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Keeerimineee! Gerardo’s guys surfaced here. Roared around, banged around, raked around. Held out a hand: A HUNDRED BUCKS for one hour’s worth of clean-up.

Folks…I just paid them two weeks ago!

Now, admittedly: I couldn’t do that kind of work anymore, even if the temp outside were NOT 100 degrees just this moment, right at noon in mid-September. And I certainly couldn’t cut the guys back by 50%: after an untended month, the yard would look like a wilderness.

But…y’know what this sez to me?

Maybe…just maybe…we’re getting to the point where it’s time to consider moving into that high-rise apartment I secretly covet. Or, Gawd help me, into the horrible, terrifying old-folkery I most UNsecretly want to run away from….

ARRRGHHH

Okay, okay. Get a freakin’ GRIP on the marbles! 

Lookee here: a shared room at Orangewood STARTS at $3,400 a month.

Holeee shee-ut!!!

Detest room-mates as much as I do? Get a private room: $4,100 a month. AND, gawd help us, we’re told that’s below the typical market rate: average cost for assisted living here in lovely Phoenix runs $3,975. Presumably in a setting devoid of privacy.

Dear gawd.

Well…ahem… {choke!} {gag!} Look at it this way: I could get someone to come to my home and ride herd on me for a fraction of that.

W0nder Cleaning-Lady, who in addition to shoveling out my house also takes care of the bedridden and infirm in their homes, just charged me all of $80 to spend the whole damn day here shoveling out the house. And doing a pristine job, we might add.

Gerardo’s dudes just left: they passed two or three hours working like horses in gawdawful heat, cleaning and manicuring the yard: $100, for three incredibly hard-working guys.

Make a comparison like that, and you’ve gotta figure that you’ve got quite a ways to go before staying in your home to rot into old age will cost you more than locking yourself up in an old folks’ prison.

So…uhm…what do I NOT get for that much cheaper maintenance cost? Let’s try think sorta rationally about this, hm?

If that’s even possible:

Yard service. Gerardo’s crew leaves not one damn thing un-done when they spend half a morning roaring around the place. I just paid the boys $100 for heaving around in 100-degree heat and leaving the place looking like a freaking resort.

Cleaning. Baby-sitting. Yeah: the Cleaning Ladies from Heaven roar in here, work like horses for something over half the day, leave the place spotless, and…as part of the $80 package, they’d take me to the grocery store if I asked them.

So far, mercifully, I haven’t had to do that. Bridge to cross when the time comes, eh?

Hmmmm…. Well, think about that. A day of babysitting services, at $180, is as nothing compared to what it would cost me to move into the old folkerie. We’re talkin’ hundreds of dollars a month vs. thousands of dollars a month.

Then we have the chow issue. I happen to be damn picky about what I eat. No, I do not care to eat crap that comes out of cans and boxes. Or stuff that’s dished up off a steam table (most of which also comes out of cans and boxes). Nor do I care to dine when someone else tells me to come to the table, rather than when I feel like eating.

As long as I can stumble from the bedroom to the kitchen to the bathroom, y’know…it strikes me that I would be FREAKIN’ NUTS to move into one of those holding pens for the elderly and the infirm.

Yeah: I surely am getting to the point where I feel a shade nervous about being here all day, with nothing but a dog and a magazine of slugs between me and the next chucklehead who shows up at the house.

But you know…for what it costs to live in an old-folks’ prison, I could hire someone to come around once a day (or more) to check on me. I could have a gadget to wear around my neck that could be used to summon help with a push of a button.

Matter of fact: This very afternoon let’s look into getting one of those things. For the nonce, though, a cell phone in a pocket will do the job, in most circumstances.

Yeah. Maybe…. Right now I have four DIFFERENT cell phones, none of which I understand how to work very well.

But;..uh…that’s easily solved, stupid! Go out and buy four or five inexpensive cell phones that are all the same! Learn how to work the damn things. Then keep one in a pocket, and one near the floor in every room in the house.

