Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Merry Christmas(?)

by

Christmas treeGood Yule Morning to you! I hope your holiday is happy.

Hereabouts, it’s raining. Again. Still. This is the second day of steady rain, with more (we’re told) to come. Just this moment, it’s stopped. And here I am trying to take advantage of that pause to fix something to eat.

It’s not working. Had the bright idea of frying some baby potatoes in butter, rather than, as usual, grilling them. Mistake! The smoking butter set off the fire alarm. Got that damn thing shut off. Carried the potatoes in their pan out to the grill to set the things on the grill pan. It’s starting to mist again. The tiny raindrops sifting out of the sky hit the hot grease and created a stutter of staccato explosions.

Soon it will be raining again, which will make it impossible to cover the grill whenever I’m done “cooking” (or whatever it is) because the metal grill lid will be too  hot.

Haven’t heard when my son wants me to come over for the proposed dinner, a circumstance which I’m beginning to assume means “never.” Okay…whatever.**

What’m’I gonna do about that grill in the rain? Hmmm…  Whenever I can pull the food off of it, I guess, cover it loosely with a few strips of tinfoil. Then as soon as it’s cool enough, put the mostly worn-out cover back over it. No wind is blowing, so a few sheets of tinfoil probably will stay in place for half an hour.

This is devolving into a nice Day from Hell.

Still have the gawdawful cough. The hand still hurts like the devil, though it’s a little better… Friday I’m supposed to go out to the Mayo to get a chest X-ray (since this cough may very well be incident upon the antibiotic they gave me for the UTI, a side effect with potentially fatal ramifications) and a hand X-ray. How exactly any of this is going to help escapes me…there appears to be little to be done in either event. The lung damage, we’re told, will clear on its own in about four months — assuming it doesn’t kill you. The hand? I don’t think it’s broken…and so what exactly is to be done, other than maybe some physical therapy, also remains to be seen.

Yes. The hand…and the woo-woo. Actually, we have woo-woo remedies in connection with both. Videlicet…

This damn cough is about to kill me. Now that we know the stuff that powers Robitussin and its knockoffs — stuff that works very effectively to silence the hack for several hours — jacks up the blood pressure by something upward of 20 points, we’re left with nothing to treat the damn cough.

So I tried an old folk remedy: fresh ginger steeped in hot water and honey.

Interestingly, this does create an improvement. And it works for several hours! The difference is not as joltingly quick as what occurs after a dose of the pizzen in Robitussin, but it’s about the same. And it seems to last for about the same period of time.

Uh huh… Strawberries, cherries, little angels kissin’ spring…

Night before last, I came across the jar of CBD cream that came into my possession a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, until I had to rummage around for some lip balm.

“Hmmmm,…” thought I, ever articulate: “Why not?”

So I rubbed this stuff on the sore spots, fell into the sack, and forgot about it.

Next morning, I wake up and lo! The pain is about 85% improved.

Of course, I think the Goddess has changed Her mind and decided to smile upon me. By the light of dawn, I blithely forget about the crème de cannabis that I’d smeared all over the paw.

As the pain slowly returned over the next 20 hours or so, somehow I managed to remember the doped cream. Could it be possible? I wondered. Looked up the question of whether medicaments of one sort or another actually can soak through your skin and affect your muscles and tendons. Weirdly, there seems to be evidence that this is the case. I mean scientific evidence, not woo-woo.

What the hell? This morning I smeared on some more. It required some time to take effect — if indeed the outcome is an effect. But after a bit, the pain, which has been pretty intense at times, was somewhat relieved.

Who knows?

woo-OOOO-ooo!!
😀

….and time passes…and the tinfoil trick works, and lo! there’s a streak of blue across the sky, something we haven’t seen in two or three days. The steak & potatoes came out just fine, despite the inclement weather.

Ruby just came in and opened the door to the garage(!). What is that dog trying to say to me?

It’s mighty cold outside. She doesn’t seem to want to go outdoors, exactly. But what interests her in the garage? That escapes me.

But then…most things escape me.

** Lo! The message M’Hijito sent re: proposed arrival time was sent at 11:20…appeared in my in-box at 1:40. Gee, thanks, Apple!

