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Common sense

The Insane Fidgeting of Tempus…

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Tempus fidgets, as my mother used to say. (Yah: very funny. Chortle!)

Yesterday evening I was thinking about my college boyfriend — let’s just call him P. — whom my parents hated, loathed, and detested.

Why they so reviled the man was something I could never figure out. To this day, it’s just a guess…but revile is the word. The detested him at a professional level.

My guess is that it was because he was from an Eastern European background, and they were bigots at a professional level.

You understand: he was NOT European. He was born and raised in Chicago, as were most of his nearest relatives. But in my parents’ minds…well…once a Bosnian, always a Bosnian???

My parents demanded that I break up a two-year relationship with P., one that had become serious enough that he and I assumed we would marry after we finished at the University of Arizona. When my mother made it clear that I would have to choose between them and him,…well…there really wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t about to abandon my parents, who had hauled me all over the world, provided a sterling upbringing, and sent me, on their dime, through four years of college.

A few other details frosted that cake, though. I think the one that cinched my decision came when his best buddy took up with a barfly, frolicking merrily in the sack with her…while his wife was too pregnant to accommodate him.

Seriously: the guy’s wife is eight or nine months along, and there he is, screwing this chippy. And P thought that was cool, just hunky and dory…after all, his wife couldn’t or wouldn’t let him have any. What’s a man s’pposed to do?

Right?

All my mother’s vociferous objections to P had little effect on my taste for him. I was madly in love, after all. Right?

But when, that night as we lingered in bed together, he remarked that “A guy has gotta have it,” excusing his friend’s faithless lust, I thought…ah hah! If you think that’s OK for your pal, you’ll figure it’s OK for you.”

Right?

Uh huh… Well, right or not, out he went. I flang him out: sent him off weeping into the night.

That that was the last I saw of him.

From what I can tell, he went back to the Midwest, got a master’s degree in those parts — in Education, the easiest of all possible programs — and then dove into a series of bureaucratic jobs. Turns out that for some time during my last stint as an Arizona State University bureaucrat, he was working in the ASU president’s office!

I had no idea. Didn’t find out about it until I was long gone from the Great Desert University, as was he. If ever I encountered him on the campus, I didn’t recognize him.

Which, I suppose, is just as well.

Porch Pirate Repellant…Redux

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The signs I put in front a year or so ago, asking the Beloved Amazon Dude or Dudette to please bring packages inside the courtyard and not leave them out on the driveway, rotted away in the blasting sun and the driving rain.

Interestingly, the signs actually work! The Amazonians do bring their deliveries into the courtyard, and the porch pirates apparently prefer not to expend enough energy (or risk being videotaped) to come inside the courtyard and steal stuff.

So this morning I spent an hour rejiggering three signs, sealing them into plastic holders, and securing them to the gates and the front door.

Hassle City! You not only have to redraw the signs, you have to snurchle them into the kind of plastic holder that goes into a 3-ring binder and then seal the plastic holder all the way around with layers of Scotch tape. Then you have to slither plastic strip things into the binder holes so as to use the plastic strips to secure the signs to the steel gates. These last — in the Land of 110-degree heat — a year or more.

Yea, verily: a first-class PITA. But less so, I suppose, than having to drive to Target or Safeway or Albertson’s or Walgreen’s or the hardware store to buy every little thing you need, when you need it. Over the past few years, I reckon Amazon has saved me a surprising amount not only in gasoline but in wear-&-tear on the car. And nerves: half the time when you go into a retail store’s parking lot around here, some transient barges up and demands a hand-out. Guess I’d druther pay Amazon a little more on the retail price of this, that, or the other dingbat than having to dodge or repel the local drug addicts.

One of the neighbors — a lively techno-type — set up a camera in front of his house and found it recorded some woman in her car following the Amazon truck. The minute the Amazon driver would climb back behind his steering wheel after dropping off a package, she’d jump out, run up to the front door, grab the package, race back to her car, toss the package in the back seat, and take off down the road after the Amazon truck.

Persuading the Amazon drivers to bring packages INSIDE a gated patio has worked well to discourage this chickadee and her ilk.

