Coffee heat rising

Retirement

Roaaaarrrrrrr!

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Gosh, what a…classically Arizona winter day. How strange, how weird, how…funny.

Coming on to 10:30 of an early November morning. Ruby and I go out front to oversee The Property. Yeah: get Gerardo to fix this. Get him to trim that. Admire the other plant. Loaf, loaf, and loaf…

The sky is deep gray, coated in thick, non-raining clouds. This makes for a strangely beautiful morning, hard to understand why. But one supposes “why” doesn’t matter, eh?

Off in the distance, a steady RROAARRRR rumbles up toward the ‘Hood from the southeast side. It’s the song of the the commercial airlines taking off and landing at Sky Harbor Airport.

Living closer to that place — where my stepsister’s house was, for example — would be even more annoying than living in Sun City, where one is blasted from dawn to dusk by jet fighters roaring in and out of Luke Air Force Base. Purely by accident, I happened to stumble into my present neighborhood: staidly middle-class, centrally located in spades, and far enough from the local noise-makers to be relatively quiet.

Seriously: I am so pleased with this house that I absolutely positively do NOT move out of here when I reach a stage of such decrepitude that I need a baby sitter.

And really: considering how much it costs to live in an old-folkerie (the place where my father retired took all the proceeds from the sale of a very nice suburban house, and then pretty much cleaned out his savings accounts), it does seem to me that rather than move into a retirement “home” (snort!!), you might be better off to hire staff to come in and care for you in your present, paid-off manse. Especially if you manage to die in a timely way.

Seriously — sorry, I realize Americans are scared of talking about Death, but do get over it! ‘Cause we ain’t a-gunna get away from it!

Just as seriously, it strikes me that with the roof over your head paid for, you could be better served by your own hired folks than you would be living in one of those old-folks’ prisons.

Luz — Cleaning Lady from Heaven — remarked at one point that she’d had a job like that.

So I’m gonna ask her who she worked for, what she did, and how much she got paid. Learn who to hire and where to find them when you reach the point where you really can’t care for yourself, reliably and safely. Then start looking around, talking with employers, and figuring out how to get such a person on the private payroll.

***

Ahhh, what a nice little neighborhood, indeed. The WonderAccountants — who live straight across the street from the Funny Farm — just installed a new set of exterior windows. They apparently called the same guys who installed mine several years ago, and it looks like they selected the same model of windows, or one very much like mine.

They put up classy wrought-iron fake shutters on either side of each window, far more sophisticated than anything I could dream up… And now the front of their house REALLY looks nice. They should be amply pleased with the result.

They say that double-paned windows save you a bundle on AC and heating bills. Couldn’t prove it by me: I’d say the monthly power bills are about the same as they were before I replaced my single-panes.

Still, a double-paned window would be a bit more hassle to break into, so that would up your security level. And a perp would have to make a fair amount of noise to cut or break out such a window, thereby alerting you in plenty of time to dodge out a back door and run off down the street.

***

{sigh} I love this neighborhood. I love the neighbors. And I love my house. GOT to find ways to stay here until I croak over.

The prospect of being locked up in one of those holding pens for old folks fills me with horror. Honestly, I would rather be dead. (No: I’m not contemplating suicide anytime soon, so please don’t panic.)

But y’know….life is short. We only have around 70 or 80 years in this sylvan vale. So why spend any part of it in misery, just because you’re getting on toward the end of the road? Locking up a person in a holding pen to await the end is forcing that person to spend the last part of her or his life in misery.

How, really, is that the right thing to do?

Would it not be better…would it not be morally preferable…to hire someone to come in to your home and care for you until you totter over into the grave? Or at least until you fully and permanently lose consciousness?

That’s no easy job — caring, not tottering, that is. My father worked like an animal caring for my mother in the last dreadful weeks of her tobacco-poisoned life. But…well…he did her a magnificent service.

I watched him die in the old-folkerie where he banished himself….and to tell you the truth, his best friend there did himself a favor when he took a pistol and blew out his own brains.

