Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Hot enough to fry your brain…if you still have one…

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WILL WordPress let me back in this time???

Hmmmmmm…..  The answer would appear to be “Yep!” But…let us hold our wind and water…we don’t KNOW that it will let me post this squib. Ohhhh well...got nothin’ else to do just now.

M’hijito, my honored son, just called on the horn. He’s on his way out of town and all worried that I’m not competent to buy a bag of groceries. Or, more to the point, that I’ll try to walk to the grocery store (a distance of about three blocks) in the broiling heat.

{chortle!}  What CAN one say?

* Yes, I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.
* I’ll call Uber and ask them to drive me the three blocks to the store.
* Don’t worry: if the dawg and I run out of food before you get back, we’ll just do without until you get here.
* Pass me the goddam bottle of wine.

See, the problem I have these days is that people don’t seem to recognize when I’m kidding. And I don’t understand why. ‘Cause I’ve always been something of a kidder. Why isn’t it obvious anymore?

Well, to be honest (and no, NOT kidding this time), it’s 105 degrees out there. And no, I wouldn’t be happy about my 80-ish mother wandering around, alone, in 105-degree heat.

And that’s what we’ve got right now, in the balmy shade of the back patio: 105 degrees. Hevvin only knows what it is in the full sun. 

But…y’know…I’m stupid, but I’m not THAT stupid.

Of course I’m not about to junket up Conduit of Blight Blvd and across the parking lot at Conduit of Blight and Main Drag North through 105-degree heat. Soooo…WHY does he think I might actually be that stupid?

***

Okay….let us imagine some part of the agèd brain is still functional. How ARE we gonna get the chow we need?

Here in the ‘Hood, we have several possibilities for the agèd and the witless:

* Uber. This neighborhood is overrun with Uber cabs. If I wanted someone to drive me to a grocery store RIGHT NOW, I could call Uber.

* A train. It rides on tracks that run north and south past the Funny Farm, less than three blocks to the west.

* Busses. They run on the same thoroughfare; just not as often.

* Feet. The shopping center is only three blocks up to the north! Even in the blasting heat, a person in normal health (as I happen to be) is not going to expire from walking that far.

By the same token, neither am I about to pay a bus or a train to carry me three blocks to a store. Gimme a break!

* Time and the River Flowing… As a practical matter, in about six hours the sun will have gone down, the air will be much cooler, and walking up to that shopping center will be a simple and safe matter.

Yeah…WAIT until the sun goes down, forgodsake! Or start before the sun gets high enough to fry the landscape! How hard is that?

Oh well. Truth to tell, I wouldn’t have been real happy about my mother gallivanting in 105-degree heat. So I can’t bellyache too much!

Further truth to tell, though, the issue is not the ambient temperature. It’s the ambient humidity.

Ugh!!! As we scribble, it’s overcast out there (got that?: 105 degrees and cloudy!). And yeah, that does make for some real unpleasant heat — even dangerous heat.

So…yeah. Afraid it’s not a good afternoon to trot on over to the Albertson’s.

She’s B-a-a-a-c-k!

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Zowie! I’m in!!

WordPress has been blocking me from signing into the Funny About Money website. Just did something — dunno what — that suddenly let me into the site.

Since I may not be able to get back, here’s an update, of sorts…

Things keep getting ridiculouser and ridiculouser. 

For myself: I’m slowly sinking into the Family Disease, which happens to be diabetes. Things go from bad to worse there: the Mayo Clinic has called the state and taken away my driving privileges, meaning I can’t even so much as drive to the grocery store.

Seriously: to buy food at the local market, I have to hike blocks through 100-degree heat! So much for “do no harm,”right?

Wouldn’t Hippocrates love it…

Meanwhile, my son has also fallen ill. Deeply worried about him…but what I can do about it, especially in my present condition, I can’t imagine.

And mean-meanwhile, it looks like there’s a good chance I may soon be dragged to an old-folk’s holding pen, very much against my will. Did you know they can force you into an old-folkerie? Even if you’re willing to hire someone to come to your home and care for you, apparently.

I need a lawyer. Mine dropped dead in his office.

No kidding. Apparently he was just standing there when he had a stroke and literally fell on the floor dead.

So now I have no one to help me through the biggest set of fiascos I’ve ever been through in my life. 

No one answers the phone at his office. Apparently where he had established himself was not a partnership but a sole proprietorship. It appears he was just renting space from the other lawyers in that office. So I can’t reach anyone to at least, for godsake, send me my file!

And I have NO IDEA how to deal with that.

He had written a will which, I hope, will protect my son and pass my property along to him. But…where IS that paperwork? 

My understanding is that wills and whatnot are filed with the County. But did he do that before he fell over dead? Don’t know, and don’t know how to find out.

When life turns into a fukkin’ nightmare, eh? 😮

As I scribble, it’s the wee hours of a Sunday morning. So I’ll have to wait until Monday to even try to get something done. Oh well: that gives a day in which to figure out how to try to get something done.

