los Angeles. Or Long Beach, where I had the un-privilege of spending my high-school years. Wherever you’re goin’ in Southern California, you can’t get there from here…not without a car.

To the extent that Phoenix and L.A. have trains, you don’t wanna ride on them…not unless you enjoy being pestered by panhandlers and oversexed bums. Yeah, there are busses, but by and large they don’t run on time, they’re filthy, and they also tend to harbor folks that you prefer not get too close to you. (“Too close” being “in the same county….”)

But…

Over the past week or ten days, I’ve made two disoveries that change ALL of that:

a) You don’t need a car; AND
b) You don’t have to ride on the off-putting public transit, either.

Why?

BECAUSE OF UBER. 

Turns out that during the past few months and years, Uber has become an enormous success here.

Yeah. You can get from  Point A to Point B in a private car, hired out by its owner to Uber, for less than a taxicab costs. The cars are clean, you feel reasonably safe in them, they show up in a timely way, and the cost is within reason.

Not only that, but a guy who drives for Uber lives three houses down the street from me!  And he’s not the only Uber driver in the general vicinity.

Dayum!

This changes everything. 

****

My son got mad at me and, in consequence, he stole my car. It’s parked at his house — presumably locked inside his garage.

I do not feel like bickering with him, so I decided, in a phrase, ohhh fu*k it! Let him have the damn thing.

And that’s when I discovered that Uber is everywhere. Even three houses down the road. No kidding. One of the neighbors is driving for Uber!

I can easily get from just about any Point A to just about any Point B (or C, or D, or whatEVER), and with a cell phone, I can call Uber from anywhere. 

And y’know what? Just now the only reason I want that car back is so I can sell it to some other sucker!

{click!} On Cars: WHY have I never figured this out???

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My son, in the midst of a peculiarly annoying quarrel, grabbed my keys and made off with my car.

Yes. The only car I have.

Oh eek! Oh augh! Ohhhh gawd, what’ll I do?

Right?

Welp…maybe not.

Maybe, just maybe this is an occasion for celebrating. Because, incredibly enough, it has brought about an Insight of the first water.

Know what? Here in the Big City, I don’t need a car. Occasionally I do need access to a vehicle with four wheels and an engine. Very occasionally. In fact, those occasions are so rare and the alternatives to owning a motorized beast  are so inexpensive that, f’rgodsake, I could afford to rent a Mercedes whenever I feel in the mood.

Seriously.

There are three major grocery markets within easy walking distance of my house. Add to those a hardware store, several restaurants, a computer store, a bookstore, a wine shop…on and on.  And also a place where I could rent a car, if absolutely necessary. A train line runs north and south, with a stop about a block from the house. And Uber drivers are standing by to sell you a ride, too.

WHY have I been spending all that money on owning and insuring a rolling tin can?????

Yes, it’s convenient to have a car outside your kitchen door. But a phone call will bring an Uber right to your front door. Just now we’re coming up on the hottest season of the year in Phoenix. But at 8:20 in the morning, it’s balmy enough outside. Right now I could walk to the Albertson’s and back without raising a sweat.

Admittedly, I do own a rolling cart. This allows me to transport bags 0r boxes of groceries without having to lug them in my hands. Admittedly, the potential for PITA is there…  But…but…a rollee cart is one helluva lot cheaper than a gas-guzzler. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate. And you don’t have to insure it.

Somethin’ to think about, ain’t it?

What would I do with that vast two-car garage?

One idea is to convert it into an art studio.  Year-round: it’s air-conditioned. Or I could rent it to someone who wants to give art lessons. A half-dozen friends could draw and paint in that space.

Of course, the space could always be used for storage. Problem with that idea: I don’t have much junk to stash.

Leave the side door to the backyard open, and lo! It becomes the biggest dog house in the nation. Ruby the Corgi will love it. So will the coyotes, I expect.

😀

Seriously: getting rid of the car just might not be that bad, as ideas go.

