Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Here Comes the Sun…

by

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!

by

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.

How much longer, dear Lord?

by

“Probably at least four more weeks, wimpy Human…”

{sigh}

So I picked this bug up on the 15th from the Mayo’s ER. That was about three weeks ago. Not all that long ago, but yes, God is (as usual) right: I am a wimp. Videlicet: I am damn tired of being sick!

The last time I enjoyed a comparable bug, it took four months to get over it. This would suggest we have another three months or so to listen to me whine…assuming a bolt of lightning doesn’t shut me up before then.

Maybe that’s what the recent blast from the clouds was all about? A divine comment, on the order of “Please shut up!”

Ruby the Corgi is no more pleased with the whiny Human than is God Herself. Most offensive: the dog walks have come to an abrupt halt. We’ve managed two strolls with the dog over the past three weeks, one of which ended when I couldn’t get enough air into my chest to keep going. My enthusiasm for being dragged through Upper Richistan, it must be allowed, has fallen to exactly nil.

Worse yet, the Human keeps climbing into the bed and parking there. Not wanting to be rousted out of a snooze by a dog campaigning to get onto the bed, the critter insists on lifting the Dog up there, too…willy nilly. In the Dog’s case, the sentiment is more nil than will.

This predicament elicits the gratifyingly terrifying Llama Drama from the Dog. She perches on the edge of the bed’s footboard and leans precariously over, peering down into the void as though she were contemplating plunging from the top of the Andes’ highest peak. This is part of an elaborate dance whose ultimate purpose is to extract a doggy treat.

The Human, alarmed lest the Dog decided to throw itself onto the tile floor — thereby creating an elaborate veterinary bill, to say nothing of two or three hours of frenzy — now has to get up and gently lift the Dog off the bed. Result? The ever-effective Doggy Treat Dance, in which the Dog does a joyful whirling dervish thing, up the hallway and out to the kitchen.

No, she does not want to go out. (Are you kidding? It’s dark out there!) She wants a doggy treat, and she will not give up until she gets one.

Very effective. The Human goes back to bed. The Dog, munching, retires to her nest beneath the toilet.

{moan}

I’ve lost my beloved two-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Where it could be, I cannot imagine. One of the less charming functions of old age is the habit of setting things down and then forgetting where you put it. Hours may go by, days may go by, yea verily even weeks may go by, and the beloved object is GONE.

Eventually, you may find it…but…not until you have replaced it.

Alas, though, this particular item cannot be replaced, except by a piece of knock-off junk. The only way I’ll be able to find one like it will be to find one in an antique store someplace.

Goodie. Just what I feel like doing when I’m at Death’s Door: stumbling from Goodwill to St. Vincent de Paul to the Mormons’ second-hand store searching for a piece of real Pyrex.

It couldn’t have gone far. Either I set it down carelessly and can’t remember where or the cleaning lady put it “away,” in which case I’ll never find it. Another possibility: I could have dropped it in the trash. But fortunately, I haven’t taken the trash out to the alley in days. So…tomorrow I’ll have the pleasure of fishing through the two trashcans in the garage, one piece at a time. The likelihood that it’s in the garbage is almost nil…but…I can’t afford to take that chance.

Ohhh gawd, i am soooo sick! The last thing I feel like doing is driving from pillar to post trying to replace that thing in a thrift shop. Let’s hope it resurfaces soon, like a dim message in the inky Magic Eight-Ball of my life.

HOLY Good Morning, America!!

by

Dog and I were rousted out, along about 6 a.m., by a mighty blast of lightning. Holy mackerel! Because it was prefaced by an ominous rumble, I thought it was an explosion at first. Another meth lab bites the dust? But quick enough you could see the blue flashes of lightning flickering through the draperies.

Will, our neighborhood town cryer, noted it on the ’Hood’s Facebook page. A whole slew of followers commented. One woman thought a plane had hit the house. Another brilliant soul went outside to check it out (forgodsake — why not wear a TV  antenna attached to the beanie on your head, too?)

Covered the BBQ, but the kite-like wicker chairs on the side porch were still outside, so I had to race out and drag those in the house. Not much wind came up, though, and just a spattering of rain. Wunderground reports a 60% chance of rain today, dropping off tomorrow, and then back to a noticeable level over the weekend. Should be innaresting.

And the pool dude just came and went…yay!  That gent has turned out to be a large success. Very, very nice man — and pleasantly chatty, which is nice when the person is only around for 20 minutes or so. Even though I haven’t lifted a finger since he started working here, the pool looks gorgeous — ALL the time, not just for the 10 minutes after it was cleaned. Dunno how he’s doing that, but I think he’s worth every penny he charges.

