Coffee heat rising

Dawgy Walk…Through the Swamp

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Blech! That is hardly an understatement. 6:30 in the morning and it feels like a freakin’ sauna out there! What a horrible day!

It’s 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch. 8:30 a.m.  Truly does feel like a freakin’ SAUNA out there, it’s sooo hot and soooo WET. 

I’ve seen days like this in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia when the air was so wet that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Presumably the only reason that isn’t happening now is that we’re not parked on a beach next to the freakin’ Persian Gulf. Yech!!!

But…I’ll bet if we were much closer to the Sea of Cortes, that sky would indeed be spitting rain on our heads.

DXH is in Chicago, for some sort of business meetings. I forgot….and called him as dawn cracked this morning. Thereby interrupting him and annoying him royally.

Jeez. Don’t get old, whatever ya do!!  😮

Don’t have much to do today…I don’t think this is Cleaning Lady Day. If that guess is correct, then there’s no need to race around the house picking up litter.

Hmmmm… Found a roadside doctor practicing next door to the Albertson’s shopping center. I’m thinking I should try to build a doctor-patient relationship with the guy…not because he seems so wonderful, but because he’s so convenient. The Mayo, where our docs practice, is a good hour’s drive from here. I can walk to this guy’s office. So it would be good to have him on the string for ailments that would benefit from a doctor’s attention but that clearly are not terminal….

That would help a lot.

The MayoDocs are great when you have something wrong that’s real and that’s significant. But driving to the other side of Timbuktu to have every little sniffle checked? Not so much. 

This is one of the great things about living in the thick of a major metropolitan area: you don’t HAVE to drive from pillar to post to get things done. In fact, just now I don’t have to drive anywhere: everything I need and do is within walking distance. Failing that, though, we have an Uber driver living across the street — one of half a dozen who inhabit the ‘Hood. I can hire him to schlep me around the Valley.

I’m pretty sure I can get this new doc to overrule the Mayo quacks’ opinion that oh dear oh dear I mustn’t be driving. But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to be bothered. The main thing just now is that I need the driver’s license to serve as identification. Driving per se is beside the point. Cashing a check is the point.

So I need New Quack to help me retrieve my driver’s license. If he will.

😀

Gosh, I’m tired of Stupid Stuff. 

Does it not occur to you that Stupid Stuff ebbs and flows like the tide?

For a nice long time, things flow smoothly and calmly and sanely. And then all of a sudden a freakin’ FLOOD of Stupid Stuff pours down on you like an ocean wave? Just now, we’re definitely at high-tide. I feel like I’m drowning in Stupid Stuff!

And frankly, wayyyyy too much of it is emanating from those suckers at the Mayo: the ones who listen to my son bellyaching about me but never think to ask me about the cause of the bellyaching.

That, I think, is why I need to hire on some docs who a) don’t know me; b) don’t know my son; and c) have heard nothing from the opinionated set at the Mayo Clinic. Let them hear me whine about my current “symptom,” let them examine me, and let them form their own conclusions about what, if anything, ails me.

Movin’ On…if it can be called moving…

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LOL! Okay, so the magnificent stabs of pain that visited the lame hip a little earlier today have pretty well settled down. What kicked it up, I have NO idea.

Nor do have I a clue what made it settle down. All I know just now is that at the moment it hurts, but it sure doesn’t hurt like it did.

Don’t get any optimistic ideas that “doesn’t hurt like it did” means it’s gonna go away. Because that ain’t how this thing has been working. Yeah: it comes and goes. It’ll hurt like Hell. Then for no obvious reason the pain will recede: not gone, but tolerable. Then a few hours later — again for no obvious reason: hurts like Hell again.

No clue what makes it flare up. No clue what makes it settle down. All I know is that it comes and goes. But never…ever…goes AWAY.