Uh oh… Not to say GOOD GRIEF!

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Just experienced one of those blinding insights... You know, when you’re loafing around and all of a sudden something SOOO FUKKIN OBVIOUS dawns on you and you say to your idiot self what the HELL was the matter with me that I didn’t think of this????

Yeah. What HAS been the MATTER with me?

***

Welp…superficially the matter has been some kind of ailment that causes crazy-making peripheral neuropathy — tingling and stinging in the hands, feet, and lips — and just about constant ear-whistling. Either of these phenomena alone is enough to drive you off the edge of a cliff. Together, they pretty much guarantee suicidal ideation.

Nothing, but NOTHING that I’ve tried has helped. This has gone on for weeks, eliding into months.

Welp…it suddenly strikes me: nothing that I’ve tried addresses one major, very obvious potential cause.

Hey: what causes your ears to whistle and buzz when you’ve got the flu? When your allergies are flaring?

Yeah: sinus and ear congestion!

DUH!

My nose doesn’t feel stuffy (or rather, no more stuffy than usual: this IS Arizona, the land where you go to find out what your allergies are). But my ears do. They click when I open my mouth wide, like they do when you have a bad head cold.

In Arizona, you get sinus and ear congestion from the ambient allergens. And it develops that peripheral neuropathy can also result from allergies.

At the risk of repeating myself: DUH!

***

Ya don’t suppose…????

Holy sh!t…why didn’t I think of this before? It’s been going on for weeks, months…and never once have I thought “why are my ears ringing all the time? like when i have a bad cold??? sorta like when i have an allergic attack?”

***

Okay. I just dropped a Benadryl.

This should be entertaining: let’s see what happens. Give it an hour or two to kick in, if it’s gonna kick in.

Benadryl wires me to the teeth (which is why I don’t like to take it). But it doesn’t knock me into the middle of next week, the way other allergy meds do…so it shouldn’t be unsafe for me to drive the car or climb into the bathtub.

That’s the reason I don’t like to take the usual allergy meds: they put me into a damn coma. I need to be able to drive, and I need to be able to function around the house.

Hmmm…it’s 1 p.m. now. I’d guess it’ll take an hour or two for the thing to kick in, if it’s going to. Minimum. Actually, it’s been going on for so long, it may take a day or two for the allergy med to make a difference. Hmmm….

This will be innaresting.

I hope.

 

Gaaahhhh!

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One of the problems w/ being unemployed…uhmm, “retired”…is that your schedule (such as it is) is out out whack with everybody else’s.

11:30 a.m.

JUST ready to draw a bath, get dressed, and head out for errands. This, after loafing all morning playing computer games.

Arise from my leather throne. Stumble toward the back bathroom, reach for the tub faucet. And…

RRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

WHIRWHIRWHIRWHIRWHIR!!!

RRRR  RRRR RRRR!

oh holee sheeut!

Gerardo’s guys are out there cleaning up the unholy mess that is the yard.

Could he have told me they were coming today? Maybe even have let me know they were on the way?

Course not. What else does the Li’l Retired Woman have to do but sit around and twiddle her thumbs?

So now I can’t jump in the shower and get dressed.

Because as you know, the minute my clothes are off and my hair is sopping wet, it’ll be BING BONG!

Now I can’t prepare for the meeting I have with a client, because RRRR  RRRR RRRR! BLAST BLAST BLAST! THUMP WHUMP THUMP! is remarkably counterproductive to thinking through a problem.

Now I won’t have time to run by the store before the client gets here, because I’ll need to sit here and wait till the boys exit, stage left.

Now I’ll have to think through the stuff Client and I need to discuss…to the symphonic roar of weed whackers and leaf blowers.

Now I won’t have time, on the way to the grocer’s, to go by the office complex where the dermatologist’s office supposedly resides and try to find his place. (Yesterday’s expedition was a FAIL!)

LOL!

Isn’t it wacky that all it takes is ONE thing like that to dork up your entire damn day? At least half the things I needed to do this afternoon are not gonna get done.