My father found the guy’s corpse.

What a horror! But…why not make it possible for a person who knows Death is on its way and knows insurmountable suffering will accompany it…why not make it possible to choose your own exit door?

*** *** *** 

Darkness has fallen
Dog has frolicked
Human is pooped

*** *** *** 

And here we are, once again, loafing in an easy chair by the breeze of an electric fan and the light of an elegant old electric lamp.

😀

What a day!!! One depressing thought after another. One depressing predicament to cope with after another.

Ohhhhh well.

Tomorrow’s another day. Uhm… I hope…

Wow! AWESOME!

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Which is to say: AWESOME afternoon!  What a beautiful day!

When my Realtor friend John Shackelford brought me to the ‘Hood, lo! these many years ago, he could not have done me a bigger favor. This middle-aged North Phoenix tract really is a beautiful little mid/middle-class neighborhood, perfect in every way.

Seriously! It IS in the middle of everything: you don’t have to walk far to get to any store, any professional’s office, any car shop, any ANYTHING you like. Drop the jalopy off wherever you please, wander away, and come toddling back…yes…whenever you please.

The ambience is safe. Thugs do not holler at you as they barrel past on a main drag. Every corner has a tidy little shopping center. There’s a church across the street. And a school across the street. And a car repair shop up the street. And….and…and on and on.

Seriously, indeed: I do feel like I just fell into it when I bought into this neighborhood.

This afternoon, it was over to my favorite little booze shop, thereinat to buy a six-pack of Kilt-Lifters. Then homeward, ever homeward…hereinat to love up the dog and fork over a couple of fistfuls of kibble as a treat for her. Then pour a beer, sit down, and put up the feet.

Gosh! What a day, eh?

We live in such a pretty little neighborhood! I’m SOOOOO glad I didn’t follow SDXB to dreary Sun City when he decided to escape Tony the Romanian Landlord by moving out to Old Folks’ Land. Gaaaahhhh!  When I lived out there with my parents, I learned to hate…

  • …the sound of F-16s roaring overhead all day
  • …the hatred of young people, creatures the locals moved out there to escape
  • …the ticky-tacky architecture
  • …the third-rate grocery stores (do old people not eat, not cook???)
  • …the endless, endless, FUKKIN’ ENDLESS drive into town, whereinat to buy a decent steak…

LOL! If you’re gonna live in a city, forgodsake LIVE IN A CITY. 😀

Glorioski! Glorious Day, Glorious Future

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Wow! What a gorgeous morning. Intermittent overcast with big, fluffy, cottony clouds. Cool but not cold. The sky wants to rain, but can’t work itself up to that much effort.

Ruby and I frolicked through Upper Richistan, as usual admiring the big ole’ expensive houses and their big, expensive irrigated lawns. Gorgeous neighborhood.

Ours isn’t “gorgeous,” but it’s adequately pleasant. Mid-middle class homes on lots that put enough space between neighbors.

Ruby loved up some workmen…cuteness is like some kind of joy drug for most people. We went on our way eventually. Now we’re back at the house.

And the Human finds itself wondering what next? 

Despite the family track record for longevity, we can pretty safely bet that I don’t have all that much longer to go. Relatives who have lived into their dotage have uniformly been Christian Scientists…tee-totalers, that is.

I ain’t no tee-totaler and never have been. My first boyfriend introduced me to wine when I was about 17, and I’ve been lapping up the stuff ever since. As we know, anything alcoholic is a handy device for shortening your life span. So I think it’s safe to figure I’ve got maybe about 10 years left — at most. Probably a little less than that.

The best I can hope for, I think, is to drop dead…and thereby avoid ending up in some nursing home or prison for old folks. That’s not outside the realm of possibility — as I say, the forebears who dropped dead in their late 90s didn’t drink. I do (with élan!), and so it’s safe to assume I’ve probably cut a good 10 years off the inherited lifespan. But that still would leave me another 10 years. Ten years that I do NOT want to spend in an old-folkerie!!!!

