Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Round and Round We Go….

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Whatever it is, it…

…doesn’t work
…has to be done over again
…needs a technician to deal with it
…needs my son to wrangle the technician
…is gonna cost an arm and a leg and another arm!

Air-Conditioning Dude just climbed down from damn near an hour on the roof. M’hijito was struggling to get away from his job so he could come down here and wrangle…but…apparently that was not feasible. No sign of the kid, no word from his precincts…oh damn. And now AC Dude needs to move along.

AC Dude is waiting in his truck for the kid to show up. He did say he had some paperwork he needs to do…but after that?????

We also had Plumber Dude in the wings: no sign of him.

Y’know…it looks like my dotage has caught up with me. Seriously: I just no longer can ride herd on workmen and doctors and lawyers and veterinarians and thisses and thattas.

Earlier today, I was thinking…hmmm…. Maybe it’s time for me to sell this house and move into an apartment.

Not fond of apartment living, frankly — been there, done that, and done it and done it and done it and…don’t wanna do it again. But it does have its advantages:

* The landlord deals with repairs and workmen
* Someone else has to be home to intercept those worthies
* Most of the infrastructure repairs are covered by the rent
* You don’t have to hang around all day to meet and greet said workmen

******

At any rate, my Excellent Son arrived soon to wrangle the beloved AC Dude. 😀  Seriously, both men rank among The Best, far’s I’m concerned.

Dear Son knew exactly what to describe to our guy. Bless’im! You don’t even wanna KNOW what I might have said to the fella.

Thanks to the clear instructions, though, AC Dude quickly grasped the problem and in less than an hour, had the thing fixed.

What a job, though! All told, from arrival to exit, it did take him darn a good hour of rassling around.

Y’know, this is one good reason — maybe THE best reason — for me not to sell this house and move into an apartment or some sort of old-folkerie. M’hijito should get this house. It’s just the ticket for him: roomy and handsomely renovated and smack in the middle of a passing tony neighborhood and within walking distance of the lightrail (which will drop you off right in front of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store…) and within walking distance of three major supermarkets. Really….we need to see that he gets the place when I shuffle on down the road.

***

And along those lines, recently I learned that the old folks’ prison called The Beatitudes  — just a few miles straight down Main Drag West from my house, and within easy walking distance of M’Hijito’s place — will send people to your home to babysit you!

That is to say: I may be able to get one-on-one oversight, food prep, some drivings-around, and whatnot without having to sign over my freedom to one of those awful jails for the elderly!

Whether they charge a lot more to come to your home and ride herd on you than they do to put you up in old-folks’ prison is yet to be discovered. My father had to fork over everything he got from the sale of his handsome little house in Sun City to get into the gawdawful old-folks’ jail where he consigned himself. So I imagine this supposed service will be similarly pricey.

But if the cost is the same…any day I’d druther be able to stay in my own home than have to move into a noisy, stinky, annoying zoo for the elderly. So: that issue moves to the front burner. It would be hugely reassuring to know I could hire out my end-of-life care, rather than having to move into a “facility.”

Ugh. What a society we live in!

Surely the End Is in Sight

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So, so sick. One can only hope this comes to an end fairly soon.

Not that I’m in any hurry to shuffle off this infamous mortal coil…but…dayum this old-age stuff hurts!

Need to find a way to get down to the nursing home/old-age factory, there to talk with the operators and figure out how to arrange to get myself in there when the time comes (which, I fear, is nigh…) and how to pay for it.

Horrors.

First horror: I truly detest institutional living. Hated every goddam minute of living in the college dorms. And now it looks like I’m going to have to end my life in exactly that kind of setting.

Yeah: hating every goddam minute of every goddam day.

Next horror: those places take everything you have in exchange for baby-sitting you into the Next World. And I do NOT want to have to fork over all the money my father left me and all of my own savings plus the value of this house for the privilege of being baby-sat into the Next World. I want that inheritance to go to my son, not to some baby-sitting factory.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Wonder Cleaning-Lady apparently spent some time coming into infirm people’s homes and baby-sitting them. Next time I see her, I’ll have to ask her about that, and where she worked.

It would be ideal if I could hire someone to come in and baby-sit me, at least during the day and at least until I’m a lot closer to the finish line. But it’s unclear to me whether that’s possible and, if so, how much it would cost.

Everything you have: that’s how much it’ll cost. Dontcha just  know?

