Coffee heat rising

Retirement

Passworded Out!

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Gawdlmighty, every freakin’  thing you need to do on the Internet now demands a password. And by damn, they all have to be different!

No way can I even begin to remember all these things. So they’re typed out and taped to the shell of my laptop.

Okay, okay: it’s not THAT big a deal. Just now only three sets of secret codes are taped to the computer. But it’s annoying.

Very annoying.

Speaking of annoying, we’re told some sort of social workers are supposed to show up here this morning — within an hour or so, far as I can tell.

> Who these folks are: unknown
> What agency they’re from: unknown
> Who sicced them on me: unknown.

Soon as they show up, I’ll have to demand that they show me some credentials. But…who knows whether those will be real or counterfeit?

Whether they represent some sort of threat or risk to me: also unknown. Is someone trying to stampede me into an old-folkerie? If so, who might that be and what grounds might they be advancing as an excuse to lock me up?

Anyway, I sure could do without it.

This morning’s weird antic means I can’t take poor li’l Ruby (or poor li’l me) for a walk before it gets hot outside.

Assuredly, I am NOT a happy camperette over this. I do NOT like officious types poking their noses into my business; I do NOT feel obligated to discuss my personal issues with strangers, and I highly resent having these people show up at my door to demand…what?

Made even less happy because, as you know and I know, the likelihood that these people are looking for excuses to declare me incompetent to live on my own is exceptionally high. Gets higher with every minute that my age proceeds toward 90… So somehow I’ve got to make myself look competent, competent, and ultra-competent:

  • The house must be picked up
  • The furniture must be dusted
  • The bed must be made
  • The breakfast dishes must be stashed in the washer
  • And…and…good morning, America! 

I am NOT in the mood to cope with a lot of housekeeping ditz this morning. Or any morning: that’s why I hire a cleaning lady! 

Unfortunately, she hasn’t been around for almost a week, so I’ve got to retrace her steps and tidy up everything. And I don’t wanna. All I wanna do is finish my morning coffee!

What concerns me most about this, though, is the possibility that whoever tattled on me is angling to get me committed to an old-folkerie. And that is something I regard with horror.

I most surely do NOT want to live in an institution! I hated, loathed, and despised every minute of living in our college dorms. Not because the dorm-mates weren’t nice, not because the dorms weren’t maintained well enough…not because of anything other than that I deeply, profoundly dislike communal living.

Give me a cave in the Himalayas and I’ll be fine! 😀

 

Weird, gray day

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First week of May and here we are submerged in a steel-gray morning. In Arizona, of all things!

Seriously: the sky is a weird, smooth, featureless gray lid. Ruby and I have circumnavigated the’Hood, returned, chowed down…now sit here wondering what to do next. If anything.

“What to do next” will probably amount to “go back to bed.” The Human is feeling unduly tired — sleepy, actually — and does not relish pretending to be alert and constructive. Wunderground predicts today’s high will have us sweltering under 80 degrees, followed by a bracing low of 66 degrees.

Yeah. We’ll believe it when we see it.

A jet plane roars overhead. The top of the neighbor’s tree sways gently in a breeze so vague we can’t feel it over here. Not that it matters.

Should pay a visit to one of the local stores. But am totally NOT in the mood to stroll around the sidewalks and the streets

Oh well: we won’t starve.

Not till tomorrow, anyway. 😀

{sigh} I find myself contemplating the possibility of returning to Sun City. 

My house, right here in the ‘Hood, was built by Del Webb — the entrepreneur who brought us Arizona’s Sun City tracts. So a move out there might not feel especially drastic…except that it’s too far from my son and there are no wonderful little kids frolicking around.

And course, except that you’re BLASTED all day long with jet airplane noise, emanating from nearby Luke Air Force Base.  That racket starts at dawn, rolling you out of the sack and souring your mood for the rest of the day.

So…no. Ain’t movin’ back to Sun City, no matter how much crime and B.S. we get here.

