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Yep: that appears to be what we have next on the agenda. My son is on his way over here to pick me up and drag me to the physical therapist’s gym, there to be pestered and exercised no end.

UGH!  How could I do without it??????

Well. Actually…I have no business bellyaching about this routine.

The spavined arm hurts like the dickens just now — and has done so all afternoon. Some supervised exercising should loosen up that shoulder and, with any luck at all, ease the pain…ohhhhhhg hellle’s belles!!!!  Here he is!

DAYUM!

Ugh!!!  Hotter than the Hubs out there this morning. And wet. Not raining, but so humid the air feels thick.

Ruby the Corgi and I are just back from trudging around the park: the exercise walk of the day. It’s so sticky out there, you feel like you’re walking through cotton candy!

M’hijito has got us set up to traipse to the far side of the galaxy, there to visit the august Mayo Clinic…again. If there’s ANY way to get out of that, I’d sure like to. The peripheral neuropathy is clearing up now. Almost gone, come to think of it. So this is going to be a long, tedious, annoying wasted trip.

On the other hand, he’s got his own ailment that would benefit from a chat with those august quacks. So maybe we could just trade conferences: HE, not me, talks with the doc.

On the other other hand, he’s the one with the demanding job. And he’s the one who shouldn’t be wasting two or three hours traipsing to the far side of the galaxy, there to talk with a doctor who will tell us nothing we didn’t already know. Either way…it’s a monumental waste of time.

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….