Revival Time

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Not that kind of revival! 😀

Amazing, it is, how fast we melt away when we lay around all day doing nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can manage.

I’m pretty good at that, we might add.

After falling over a broken slab of pavement a week ago Friday, I’ve been in so much pain I can barely move. And so, reasonably enough (one would imagine), I have been barely moving.

Result: taking the dog for a walk yesterday freaking wore me out!

When I haven’t been sleeping all day, I’ve been laying around all day playing computer games and cruising websites. Otherwise, when ambulatory: limping and hobbling around with great dramatic flair…like an old lady, we might say.

Well…it turns out that loafing all day is even worse for us than we think. Which, for those of us who do think about it, appears to be pretty bad.

It develops that when you take naps in the daytime, you up your chances of having a stroke significantly. This might not seem like much of a concern when you’re in your 30s or 40s, but when you’re rocketing toward 75, it gets your attention. Because…welll…sleeping half the afternoon away? That’s what I do all the time.

Because…I routinely wake up at two or three in the morning. Often I can’t get back to sleep. Or if I do, it’s just for another hour or so. This leaves me in Zombie Mode throughout the daylight hours. Which means I usually take an afternoon snooze.

So that article about napping and stroke definitively caught my attention.

Ohhhkayyyy…. So no more of that sleeping-the-afternoon-away business. Revival Time!

Yesterday I managed to stay awake all day, without too much discomfort. Surprisingly, too, I slept till around 7 a.m. — which is very late for me. That, I expect, was because I dropped half a Benadryl…but whatever, it worked.

Today for a change I was not so exhausted I couldn’t hold my head up. But did realize that the dog and I have lost our habit of the two-mile doggy-walk, mostly because I hurt too much to walk to the front door, much less wrangle her all the way through Lower Richistan, Upper Richistan, and back.

So it was out the door. But the walk was cut somewhat short, first by my overall sensation of weakness and then by a moron neighbor who was standing on her front lawn yakking with someone while her large, batshit dog stood guard. I had to pick up Ruby and carry her past them as the dog stared greedily at us and the nitwit cooed “oh, don’t worry, he never hurts anybody!”

Uh huh. This is the hound that she allows to snooze on a table or shelf in front of her large living-room picture window. Every time this critter sees me and Ruby and I walk up that street, it goes ABSOLUTELY SCREAMING BATSHIT. It growls, it barks, it slams itself against that window. Over and over. I avoid walking past the nitwit’s house, because sooner or later that dog is going to break through that damn window.

And that will be one hot mess.

I mean, really: do you seriously suppose this stupid woman just doesn’t notice that her 90-pound mutt goes freaking out of its mind when it sees a dog and a human amble by on the front sidewalk? How do people who have taken leave of that many IQ points remember how to put their shoes on?

But I digress.

Two doggy-walks a day, while a good thing, are rather more than I feel like doing, with one hand too maimed to manage the dog and one knee and the other hip hurting at each step.

So decided a yoga routine would be good. Or better: three of ’em: one in the morning, one around noon, and one in the evening.

The problem with having Jim the Incredible Pool Dude around is that because he does such an amazing job on the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money, I no longer have to go out in back every day and wrestle with pool brushes and hoses. So that is a source of exercise that has gone away. However obnoxious it may be, it did at least get me off my duff and require me to slam around for 15 or 20 minutes. Or more.

A short yoga routine actually worked very well: painless and strangely refreshing. Well…almost painless, as long as nothing touched the hand or the knee.

So I think I should try to do about three of those a day, preferably lengthening each session considerably. And then somehow get back to two miles on the doggywalks. At a time of day when the morons aren’t swarming…

Image: Wikipedia. Erling Mandelmann / photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch

Down at the HQ

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So… Trying to get out of the Funny Farm to drive down to the Religious HQ for today’s volunteer stint at the front desk, whereinat I now reside. Finally…

LORDIE, what a hassle.

To start with, I hurt from top to bottom. Even though the injured paw is slowly healing (I think) it’s very slow. The wrenched knee also hurts. If I get into the bathtub, I can’t get out through any normal contortions and so have to scrabble around to try to get on my feet without slipping and braining myself.

Not that it would make much difference these days.