Hmmmm… That would entail more than four or five units, right? Let’s see:

* Family room (abode of the loafing chair)
* Kitchen
* Middle bathroom/loafing bathtub
* Back bathroom/shower
* Purse
* Bedroom
* Garage/laundry area
* West deck
*Back porch

That’s nine cheap phones.

Hmmm….  I already have five of those. So I’d only have to buy four more.

Then figure out how to use the damn things (they’re all different, right?) and set them down near the floor in each room. Thus, if I fall but can drag myself across the room, I should be able to grab a phone and dial 9-1-1.

And would need to buy only a few more cheapie cell phones to accomplish that.

Hmmmmm….  I wonder if any such lash-up would work?

Seems to me, given one’s senility, that your set of emergency phones would all have to be the same brand and model. Trying to learn and remember how to use a half-dozen different gadgets would be…counterproductive, at best. But hey! If you’re gonna go out and buy a bunch of phones, what’s to stop you from buying a bunch of clones?

Heh! Clone phones!

😀  Sorreee about that! 😀 

Problem is: nuisance telephone solicitors. As I was just about to hit “POST” for this squib, what do we get but

Ringy-dingy-dingy ringy-dingy-dingy

Some A$$-hole on the phone trying to peddle stuff to me. I give her an earful and hang up on her….but of course, that’s not going to stop all her nuisance colleagues from pestering me.

However, you can turn off a cell phone’s ringer. That no doubt wouldn’t head off ALL the nuisance-a-ferizing, but it surely would cut a lot of it. If all the phone is doing is vibrating, half the time you wouldn’t even notice it. All you would need an emergency call-out phone FOR would be to make emergency calls out, right?

Ugh!!!

I find the present technological age intensely frustrating. And nuisancey. And…well…I guess previous generations did, too, as these things evolved and spread across the culture.

Stop the world! I wanna get off!!!

And again…and again…and again….  Not even eight in the morning, and this has turned into One of Those Days! Nothing you try to do goes right!  Right?

Human & Dog are just back from a seemingly endless walk through a swampy morning. Around the park and through the ‘Hood. The air is so wet it feels soggy. Other folks are walking their pesky dogs, too. Here comes some clown with not one but TWO pit bulls, towing him down the street.

Cross over to the other side of the road.

Pass the house where the scion of the family got into trouble with the law, f*cking some under-age chickadee. Wrecked their lives. They seem to have lost their home. And whoever bought it is just letting it sit there. They’ve done some upgrades, in a passing way…but…there it sits. An abandoned mess.

Trudge and trudge and trudge through the wet morning. Evade two other dog-loving folk of the “they just wanna pwayyyy” variety. Godlmighty, WHY are people so STUPID? Get past them without a dog fight: that’s refreshing.

Racket from Luke Air Force Base roars through the morning air, adding to the (un)lovely ambience. Reminds me of my mother…

My, how she loved Sun City. So much so that she included the blasting of jet engines in the purview of her love. She actually liked to sit out on her screened back porch and listen to that endless R-R-O-O-A-R-R emanating from Luke Air Force Base, a few miles west of their home.

Every. Goddam. Morning.

To give you a clue: here at the Funny Farm, we’re a good twenty miles away from Luke, and that racket sounds like it’s just down the road.

“It’s the sound of freedom!” she used to simper.

Nooo, Muther. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Why are people so damn stupid?

Seriously: it never seemed to occur to her that ONE bomb could wipe out her pretty little home, her shopping centers, her L.A-style city, and…her.

****

Upwards of an hour has passed. Not only is it NOT getting lighter outdoors, it seems to be getting DARKER.

I need to get off my duff, walk down to the Albertson’s, and get the covid booster that’s about to be massively overdue. How do I not wanna? Let me count the ways…

Yup. This is going to be one of those days. 