And no, my son is in no position to chauffeur me into the Next World. He has a JOB. Can you imagine???

And it’s a pretty demanding job: his nose is on the proverbial grindstone all day, every day…and then some. So…somehow I’ve got to find some way get cared for without wrecking his life. And preferably without making me any more miserable than absolutely necessary.

So…I have no idea how to handle this. Asked down at the church, figuring social service work is a large part of a cleric’s job. They didn’t have a clue.

What would help a lot would be if I would just keel over dead, with a minimum of hassle and pain. Flop down on the living-room floor and be done with it.

BUT…we have this little problem of the dog. If I fell off the cliff into the Next World, she would be left here alone, with no one to feed her and care for her. And since nobody gives a damn whether I live or die, she might not survive until someone noticed.

I guess I could find a new home for her now. But gosh, I don’t wanna do it. Just now she’s my only companion and, frankly, about my only friend. If I give her to someone else, I really will be all alone.

All alone in an institutional setting. Doesn’t that sound jolly?

Inna Minnit…

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Oook…squeak! {pace pace pace} Whimper! Oook! 

Dog wants out????

In a minnit, Dawg!

Get up off duff, stumble to the kitchen door, fling it open for Her Majesty…

Queen walks around in a circle. Strolls through the kitchen, ambles down the hallway, and heads for her nest under the back bathroom toilet.

Peer outside…

Water is POURING off the roof. Nooo, it’s not raining and hasn’t been raining in weeks. The water is leaking out of the air-conditioner, which clearly is calling out for an expensive repair job.

{sigh} Try to phone air-conditioning dude. Can’t find his number. Call the neighbor, who also hires the same guy. No answer. NATCHERLY: Today is Sunday!

Leave word.

**

Ain’t this loverly? I used to drive through this intersection every time I went out to the Great Desert University, thereinat to teach the young cuties who live in said neighborhood.

What a place we live in!

Every now and again, I contemplate the possibility of selling the Funny Farm and moving someplace safer. But…but…??????  Where on EARTH would that be?

Wherever there be humans, that place is not safe.

Get AC folks on the phone. They’ll send someone out here…whenever. That obviates my walking to the grocery store, which I needed to do…right now. 

But as you know, if I dast to pull any such stunt, that will deliver AC Dude to the front door, right now. 

****

Meanwhile, we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we…no sign of AC Dude. Well: not surprising. Forhevvinsake, it’s SUNDAY. Of course the guy doesn’t want to come flying over here at my beck and call.

The leak has stopped. Maybe I should call off the repair dude.

That will cause the leak to start up again, right?

Y’know…moments like this make the idea of moving into an old-folkerie like the Beatitudes look good.

Almost.

How can I count the ways I do not feel like sitting here (and sitting here and sitting here and sitting here) waiting for an AC guy to show up on freaking SUNDAY, f’rgodsake.

Hmmmm…  Temps are supposed to drop into the (very!) low 50s tonight. That will chill off the house…uhm…handsomely.

On the other hand, we have only a 4% chance of rain. So as long as no water falls out of the sky, a cold house will be…tolerable, I suppose.

Maybe I should call off AC Dude until tomorrow. Hm. Of course, there’s no guarantee he WILL show up tomorrow. If he doesn’t, then we’ll have two days (maybe three) of crisp temps in the house.

****

Toooo late! Call them on the phone: the poor guy is on his way.

The puddle out there has almost dried up.

For. Pete’s Sake!

******

Hmmm…. 

Look ye here:
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/KWV3-T2S/olive-catherine-getten-1891-1979

This little squib from Ancestors.com claims my mother’s mother — my supposed grandmother — died in 1979. That would have made her 88 when she died.

Uh huh.

My mother told me that she, as a teenager, attended her mother (Olive) on Olive’s deathbed. That she watched Olive die. And that she saw Olive’s body carted off in a hearse.

WTF?

Who was storyin’ there???

Either my mother made up a story and lied her way through it as she delivered it to me…

…or…

Her California family (put THAT in scare quotes!) lied to her in order to get her out of Olive’s hair.

My mother was Olive’s illegitimate child. After a court fight, custody of my (then-infant) mother was awarded to the New York father’s family, and she was largely brought up on her paternal grandparents’ dirt farm in the boondocks of upstate New York.

As you can imagine, in those conditions life expectancy did not normally extend into the 80s, as it does today.

Her grandmother — her father’s mother, the one who lived in the sticks in New York — died of diabetes at a fairly young age.