A normal person would take a shower, not get herself trapped in a tubful of hot water, right? Yes. But first, I’m far from normal. And second — more to the point — soaking in hot water seems to be about all that eases the present tumble-induced aches and pains.

Next, the deadbolt on the door between the kitchen & the garage has jammed. Soonest I could get a locksmith out to the house was tomorrow. Fortunately, there’s a drill-proof Schlage lock on the garage’s side door, and prizing open the garage door itself…well…that’s not very hard, but it would be a little conspicuous for a burglar’s tastes.

But…I tend to mindlessly drive away from the house without closing the garage door. Invariably I think of this as I get about halfway up the block, so feel honor-bound to turn around, go back, and check to be sure it’s shut. This noon when I pull a U-ie…well, naturally, my computer slides off the passenger seat and tumbles onto the floor. Shee-ut!

It doesn’t seem to have broken. Otherwise, obviously, this wouldn’t be getting written.

To add to the kitchen-door issue, the lock on one of the Arcadia doors won’t work. Turns out for some reason the door isn’t closing tightly enough to force the little button that makes it possible for the latch to shift into place. These doors are supposedly warranteed for life, but taking advantage of that will entail digging out the paperwork from files that date back 15 years…won’t THAT be fun? And then hoping the manufacturer is still in business.

To add to the computer issue, the MacBook has developed a slowly worsening quirk: its cursor randomly jumps backward up the file as I’m typing, and since I type very fast even with one paw wounded, it inserts a series of letters into some random place in the file. This, I find extremely annoying.

I also find it’s a known issue. And probably will clinch the requirement that I buy a new computer, which I really do not want to do.

One reason I don’t want to is that I haven’t been paid the $1300 owed by my most recent client. Contact his admin and find it’s because she failed to enter some tiny speck of data into the university’s excruciatingly complicated computer forms.

Soooooo….. Let’s hope this thing survives long enough for that payment to get here, so I can afford to buy another unit and jump through the involved set of hassles that will entail.

Further adding to the fun… Usually the Thursday afternoon front-desk gig is quiet as the tomb. Not so today. The phone has been jangling since I sat down. We’re doing a concert of Handel’s Messiah — people are calling with questions to which I do not now, never have, and probably never will know the answers.

At any rate, this is the kind of day that makes me question the state of my marbles. I can’t even get out the door without a fiasco, and when I finally get here — pushing late — I have no clue what I’m doing.

The front yard looks a lot clearer and tidier with all the brush that Gerardo and crew removed yesterday. But from the street you still can’t get a full view of what’s going on — if anything — inside the courtyard. So, what with that guy obviously casing the house the other day, I’m  not at all comfortable at leaving the place. Ever. Especially not for several hours at a time.

So we’re brought back to the question that arises these days every time I get in my car and drive away from the Funny Farm:

Why am I staying here?

Argha!

Main reason? I have no idea where else to go.

Not that I can afford, anyway. If you don’t want to live in  a suburb of eave-to-eave styrofoam-and-stucco ticky-tacky, there’s really not much you can afford in a safer area. Not around here, anyway. All of North Central — where I’ve lived all my adult life — is now outside my price range. Well, except for the strip that borders Conduit of Blight Boulevard, all of which suffers the same issue as we in the ‘Hood confront: our neighbor to the west is one huge meth slum. That’s why the ’Hood is relatively affordable.

The alternatives are Fountain Hills — an hour’s drive from everything I do, and also largely ticky-tacky construction, albeit on larger lots — and Sun City –also almost an hour away from my life, and a ghetto for old folks, to boot.

Prescott? Wickenburg? Oro Valley? I’d have to start my life completely over in any of those places. And y’know what? I’m just too damn lazy to feel like building whole new networks of friends, whole new networks of retailers, whole new networks of doctors and dentists and optometrists and hair stylists and car mechanics and cleaning ladies and yard dudes and locksmiths and AC repairmen and plumbers and bankers and veterinarians and accountants and computer gurus and…augh!! It’s more than one can contemplate.

Ugh…some woman just hung up on me because I have no idea where to buy size 3x men’s pajamas. WTF????

And…ohboy, two seconds later the wooden gadget someone made to hold the door open got busted. Now the door is permanently latched shut.