Now I’m going to be forced to get up off my duff and drive to the grocery store, it being after 9 a.m. so I can turn left out of the ’Hood. The bronchitis seems to be letting up, just a bit, and so I’m hoping it will be about gone in another week or two. Even after two 15-hour nights of sleep, plus another 9 hours last night before this morning’s little freshet, I still feel so tired I can barely stumble around. Driving the car seems contraindicated, but there’s no other way to get food. Soooo…

The low-cholesterol diet regime is, IMHO, just about as obnoxious as the bronchial infection. It’s darned hard to think of anything to eat for breakfast that I want to eat, that is low in fats, and that tastes good. The guacamole scheme was a FAIL, as of course is anything spread on bread, which makes me blow up like a balloon. A couple pieces of grilled fish reside in fridge, but…yuch. A chunk of cold halibut is not what I want to greet the day with.

While I’m out today, I’ll have to drive down to the big Sprouts downtown to look for free-range, air-cooled chicken. I really dislike factory-raised, saltwater-infused chicken — just vile! — and so I don’t eat it, because I have to go way, wayyyy out of my way to get unadulterated poultry.

Ultimately what I may have to do is just take a chance that getting rid of the daily cheese-laden breakfasts will do the trick. But…honestly, I really don’t want to argue with YDK the next time I drag in there to be pestered with this stuff. Nor do I care to drop dead of a heart attack or stroke anytime soon…

Whinge, Continued…

by

😀 It got even better this afternoon, in the bizarro department.

Along about mid-day, I decide I need more of the generic Albertson’s dextromethorphan (DXM) cough syrup, having discovered that the Mucinex I’d bought at AJ’s in hope of avoiding any more driving around and standing in line than absolutely necessary was too vile to gag down. So I stumble in and grab two bottles of generic cough goop off the shelf.

After a not very good snack passing for lunch, I decided I really need to go to bed. I need to go to sleep. If I can get two or three hours of sleep in, maybe I’ll feel better.

Right?

Oh, sure.

Just about then, up comes Gerardo. He blocks my driveway with his gigantic truck and sets his dudes to work, blowering and raking and cleaning and, oh yeah: while he’s at it, he decides to repair the broken plumbing in front.

So they bang around and bang around. Eventually it becomes clear that I’m not going to get any sleep. So go to open one of the bottles of cough medicine and find, lo! It’s not DXM 30%. The goddamn stuff is generic Mucinex!

Ohhhhh ugh!

There’s about one dose of DXM 30% left.

So I wait and wait while Gerardo and the boys throw themselves around. They are, as usual, working like horses. But… I. Need. That. Cough. Medicine.

Finally ask him to please move the truck, which he kindly does.

Traipse back down to Albertson’s. Return the Mucinex knockoff. Find a bottle of the plain DXM 30%, but not in the generic, so one bottle costs about 12 bucks. Get one (1) bottle. This requires standing in line and standing in line and then standing in line again.

Dodge a bum going into the store. Dodge the same bum going out. Evade a panhandling pounce — I”m getting good at this.

Return to the Funny Farm. By now the men have the entire front flowerbed dug up. They’ve succeeded in getting one watering zone to run, but the one that serves that flowerbed — with the brand-new bougainvillea planted in it — ain’t working.

Back in the house: I remember that I set the parts of the steamer (“humidifier”) to soaking in vinegar, in hopes of getting the thing to work again. These are sitting in the garage sink.

Scrub this stuff down with a brush and run water through all the parts.

Fill the contraption up with water, drag it back to the bedroom, and plug it back in… And LO! It works!

Hallelujah.

Meanwhile, I’m still awake. Gerardo and crew are still banging around. The boss has to go buy a cable to repair a break, which he does while his guys are heaving around.

I cook an artichoke and eat most of it. Not as delicious as expected. Stomach is upset. But at least now I have the cough medicine.

By the time the repair project is done — the guys get the system working better than it has in a couple of years — it’s way too late for napping.

They leave. I climb on the bed with the dog and waste some time playing with the computer.

Phone rings: church friend. A lengthy chat ensues. That’s very nice and cheering. And it passes time.

Dog demands to get down. I get off the phone, levitate the hound off the mattress, let her outside.

Forthwith a cop helicopter starts to buzz the ‘Hood. Naturally.

Hie the (unhappy!!) dog back in the house. Feed her dinner as a bribe. Cook up some pasta for myself…also tasteless. Food in general seems to have lost all flavor.

By now I’ve come out on the other side of so-tired-I-can’t-hold-my head-up.

Watch Mike Pence try to bully Judy Woodruff on PBS News, going on about how the American people don’t care about the impeachment proceedings.