😮  huh  o-:

Y’know, it doesn’t seem to me that, when I was younger, I used to have this problem. Yes, I would be annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of something I’d planned to do. Yes, it would (or at least could) dork up my schedule. But it didn’t bother me all that much.

It didn’t leave me feeling inconvenienced and pi$$ed.

Strange that I’d feel that much different about it, now that I’m old.

😮

Ohhhhhh sheeeUT! They had to replace a strip of piping: $120!

And, trotting around and inspecting, I see they had to replace a bunch of smaller stuff, too. Ugh!

That whole irrigation system needs to be rebuilt. I had it installed when I moved in here…what? Ten years ago? More than that???? And now, it all being plastic, it’s pretty well shot.

Question is: is it worth having the system dug up and replaced? That will be a several-thousand-dollar job.

And…well…y’know… I’m probably not gonna be here that long. Surely not long enough to recoup the cost of digging up and rebuilding the whole system.

One of three things is gonna happen:

  • I’m gonna drop dead (if I’m lucky).
  • I’ll survive a stroke or a heart attack and end up rotting away in some care home.
  • Or decrepitude will force me to sell the house and move into an old-folkerie.

Arrrrghhhh! What a golden, shining future!

Seriously…

If I were certain my son would move into this house when I’m gone, I’d have that system replaced right now. Then it would be a gift to him (of sorts…paid out of his future inheritance…). It would keep the yard running smoothly, and that would be one fewer headache he’d have to attend to when he moves in here.

Or sells it. If you know the irrigation system is cattywampus, you’re pretty well gonna have to get it fixed before you put the house on the market.

But…the future. Ahhhh the future. How DO you plan for something you can’t really know?

If I dropped dead tomorrow, my son could figure these things out at his leisure, and pretty easily. He being one of the brighter pennies in the Coin Collection of Humanity.

But dontcha just know that ain’t a-gonna happen? Women in my family who haven’t fu*ked themselves to death or smoked themselves to death have lived well into their 90s…with no medical care! They were Christian Scientists! Since I don’t smoke and I don’t frolic with strange men, the chances that I’ll last well into my dotage are pretty good.

Better yet: my Berkeley relatives stayed in their homes right up until the end.

Well, no; that’s not correct: my  great-aunt allowed her son to persuade her to move to an apartment in downtown Berkeley. Smart move, that: the cute little Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff house she lived in was infested with termites. Even though the neighborhood was still a galloping fine investment, it was one that would cost homeowners more and more as those houses aged, aged, and aged some more.

But…but…ahem! About those termites….

WHY DIDN’T GREAT-AUNT OR COUSIN KNOW ABOUT THEM?????

Possibilities:

* Good cousin told his mother to have the place inspected, and she blew him off with a fib to the effect that she had the job done and no termites were found.

* He clued her, but she blew him off with “yes, dear.”

* She had it inspected and got a “no bugs” report.

* She had it inspected, was told it needed an exterminator, and blew it off.

* Neither one of them thought of having the place inspected.

See what I mean about “GAAAH”?

Just stop the damn world so we can get off.

Seriously: I don’t want to leave conundrums like this to M’jihito. Not even one just conundrum.

Retiring to the Life of Riley?

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Gettin’ old…gettin’ old. 

My son is beginning to fret, far more vocally than before, about my staying here alone in my middle-class four-bedroom house. Quite reasonable is his fear that I’ll trip (AGAIN!) and fall (AGAIN!!), but this time inflict some much more serious harm (breaking a shoulder was quite enough…) or even kill myself.

So he’s begun lobbying for me to sell this place and move into one of those horrid holding pens for old folks, like the one my father went into.

Now…my father went to sea all his life. He ran away from home at the age of 17, lied about his age, joined the Navy, and never looked back. And it was a good life: he earned a good living without a college degree (in fact, I don’t think he even graduated from high school). He saw the world — big time — there are not many countries outside the Soviet Union that he didn’t visit. And he landed a harbor pilot’s job in Saudi Arabia that, thanks to the hideous living conditions, paid enough for him to retire at the age of 50.

He did, eventually, have to go back to sea — he didn’t understand about inflation and so found himself short of enough to support himself and my mother for the rest of their lives. But it was only for a year or so.