BUT…the amazingly resourceful Nanette forthwith walked in through the door, retrieved the busted device, and fixed it.

A parishioner wants to know at which the Christmas Eve service do we sing “Silent Night” in the dark. I say it must be the midnight service…because that’s when the choir sings and we always sing…etc. No, says she, it can’t be the midnight mass because they never go to that.

Huh? Well, then, sister, it must be the service you usually go to, no???

An hour to go before I can head home and pour a bourbon & water.

 

Is It Just Me…or Is It Just Chaos?

by

Beer! God’s greatest gift to Personkind…

Amazingly, I slept past my usual 3 a.m. wake-up call. Didn’t roll out of the sack until 7:30 in the morning. That’s a lot of sleep for an old cave woman. If we’d still been living in little tribes on the veldt, the entire clan would have been consumed by a sabre-toothed tiger around 3 :00, while the elder slept through the mayhem.

Fortunately, the only carnivore in evidence was a corgi, who also slept through till sunrise.

This has been one of those days. Nay, one of those weeks. You know: the “whatever can go wrong” variety?

When I came home the ’tother night from the Thanksgiving feast, fed and significantly refreshed, my attention was again drawn to the strange streaks on the bedroom walls I’d noticed before but, having no strength to fart with whatever that was, decided to ignore. About halfway in (I’d guess) to recovery from the present bronchitic episode, I explored.

Yes. Well. Those streaks looked wet because they were wet. As in…you know…water.

And that’s what they were: condensation from the two steamers that have been running in that room just about nonstop for the past six weeks.  The walls were coated with vertical puddles of water! These mixed with the ambient dust to form mud puddles.

Fortunately I have a lifetime supply of those Mr. Clean wall scrubber sponges, purchased from Costco in enough quantity to accommodate the cleaning lady until death do us part.

Equally fortunate: the water had condensed only on the room’s two exterior walls. This, presumably, because of the temperature differential between the outside air and the heated interior.

As it was, it took an hour to pull out the bed and scrub those two walls down from ceiling to floor. Jolly fun! In the middle of the night.

Laptop developed a wackshit quirk late last week, disconnecting it (so we’re told…but maybe not so much???) from iCloud. Now I have to traipse it to Scottsdale tomorrow…oboyoboy, i can hardly wait.

But that’s only part of the problem. It’s also hanging the cursor — totally disabling it so that I have to force-quit the computer and crash all the programs that are open in order to get the machine back to where it will function. This appears to be associated with a Washington Post game I like to play, but why that would be is profoundly unclear.

A-n-n-d Word just hung when I tried to reopen a file that was crashed in the most recent force-quit. So now I have to crash out of that.

The mail program crashes at random, for no discernible reason. And I keep getting a nagging pop-up message demanding that I sign in to iCloud — even though I am signed in to iCloud. And…none of the present and past passwords I have for iCloud seems to work, nor does there seem to be a way to reset the password in any way that makes any kind of sense. Or that works.

Apple’s formerly superb customer service has gone down the sewer. Until just the past few weeks, they’ve had THE most amazing phone techs, who could solve anything and fix anything over the phone. The last three times I’ve called, though, the people on the other end have been, shall we say, dumb as posts. How the Hell they got hired escapes me. They not only don’t identify the problem or come anywhere close to fixing it, the last nitwit actually made it worse.

So…that’s disapppointing. Interestingly, they’ve quit sending “how’d we do?” emails…presumably, then, Apple is fully aware of this.

Now I have to spend half the day Monday schlepping the MacBook to the Apple Geniuses, way to hell and gone in Scottsdale (since Apple kindly closed the central Phoenix store) and probably will end up having to ship the thing off. This will entail the usual endless arguments over my antique Word and Excel system. And of course, yet another endless trip to the recently dystopiified Scottsdale Fashion Square.

Really, I need to download LibreOffice and learn to use its word processor and spreadsheet software. But I cringe: I am SOOOO done with the electronic learning curve.

Speaking of the marvels our Our Technological Age, some strange email purporting to be from FeedBurner came in…go to site, fix this, fix that. WTF? Guru Grayson suspects it’s phishing, but in any event, FeedBurner was installed long before he took over wrangling the site. He advises that I should go over to FeedBurner’s website, sign in, and see if they really are bellyaching at me. Of course, it wants a password.

