So here we are, once again, back from a twilight circumambulation of the ‘Hood.
WHAT a pretty neighborhood! If you have to live in Phoenix — or anywhere in the suburban reaches of the “Valley of the Sun,” you really can’t do better than this one.
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Well, I started to write this a day ago…then roamed off into the twilight of my life.
Oh, my. I’m SO sick.
Surely it can’t be much longer before I’m dispatched to the next world. Surely hope not, anyway!
Speaking of that horrifying dispatch, my son just called to inform me that he’s dragging me to the old-folkerie of our choice: the place he plans to store me until I finally pass over into the Next World.
That would be kind and thoughtful and all…except…..
Very few things do I revile more than institutional living. I just HATE being crammed in with a bunch of other people. I hate listening to some dimwit’s TV blabbering on down the hall. I hate bad food dumped out of cans and boxes into steam tables.
Honestly: if I’m approaching the end of my life, then forgodsake it’s time. Time for me to go.
And that exit is not something I want to have drawn out.
Yes, I will say: I’m not especially well just now. And indeed, it won’t be long before I won’t be able to stay here in my home safely.
Already, my son has purloined my car (he believes I shouldn’t be driving), which means I have to hike some unholy distance just to go to the grocery store. And no, hiring the Uber driver across the street has proved not to be a very practical strategy.
The awful place where he plans to consign me is less awful than most of them.
My father put himself in a place now called The Terraces. He would have done fine there if he had not stupidly imagined he could replace my mother (the love of his life) with a dimwitted woman he met there.
So… Lesson number one: no love affairs!!!
😀
Seriously, though…you would not believe the horror show that devolved from that episode.
Because he had stupidly married the woman, he was afraid to break it up. He convinced himself (rightly or wrongly, I do not know) that she would get all his assets if he divorced her.
Personally, I doubt that would have happened: at the time, his daughter was married to a partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the Southwest. But he was just simply to scared to take any chances.
So he stayed married to her, in profound misery, until the last day of his life.
As for me, I hate institutional living. Hated every moment that I had to spend in the dorms in college. (Back in the day, unmarried women students were required to live in the dorms, unless they could prove they were living at home). And I just. don’t. want. to. go. through. that. again!!!!
I fail to understand, given what it costs to live in one of those hell-holes, why we can’t use the same amount of money to hire someone to come in and babysit me in my home.
So this morning my son is dragging me to the Terraces, for an introductory tour.
Goodie gumdrops. I can hardly wait.