  • It would save a ton of money.
  • It would repurpose part of the house.
  • It could create an income source, in the form of art studio rental.
  • It could open the door to new friendships.

Interesting…

Why Did They Hate Him So?

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It was in the summer of my sophomore year that I took up with my college boyfriend. We met at the University of Arizona’s swimming pool, where we each had taken to hanging out when we weren’t attending summer-school classes.

Paul was eastern European. I wanna say he was Bohemian or Slovakian. What he was, though, was American. His family had been here for a couple of generations, and he grew up in Chicago

Nothing about him shouted ALIEN!!! If no one had told you his predecessors had immigrated from Eastern Europe, the idea would never have crossed your mind. If it did and you had stared carefully at him, you probably would have thought his background was middle European or maybe British. English, that is.

But…

I brought him home from school one weekend, so as to proudly show him off to my parents. Little did I know…

They were shocked and dismayed, I tell you: shocked and dismayed. Seriously: it was instant hate…the minute they saw him.

I knew my parents were wracked with racial hatred. They would have disowned me if they’d caught me dating someone of the African persuasion. Or Chinese. Or Japanese. Or…apparently anyone even faintly different from themselves. My guess is, British was the desired ethnicity, and American the only acceptable nationality. My mother’s antecedents were English with some French thrown in. My father’s: Germanically English.

I met Paul in the summer between my sophomore and junior years. After having spent my first college-age summer at the new parental home in Sun City, I realized living in a ghetto for old folks was not for me. So, the following summer I engineered the opportunity to stay in Tucson and go to summer school. There, I used to hang out at the campus swimming pool. And that’s where Paul and I met.

How he triggered my parents’ racist instincts mystified me. And it escapes me to this day: he was as white as I was. The damning difference was that his family came from Eastern Europe.

Whaaa?

They had trained me up effectively to hate racial groups that were Not Us. But European nationalities? Huh?????  I had no idea we were also supposed to hate people who came from certain regions of Europe.

WhatEVER…. /eyeroll/  They were just abhorred when I brought Paul home one weekend. And from that moment on they launched a campaign to get rid of him.

I was madly in love with the man, myself. He was handsome, smart, fun to be with…what more could a college kid want? And as for our family’s tradition of rock-solid racism: to my eye, he was as white as me.

Having seen The Enemy and realizing he was about to be Us, they set out to get rid of him. I resisted for quite some time, even though I understood that if I married Paul, I might never see my parents again.

No, that is not an exaggeration.

What did in poor ole’ Paul for me was this:

His best buddy — closest male friend on this earth — was married. This guy’s wife was advanced in pregnancy. So much so that she could not accommodate him sexually. Determined to get what he believed was his by right, he took up with a bar maid, whom he met one evening while out drinking with his pals.  So now he’s having grand fun fu*king this chippie and bragging about it. Paul thinks that’s just hunky and dory.

No kidding: Paul saw nothing wrong in his pal’s philandering with a chickadee the guy picked up in a bar!

Because, after all, his wife couldn’t “give him any.”

This episode removed the scales from my li’l teenaged eyes: my parents’ racism aside, the guy was an immoral lout. So I dumped him.

Years have gone by — a lifetime of years, eh? He went back to the Midwest and became a university administrator. Had a successful career. Photos on the Internet show a handsome man; reports indicate he did well for himself. And incredibly, for awhile he was working in the president’s office at the Great Desert University. That was during the time when I was working on the campus editing a research publication for the graduate college.

I had no idea he was there. I must have stumbled across his path now and again, but never noticed him or heard his name uttered. Did he know I was there? Dunno. Probably: he was smart, and that publication did ultimately come out of the university president’s office. But…possibly not: there was no reason he would have known my married name, which I was using by then.

On reflection… Today, I think my parents were right, in a way. Given his morals — or lack thereof — he would have made an undesirable husband. At least, for me…