Well. That thing was installed by a previous web wrangler. If I ever had a password (which I highly doubt), I don’t have it anymore.

Back to Grayson. “The program is junk and no one is using it anymore,” says he. So it goes. One of us will deal with that later. Much later.

Still coughing. It’s s-l-o-w-l-y getting better, but at this rate it’ll be weeks — probably several months — before the hack goes away.

To frost the cake, I screwed up the Call-Blocker. Accidentally blocked the dermatologist’s number — is there a reason their robocall nuisance called on a Saturday night(!!!!!!!) to pester-remind me about next Tuesday’s appointment? Can’t unblock it following their instruction booklet. Now I have to get their techs on the phone — they’re not in on Sundays — and figure out how to undo that mess.

Amazon Prime video has hung up. So I guess not only may I not play an idle video game, neither can I watch one of the very few videos there that appear to be worth wasting one’s idle moments on. End up with an old John Wayne clunker. Thrill-a-minute… 😀

Oh, god. I’ve seen this thing. Soooooo long ago it was, and yet I still remember the opening scene.

Here Comes the Sun…

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Into the third day of a passing storm. It’s supposed to clear tomorrow…today the sun peeked through for several hours, but then the sky clabbered up again and more rain fell with abandon.

Think (hope!) the bronchitis may be starting to clear up. too. In the morning it feels almost like an ordinary cold. But of course, that’s after I’ve been sequestered inside a closed-up bedroom with two hot steamers running for 10 or 12 hours.

In fact, this morning it seemed improved enough to assay a doggy walk. For day after day, poor little Ruby has been trapped in the house by the rain and by the Human’s ailment. Alas, by the time we got to the outskirts of Upper Richistan, the threat of more rain had escalated to a promise. So we had to cut our expedition short and hurry home — just reached the front door when more rain began to pour down.

Thought we’d try again as the weather cleared but then decided I’d druther go back to bed. Plus as I was peering out the front door to check on the downpour status, I spotted a shady pair trotting past the house, transparently stealing and garbage scavenging, almost surely homeless (read “drug addicts” in these parts). On the way home we saw another sketchy fellow going through a garbage bin in the alley behind Josie’s house. In the rain. Uh huh: N.G.

Back at the Funny Farm: yesterday’s extra CPR Call Blocker coding seemed to have had an effect. The number of nuisance calls dropped to two. I thought I’d found the key to blocking nuisance calls from “Name Unavailable,” but another got through. Called CPR’s excellent customer service; the guy there says blocking “Name Unavailable” doesn’t block “Unavailable” calls, each of which has to be separately, manually blocked. Now I’m thinking the only way to deal with this constant harassment is to tell everyone who needs to reach me that the only way to get in touch is by email, and then unplug the phones. Or cancel the service.

As the day passes, the apparent improvement in the epizoõtic backtracks, and by mid-afternoon it again feels like I can’t draw enough air into the lungs to sustain life. So it was back to bed in the confines of the closed bedroom filled with steam.

This is the kind of sh!t that makes you doubt the entire premise of “Aging in Place.” Really? I’m on the far end of being able to drive around the city when I don’t feel well. What is gonna happen when I’m 80 and I come down with this kind of crud? Or something worse? How will I get food? How will I care for myself? Will I die on the floor with no one to notice till my skeleton has been cleaned by the ants?

I see My Beloved Employer, the Great Desert University, whose administrators are always on the lookout for a way to generate another million bucks, are building an old-folkerie for self-styled intellectuals, to house the aged on the campus. Lots of stuff to do. And you even get to go to classes on the campus!

Whoop de doo.

Well, so let’s look at that with the least jaundiced eye we can manage.

Okay. In theory it looks like a good idea. A lot of stuff is going on at the campus. You would be surrounded by young adults, and if you were ambitious enough and influential enough, you might even be able to engineer some activities that would allow you to interact with the critters. Usually a healthy enterprise, this.

However…truth to tell, Tempe is Chez Pitz. Despite the presence of the university, it’s a bedroom community that doesn’t even faintly appeal to me as a place to live. “Old” is the New N*, particularly among the Millennial set: your chance of engaging with the (mostly commuter) students on the Great Desert University campus is almost nil.