Errands to do this morning were skipped by the obligatory Doggy Walk. One opts that at one’s peril! 😉

Did you know that you can go into a dime store or a drugstore and buy a FAKE SERVICE DOG HARNESS for your canine sidekick?

No kidding! I was over at the neighborhood drugstore the other day, and damned if I didn’t see a whole bouquet of the things hanging from a hook in there.

For a fleeting shady moment, I actually thought GRAB IT! 

Then Ruby could come with me into the Albertson’s and the Sprouts and the computer store and…I could get my errands done in one swell foop with the daily doggy-walk!

By golly, THAT would make life easier!

In England — at least when we were there some years ago — they let you bring your dog in most retail establishments. And restaurants.

Yeah. You’d sit down at a restaurant table and there at the table next to you would be someone with a dog in a harness, pooch parked on the floor next to its human. Go into the equivalent of a drugstore or a dime store, and you’d be likely to encounter a similar pooch. Same, amazingly, in grocery stores.

I’m not inclined to fake my dawg’s status. But...hmmmmm…..  It’s somethin’ to think about! 😉

Seriously: it sure would make life easier: being able to kill two outdoor errands at once — doggy-walk and store visit.

But gosh. It really does seem like there’s a limit. Or oughta be, anyhow.

 

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!

Hubs of Hades Central….

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Well…no. It’s not exactly hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there this morning. More like the outer fringes of that garden spot.

Dog and Human flew around the park, shortly after dawn: best time of day to be there.

Ruby dearly loves the feel of grass under her little doggy feet. The human loves the openness of the place and the young parents rolling their beautiful little babies around in strollers. What fun!  {heh!} Especially when you don’t have to get up at dawn to feed the cute líl things!)

So that’s always a pleasant excursion.

Contractors are working like proverbial horses, rebuilding a corner house that went to wrack and ruin in the hands of the previous residents. Rebuilding the pool. Installing a block wall around the back. Endlessly wrestling around inside.

It is, without a doubt, going to be converted from a “nice” house to a “wow!” house. It has even occurred to me to covet the place…briefly.

Very briefly. When common sense creeps back in…of course I would not want to live in a house that backs onto a public park and stands on the corner of the neighborhood’s main feeder street and a busy cut-through. Darn!!

That main mini-drag pumps commercial traffic through, plus all the local residential traffic, workmen’s cars & trucks…on and on. During the rush hour, drivers in the know use it as a short-cut between two seven-lane commuter roads, dumping a ton of traffic in there and serenading the locals with noise.

So. No. Pretty as the house is and kewl as the neighborhood is: not even faintly interested in buying it.

Lately, as I may have noted here (don’t recall exactly where & ain’t lookin’ it up right this minute), I’ve contemplated following SDXB out to Sun City, a senior citizens’ ghetto on the west side of the Valley.

But no. Don’t think so.

First off, because I happen to like the sounds of kids playing and teenagers carrying on. We get plenty of those, right here in the ‘Hood.

And second off, because I do hate the roar of F16s charging in and out of Luke Air Force Base: a serenade that starts every morning at 6:00 sharp. Luke is just a few miles down the road from Sun City.

LOL! My mother used to revel in  that racket. She’d sit on her back porch as the planes thundered back and forth, swilling coffee. “It’s the sound of fweedom!” she’d coo.

How could I have inherited a 160-point IQ from a mother who had damn near zero common sense????

Anyway, where it comes to that blasting racket, here in the ‘Hood we’re pretty well out of range. That’s one of the reasons I stay here.

Hotter than the Hubs…

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Along about 7:15 in the evening: that’s where we are. And where we are is HOT and Humid. Feels like accursed Saudi Arabia used to feel.

Well. Almost. No humidity is dripping off the eaves, anyway. That was a frequent occurrence over there.

Still, it’s hot and sticky out in back. The grill is running and in a couple of minutes I’ll toss on a blob of hamburger. Hungry, but not hungry enough to feel like eating on this damp and gummy evening. Still: gotta stuff some food in.

