Hubs of Hades, Redux

Three-thirty in the afternoon. High, magnificent white clouds off to the north…but nary a sign of rain here in the Valley. Wunderground says we have 114 degrees; humidity 11%; precip zero.

That, my friends, is another way of saying “hotter than the hubs of Hades.” 

The hapless woman my son hired to babysit me — he thinks I can’t take care of myself alone anymore — is bored out of her mind. The reason I’m unlikely to get hurt while I’m sitting around all day by myself is that…

* I go noplace;
* I do nothing;
* I sit around watching the dog as she does nothing.

Oh, well. If that’s how he wants to spend his money, far be it from me to contradict him.

Haven’t persuaded the poor lady to drive me to any stores or other amusements, mostly because I don’t need any new provisions and surely do not want to go out in that unholy heat.

What to do? How to deal with this new headache?

Well…

1. Make a list of things that need to be done (or at least can be done) while I’m under her control.

2. Be nice to the poor soul. She’s probably as terrorized as I am about this whole wacky thing.

3. Since my son has cut off my driving privileges, get her to drive me to stores (even those within walking distance) at least several times a week.

4. I walk a couple miles every day, for exercise. See if she would like to come along on these walks, after the weather gets cool enough that we could leave around the time she gets here.

Godlmighty, this fiasco is making me crazy. Pretty clearly, I’ve passed a milepost on the road to senility. And some major changes are going to have to be made to accommodate that. The big hope — the big stumbling block — the big screaming nightmare…is that I’m not yet so batshit that I have to be locked up in an institution.

I hate, loathe, and despise communal living. Hated every minute of living in the college dormitories. And that is NOT the way I want to wrap up my life.

This job will be made tougher for our New Lady by the fact that I refuse to pay for television. I will be DAMNED if I’m gonna pay to have advertising shoved in my face. Plus about 90% of what’s on TV is just not worth paying for.

So…that means she doesn’t have any pap to amuse her when she’s here. She must think I’m even crazier than I am. And she must be excruciatingly bored.

So…THAT means we’ll have to come up with things to do and places to go while she’s here. Better confer with her along those lines: mostly to find out what she likes to do and figure out when and where we can go for those things.

Also must ask my son if he thinks we should go ahead and pay for cable TV, so she will have some drivel to watch while she’s here. I’d just as soon not have brainless blah blah blah emanating from one of the rooms, but…if that’s what it takes to keep some poor soul in our employ, I guess I’ll have to get used to it.

{sigh}

Guess I’ll have to get used to the whole damn fiasco!