Since it was considered improper for a single man to live alone, unchaperoned, with a young girl, my mother was then sent to the California relatives.

Meanwhile, her own chippie mother (as the story is told) f*cked her way into a roaring case of uterine cancer, which supposedly carried her away when she was in her 30s. By then my mother was lodging with the California set. And she said she saw the woman die and be transported off down the road in a hearse.

Quite the little tale, isn’t it?

And it becomes more tale-like when indications that Olive did not die when my mother said she did.  Or…uhm…thought she did.

Did my mother lie about Olive’s death?

Why would she do that? A reasonable explanation would be that she never wanted to see the woman again and that she surely did NOT want her daughter to see the chippie woman.

hmmmm

Does that make sense? We spent ten years overseas, in Saudi Arabia, where it was mightily unlikely that Olive would surface and come back to haunt.

And my parents retired to Sun City, Arizona…where they could easily have NOT invited dear Olive to visit.

Yeah. Those are significant parts of the story that do NOT make sense.

Why do I have the worst feeling that Olive did not die when my mother said she died?

Why do I sense that my mother’s august family lied to her about Olive’s (non-)death?

If Olive lived until 1979…well! That was the year I completed the Ph.D. and the year my son — her grandson — was born. I wonder if she knew either of those little factoids about her family history.

The two most logical explanations: Either my mother’s family lied to her about Olive’s (non)demise, or my mother, knowing Olive was still kickin’, lied to me.

I do remember one time when my Aunt Gertrude, who was Olive’s sister, was visiting our house in Sun City and the subject of the family history came up…the subject of Olive’s alleged death, we might say.

Gertrude got the strangest look on her face as my mother recited the tale of Olive’s (alleged?) death and the removal of her body from the home, carted away in a hearse. And then we have the report of her at the site above, still kickin’ until 1979.

It raises two interesting questions, both of them probably unanswerable:

* Did my mother know that Olive didn’t die of cancer, that fateful croaking-over day?

* Did Olive know she had a grandson?

Well…there’s a third question: How evil can ya get? 

Now for some serious loafing…

by

Out the door, an hour or so ago. It being Thanksgiving Eve, none of the hired help is around: no sign of Gerardo the Great, no sign of the Luz the Ineffable Cleaning Lady.

Our neighbor and wonder-accountant reached Luz, whom she also hires. Luz is NOT working today, thankyouverymuch.

To which we say: hooooraaaaayyyy!

Ruby and I shoot outside, to perform a pleasantly loafifarious stroll: around the park, through the Richistans…what more could one crave on an exquisitely beautiful afternoon?

M’hijito and I…well, between the time I started this sentence and right this minute (a few seconds later…)…are at each others’ throats, arguing and slinging insults back and forth over the phone. {sigh}

Just what we needed to make a nice “vacation” day, eh? In a matter of minutes, we’ve turned a beautiful afternoon into a nightmare. And y’know…I’m pretty much beyond being able to handle that stuff. Tired, lonely, need a friend…do not need a slew of insults shoved in my ear.

Welp, I can’t handle this stuff just now. So in a couple of minutes, the dog and I will set out again, for an endlessly long journey to…who knows where?

Outta here!

Mayo-Trapped!

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So here I am stuck inside one of the Mayo Clinic’s many blood-sucking rooms. Sunday morning again: once again.

Just asked my son why these appointments are always made on Sunday — one of the reasons I dropped out of choir. Got a crabby answer…but apparently he’s the one who’s been doing this. Like…he didn’t KNOW I had a standing activity on Sundays?

Innaresting.

***

Now they’ve got me trapped in a treatment room with a needle stuck in an arm, pumping some sort of gunk into me. The kid and I have been fighting — jolly fun — and so (reasonably enough) he has taken his computer and stalked off to the lobby, leaving me to sit here all alone with a needle stuck in my arm.

Dare not readdress the question of who repeatedly schedules these accursed appointments on Sunday mornings, guaranteeing that I can’t go to choir. That’s OK, I guess, because I dropped out of choir awhile back — for other reasons. But if that were not the case, by now I’d be outta there once and for all.

At any rate, I’ve come to hate this place with a passion — altruistic and marvelously scientific as it is. Actually, it’s a  sentiment that has a long backstory:

While I was growing up in Saudi Arabia, Aramco employees families and their families had to take rafts of shots every six months. None of those were pleasant, but some were notably painful — particularly typhus, typhoid, and cholera. The latter two REALLY hurt! So I learned to fear and hate clinics, hospitals, and medical staff.