After my mother died, he immediately moved into an old-folkerie — uhm, “life-care community” — where he lived out the rest of his life in brain-banging misery. No, not because of the institution, called Orangewood, which treated him well — after 30 years on tankers, he was used to crowded living conditions and bad food. But because he stupidly remarried and ended up stuck with with a harridan. He probably figured he could rebuild his former life by replacing my mother with another old gal. But…oh, my….

So my view of old-folkeries is tainted by his remarkably unpleasant experience…which admittedly was tainted not by the old-folkery itself but by the bitch he married.

Let’s suppose I were to give up on staying in my own place and succumb to my son’s demands that I move into an institutional setting…

What would you need to know about a place to live in your dotage?

  • What services and physical amenities would be needed for one to live on one’s own?
    • Meals (served in a student union-like setting)
    • Cleaning services
    • Repair services
    • Chauffeuring (in a limited way)
    • Power bills
  • Could you provide them for yourself?
    • I’m already doing that, except for the chauffeuring…and we do have plenty of those services hereabouts
  • How much would providing them cost?
    • Certainly not as much as your entire net worth, which you pay to get entry to one of those places

What attracted my father to the whole idea of Orangewood, at the outset?

  • He didn’t want to deal with the work of maintaining a house, i.e.,
    • yard work
    • repairs
  • Utility bills were probably included as part of the monthly Orangewood bill
  • Meals were provided
    • He didn’t have to make regular or large grocery-store runs
    • He didn’t mind institutional cooking
  • Orangewood staff would drive inmates to doctors & other destinations
    • In fact, I think they had a bus service that would tote the inmates to grocery stores. Yea verily…I do remember he and Helen ended up sitting for hours in some doctor’s waiting room until the OW bus showed up to drive them home. Hardly ideal!!!
  • He was used to living in an institutional setting, and did not mind cramped, noisy quarters

The fact is, he probably would have been fine there if he had not become involved with Helen. This hints that trying to replicate what made you happy in your previous life is not a good idea.

  • There was no way another woman could replace or duplicate my mother
  • The apartment quarters were too cramped for a couple to live in comfortably unless they were hardly ever home.

If this observation is accurate, then it would seem you have two choices:

  • Don’t remarry or otherwise try to rebuild your prior lifestyle. Engage the new life and do as much as possible in new ways and different ways.
  • If you just must remarry, do not imagine the new married life will be anything like your prior lifestyle. ENGAGE CHANGE and build an entirely new outlook and lifestyle in the new married life.

Why did my mother not want to move to Orangewood?

  • She loved that house in Sun City. She repeatedly told me how much she loved the house and liked living there.
  • She had dear friends out there.
  • She had no desire to leave those friends or build a new social circle
  • After a lifetime of major moves, she probably had figured the move from Long Beach to Sun City would be the last household move she would have to make, and she didn’t want to do it again.

Why might she have been willing to move?

  • Orangewood was within walking distance of my house (but she couldn’t or wouldn’t walk that far)
  • Luke Air Force Base generated a LOT of noise (although she was not bothered by it)
  • She might have felt safer, given her burglar paranoia
  • She would have been closer to fancy shopping centers
  • Although probably unaware of this: she would have had access to better doctors and medical facilities

None of these were strong enough motives to make her want to move.

 What are the pro’s & cons of my own place vs an OldFolkerie? Can these be weighted for comparison?

Pro’s

Staying here:

  • Maintain independence
  • Yard
  • Private pool
  • Spare room for guests
  • Quiet: privacy
  • Full kitchen
  • Separate freezer
  • Indoor, private garage for car
  • Own washer & dryer

OldFolkerie:

  • Communal living: meet new friends
  • Communal living: authorities keep eye on you
  • Relieves my son of responsibility
  • Bus to take you places

Is there a way to replicate the benefits of an old-folkerie?

Along those lines, note this site: https://my.aarpfoundation.org/ Many resources that could help you stay in your home.