Holeeeee maquerel, is it hot out there! In the shade of the patio shade structure, tucked away among the leaves and branches of the big old ficus plant, the thermometer measures 108 degrees.

My excellent son charged out into the blasting heat and returned with a pile of chow and treats from the Sprouts — sparing me from having to hike over there or do without. “Do without” being the most likely operative term… So now Ruby and I are well fed and loafing on the big bed — very late in the afternoon, early in the evening, it being 5:30 p.m. and still hotter than the Hubs.

Hubs outside, Hubs inside: it is just plain HOT, every which way you turn.

And lookee here what just popped up on the ever astonishing Internet! If this true (the ever-nagging if, eh?), it may cut off the pending Alzheimer’s in its tracks! Lithium is pretty easy to acquire: you can order it from Amazon!

Clearly we’re very early in that game, though. Don’t think I’ll be ordering the stuff from the Internet until we see what, if anything, it really does.

Interesting, though….

Nasty weather here in (un)lovely uptown Phoenix: hot and wet!

No, it’s not raining (yet). As we scribble by the 8:30 light of a stuffy dawn, the back porch thermometer registers a balmy 90 degrees. But Wunderground predicts a high of 108 — ah, lovely! Humidity: a mere 12%.

Things could be worse, as we well know. But still…it makes Prescott look damn good. San Francisco looks even better.

Hey! I can’t complain. We do not get snow here! Very rarely even a few minutes of hail. I’ll take a 108 degree day in trade for 32 degrees…any time!

Interestingly, when it’s customarily this hot, 12 percent humidity seems downright soggy. And that’s the case today: yep, t feels downright soggy out there!

By 7:30 the he hound and I had circumnavigated the neighborhood’s spacious local park — a stroll of bout two miles, I’d estimate. Ruby will take a doggy-walk over a loafing human, no matter what the heat or humidity.

Once again, some A-hole jangled me out of bed before 7:00 this morning, trying to subject me to a telephone sales pitch. I told him where to shove it, as I always do. That doesn’t seem to affect the jerks. Need to get a whistle or an air-horn to blast the ba*tards with.

We’re told most of those jerks are prison inmates. Apparently, nuisance phone solicitation is a prison industry. And where, exactly, are our legislators who could put a stop to that shenanigan?

Why the Hell not give these guys jobs they can do when they get out of the slam? Jobs that don’t infringe on anyone else’s privacy or business? Or…I dunno…just teach them to get better at burgling, so they have a better shot at staying out of the slam…

<<swishroar!>>

Watering system comes on automatically…odd time for it to turn on: 9:00 a.m. It normally turns on around 7:00…or sooner. Hmmm.

Ruby comes racing out of the back, demanding to go out and investigate the noise. Open the back door.

She charges outside and patrols the backyard. Finds nothing. Comes back in. Ambles back to the bedroom and flops back down.

NOT in the mood — patience-wise or finance-wise — to get the irrigation dude back here to figure that out. Sooo…what now?

Just let it run, I figure. If it doesn’t go off, I can shut the system down manually and call Irrigation Dude. But…with any luck, it will run through its cycle and then shut up.

I hope.

This is the sort of thing that makes an apartment in a high-rise look good.

 

 

Geez, FaM’s website let me in!  I lost the log-in data and for awhile thought…well…that’s the end of scribbling blog posts! 

Whether I can get in again remains to be seen. Didn’t think the code I entered would work, so…I didn’t write it down.

Hoping that today will not be another Day from Hell. It’s overcast and muggy…gotta get up RIGHT NOW and take the dog for a walk, if we’re gonna get out today at all.

The hellish illness has eaten away at my nerves and at my son’s nerves to the point where we’re barely speaking. I don’t know what to do about it — never have been good with people, even under the best of circumstances. And what we have here appears to be about the worst of circumstances. Sooo…with social skills that rank among the bottom third, I’m kinda…fu*ked, frankly.

At any rate: awaaayyyyy!  Hope I can get back in…but if not: it was nice knowin’ ya!