Lovely Tempe

However-ever, one would be to some degree — nay, to a large degree — insulated from the overall Southern California-style ticky-tacky of the East Valley suburban lifestyle.

But.

Yes. But. You would be housed in a multi-story apartment building: a rabbit warren.  No yard. No privacy to speak of. No distance between you and your fellow inmates. And not just any apartment building, but a storage bin for old folks.

What would I do with my little dog in a place like that?

Well. You know exactly what I would have to do with my little dog: find some other home for her. And I would never be able to get a dog again.

Sorry. but a goldfish a substitute for a dog does not make. Life is not life without the companionship of a dog. That is fact.

Thus, quite possibly, a life proctored by protectors who will be there to call 911 if you fall and you can’t get up may not be a life at all.

Tomorrow the weather in lovely uptown Phoenix is expected to be “sunny along with a few clouds.” Let’s hope that’s true. And let’s hope it applies to Life, the Universe, and All That…

Found: Lost Gadget. Found: Food!

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As suspected, simply waiting for enough time to pass caused the missing two-cup Pyrex measuring cup to reappear. To say that nascent senility is much like gazing into a Magic 8-ball is…well, no exaggeration. Things go missing. They disappear into the air. They stay gone for awhile. And then one day they surface, as if by magic, in some perfectly reasonable spot where, no doubt, they have been residing all along.

So where was the damn thing?

Where else? In the dish drainer, in the kitchen sink. Exactly where anyone who had recently filled a measuring cup with water would place it to drip dry.

Why could I not find it? NO idea. I must have looked right at it at least four times while thrashing around searching for the damn thing.

In defense of my idiot self, I will say that it was sitting beneath a sieve-type colander made of steel mesh. One could argue that this object was a bit of a distraction. After all, I was looking for a glass container, not a screen bowl. But still…it’s not what you’d call “opaque.”

All that thrashing around for… what?

Ohhh well.

To my delight, I discovered that the recovered glass measure is indeed the OLD version, made in the USofA, not the cheesey product that is pawned off on US consumers today. That is, if you believe the remarks of Amazon customer reviewers, who claim that the original Pyrex can be recognized by the type font used for the painted on brand name. The genuine original was marked PYREX — in all caps. The knock-off is marked in lower-case type, as the one in the image above: pyrex. Yes! Mine IS all caps. 😀

Also found this morning: breakfast.

Lightheaded with hunger, as dawn cracks I stumble into the kitchen behind the dog. I’m fuckin’ starved…and realize i have got to eat! must have FOOD!

None of the rather vile and flavorless items I’ve decided to substitute for the cheese and fruit that I usually eat in the morning is working. I just can’t gag that stuff down — I mean, the various fine dishes I’ve imagined might take the place of my favorite chow. Let us be honest: if it doesn’t have cholesterol in it, it just freaking doesn’t taste very good!

The result is, I go hungry all day because I feel awful from the bronchitis, and because I’m not eating I’m getting sicker and sicker. By noon I can hardly drag myself out of bed, and I certainly don’t feel like fixing a full meal. Or any meal.

So this morning I decided it doesn’t much matter whether I die of a heart attack or of malnutrition. Fuck it! And broke out a slab of fine Leicestershire cheese.

Breakfast, then:

  • Suicidal cheese
  • Toast
  • An apple
  • Coffee

Interestingly, I haven’t died yet. Felt noticeably better most of the day — even managed to walk the dog about 3/4 of our usual route (she hasn’t been out more than twice since this fiasco started four weeks ago!). Still spent many, many hours in bed, but felt like I might live to one day clean house again.

A day or two ago, I bought a package of free-range chicken thighs. Put those on the grill this afternoon, along with some asparagus and a package of rice to reheat. Not too inedible. This little feast is still sitting on my stomach like a rock…but at least I’m not hungry, for a change.

My poor little pooch must think the globe has stopped rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun. About the only exercise she’s getting entails luring the Human out of bed and out to the treat jar in the kitchen. This, of course, is making her fat. The Human’s not exactly getting skinny, either, come to think of it.