Great distraction, this al-Baghdadi coup, isn’t it? Are we really supposed to ignore the extraordinary timing? Oh, God. Rome burns and the fiddles play.

We’ve fallen through a wormhole and crawled out on some other planet. I’m sure of it.

{moan!}

by

In and out of ERs four times in the past week. So, sooooo sick!

It’s some kind of respiratory infection: sore throat, impossible cough, grinding headache. There’s also some kind of abdominal pain that I thought was a pulled belly muscle but now I think…not so much.

The Mayo doc gave me a repellent syrup to treat the UTI, which kicked off a high fever. That stuff damn near killed me. Then in the middle of that fiasco I came down with this bug — cold, flu, whatever it is. My temp has been swinging up and down from 98 to 102+. A-n-n-n-d now it looks like I just broke the expensive digital thermometer, grabbing it to keep it from sliding off the nightstand. Now I’ll have to get up and traipse around the house in search of the old mercury number.

Wheeee.

At any rate, during one of the junkets to the Mayo, I learned the repellent syrup apparently killed off the UTI germs. That’s something, anyway. I guess.

The other thing I (re)learned was WHY I’d rather drive halfway to Timbuktu to go to the Mayo’s ER than duck into the nearby John C. Lincoln hospital. To wit:

In my last sally, I was so tired and it was so late at night (11 p.m. and counting — bearing in mind that I’d spent the entirety of two preceding nights sitting around the Mayo) that I stupidly decided to go into JCL, a megahospital that serves a population who largely know no better and even if they did, can’t afford any better.

I get in there, to an empty ER, and they sign me over into the care of this amazingly dumb-looking male nurse. You know how some people just emanate “stupid”? This guy was one of them. How did you get through nursing school, bub?

He’s supposed to do a blood draw (again!) and he wants to insert an IV line (why?). But he is SO totally not up for the job that within seconds he has blood all over himself, blood all over me, blood all over the bed, and blood all over the floor. “Thankyouverymuch,” I say as I’m running out the door. Onward to the Mayo: another 20 or 25 minutes of driving over empty roads.

There, staff ascertain that the UTI is gone and conclude my problem appears to be a severe viral infection.

**

Oh jeez. Naturally Ruby picks 9:00 at night to have a doggy shitfit…I do not feel like getting up to shoof out what she’s barking at. Oh well: burglars, enter here.

Cripes. She’s getting madder and madder… Grab the shillelagh! Is there ever a dull moment around this place?

Well, I can’t see anyone. Must’ve been a moth flying past.

Still spectacularly sick this morning. And now no better by the dark of night.

Truth to tell, I deeply dislike the primary care provider the Mayo has foisted on me. And it’s painfully clear no love is wasted on her end, either. Nor do I enjoy, one little bit, the 40-minute drive through homicidal traffic to get out to her office. Especially when I come away annoyed as hell.

So I decide to call Young Dr. Kildare, 40 minutes on the other side of the Valley. Start dialing at 9 a.m. A half-hour later, his phone is still ringing busy, suggesting not so much that he’s so popular the hordes try to break down his door on Monday mornings but that his phone system is on the fritz. Finally gave up.

It would help one whole helluva lot if I weren’t allergic to aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen. There’s not a lot you can do to fight a fever, under those circumstances, than put an ice pack on your head and drink plenty of cold fluids. But believe me, when your head is splitting and your throat feels like someone stuck a blowtorch down there, the last thing you feel like doing is guzzling water. Yuch! I can’t even bring myself to consider bourbon & water…which is sayin’ somethin’.

My neighbor,WonderAccountant, brought over some soups and some light food. And my son showed up with more supplies this afternoon. So that was awfully nice. I guess I’m gonna have to find some way to be nice in return!

Meanwhile, I’ve fallen behind in editing a client’s book: a study in differential equations of…something epidemiological having to do with social media. Hafta say, it’ strangely interesting. But it’s damn hard to stay focused when every time you swallow it feels like a stab in the (former) tonsils.

The dog is terrorized. She apparently thinks I’m barking (or yelling) at her…dogs don’t cough much, I guess. She’s threatening to jump off the bed, a drop far enough to break her leg. If I were a responsible human, I’d get up and lift her down. But alas, I’m beyond responsibility.

Holy mackerel, there is such a thing as a “fixed-point theorem,” and by golly, it is hyphenated. Hmmmm… “The Banach fixed-point theorem gives a general criterion guaranteeing that, if it is satisfied, the procedure of iterating a function yields a fixed point…” Is that another way of saying “If you repeat something often enough and long enough, people will believe it’s true”? 😀