And mean-fukkin-while, GET THIS:

Some idiot called the state of Arizona and reported that I am being abused. 

No kidding!

The other day two social workers showed up at my front door, saying someone had called the state and told them I was being abused.

HUH?

By a pure miracle, Wonder-Cleaning Lady had been here that day, and so the house was spotlessly clean. I was neatly dressed and combed. So we sat in my clean and neat living room while we had a clean and neat conversation. They went on their way, apparently satisfied that I’m not being beaten and starved.

But of course, that means someone, somewhere is watching.

Yep: Big Brother is watching you…and me!

What kind trouble-maker would call up the state and sic a pair of social workers on me? That just escapes me. But it’s a big worry: will this also create problems for my son?

I simply have no idea. No experience with this kind of thing. And no imagination to picture whatever this trouble-maker might dream up next.

Meanwhile, one thing this unending fiasco has shown is that it was majorly a mistake to establish my medical care at the Mayo Clinic. Not because anything is wrong with the Mayo. But because the Mayo is almost an hour’s drive on the other side of the Valley!!!

They have a hospital that’s a little closer — about half that distance — but it also is a LONG way from my house. I have been enjoined from driving, which means it’s damn near impossible for me to get to a doctor — not without enormous inconvenience and hassle for my son!

{sigh} I guess what this shows is one basic principle: NEVER ESTABLISH YOUR MEDICAL CARE THROUGH A GIANT BUREAUCRACY. 

Seriously: I deeply regret having set health-care things up through the Mayo. Just getting an appointment is a hassle. When you try, you get sent to the far side of Scottsdale…quite a trick to get there, when their quack has nullified your driver’s license.

So it goes…from one fiasco to the next fiasco.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next, eh?

Shades of Araby…

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It’s not really that the exterior temperature is so hot. It’s the humidity. Under high overcast come 11:44 a.m., it’s 105 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Yes: that IS one hundred and five degrees. 

{gasp!} Wunderground claims it’s 106 degrees (BFD!) with a 15% chance of rain in the next six hours. Peering out the back door, we see a high, thin layer of overcast, and a back-porch thermometer reading of 105 degrees. Indoors, the AC cools it down to 81 degrees. Which is some 20 degrees better…I guess…but not a helluva lot more comfortable, because it does little to suck the humidity out of the indoor air.

This feels like it did we lived in Arabia: where the weather was chronically hot and soggy. I was a little kid at the time, and so didn’t know any better. But my parents…well, they weren’t averse to complaining about it!  😀

My mother grew up in upstate New York — was sent to California when her paternal grandmother (who was raising her) died of diabetes. No: there was no such thing as insulin in those days…if there had been, you can be sure her folks couldn’t afford it.

My mother never got the Family Disease. I’m told I have “pre-diabetes,” whatever that is. And another family member supposedly has a full-on case of it. Is it not odd that such a dangerous, potentially fatal disease would be heritable? Surely, that would seem to keep the population boom down..

A dear friend also has this fine ailment. She seems to be coping with it well…but that being her business, one never knows.

WhatEVER. Just now I’m wishing I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area, whence my mother’s family emanated. And where, IMHO, I believe I belong. A hundred and five in the shade does not feel livable to me! 😀

 

 

Another Balmy Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all enjoy it,” as one beloved radio announcer (now extinct) used to croon.

Yeah. It’s 5:25 in the afternoon and A HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREES in the balmy shade of the back porch.

To gild that thermometer, a layer of overcast is drifting in from the east. So…it’s hotter than the hubs out there — and humid. 

Lovely. Feels like Saudi Arabia.

Anyhow…if there was ever a chance that Ruby and I could do an evening walk after the sun goes down, it’s rapidly melting away!

😀

What DO you suppose got into my parents, to drag us here to this balmy spot? Wouldn’t you think 10 years of 110-degree heat and sand by the Persian Gulf would have warmed the cockles of their souls enough?

ohhhhh well….  At least we don’t get hurricanes. Horrors!

Think I was supposed to go to the dentist this afternoon. That would have been impossible, as M’jihito still has my car. Just as well…I’m past my heat-and-hassle limit!!!

***

Ruby goes outside. Where is she? 

Call the dog.

No sign of her.

But also no sign that any of the PARCHED, FRICASEED TREES AND PLANTS in the backyard have been watered.

Call the dog.

Tear around trying to get the watering system to come on. Drag a hose to one especially fried tree.

Call the dog.

Set the water to running on the backyard orange trees.

Call the dog.

Bat my way back into the house.

Call the dog.

Finally find her: loafing in the bedroom.

Hot, hot, hot, hot, HOTTER THAN HOT. Air-conditioner is set to 79 degrees, and it’s pounding away.

Phone jangles. 

Leap up, run to the office, grab handset.

It’s M’hijito, calling to check that I’m OK in this unholy heat, and asking if I’d like him to take me to the grocery store.

