Coffee heat rising

Retirement

San Francisco: Take Me Home

by

…To the place
I belong…

Parkmerced. That’s where I belong.

Oh, my: what a lovely development, down near the shore of Lake Merced, on the southerly end of San Francisco.

My mother got us in there when we came back from Arabia: before my father came back to the States. We left the Hell-Hole ahead of him, about three or four months before he retired.

He must have had the sh!t-f!t from Hell when he found out how much those high-rise apartments cost! You don’t even wanna think about it!

After he went back to Ras Tanura, our lease ran out and she got us into one of the garden apartments. They weren’t especially fancy — nothing like the gorgeous spaces in the towers — but they weren’t at all bad. If anything, I think I liked ours better than the tower. It had its own little garden. And some kids lived across the street from us.

Oh, well. There we were.

Walking around the ‘Hood this morning: ohhhhh gawd! HOT!  HUMID!! And it’s barely dawn. Can’t say I hate this place…but I sure would rather be in San Francisco!

Passed by the vacant, run-down house once occupied by the couple whose son went to jail. That’ll bankrupt you: be sure of that!

Apparently he fucked some girl who was under the age of consent — and got caught in the act. OFF TO THE SLAM WITH HIM! 

This misadventure cost the parents everything they had. They went belly-up. Lost the house.

Who owns it now (if anyone, other than a bank) I do not know. But it is a WRECK.

Ya hafta say this about the ‘Hood, though: Overall it’s well kept up, tidy, tony-looking. A couple of sections are highly up-scale; indeed. the rest of the place is solidly upper-middle-class.

Sooo…. My house should keep its value. If my son inherits it, he’ll have a nice, debt-free place to live or, if he prefers, a salable piece of property that should land half a million bucks in his bank account.

That’s assuming I don’t have to go into the old-folkerie called the Beatitudes, which he has in mind for me. He may not realize: Those places take everything you have. If I can’t stay out of that place, that’s what will happen. Nothing will be left to pass along to my son.

Probably it would be cheaper — and surely more cost-effective — to hire someone to come in to take care of me in my home through the last months or years of my life. I hope he’ll go along with that… Partly for my sake (nothing makes me cringe more than the mere thought of institutional living) and partly for hi$.

At any rate, as this rumination implies: I ain’t a-gunna get home to San Francisco anytime soon. Surely not in this lifetime. Well… unless — Heaven forfend! — something happened to him before it happens to me. If he predeceased me, I probably would move back to the Bay Area. There really isn’t anyplace else I’d rather live.

My cousin found a lovely resort-like old-folkerie in the East Bay, where he deposited his mother for her last years. I’d be lookin’ for something like that.

Meanwhile, with this house paid off and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven in the offing, I probably will stay here as long as I possibly can — with any luck, for the rest of my life. CL from H has worked as a caretaker for the elderly and the infirm, and so maybe she can be hired full-time to baby-sit me during the final leg of my journey to the Next World. But if not, we know there are lots of folks like her, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to come in to care for me.

I hope. 

July 4, 2025: 7:30 a.m.

by

Accuweather:  Humidity 50% at 7:37 a.m., wind 3 mph Predicts a high of 103. Yeah…it’s gotta be that already!

Shindig in the park: July 4. Place is overrun with kids and dogs and grown-ups. Shenanigans under way.  IMHO, w-a-a-y-y too hot to be shuffling around out there!

It’s great fun to see all the little kids racing around in the park. All the parents chasing around after them. That place is gonna be mobbed at 8:00 a.m. Ruby and I got our morning doggy-walk done just in the nick of time.

It is sooooo hot and humid over there just now. Feels like lovely Saudi Arabia. At least that happens only a few days a year in Arizona. On the shore of the Persian Gulf, this kind of suffocating weather occupies a good third of the year.

Despite the mile-plus hike, I’ve hurt my hip bad enough that mild exercise doesn’t help. Yea verily: hurts like Hell!

Some years ago, a MayoDoc said I would one day need to have surgery on that thing. Looks like the day has about arrived.