Well..what ELSE I know is…

* I’m tired of hurting
*I’m tired of listening to my ears whistling
* I’m tired of my yard being a mess because it hurts too much to clean things up
* I’m tired of my house being a mess because it hurts too much to drag stuff around.
* I’m tired of looking at the dorked up dining-room chair cushions, a mess because it hurts too much to take the chairs apart and try to fix said mess
* I’m damn tired of knowing that when I get up from this chair it’s gonna hurt like Hell

STOP THE WORLD! I WANNA GET OFF!!

{Chortle!} Actually, stopping the world may not help. We’re told that the accursed peripheral neuropathy can persist for weeks, if not months. Ohhhhhh well…..

Haunted!

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LOL!  Ya just think some damfool ailment is gone, and wooooooOOO, like Caspar the Ghost it’s b-a-a-a-c-k!!!

Here I thought the hip pain was magically healed…gone…free of limping and aching and whining!!!!!

Uh. No.

It’s back now, and with a vengeance.

What DID I do to bring it back?

Nothing, that I can think of. Just sitting here, loafing and playing with the computer. Get up to go to the bathroom and OOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

By damn, I can barely hobble across the room!

No idea what kicked it off.

* Not sitting in any goofy position
* Not hiking around the neighborhood with the dawg
* Not loafing in the bed cattywampus
* Not scrubbing the floors
* Not climbing on ladders
* NOTHING!!!!!

And now, here we are: hurting like HELL!

DAYUM! I was gonna hike across Main Drag West to haunt the computer store. But now…well…I’d be surprised if I can walk that far. And if I can…whether I can walk all the way back home.

{sigh}

If I were a grown-up, I would get into the pool and exercise the thing a bit. And that might work the pain out.

Or…heh…it might cripple up the damn hip enough to leave me stuck in the drink.

So much for that idea….

Once I get up and start to move around, it feels better. Not cured, but not crippling either. So I assume (hope) it’s nothing serious.

This morning: discovered online that the Romanian Landlord has a nursing home of some kind, established on one of the residential streets to the south of us. Interesting. I’ve heard that Romanians tend to get into the nursing home and care business…didn’t realize he was doing that. Last I heard, he’d closed down the reform school for juvenile delinquents.

That one must have caused way too much trouble for the poor guy. You just can’t imagine how much static flapped out of that enterprise! He being no fool, he recognizes which side of the bread is buttered, so within a few months he closed that one down. Right now, he’s renting the house to a very bland young couple…and frankly, I think that’s a very smart move on his part.

As long as they pay the rent, he makes a profit on the place. And so far, they’ve been quiet and inoffensive. Let’s hope they stay that way…

DOUBLE Dayum!!!  Dare to sit down (wouldn’tcha think by now I’d know better?) and here comes Gerardo’s crew, descending on both the back yard and the front yard at once. ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR…that’ll be a hundred bucks.

Think o’that. A hundred dolla for about 30 minutes of work.

Y’know, he’s jacked up his price. Now…it’s true, costs are going up everywhere. So he probably NEEDs to increase his billing. But dayum!!! A HUNDRED DOLLARS for thirty minutes of charging back and forth around the yard???????

True, they do an awesome job. But…that seems like a lot for not very much time.

On the other hand, he does have four guys roaring around out there. So in theory, it’s really two hours’ worth of a single yard dude’s labor. But gosh.

It really does make a box in the sky look good. 

{sigh} I imagine the proposed high-rise apartment on North Central Avenue would have its associated monthly costs. Probably not a lot less than a hundred bucks — trash pick-up, hall clean-up, window washing, receptionist’s time, security guard, underground garage maintenance…yeah. Probably not a lot less than Gerardo bills.

But…geez!

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And What to Do Next?

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Hmmm…ooohhkayyy…. I seem to have recovered from the spavined hip episode. That was weird…to say nothing of startlingly painful.

Now, just a few hours later — shortly after noon — the pain is gone. As in GONE gone.

That’s weird. Dunno what made it start hurting, and don’t know what made it stop hurting.

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Cruising the real estate listings in North Central Phoenix — the tony part of the city, that is.

