Coffee heat rising

Retirement

So it goes…and goes…

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…and goes.  

As I mentioned in my latest scribble here, the bastards at the Mayo Clinic have, for no good reason other than my age, nullified my driver’s license.

This, in my opinion, amounts to your basic discrimination. And if I had a little more energy and a little more sense of outrage, I’d hire my lawyer to sue the ba*tards and undo that mess.

But y’know what?

I don’t give a damn. 

The truth is, here in this part of town one scarcely needs to drive.

First off, my house is within easy walking distance of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR major grocery stores. And a doctor’s office. And a beauty salon. And a dentist’s office. And a hardware store. And a computer store. And a light-rail train.

So: irked though I am, I’m not about to expend the energy to demand JUSTICE, by gawd.

Second off, the place is crawling with Uber cabs.

Yeah: the Uber fad has taken over the ‘Hood, and we’re inundated with folks who hope they can quit their jobs and spend the rest of their pre-retirement lives driving old folks around North Phoenix.

Fine by me, folks! 😀

Thinking about the Uber inundation led me to recall…ohhh gawd!…the horror of my father and his wife’s sojourn in the old-folkerie called Orangewood. It’s an apartment complex for the aged and the redundant, and overall…well…depends on your taste. He liked it. I thought it was Chez Pitz.

Bearing in mind that my father had gone to sea all his adult life and so was accustomed to — and comfortable with — institutions, Orangewood gave the two of them a fine array of benefits.

* A nice little apartment that gazed out upon the rolling greenery of a pleasant, golf-course-like lawn

* Central location: walking distance to bus stops (if you didn’t mind waiting an hour for a ride…)

* Constant supervision

* Accomplished staff to help you deal with bills, doctors, taxes, and whatnot

* An army of workers to see that you haven’t fallen or set fire to the kitchen

* And on and on…

To my taste, it was pretty awful. I can handle those things myself, and do not need to be treated like a child locked in a playpen to get them done. But…if you don’t want to be bothered or you no longer can handle that ditz, it was great.

And…well…I suppose even I will have to admit (sooner or later) that a point in life comes where you ARE essentially a child locked in a playpen.

* You’ve fallen behind the prevailing technology to the point where you find it difficult to operate the present array of household gadgets.

* You really (in reality, not in some moron’s estimation) shouldn’t be driving.

* You’ve become decrepit enough that walking even to the nearby stores is becoming a challenge…especially in bad weather.

* You forget everything and then some…

Yeah: at some point you DO need a younger mind and body to usher you along toward the final exit.

I don’t believe I’ve reached that point yet — and sincerely hope I drop dead before I do reach it. And so what I most want is to be left to get on with my life’s chores without Big Brother’s interference.

At any rate, back to the point formerly at hand: what does this have to do with whether senior citizens should be imprisoned in old-folkeries? Not much, except that it brought to mind this episode:

My father and his wife, the redoubtable Helen, had taken it upon themselves one morning to go to a doctor’s appointment. But by this time, they were no longer driving. So they took a cab to the doctor’s office.

Whenever they were finished yakking with the doc’, they called a cab to come pick them up and drive them back home. Parked themselves in the doctor’s waiting room and…waited.

…and waited

…and waited

…and waited

…and waited

Some time later that afternoon, I caught wind of this. Drove over to the quack’s office and found them sitting in his lobby.

Waiting

….and waiting

….and waiting….

They had been there something like FOUR HOURS and no cab had shown up. And no, it wasn’t because they hadn’t called. The doc’s staff had called the cab company several times.

Hey. It’s just old bats, eh? Who gives a damn about them?

And that is the attitude toward the elderly in our culture. We live in Old Folks’ Hell, my friends.

That’s why I don’t want to live in a prison for old folks. And why, in general when dealing with service people and other strangers, I try to obscure my age and my situation. The more they know about you, the worse for you!

Welp…if I were a snappy Old Folk just now, I’d jump in the pool & get some exercise. But…I ain’t snappy and my hip hurts and the dog and I walked for an hour this morning and soooooo….this old bat is on her way to hit the sack. Again.