That kind of prejudices me against this place, and against this seemingly ENDLESS stint of sitting here with a needle stuck in my arm, even though the treatment is pretty much painless.

Seriously: the infusion takes an hour…and that only covers pumping the gunk into your arm. Doesn’t count the hour’s driving time or any time spent sitting around in waiting rooms. Theee pitz! 

We squabbled on the way out here, so my invitation to take him to a late lunch/early dinner was rejected. Ohhh well: a lovely steak is sitting in the fridge, waiting to be barbecued.

But it’s only 1:30 in the afternoon, leaving a good hour (or more) to go. And GAWD, do I hate this place!

Reminiscences

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Achey this morning. Not sick: just tired from too much hiking around.

Crackpot neighbors are hollering at each other. Shut UP, folks!

Waiting for the toast to brown. Thinking….thinking back over my family’s life in Berkeley, California. Wishing I were still there. 

My relatives’ little house was right down the road from where the lightrail train came in from San Francisco and then shot through a tunnel to the other side of the hills.

My great-grandmother and her widowed daughter, my great-aunt, lived on Hopkins street, a long and mellow road that climbed up the side of a steep hill and ended where that tunnel carried the city train through from the far side of the Berkeley Hills.

Such a handsome place! I do miss it.

Their charming little house looked a lot like this one. CAN YOU BELIEVE that price!! Over a million bucks for an ancient, termite-ridden two-bedroom bungalow!

One thing you had to say for the neighborhood: it would keep you in shape. Where the relatives’ house stood, that road was mighty steep!

The relatives didn’t own a car, so just to go to the grocery store, they got a nice workout. And yea verily! Both of them lived well into their 90s, in excellent health. Without ever seeing a doctor.

Two blocks up that road stood what we today would call a gourmet grocery store. They didn’t: to them, it was just the corner market. WhatEVER: my great-grandmother (by then in her 90s) walked up there every day or two to pick up food and whatnot. Her daughter (my great-aunt), hiked up that hill five days a week to catch a train into San Francisco, where she worked for Crocker-Anglo National Bank.

On any given day, either one of them got about 20 times more exercise than we do. And it showed: they both lived into their late 90s, in excellent health. As Christian Scientists: they never went to doctors!

Heh. I guess the hill was their doctor, eh?

It was populated with pretty little houses. Walk the three blocks to the top of the hill and you came to what we today would call a gourmet grocery store. To them, it was just a corner store, a rather ordinary grocer.

Also on that corner were a dry cleaner and a set of concrete stairs leading up the hill into Sausalito, where my cousins lived. Next door to the cleaner’s was said gourmet grocery store: on the order of a Sprouts, only not so commercialized.

They were nice folks: the great-grandmother and the great-aunt.

Heh! Imagine having relatives who don’t think you’re a Communist because you’re active in the Democratic Party!

Yeah: the idiot woman my father married after my mother died dwelt somewhere to the right of Adolf Hitler. So did her her rabid daughter, who — Arizona being, after all, Arizona (Home of the Right-Wing Crackpot) — attained to the rank of Superior Court Judge. Both of them wild-eyed right-wingers, who regarded me and my husband as COMM-YOU-NISTS.

Yep. Our family life went straight to Hell after my mother died. 😀

My step-sister Marilyn, who merged into our family after my father married her mother (in the wake of my mother’s death), must have thought we were the next best thing to Communists. No doubt she and her mom just l-o-o-ved having us treasonous bastards in their home. But I enjoyed her and her kids. Politics aside, they were nice enough folks.

Dear step-sister died in 2018: IMHO much, much too young for a journey to The Other World. But that’s only from my point of view: in reality, she was some 15 years older than me. And a good 90 degrees further to the right than me! :-d

SEriously: I did enjoy Marilyn. Her mother, Helen: not so much. And ultimately my father turned out to be pretty miserable in that marriage. He was afraid to divorce Helen: “She’ll get all my money!!!” 

Yeah. Well. Some things are worth more than money, eh Daddy?

Actually, what I should have said to him was Daddy! I’m married to  a partner in one of the most powerful lawfirms in the Southwest. She’s NOT gunna get all your precious money!

Probably not so much as a penny of it…

Oh well. I was too stupid to think of that. So was he. And so they lived miserably ever after…