Or else.

Friends and relatives have absented themselves: probably no more anxious to cavort around in this weather than I am. Jeez….I don’t even hear the neighbors’ cute li’l kids frolicking the the backyard tonight!  THAT is somethin’!

LOL! I do love the sound of their adorable young voices and their crazy carryings-on. Nothing like little kids to make a neighborhood….a neighborhood! 

Seriously: that’s a major reason I do NOT want to be locked up in a prison for old folks…uhm, I mean, a retirement “home”: I do love the music of children playing!

We have a nice tribe of kids here on the street: three houses nearby have little ones living there. And often the families bring the kids’ friends over, so we’ll have a whole circus going on out there. 😀

More fun than Carter has oats…

Seriously, I never could fathom why my parents — or SDXB — wanted to live in dreary, mausoleum-silent Sun City. Well…for my parents, I did know: fundamentally neither of them liked kids. Why they had me, I never understood: think my mother’s grandmother nagged her into it.

Anyway, as soon as I was old enough to shovel out the door and send down to the university in Tucson (a year before I graduated from high school), they moved right into Sun City. They liked it. Dreadful place, to my mind. But whatever lights your fire, eh?

The ‘Hood is reminiscent of Southern California: warm year-round (well…most of the time); a spread of single-story homes, grocery stores and other incidental shops within walking distance. I feel incredibly lucky to have found this place — brought here years ago by a savvy Realtor. And can’t imagine living anywhere else. Not in the Valley, anyway.

* San Francisco: yeah.
* Berkeley: yeah.
* Paris: maybe.

But what the heck: this place suits the ole’ lady just fine!

Wow! What Luck….

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Y’know…Amazon is saving my tail. Seriously: without the comprehensive delivery service that outfit provides, I would be in the old-folkerie by now.

Without a car — as you know, my son contrived to have mine taken away from me — there’s no way I could contrive to get groceries, to take the dog to the vet, or…helle’s belles, just to survive at all in our car-centric society.

Just ordered a case of canned food for Ruby the Corgi. Six count: that’s about 12 days’ worth. Price is outrageous (that’s for sure!). However…the price of owning a car exceeds outrageous, by the time you add up the gasoline and the regular service and the repairs. I’d have to buy dog food anyway — not at Amazon prices, but if you figure Amazon is keeping that car out of my garage, overall the cost probably evens out. That is, what I’m not spending on the car, I’m freeing up to have stuff delivered to my door.

And that is keeping me in my home.

How much longer that will hold forth remains to be seen.

I’m not going to be able to live here much longer, I’m afraid. By this point in his life, my father had moved himself into an old-folkerie, where he lived miserably ever after. (Not the institution’s fault: he stupidly married a woman he met there, little understanding that he could not replace my mother with some broad he met in the dining hall.) Personally, I loathe hate and despise communal living, and I sincerely hope I die before I reach the point that I can’t stay in my home.

But that’s not likely. Women in my family who didn’t smoke and didn’t drink routinely lived into their late 90s. And none of them were locked up in institutions…no, I take that back: one aunt was institutionalized by her son.

I’m sure I’ll end up in a prison for old folks, myself. There’s really no other practical way to care for me if I really do live into my late dotage. My son can’t take off his job to babysit me, and there are no other relatives who could help care for me. Horrible prospect.

But the really horrible part of it is that those places take everything you have. If I have to go into one of those jails, NOTHING will be left for my son. My savings, the value of my home…it all will be gone. And I want my son to have those things.

It may be best to arrange an early exit. How exactly one does that in a pain-free way escapes me…but clearly, finding the exit door by natural means ain’t pain-free, either. Ideally, one would like to just go to sleep and not wake up. But I don’t see how to engineer that in any sane or reliable way, nor does it appear likely to happen in the natural course of events.

There’s gotta be a way…now’s the time to engage those PhD-level research skills!