♥

 

Friday Morning…

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Not yet 8:30…the Dawg and the Humann have rolled out of the sack, trudged around the neighborhood, perused the pool and the yard, chowed down on whatever was in the fridge, slurped up coffee, read the news (and then some) and now…

Now?  Wish nothing more than to go back to bed.

😀

I should give lessons on how to waste time. Wonder how much people would pay for a course in professional time-killing?

My plan for today was to visit a venerable old-folkerie called Orangewood, a single-story spread about three blocks up the road from the house where DXH and I lived while M’hijito was in high school.

Question: Do I wanna live in that place?
Question: Would there be any benefit to moving over there?
Question: Could I duplicate its services and benefits right here in my house?

Answers:

* Hell, NO! I hate loathe and despise institutional living and do not wish to spend the last months or (God forfend!) years of my life in a dormitory for old folks.

* Yes. Plenty of benefit. You have someone else to clean up after you. You have a cafeteria serving up piles of chow…a “benefit” only if that’s the kind of gunk you like to eat. You have a doctor on the premises, one who materializes, as he did for my father, the minute you have a stroke. You have lots of company. You have a taxi service that will schlep you to appointments off-campus — for “free.”

* Y’know…I’ll bet I can. Turns out my cleaning lady used to go into people’s homes and provide day-to-day services for the agèd and the infirm. If she was doing that, others surely are, too. I suspect I can hire someone to provide most or all of the services that Orangewood provides. Only…in peace and quiet. Without serenades from the half-deaf neighbor’s TV set. Without annoying rules. Without disgusting institutional food.

If she was doing that for a living, that means other folks are doing it. So…one of my assignments just now is to call around and find out how to find such folks, how much they cost, and whether they really can do a decent job of it.

So there you have it: the present Project. Find out if it’s possible to replicate the services of an old-folkerie in your own home. And if so: start getting into position to do exactly that.

The longer I can stay out of any such place, the fewer weeks and months I’ll spend in old-age misery. At least, so I figure. Stands to reason, anyway.

Dawgy Walk…Through the Swamp

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Blech! That is hardly an understatement. 6:30 in the morning and it feels like a freakin’ sauna out there! What a horrible day!

It’s 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch. 8:30 a.m.  Truly does feel like a freakin’ SAUNA out there, it’s sooo hot and soooo WET. 

I’ve seen days like this in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia when the air was so wet that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Presumably the only reason that isn’t happening now is that we’re not parked on a beach next to the freakin’ Persian Gulf. Yech!!!

But…I’ll bet if we were much closer to the Sea of Cortes, that sky would indeed be spitting rain on our heads.

DXH is in Chicago, for some sort of business meetings. I forgot….and called him as dawn cracked this morning. Thereby interrupting him and annoying him royally.

Jeez. Don’t get old, whatever ya do!!  😮

Don’t have much to do today…I don’t think this is Cleaning Lady Day. If that guess is correct, then there’s no need to race around the house picking up litter.

Hmmmm… Found a roadside doctor practicing next door to the Albertson’s shopping center. I’m thinking I should try to build a doctor-patient relationship with the guy…not because he seems so wonderful, but because he’s so convenient. The Mayo, where our docs practice, is a good hour’s drive from here. I can walk to this guy’s office. So it would be good to have him on the string for ailments that would benefit from a doctor’s attention but that clearly are not terminal….

That would help a lot.

The MayoDocs are great when you have something wrong that’s real and that’s significant. But driving to the other side of Timbuktu to have every little sniffle checked? Not so much. 

This is one of the great things about living in the thick of a major metropolitan area: you don’t HAVE to drive from pillar to post to get things done. In fact, just now I don’t have to drive anywhere: everything I need and do is within walking distance. Failing that, though, we have an Uber driver living across the street — one of half a dozen who inhabit the ‘Hood. I can hire him to schlep me around the Valley.

I’m pretty sure I can get this new doc to overrule the Mayo quacks’ opinion that oh dear oh dear I mustn’t be driving. But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to be bothered. The main thing just now is that I need the driver’s license to serve as identification. Driving per se is beside the point. Cashing a check is the point.

