Coffee heat rising

Glenn Gunnells

Summertime in Arizona

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Dog and I just returned from roaming loose around the ‘Hood. Ye GAWDS, but it’s hot out there!!!

Prob’ly not really that hot…Wunderground claims it’s only 90 degrees, in fact rather mild for this time of year. Humidity: supposedly only 9%…..couldn’t prove that by me!  Feels hot and damp outside just now, come 2:30 in the afternoon.

This is when I yearn to go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where my relatives lived.

They’re all late relatives now — the ones who would have anything to do with us W.T. So there’s no one to call me back there, alas.

Actually, there’s still a cousin…she’s a nurse now. But she doesn’t live in the old neighborhood, and she never thought much of me, far’s I can tell. Dunno what I did to pi$$ her off, but she seems not to like me. My father — now long late — was exceptionally stupid about her: disapproved vocally of her conversion to Catholicism. As if that were any of his business, or anyone else’s business!

I hope he didn’t say anything to her…but given the unfriendly way she behaves, my guess is that he did. And you can be assured: whatever he said would have been passing nasty.

So, in reality: no one who would welcome me to the East Bay is still there. So there really would be no point in going back, even for a sight-seeing visit.

That notwithstanding…if I could get back there, I shoot back in an instant!

Ain’t a-gunna happen, though.

GET’em!!!

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Boyoboy, would I love to be able to GET them: the bastards who start blitzing me with phone soliciting around 7 a.m., and on into the morning.

Phone soliciting should be illegal.

Yeah, I know: freedom of speech and all that. Sure… But you can be free of speech at a decent hour of the morning.

Yeah, I know: they’re trying to catch you before you leave for work.

But freedom to hustle people is no excuse for driving the marks nuts. I am so sick of the phone soliciting harassment, I’ve seriously thought of disconnecting the phone service. Who the Hell needs a phone if all it’s going to be used for is to pester you?

Yeah, I know: turn off the phone during periods when you don’t want to be hassled.

But…my son uses that phone to get in touch with me. What if something happens that he needs to get ahold of me RIGHT NOW…and I’ve disconnected all the phones?

The bastards have got you coming and got you going!

***

Gorgeous morning! Sunny and balmy at once. 

Ruby and I circumambulated a route that SDXB and I used to take every day, back when he lived here. Goes through a neighborhood of tidy middle-class homes, probably dating back to the 1960s. All green and grassy and tree-shaded now: a very pretty route to walk in the mornings.

One of our favorite neighbors, The Ole Guy, lived on this route. He would be out puttering in the yard every morning — we would pause and chat with him.

No sign of him today. Probably moved into the Beatitudes when he had to consign his wife to the place, a prison for the decrepit. She refused to go, when he realized she had reached a point where he could no longer take care of her. Finally, it became clear that the only way he could shove her into that place would be to go there with her.

The Beatitudes is a terrifying old-folkerie, one that’s been in Phoenix for years. Sooner or later, most of us who survive into old age will be forced to move into such a place. But oh, my!  The horror!!

Institutional living is not my Thing, that’s for sure. I hated living in the dorms at the university, and you can be sure a prison for old folks isn’t anywhere near as tame as a college dormitory. Sincerely do I hope I will die before I can be carted off to one of those places…but there’s not much hope for that, given the longevity in my family and my own vigorous health.

My father had himself locked up in a similar place, one called Orangewood — now called the Terraces. My mother had refused to go. Upshot: he had to take care of her at home as she lay dying of the cancer brought on by her rabid smoking habit. But the minute she died — frankly, I think that’s no exaggeration — he put the house on the market and signed himself into the old-folks’ prison.

He didn’t mind that lifestyle. Having gone to sea all of his adult life, he was used to crowded, institutional living and bad food.

I, however, would far, FAR rather be dead than locked up in one of those horrid places. And you may be sure that if I have to do so, I will engineer exactly that. No way in Hell am I gonna spend my “golden years” (har har!) in Decrepitude Hell.

For what those places cost, though, I do believe you can hire people to come into your home and babysit you into the Next World. They’re horribly expensive institutions. And really: if you’re not a stroke-induced vegetable — if you can still hobble around your house and bathe yourself and lift a fork to your mouth — you can make exactly that kind of hire.

Well…there are better fates. One could instantly drop dead of a stroke, for example.

Let us hope for that!

Home, (Not So…) Sweet Home

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Ugh!  This is where my parents and I used to live, on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Hard to describe how richly we were hated by the locals, who considered Americans to be emissaries of Satan. So, SOOO glad not be there anymore.

My father was paid some ludicrous amount of money to shepherd tankers and freighters out of the Ras Tanura harbor. He was an ocean-going pilot of some prominence, and when he hired on out there, he figured to earn enough to finance a spectacularly early retirement.

Didn’t quite work out that way. I was a weird little kid who couldn’t get along with my normal, very sosh’ classmates. Imagine: a girl child in the 1950s who wanted to grow up to be, of all things, an astronomer! 