And therein lies the challenge: How to stay out of one of those horrible places. 

They soak up your life savings…and I want my savings to go to my son. Not to a holding pen for old bats. But….

But I have yet to figure out how to protect those savings for him, especially if I live much longer. Even more especially if I live much longer and get sick. How to evade those eventualities, though, does escape me.

If I manage to stay healthy into my dotage, though, M’hijito should inherit enough to retire in comfort…forthwith. By then, it’ll be time for him to figure out how to evade life in the old-folkerie…  😀

What NOT to Do in Old Age…

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Gorgeous, cool morning. Few people and fewer dogs out and about. Ruby and I have a great (and peaceful) doggywalk. As we stroll through a fog of boredom, I consider…horrors abundant:

* My father having to care for my mother in her last, agonizing days and weeks.

* She dies and he moves into an old-folkerie, a venue I regard with horror.

* But he likes it, because after a lifetime at sea, he’s accustomed to institutional living.

* What he isn’t accustomed to is Helen, a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West.

* Marrying Helen botches up the rest of his life.

Seriously: the last years of his life were ruined, not just because of my mother’s illness and death but because he naively married the dragon-lady. Apparently he didn’t understand that there was no real substitute for my mother, the love of his life. Did he imagine that one woman would be much the same as the next?

What have I learned from my father’s late-life experiences?

* Stay out of institutions as you age, if at all possible. Doesn’t cost any more to hire someone to come into your home to clean and drive you to the grocer and whatnot than it does to live in one of those places.

* Do not imagine one spouse is a carbon copy of the next. Do not figure you can replace a late spouse with someone new.

He would have been OK if he hadn’t married Helen. He wouldn’t have been happy, but he would have been contented enough by himself in a pleasant apartment at Orangewood, the old-folkerie where he moved after my mother died. And over time he would have adjusted to the loss of my mother.

* Find new things to do w/ your life. A new hobby? Travel? Raising poodles??? Something that’s different and reasonably fun, or at least interesting.

I want to say that marrying Helen wrecked his life. But no: My mother dying is what wrecked his life. And she died prematurely because of her smoking habit.

So: Don’t smoke! Don’t take a partner who smokes, either.

He did smoke, but he had quit well before the time my mother started to get sick from the cancer. Get rid of that habit NOW: don’t wait until it’s too late.

* But remarrying wasn’t a solution, either. I’d suggest you NOT remarry after you lose a spouse. Or, if you must, don’t do so until you’ve known the new partner at least a year. Give yourself an out, and keep that door unlocked for as long as possible.

* It made sense for him to move into Orangewood.
* It made sense for him to take up a friendship and then a romance with Helen.
* What didn’t make sense was to remarry. And if he’d waited, they might not have done so.
* Once they had entered their marriage, they were both legally trapped in an official agreement. Getting out of it would have cost each one a ton of money, and a whole lot of bad feelings.
* Staying independent — staying free from the git-go — would have given each of them and both of them the leeway to choose how they wanted to live. Once they’d married, they both felt stuck in the partnership: a partnership they each came to realize was a mistake.

Better to live in sin, my friends, than to live in misery. Seriously: they would have been so much better off if they’d never married, even if they had chosen to move in together.

Late October in the Desert

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Incredibly gorgeous morning! Clear, cool but not cold, not even crisp. People out pushing their baby strollers, walking their dogs. My mind wanders…

…to the horror of potential incarceration at the Beatitudes, a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie. Honestly: I’d rather be dead than locked up in an institution. Must figure out potential alternatives…

* Hire someone to come to the house and care for me? Apparently Luz (Cleaning Lady from Heaven) used to do this.

* Stay someplace overnight, but keep the house and return here during the day?

* Buy an apartment in someplace like The Terraces? (The Terraces is an old-folkerie.)

* Allow self to be forced to buy a place at the Beatitudes (an old-folkerie on the gawdawful level), but after the dust settles, go out and rent an apartment someplace else, keeping it secret?