Which raises the obvious question: HOW am I going to manage a four-bedroom house, a third of an acre, a pool, and an active little dog when I’m laid up with a bum hip?

No idea how that’s going to work out. Ruby, I guess, will have to stay at M’jito’s place. She hates that. Sits by the door the whole time she’s there, staring and waiting for her human to come back, open it, walk inside, and rescue her.

Meanwhile, my son — the Emperor of the Universe — has decided I’m too decrepit to be driving safely. (In that, he may very well be right…). So he has purloined the Dog Chariot and intends to sell it for me.

Ducky.

So, I’ll be thrown back on Uber drivers, or on surreptiously renting a car from the lot up the road. This, as you might imagine, will not be a good thing…seven ways from Sunday!

Argha.

Well, I can walk to a Sprouts and two large supermarkets — though I intend to investigate their skills at delivery.

Problem is, Americans by and large tend not to know how to select fresh produce. And fresh produce makes up the major portion of my diet. So…if I can’t get to a store to pick out my own food, I’m gonna have a major headache. But there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.

Right now I can’t walk much of anywhere. I seem to have sprained a hip. This morning’s stroll around the park about crippled me!

Seriously: I don’t even know if I can make it into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.

…Let’s try it…

Ooooohhh f’rcryin’ out loud!

It STOPPED! The pain suddenly, completely QUIT.

Why? No clue.

But it’s gone. 

Too weird.

Is this whole day gonna be bizarre???

Back from the Hubs of Hades…

by

Holeeee sheee-ut! Is it ever HOT out there!  Hotter than the hubs, and damp as the inside of a shower stall.

Seriously: it’s nowhere near as hideously hot ad humid as an Arabian morning used to be. But it’s close.

There, you’d get out of bed and peer out the window to see water dripping off the eaves as though it had rained during the night.

No, it had not: the sky was clear blue and no clouds floated in the sky. It was just SOOOO HUMID that the dew would settle on the roof, flow toward the eaves, and drip off onto the ground.

Miserable place.

Just now, lovely uptown Phoenix ain’t much better. It’s soooo hot and soooo wet out there, it does remind you of grody Ras Tanura. But I must say: water is not actually dripping off the rooftops, they way it used to on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

Even this much humidity is out of the ordinary for lovely uptown Phoenix. It does get damp in late July and August, but not wet enough to make you feel downright soggy. Certainly not wet enough for the dewfall to drizzle off the houses’ eaves.

Anyhoo, we circumnavigated the ‘Hood in a kind of shortened route — east toward the rising sun, north toward my old friend Jerry Jacka‘s house (he’s now long gone), back south toward a beloved old neighbor’s place — she, also long gone.

I fear I will soon be next to be “long gone.” My son would like to lock me up in an old-folkerie called the Beatitudes: a horrible prison for the useless elderly. My plan is to take a flying leap off the North Rim before that can happen…but frankly, I’m not in any hurry to go.

I deeply loathe institutional living. Hated hated hated living in the university’s dorms and do NOT want to spend the last months or (hevvin forfend!) years of my life in some gawdawful old-folkerie. Presumably I’ll have to calculate a way to achieve a final exit…but just now, that is not anything I want to contemplate.

Man! That sky out there is clabbering up! Let’s see what Wunderground calculates that we have in store for today…

Hmmm… 96 degrees as we scribble: at 7:18 in the morning. Predicted high: a chilly 105. “Air quality alert” (what else is new?). Ten percent chance of rain.

In other words: “hot and humid.”

Hungry. Might’s well get up and see what’s in the fridge to eat…

hmmmm… Leftover baked potato, swathed in cheese. Ohhh lookee here! A whole new package of loverly bacon! A package of sweet bright red little tomatoes. And berries, berries, and more berries.

Things are lookin’ up!

Guess I should “look up” and fix a pot of coffee. That would require movin’ around though. Am I capable of that just now?

Dubious.

Life with…Other Humans

by

See…this kinda thing is THE reason I do NOT wanna live in an old-folkerie, elbow-to-elbow with my fellow senile humans, taken care of by folks who can’t get a better job anywhere else:

Apparently, WonderCleaningLady unplugged the microwave, which resides in the garage.