So I need New Quack to help me retrieve my driver’s license. If he will.

😀

Gosh, I’m tired of Stupid Stuff. 

Does it not occur to you that Stupid Stuff ebbs and flows like the tide?

For a nice long time, things flow smoothly and calmly and sanely. And then all of a sudden a freakin’ FLOOD of Stupid Stuff pours down on you like an ocean wave? Just now, we’re definitely at high-tide. I feel like I’m drowning in Stupid Stuff!

And frankly, wayyyyy too much of it is emanating from those suckers at the Mayo: the ones who listen to my son bellyaching about me but never think to ask me about the cause of the bellyaching.

That, I think, is why I need to hire on some docs who a) don’t know me; b) don’t know my son; and c) have heard nothing from the opinionated set at the Mayo Clinic. Let them hear me whine about my current “symptom,” let them examine me, and let them form their own conclusions about what, if anything, ails me.

And What to Do Next?

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Hmmm…ooohhkayyy…. I seem to have recovered from the spavined hip episode. That was weird…to say nothing of startlingly painful.

Now, just a few hours later — shortly after noon — the pain is gone. As in GONE gone.

That’s weird. Dunno what made it start hurting, and don’t know what made it stop hurting.

****

Cruising the real estate listings in North Central Phoenix — the tony part of the city, that is.

Wow. Which is to say…uhm…well…wow. Truth to tell, I’m not seeing a thing that impels me to feel I must run out and buy it. Or even run out and look at it. My house is as good as any of these piles, or better. And when I croak over, M’hijito will inherit a piece of property worth some stupefying amount of money (certainly compared to what I paid for it!!) and can decide whether he wants to stay in his own palace or move into my castle. His place is maybe a little smaller than mine — certainly a little older — but both houses are well maintained, in decent neighborhoods….and worth a sh!tload of money, after all these years.

He has remarked that he’d like to move back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a nice, middle-class rural kind of town…founded by well educated engineers and business entrepreneurs. Truth to tell, it’s quite a pleasant place. And as a retirement venue, it could be downright perfect.

Because Grand Junction ain’t the San Francisco Bay Area — my own choice of retirement venues — what he’d get from selling my house and his would set him up like Colorado’s King of Sheba. So…as retirement schemes go, it ain’t a bad idea.

Why am I NOT in Berkeley, as we scribble?

Because he’s here.

Seriously: I feel no great craving to return to the Bay Area, even though I did love living there and I still miss some aspects of it. But that craving is far from enough to make me want to move anyplace where my son isn’t. If any day now he took it into his noggin to move to Grand Junction, I’d no doubt follow, shortly.

Ohhh well. What to do next?

It’s too damn hot to hike to any of the nearby grocery stores. Ruby and I are well set up for a couple days’ worth of food, even though the human lacks her favorite potables. That lack, alas, is not compelling enough to send me barreling through the neighborhood to the nearest Albertson’s, Safeway, Basha’s, or wine closet. So we will loaf.

Ruby is already loafing, having resumed her possession of the foot of the bed.

The beautiful pool is contentedly burbling away. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d be out there paddling around. But…well…the truth is, one probably doesn’t want to plunge in a swimming pool beneath the ungodly blast of sun we’re getting just now.

Later. Much later.

Beloved Neighborhood, Beloved Neighbors

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The ineffable Josie was out in her front yard, yanking weeds as Ruby and I ambled back home from our morning circumnavigation of the park.

Josie lives in SDXB’s old house. She came up from the daunting slums of South Phoenix — the house purchased by the city and donated to her after the city glommed her property to build an airport runway. (What a place, eh?) I do enjoy Josie: a denizen of an entirely different culture. Hope she hangs around for as many years as I last here. 😀

Meanwhile, neighbors were walking their dogs at the park. The sky is dappled with low-hanging cumulus, incredibly beautiful in the dawn light. Weather is on the high side of warm, humid, a bit sticky. But not really uncomfortable. Yet.

I do love this place.