<3

Hafta ask you: how nice is that??? <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Nothing needed here this evening. But tomorrow I may ask him to schlep me to the Sprouts or some such. No hurry, thank goodness!!

Arizona:
Garden spot

Muse Me No Muzak!

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Daaayum, but I hate Muzak. Do you know anyone who actually likes to sit on the phone interminably listening to bing-bing-BONG-bing/bong bong BING bing pumped into their ear?

Tried to call Young Dr. Kildare’s new office, way to hell and gone out in Sun City, by way of canceling today’s appointment. Ring ’em up and get bing-bing-BONG-bing/bong bong BING bing blasting into the phone. Finally, after about five minutes of this annoyance, some poor office worker came on the line, just as I was about to slam down the phone.

Y’know, one of the problems with this endlessly annoying “system” is that by the time an employee answers the phone, your customer is in SUCH A RAGE that it’s almost impossible to muster a shard of politeness.

Another problem: since Dr. Kildare makes his (dis)respect for his patients/customers so obvious, you can be SURE this one will never show up in his environs again.

Y’know, I think the Mayo is just great. Love my doc out there, though sometimes question her opinions. But the problem is…their offices are WAAAAYYYYY over on the far side of north Scottsdale, halfway to freakin’ Payson. A drive over there takes upwards of 40 minutes — one way. So you’re on the road for 80 minutes to spend maybe 10 minutes with MayoDoc.

Annoying.

At the time I knew him here, YDK’s office was right up the street from my house. Literally: I could walk there, if I felt so ambitious. That and the fact that he’s reasonably smart and competent led me to schedule visits with him for any medical issue that looked fairly tame. Saved the Mayo safari for ailments that looked downright terrifying.

And when you get old, you DO get enough of those to help pay a doctor’s overhead…

At any rate…probably in search of an older, more ailing clientele, YDK closed his office in Moon Valley, a suburb just up the road from the Funny Farm, and decamped to Sun City.

A long drive from here. A long, crowded, unpleasant drive.

But…I like him so much that I decided I would follow him…westward, ever westward.

***
Uh huh. Tried that. Ain’t tryin’ it again. 
***

My parents lived in Sun City. My mother died there, under the care of the most UNcaring doctors I ever met. So, I determined that I would never, ever let a Sun City doctor have at me.

Needless to say, YDK’s move out there led to some agonizing second thoughts. 

A huge, brand-new, fancy hospital has sprung up in Sun City. One guesses that YDK and his partners decided to go out there so they could get in on the ground floor of that thing…and have access to some swell new office digs. All very nice.

But if I’m going to drive half my lifetime to see a doctor, I guess — oh, make that I know I’d rather go east than west. ANY day I’d rather go to a Mayo Clinic doctor than to Albert Schweitzer in Sun City! Hafta say: the experiences we had out there — in Sun City — while my mother was dying were just horrific. I swore I’d never go near another Sun City doctor or hospital…and…well… I reckon now is the time to honor that oath.

‘Bye, YDK…you will be missed!

<3

Augh! SPARE Me, Lord!

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Well, we’ve got about 2.5 hours before my son shows up to drag me back out to the Mayo Clinic — on the far side of Scottsdale, halfway to freakin’ Payson — for another time-wasting yack-fest.

These supposedly therapeutic sessions consist of gathering about two dozen old farts around a large conference table, where we spend three hours nattering on about how we can’t remember where we put our shoes.

No kidding! That WAS the subject of one chatterfest.

UNbelievable waste of time!

Did one person — either one of the freshly air-headed or one of the staff members — ever suggest that the way to not have to worry about forgetting where you put your shoes is simply to ALWAYS PUT THEM IN THE SAME PLACE every time you take them off?

Nope. Not one person came anywhere near suggesting that. It was all whine! whine! whine! I can’t remember my name! 

Seriously: Wouldn’t it be better simply to recognize that as you age, your memory will weaken (that’s normal…) and take steps to address that problem? How hard IS it to…

…have a to-do list. Tape it to the back door or the bathroom mirror if you can’t remember where you put it.
…set alarm clocks or timers to ring when you have an appointment or something that needs to be done at a certain time.
…put your relatives or hired help up to reminding you that you need to do X, Y, or Z.

You see the problem…  

Anyway, the last time we trudged out there for one of these get-togethers, it was two and a half or three hours of utter, COMPLETE wasted time. 

And since I personally feel my time should be mine to waste, not someone else’s, I highly resented that event. And even more highly resent having to traipse out to the east side to waste another whole goddamn afternoon.

Understand: it’s almost an hour’s drive out there from here. That doesn’t count getting parked and navigating your way, on foot, through the clinic’s maze to get to the day’s conference room.

Which is to say that by the time you’ve traipsed out to the far side of Scottsdale and come back home, you’ve blown away two hours…and that doesn’t count the three hours blown away listening to old buzzards whine about losing their shoes. So in fact, you’re going to waste a good half-day.

Thought you had something better to do with your time? Hey…don’t be silly! You’re OLD…you don’t have anything to do with your time.

Right?