Unplugged it…WHY???? Gaddamm it.

This a.m., I go out there to heat some potatoes for breakfast, and find the damn thing doesn’t work.

Moment of panic: hooooleeee sh!t!!! Do I have to run out and buy a new micro today? And then tote it home or have it delivered…and then get it set up and working right?

AAAUUUUGH!

Well…I finally figured out that WCL must have pulled the plug and then never plugged it back in. Okay. Problem fixed.

But…goddammit! What IS the matter with people?  If you’re going to sabotage something in the course of doing some chore, f’rcrapsake UNsabotage it before you wander off!

grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr

My problem is, I just don’t get along all that well with other humans. I have next to zero patience with Humanity, dammit!

And THAT is why I don’t want to spend the last months or years of my life locked up in an institution with a bunch of other old buzzards.

* * * * * 

Argha. It’s after 7 a.m. Before it starts to get hot, I need to get off my duff and walk up to the stores on Main Drag North by way of buying a few more cans of dog food for Ruby, snabbing some more fresh berries and melon, and roping in some bread and bacon. Blech! Just what I wanna do, the first crack off the bat in the morning.

Well: the second: Ruby and I have already circumnavigated the ‘Hood.

* * * * * 

One thing I need to do — well, plan to do more than need, actually — is to hop on the lightrail train and ride down to 19th and Glendale, where I can visit and explore the dreaded Beatitudes old-folkerie.

That’s the place where my son would like to foist me. The place where, thankyouverymuch, I do NOT want to live out the last months or years of my life.

My father consigned himself to one of those places. It was called Orangewood. And it was a pleasant enough place. It’s just that…well…it ain’t home, folks. It’s like living in a motel.

And no. No, I do NOT like motel living. No, I do NOT want to spend the final slab of my life in a prison for old folks, eating bad food turned out of cardboard and plastic packages onto steam tables.

Ugh, ugh, and ugh. Not to say UGHHHH!

The Beatitudes, in addition to multi-story structures filled with motel-like rooms, also has free-standing, single-story patio homes. These might be tolerable, primarily because they do provide a little space between you and the neighbor.

Whether these little castles are reserved for married couples or whether they’d let an old bat and her little dog occupy one, I dunno. Pretty quick, though, I intend to ask.

oooohhhhh gawd. 
The horror!

The HORROR of having to move into one of those warehouses for old folks!! I just do NOT want to live like that.

Ohhhhhh well…  It’s after 8 a.m. I’d better get a-hiking if I’m gonna get up to the grocery store before the morning gets unnavigably hot. Blech!

And so…AWWWAAAAAAAYYYYY!

Hotter Than a By-God

by

Crimmineee. It’s only 2:00 in the afternoon, and the temp in the shade of the back porch is 104. 

Welp…I had things I needed to do. But I ain’t goin’ out in that!  Especially not without a car.

Should’ve gotten off my duff at 7 or 8 this morning, when the local shops opened. If they opened then. Some of them stay closed until a more traditional 10:00 a.m.

What a place! Why do I stay here????

Well, the main reason I stay in Arizona is that the kid is here.

Secondarily, I dunno where else I’d go.

Locally: Arizona just ain’t that glamorous a venue. There really isn’t anyplace else much better to live around here. Outside of AZ… back to California, maybe?  Helle’s Belles! I sure can’t afford to live in the East Bay, whence my family emanated. Hate Southern California and would rather put up with Arizona’s 100-degree-plus temps than go back there.

Ya can’t win for losin’, eh?

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the possibility of moving into an old-folkerie called the Beatitudes. Very nice place. Brain-banging expensive: basically, you fork over everything you have in exchange for their promise to care for you through your last years.

It’s just down the road, though, so it’s no further from M’hijito’s place than the Funny Farm is.

But…ugh! I’ve never been into communal living. And I don’t figure I’d get used to it now. Sure don’t wanna try. 😀

Seriously: I really dislike an institutional environment!