* Buy a house in M’hijito’s neighborhood, so he feels better about being closer to me? Hire someone to help care for it?

Looks like #1 is probably the only truly viable choice. That or 1 & 5.

Right now, I don’t need #1. I have no problem caring for myself:

* Fixing meals
* Shopping for groceries
* Cooking gourmet(!) meals
* Bathing, grooming
* Tending the pool
* Riding herd on the hired help
* Caring for the dog

The big issue, really, is the purloined car: not being able to get from Point A to Point B without hiring a driver. But is that really a very big deal?

* A guy across the street drives for Uber and is usually available.
* Otherwise, Uber does its own roaring business in this neighborhood: no problem calling for a driver.
* When my son’s nose is not on the grindstone, he probably can schlep me to most routine destinations (grocery stores for example).
* But that may not be necessary: we have not one, not two, but three major grocery retailers and two drugstores within easy walking distance. And two computer stores. And a veterinarian. And a hair stylist. And a nail salon. And…hmmmm…Is anything NOT within walking distance???

My Aunt Gertrude was a very practical woman…so, my guess is that she moved from her sweet Berkeley bungalow into a fancy old-folkerie because her son forced her to move, not because she felt any urgency to do so. She could have gotten by in that house indefinitely, with hired help to come in and handle the cleaning, the shopping, and the errands/appointments. And what an asset to have handed down to her son: it’s now worth over $1.2 MILLION!

Such are the ravages of time, eh?

Truth to tell, I suspect that over the time left to me, this house’s value also will explode…right along the lines of Gertrude’s house. And how would I love to be able to pass along something over a million bucks to my son? Zowie!!

Scam-a-Bat

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My poor son was mightily peeved this morning when I interrupted his work by calling him to ask if some marvel of an offer that arrived in the mail was, as suspected, a scam.

Yes. Of course it’s a scam. Quit breaking into my workday with that stuff!

Uh  huh.

Well, what happens when you’re old is that it gets harder and harder for you to distinguish the Fake from the Real. That’s even when you know very well that about every third person you encounter wants to rip you off. 

Yes. Even when you know that 99% of what comes in the mail is a scam. Yes. Even now that virtually every phone call comes from a crook. I no longer even answer the phone. Leave me a message, and maybe I’ll call you back. If I know you personally…

Even ordinary adults in their working years get quite enough nuisance calls! Now add to that the calls for help from elder relatives who have been pestered by this, that, or the other scammer, and you get…overwhelming!

Today I got a snail-mail from what looked like a legitimate creditor telling me that I’d better pay up some late bill or it would be off to jail for me, by golly!

Uh huh.

Well, on some level I knew that was BS, because I don’t buy things on time. If  can’t afford to pay for it now, I don’t get it.

But that’s not 100%. Yes, of  course I do have some creditors. Don’t we all?

Well…yeah. That’s what the scammers are counting on.

My son was enraged when I broke into his work morning to ask if today’s telephoned demand for money was something real…or what. This made me feel like a sh!t, of course. But…what would I have felt like if I’d fallen for the caller’s scam?

Honestly. I think a person could make a living by hiring out to answer people’s phones and screen the incoming trash. No kidding: at this point, I would seriously consider hiring someone to answer my calls. MOST of the calls I get these days are hustles and scams. Hiring someone to screen incoming would relieve me of a fair amount of tooth-grinding!

Same with the mail. It’s getting to the point where I won’t open an envelope unless I recognize the sender’s name & address. ANY envelope. But that means that occasionally someone I do business with is not gonna be able to reach me by snail-mail. Or by phone. In other words: they can’t reach me at all. 

Probably the trick to that would be to insert some sort of code into your return address.

Jane 324 Doe, Esquire
1234 Erewhon Road
New York, N.Y. 23456

But these edited return addresses would, over time, be collected by the hustlers, so that eventually you would no longer be able to tell the difference between legit correspondence and hustles. And of course, to the extent that such a maneuver works, it will waste your time as you dork around with the coded addresses.

The older you get, the tiresomer it gets!