Weighted value of pro’s & con’s:
(Sorry: WordPress will NOT let me format this table sanely…and just now I’m not in the mood to retype the whole thing…)

Issue/item Cons, my pl Pro’s, my place Cons, OW Pro’s, OW Real & potential drawbacks
Independence 2 10 1 2 Risk of fall
Yard 3 10 10 0 No yd @ OW
Private Pool 3 8 10 0 Expense, risk
Privacy 5 10 8 1 Limited, OW
Full kitchen 0 10 9 1 OW: no full kitchen
Sep freezer 0 10 10 0 OWs: none
Private parking 0 10 5 5 OW: none
Own w/d 0 10 10 0 No w/d in apt.
Hired workers 2 10 5 5 n/a
Taxi/Uber 3 10 3 10 T/U: about the same
Trans included 0 10 8 8 Slow, PITA; no transit officially “included” at my place
Meals 8 10 8 5 OJ food was awful! Limited mealtimes
Frees Son 10 2 2 8 Need to find services to help when he is unavailable
Social life 8 2 3 7 Need to reach out to make friends here
Sum above 54
Cons, my place
 112 Pro’s, my place
 92
Cons, Orangewd
 52 Pro’s, Orangewd

 

If this list is reasonably complete (is it??), from my point of view: the pro’s of living at my place outweigh the pro’s of Orangewood by more than twice; the con’s of living at Orangewood outweigh the cons of staying here by almost twice.

If fear of a catastrophic fall or a sudden health emergency is the main motivator for institutionalizing oneself, would it not make as much sense to ALWAYS CARRY A CHARGED-UP PHONE or one of those call-for-help buttons?

Either of those is infinitely cheaper than forking over the value of your home plus still more of your assets to some institution. And, IMHO, infinitely better  than consigning yourself to a prison for old folks.

Wednesday

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Seven-thirty in the morning: 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch, humidity 44%.

Back from a mile-long walk with the Hound. Hotter than the hubs out there, and soggy. Ruby doesn’t seem to notice. She rockets along the whole route like she was shot out of a cannon.

The irrigation system is crapping out. Gotta try to track down the installer (if he’s still in business!) or find a new one. Probably will have to replace a fair amount of that fine plastic piping. Ugh! Not to say $$$!!!

At the park: not too many dogs to have to dodge around this morning, probably because the weather is constraining most of the strolling dog-lovers. That’s a relief: some of those folks are stupid beyond belief, when it comes to dogs.

I find it impossible to understand how you could conflate a dog with a  kid. Wake up, folks! It’s not your “fur-baby”! It’s a highly evolved wolf that has developed a co-dependent relationship with humans. It doesn’t want to “pw-a-a-ay” with your neighbor’s dog. It wants to EAT your neighbor’s dog.

LOL! Hafta say, at the time I moved into this house, I never would’ve thought that I would be here long enough to need to replace the irrigation system I paid heftily to install during my first weeks of residency. Rebuilding it does NOT sound like a great idea. But…if I’m going to stay here (am I???), the watering system has gotta work.

Personally, I’d like to move into a high-rise on North Central, thereby mooting the whole yard and watering-system issue. However, my son WANTS this house. and accordingly he wants me to stay here until I’m carted off to the nursing home. At that point he’ll sell his place and move in here. Sooo…one could regard the proposed new plumbing as a gift to him.

Besides which: despite the proximity to Crime Central, I do like this house and this neighborhood. LOVE having the pool to topple into on a hot day. Love the trees and the shade. Love the yard that lets me have a dog of just about any size.

***

7:30 p.m.

And here we are, twelve hours later! Another day…not a single ‘nother dollar.

Weather progress: it’s a hundred degrees in the backyard just now, under a light film of high clouds. Nine percent chance of precip.

In Arizona, that’s what we call “humid.” 😀

No, I did NOT get my dainty little self enough off the dime to call the irrigation dude, or even to try to track him down. This laziness thing is becoming…uhm…a thing.

It’s too damn hot to do an evening doggy-walk — the pavement would burn Ruby’s feet. So we loaf.

Loafing is our specialty. Ruby is stretched out on her doggy-blanket atop the bed. The human is stretched out on her human-bedding atop the bed. We rule!