As places to live go, Arizona is overall kinda ugly. Unless you want to live in the Grand Canyon, I guess. Mostly it’s dusty, dreary desert or shaggy, under-watered forest land. Or Southern California style urbs and suburbs.

So…no reason to move out of the city, which at least sports a few decent grocery stores.

Where WOULD I ‘druther be?

Well, the San Francisco Bay Area, I reckon. 

My mother’s relatives emanated from the East Bay: Berkeley and waypoints. I did love those parts, for sure. But no way in Hell could I afford to live there these days. Or any days…

Trying to imagine what it would be like to live with Ruby in the hotel-like environment of the Beatitudes. Heh! I can tellya: that dawg would have a rabid sh!tfit every time anyone walked past in the hallway. Holyeee mackerel, would she go batsh!t in that place.

So would I. Truly, I do loathe, hate, and despise communal living.

Jeez. What a depressing day: what depressing prospects.

Ruby and I could stay here in the Funny Farm until I get to the point where I truly can’t manage it anymore. (That won’t be much longer, to tellya the truth…)

Or we could move to the Beatitudes, a secure but deeply depressing old-folkerie.

We could move into the old-folkerie where my father chose to live after my mother died, a single-story spread called Orangewood. Worst food you’ve ever had in your life…and you’re required to eat in their dining hall, so they can check you off their rolls and be sure you haven’t croaked over during your hours in your dreary little apartment.

Or…

I could sneak out and Ruby and I could run off to the backcountry of northern Arizona, maybe head up into Utah. Wonder how long we’d get away with that?

Ugh. None of these are attractive options. The least dreary, I think, is to stay right here.

And good luck with that…

SDXB moved to Sun City, where he has taken up happily enough with New Girlfriend. It’s not a bad option for an elder, especially one with stuffy tastes. My parents liked it there. I never cared for it…but then, I wasn’t an old bat at the time.

Honestly…I can’t think of anyplace much more depressing to live than a ghetto for old folks. WhatEVER, though.

Ohhhhh Freakin’ MG!!!!!

Just stumbled in from the mailbox, where I found an obese envelope full of old reports from the Mayo Clinic. Mygawd, there’s over 500 pages of this stuff!!!!! 

Why in the name of hevvin did they send this crap to me??  And what on earth do they think I’m gonna do with it?

Jayzuz. Just what I needed to cheer up my afternoon.

Backcountry. Northern Arizona. Utah boondocks. Lookin’ better and better!

Makes the Old Folkerie Look Good…

by

Gawd, I never imagined I’d have any such thought!  But here it is, not even 6 in the morning, and I’m being blitzed with hassle after hassle after HASSLE.

Got to take the dog for a walk before it gets hot — which means we’ve gotta get out the door NOW.

The pool is suffocating in dead leaves. WHERE is Pool Dude????  Amazon just delivered a new net for the leaf catcher, the original having plain worn out. 

Put that out back with a note for Pool Dude. No guarantee the guy is gonna show up.

Pool cleaning is one of the “professions” for which the state prison system trains its residents. So…that means chances are good that your pool cleaner is an ex-convict: not exactly the soul of reliability. I should wait here and see if he shows up, but you KNOW that if I do that, the dog will not get out for her walk. Because…

* The guy won’t show up before 10 a.m., by which time outside temps will be pushing 108 degrees; or
* The guy won’t show up at all.

Meanwhile, to get to the grocery store on foot before it gets too hot to walk up there (my son having purloined my car), I need to get started on that errand NOW.

But I can’t do that and take the dog for a walk. And even if I leave for the store right now, by the time I get back it will be too hot to take Ruby out.

My son is probably right: the time draws nigh when I will no longer be able to stay in my home. I’ll either have to move into an apartment (and what am I gonna do with the dog?) or into an old-folks storage bin (and what am I gonna do with the dog?).

Actually, I think some of those places will let you keep your dog. Ducky: how do you keep her from yappiing at every footfall that comes up the hallway?

Speaking of footfalls: better get the dawg out for her walk before the heat comes up: i.e., NOW.