Wow. Which is to say…uhm…well…wow. Truth to tell, I’m not seeing a thing that impels me to feel I must run out and buy it. Or even run out and look at it. My house is as good as any of these piles, or better. And when I croak over, M’hijito will inherit a piece of property worth some stupefying amount of money (certainly compared to what I paid for it!!) and can decide whether he wants to stay in his own palace or move into my castle. His place is maybe a little smaller than mine — certainly a little older — but both houses are well maintained, in decent neighborhoods….and worth a sh!tload of money, after all these years.

He has remarked that he’d like to move back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a nice, middle-class rural kind of town…founded by well educated engineers and business entrepreneurs. Truth to tell, it’s quite a pleasant place. And as a retirement venue, it could be downright perfect.

Because Grand Junction ain’t the San Francisco Bay Area — my own choice of retirement venues — what he’d get from selling my house and his would set him up like Colorado’s King of Sheba. So…as retirement schemes go, it ain’t a bad idea.

Why am I NOT in Berkeley, as we scribble?

Because he’s here.

Seriously: I feel no great craving to return to the Bay Area, even though I did love living there and I still miss some aspects of it. But that craving is far from enough to make me want to move anyplace where my son isn’t. If any day now he took it into his noggin to move to Grand Junction, I’d no doubt follow, shortly.

Ohhh well. What to do next?

It’s too damn hot to hike to any of the nearby grocery stores. Ruby and I are well set up for a couple days’ worth of food, even though the human lacks her favorite potables. That lack, alas, is not compelling enough to send me barreling through the neighborhood to the nearest Albertson’s, Safeway, Basha’s, or wine closet. So we will loaf.

Ruby is already loafing, having resumed her possession of the foot of the bed.

The beautiful pool is contentedly burbling away. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d be out there paddling around. But…well…the truth is, one probably doesn’t want to plunge in a swimming pool beneath the ungodly blast of sun we’re getting just now.

Later. Much later.

YOW!!! Incredible pain!

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Holeee maquerel! This morning as I was puttering around the house, my right hip went out.

As in OUT out…yow!!!! 

I don’t think I’ve ever had anything hurt that much…and I had my baby without anaesthetic because I thought childbirth is supposed to hurt more than one’s periods.

(Hint: it doesn’t.)

Could barely walk, but made it to a phone. Called the Fire Dept rescue crew.

And…of course…by the time they got here the pain was beginning to subside.

They must have thought I was crazy!

Maybe I am crazy…  ?????

They went on their way.

I limped back into the house.

And now here I am walking around with almost NO pain, a little stiffness…and wondering WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????

Ahhh, here’s a little cookie-frosting: The cops’ copter is circling around to the north.

At this hour — just coming on to  9 a.m. — that can indicate a car accident.

Or — as at all hours in this place — it also can mean a home invasion. Domestic abuse. Kid fell in the pool and is drowning (or already drowned). Car wreck. On and entertainingly on….

Welp…better get up and check that all the doors are locked. Looks like the toast is done, too.

And so, awaaayyyyy!

Giddy-up!

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Two days later and, incredibly, we’re STILL on the wagon!

Who would’ve predicted it, eh?

Now, I ain’t a-gunna say that I don’t miss a nice beer right about now — come 4:20 in the afternoon. But neither am I gunna say that I’ll keel over in a faint without it.

The crazy-making peripheral neuropathy continues, though I could (maybe) persuade myself that it’s a little milder just now. For that to be credible, that milder-ing would have to continue for several days or weeks, and get more obvious as the time passes. So…about all we can say about that is time will tell. 

Meanwhile, I’ve come to think that if I’m going to be able to stay in my home as I age and not end up in one of those horrible warehouses for old people, I’ve got to get 100% sober and stay that way. That is to say, I’ve gotta quit drinking, and I’ve gotta quit drinking NOW.

So far, that’s not been very difficult. But…heh!!  It’s only been a few hours…

It needs to become not a few hours. Not a few days. But a few weeks.

And then a few months. And months and months… And then…yep: years. 

Videlicet: I’ve gotta get off the sauce and STAY off the sauce. Now and evermore.

We shall see, soon enough, whether that’s even remotely possible…