😀
not to say
🙁

So the kids hated me and tormented me every day from the fourth grade on, day in and day out of awful misery.

My mother realized how horrible life had become for me out there, and she managed to maneuver my father into retiring from ARAMCO and coming back to the U.S., whither he shipped out of California for Standard Oil.

Whew! She saved my sanity with that. 

Didn’t do his career a whole lot of good, though…

So I was in the 6th grade when we landed back in San Francisco. Couple years later, he got a higher-paying job with Union Oil shipping out of Southern California, and that allowed him to retire permanently much earlier than planned.

Thence, it was off to Arizona, where he had discovered the phenomenon known as Sun City. They shoehorned me into the University of Arizona a year early (skipping my senior year in high school), bought a house in that dreary old folks’ suburb, shooed me off to Tucson, and lived happily ever after.

Well… Until my mother’s incessant goddam smoking habit caught up with her. After it had made me sick (and sick…and sicker) for several years, it gave her cancer and killed her.

My father was soon glommed by one of the predatory women in the old-folkerie to which he had recourse after my mother died. She maneuvered him into marrying her — one of the biggest mistakes of his life — and he lived miserably ever after with her, in that dreary retirement home in uptown Phoenix.

Hafta give him this: he was a far stronger human being than his daughter was or is. I would have picked up a pistol and blown out my brains if I’d been stuck with that lady in that hideously depressing prison for old folks. She was mean, meaner, and even meaner, and she openly hated me because my husband and I were traitorous LIBuhrals. (She was a right-wing crazy; my hubby was on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, if you can imagine anything so Communistic!). I soon learned to detest her, and so I stayed away from my father most of the time.

Grand way to wrap up a life of amazingly hard work, eh?

Poor man! His life should have been better than that…especially the last few years of it.

He spent those last few years in misery, because he refused to divorce the Dragon Lady. This, despite urging to do so from me and from my husband, one of the most prominent lawyers in the American Southwest. “She’ll get all my money!” wailed he. Forgodsake, Daddy: some things are more important than money. 

Well. He thought not, having toiled throughout his adult life to collect that retirement fund. So he stayed married to the witch, on and interminably on. He predeceased her, which meant the last few years of his much-coveted retirement were passed in glum, tedious depression.

Ugh! What that said to me is no matter how much you covet married bliss, NEVER remarry in old age! 

Glorioski!

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What a GORGEOUS morning!!!  High, thin clouds gently floating overhead. The blue sky peering through them. And splendidly temperate, inviting you to park yourself on the back porch, crunch a cookie, and guzzle black coffee.

Truth to tell, for all its eccentricities Arizona really IS a splendid place to live. Don’t know how my father found out about Sun City, but somehow he did…and forthwith he and my mother retired to those stodgy environs.

They hadn’t been there more than a year or two when a monster recession hit. My father, who had invested all his savings in the stock market, lost his proverbial shirt.

So, he had to pack up and go back to sea, the poor guy. Shipped out as first mate for a company that ran oil tankers out of southern California.

In the interim, my mother sat in front of the TV and smoked…and smoked…and smoked…and smoked herself into a fine case of cancer.

It didn’t make itself obvious until after he had swung his second retirement, and to his infinite delight had quit his job (again!) and gone back to Sun City to spend what he expected to be the rest of his years with the Love of His Life.

Staunch right-wingers, neither of them believed any of the maunderings that came out of the federal government. So, they were kinda blindsided when my mother’s non-stop smoking habit did indeed lead to an inoperable case of cancer, just as Big Brother said it would. As she died horribly, he never left her bedside, but took care of her, the house, the car, the shopping, the cooking, the finances…and the doctoring.

After she died, he couldn’t bear to stay in the place they’d dreamed would be their retirement haven and happy home. So he sold it and moved to an old-folkerie in Phoenix. And…a sad story attaches to that….

In short, though: that she killed herself with cancer sticks meant that she killed any chance for a contented retirement for him. If I’d been him, I’d have taken a long leap off the side of the Golden Gate Bridge. But…he was made of stronger stuff than I am.

He was an exceptionally handsome man…and the instant he walked into the old-folkerie’s dining room, he was, shall we say, noticed.

Forthwith, one of the inmates ambushed him. He was flattered — this was a guy who never looked twice at any woman other than his wife. That meeting led to an exceptionally unhappy marriage — one he refused to dissolve because he imagined “she’ll get all my money.”

And also because he had a daughter who was too stupid and too naive to say “But Daddy: your son-in-law is one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. She’s not gonna get all your precious money!”

So…he was stupid and I was remiss and the new wife was a witch. Between the three of us, we concocted a fine unhappy passage through the end of his life.

If there’s anything to learn from that escapade, it’s…what?

When you experience a major life change (such as the death of a spouse), don’t make any sudden moves. 