And do NOT want to be moved out of here. How exactly I’m gonna manage to “age in place” with my son already beginning to lobby to move me to an old-folkerie kinda escapes me.

But…we shall see. I haven’t been legally declared non compos, so I imagine (hope) I’ll be able to stay put until such time as I can barely stumble from the bedroom to the bathroom. Or until I die, whichever comes first.

When I first moved into the ’Hood, back in the Dark Ages, a number of elderly women lived in these houses, on their own. One was right next door to my first house here. No doubt into her 80s, she was a lively character. Every day, she’d be outside blowering and sweeping her patio or fiddling with the yardwork.

I want to be that lively character. 

Now, it’s true: I don’t enjoy yard work. But I can afford to hire people to keep up the property:

* Yard dudes
* Pool dude
* Arborist
* Cleaning lady
* Electrician
* Mechanic…

On and on. So with any luck, I hope to stay put until I die. That would be ideal.

Second best would be to hang in here till I have a stroke and lose track of who and where I am.

And yeah: one can only hope…

Meanwhile: what a GORGEOUS morning. High cumulus glowing white and pearl-gray by the dawn sunlight. Temperature: perfect. Kids and dogs outside playing: moms and dads watering yards and getting ready to fly off to work. Crew of workmen heaving around the new mansion someone is building in Lower Richistan.

Amazing.

Why would anyone ever wanna live anywhere else???

Round and Round They Go…

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And where they bite, no one knows. ARF!

Actually, this morning’s junket around the park was uneventful. Quiet. Arfifarious. Ruby declined to try to eat any of our fellow dog-walkers’ companions. (Either that, or the dog-walkers have finally wised up a bit…) Weather was hot, humid, icky — reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia.

Mornings like this remind me of oooohhhh how glad I am that I no longer live out there! What a gawdawful place!

Seriously: a swampy morning like this would be S.O.P. over there. Useta be: all summer long we’d wake to water dripping off the eaves as though it had rained half the night…under a clear blue sky. That’s how humid it was: the air SO WET that water would condense out of it and piddle off the eaves like rain.

LOL! Swamp or no, the park is always fun…or at least pleasant. This morning we encountered a handsome young father pushing his obscenely adorable baby along in a carriage. Awwwww! What could be cooler, eh? 

😀

Well. Maybe “cool” wasn’t exactly the term. But he and his urchin were indisputably charming.

Otherwise…what? Well…one “what” is that, as we hiked along a particularly affluent street in Lower Richistan, I was suddenly struck by the resemblance between the upscale section of the Hood and a historic Phoenix district called Palmcroft.

That tract is part of the larger, also highly historic area called Encanto: a place full of gorgeous old houses dating back as far as the 1920s.

Our area is much newer…but here in the 21st century, no one would dast to call it “new.” The houses are edging on to “historic” themselves, many of them very pretty, all of them handsomely maintained. The Young and the Affluent do adore “historic” houses, and they flock in here to buy them…bearing well-stuffed pocketbooks.

This pushes real estate prices up and up and up. I couldn’t even begin to buy a house down near the park — an area that I could easily have afforded a decade or so ago, when I moved in here.

Therein lies a main reason that I want to stay in this house till I croak over: if I can leave the place to my son, he’ll be able to afford to go anywhere he pleases. 

  • Fancy-Dan Scottsdale: no problem
  • Ritzy Paradise Valley: call in the movers!
  • Back to his dad’s home town, Grand Junction, Colorado: off to the scenic upscale(!) hills
  • San Francisco, where each of us privately believes we belong: California, here we come!

You name it, he can be there. Or…he may choose to just stay here and enjoy this handsome upscale tract.

And it is an exceptionally pleasant place to live. Centrally located. Handsomely built. Mature landscaping. Gorgeous park. Adorable kids. And nowadays: an increasingly awesome public transit system.

Seriously: you can live here now without a car. And, incredibly enough, I do! 

Such are one’s thoughts as one’s dog tugs its human around our park. I love it here…my dawg loves it here…we ain’t movin’…isn’t that the cutest li’l kid you ever saw!… I want my kid to get this place, lock stock & barrel…