If he’d waited just six months before jumping into marital “bliss” with the Dragon Lady, he no doubt would never have married her. He would still be lonely, but he would not have been freaking miserable.

When you plan ahead for the major passages of your life — retirement, for example, or marriage, or the rearing of children — think of and plan for ALL the contingencies. Not just the things you imagine will happen or hope will happen. But for the catastrophes and the fu*k-ups, too.

If money or major commitments are part of a “major passage” of your life, consult a lawyer and a financial advisor before jumping into anything.

******
arrrrghhhh!!!

Here’s the Cleaning Lady from Heaven, at the front door. It’s MUCH later in the morning than I imagined!!  LOL! I thought it was about 9 a.m.

Uhhhm…welllll… No. It’s damn near 11:30! She’s already cleaned the WonderAccountants’ house, straight across the street. And now here she is, ready to work her magic on the Funny Farm.

Seriously: this lady is about the most wonderful human being you could ever have working for you. If I ever took it into my feeble little mind to start a cleaning service (what, me? work???), she would be the one I’d hire as its manager.

Well…let’s wrap this up… ONWARD!

BANG! BANG!! BANG-A-DA-BANG!!!

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Eight-thirty of a New’s Eve! And everyone within (and beyond) earshot is celebrating: BANG! BANG!! BANGA-DA-BANG!!! 

Amazingly, Ruby the Corgi is taking it all in…very relaxed stride. Really: I would have expected her to be all nervous and jumpy and spooked.

But nay! She seems to realize all that racket is coming from somewhere else: somewhere a fair distance from the Funny Farm. Not only is she NOT spooked, just now she’s flopped on the foot of the bed, loafing!

How weird is that, I hafta ask you?

LOL! This evening the brain-pan filled with memories of a very weird experience...one I never really have been able to make much sense of.

My father, you need to understand first-off, was a very macho sort of guy. Anything that smacked of “queer” would set off his rage genes. He hated queers (so he said), and would launch into paroxysms of disgust on the subject if given half a chance.

Sooooo….  It struck me as VERY weird when one time in a balmy Arizona season, he took it into his head to gather a bunch of Boy Scouts to go out on the desert and shoot at stuff. Target shooting.

Not too weird, until you learned that — hang onto your hat — he proposed to stay out there overnight with the passel of teenaged boys. All of them ejaculatedly revved up by shooting guns into the night air.

Yeah.

Whaaaaa???????

To my astonishment, my mother said nothing to try to derail this plan. Probably, I imagine, because she couldn’t think of anything…or maybe she just didn’t want to get into a quarrel with him.

So he rounds up a troop of senior Boy Scouts, and off they go into the desert night.

No other adults with them: just my father and a half-dozen or so teenage boys.

Uhhmmm…..

Since I wished to continue living, I, too, said nothing about this…but thought any number of unmentionable thoughts.

Well. OK….

Off they went, into the desert and the dark. Far as I know, nothing much transpired — or if it did, you may sure none of them mentioned it.  They drove off, set up camp somewhere, and spent the night shooting their bang-bangs and sittin’ around the campfire.

You understand: my father wasn’t given to that kind of thing. By and large, he didn’t much like kids — these were not kids, though, but teenagers. And this was the ONLY time in my life that I’d ever heard of him or seen him go camping. Not that he couldn’t: he grew up out in the Texas boondocks. But he didn’t subject me or my mother to it.

So…when I hear the BANG BANG BANG of fireworks or firearms echoing through the night, that’s what I think of: my father out on the desert with a passel of teenage boys, shooting off their guns into the dark.

Or whatever.

And that makes these firework-accented holidays feel…weird, to me. Very, very weird. 

***** GODAMMIT!*****

Now we’ve got idiots out there shooting off fireworks over the tops of the palm trees.

I’ll have to go out there and keep an eye to be sure the damn trees don’t catch fire.

WHY ARE WE SURROUNDED BY MORONS?

She Would’ve Loved….

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Oh, my goodness! How my mother would have loved this adorable little corgi. Ruby is…

…hopelessly cute(!!)
…sweeter than candy
…doggily persuasive
…richly funny

What a charmer. She surely would have seduced my mother within minutes of their meeting. And they would have been pals for life.

Or at least, for rest of my mother’s life.

She’s long-gone now. My father remarried; then he died in misery. The new wife was merrily ejected from my life…she’d be about 181 by now, I imagine, if she were still living.

My mother was murdered by the tobacco peddlers.

Yeah. If you have a kid…or anyone you care about or who cares about you…don’t get seduced into smoking. It truly is a murderous custom.

She deserved to see her grandson. She deserved to see the cuteness that is the corgi. She deserved to live out her husband’s life. But no. She smoked herself to death, and so never saw any of those things…or any of the other beautiful things that should have graced her later life.

Don’t let them kill you, friends!

But do get a corgi!!!! 😀  Everyone should have a corgi. Right?