Coffee heat rising

100 Things about Myself

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I wrote this in response to a question at Quora: “Can you write 100 things about yourself?”  Having completed that little challenge, lo! I find Quora won’t let it go online. So…Here ’tis:

*********

Sher.

  1. Just now, my head hurts.
  2. Think that’s prob’ly because of allergies. Everything in sight is blooming just now.
  3. Can’t take an aspirin because when I was a toddler I got into a medicine cabinet and ate a whole bottle of aspirin.
  4. When my mother realized what I’d gotten up to, she rushed me to an ER, where a doctor told her I would be dead by morning.
  5. Strangely, I’m not dead yet, even though several thousand mornings have passed.
  6. The docs told my mother I must never swallow another aspirin pill as long as I live, because it would kill me. They were wrong, oddly enough.
  7. I need another cuppa coffee…hold the phone…
  8. This morning I’ve got to call a lawyer to help me deal with a relative who’s trying to glom possession of my house.
  9. That makes me nervous, because I don’t know the woman lawyer, who was a partner of my dear long-time lawyer. He dropped dead a week or ten days ago.
  10. If I can’t get this woman to work with me, then I will pack up a bunch of belongings, toss them and my dog in the car, and leave the state permanently.
  11. To “lose” any followers, the dog and I will camp for several weeks in the deserts and forests of the Four Corners area.
  12. Where we’ll end up, I have no clue. And really: don’t much care just now.
  13. Now that I’ve managed to regrow my hair to the length where I like(d) it, I’ve decided I don’t much care for it long.
  14. This could be convenient: I could get my hair cut real short on the way out of town, so when the relative in question describes me to the cops and anyone else he tries to set on my trail, he would be describing someone who doesn’t look like me anymore.
  15. There’s a thought: change your hair! OK, why not change the dog’s hair, too? I could either have a groomer shave her fur off short, or I could dye her (very distinctive-looking) fur.
  16. We live in a nice, thirty-year-old tract house on the fringe of an upscale district.
  17. I grew up in Saudi Arabia.
  18. I grew up hating school, because the brats there thought it was hilarious to tease and torment me for wanting a career as an astronomer.
  19. Back in the Dark Ages when I grew up, girls absolutely positively did NOT get to grow up to be scientists.
  20. As a kid, standardized tests indicated that I was reading at the genius level.
  21. Back in the Dark Ages when I grew up, girls absolutely positively did NOT get to be geniuses of any kind. Well, unless they were geniuses at baking cakes and sewing clothes.
  22. I was pretty good at baking cakes.
  23. But I hated sewing clothes.
  24. My father never knew I found out where he hid his revolver.
  25. Back in those same Dark Ages, I had an elaborate, highly specific plan to run away: tie together a raft of palm spines (used to build fencing in our camp), add a home-made sail, launch it from the beach (about two blocks from our company house), and sail away into the distance. Follow the edge of the continent to where I could cross over and land on the shore of Alaska; continue south into California. Get a dog. Live my life as Little Orphan Annie.
  26. Just now, my hip hurts. Probably osteoporosis. More than probably…
  27. The ongoing headache: probably allergies.
  28. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d get off my duff and take the dog for two-mile walk through the nearby desert preserve.
  29. But I ain’t a-gonna, because the last time I went hiking up there, some S.H. (not realizing I was old enough to be his grandmother) followed me through the desert. When I ducked down into an arroyo before he rounded a hill that briefly blocked his view of me, he stood for a good 15 minutes on that trail, obviously searching for me.
  30. I’m a talented writer, widely published in consumer and trade periodicals, with three books in print.
  31. But I can’t do math to save my life.
  32. I never carry cash with me.
  33. Consequently, I never dispense hand-outs to the legions of panhandlers who pester us whenever we walk across a grocery-store parking lot.
  34. The top of the block wall between my place and the neighbors is lined with carpet tack strips, to keep out the neighboring Cat Lady’s little furry friends, which otherwise would use my vegetable garden as their latrine and kill all the birds that visit my yard.
  35. The neighbor between my house and the Cat Lady’s house hates wild birds almost as much as she hates Cat Lady’s furry pals.
  36. I don’t much like the skylights in this house: They’re classy and stylish and they light up the kitchen, dining-room, and family room very nicely, but they also let in heat.
  37. If I have to run away to keep from being consigned to an old-folks’ home, I definitely will pass through the Navajo Reservation and, while there, buy another beautiful Navajo weaving.
  38. As you might guess by that, I do love the Navajo rugs I bought there some years ago. They now grace walls in the family room and my office.
  39. I refuse to pay for television. Period.
  40. When our Honored Leaders took free TV away from us (nowadays you have to subscribe to cable in order to get a signal here), I just stopped watching television.
  41. Well. Except for the TV I could download into my computer.
  42. Having realized how b-o-o-o-o-ring most on-air TV is, I totally lost my taste for the “entertainment” that used to fill my every evening. Now I watch PBS News on my desktop, and…well…that’s about it. Even Masterpiece Theater isn’t worth sitting in front of a computer to watch.
  43. But gosh, I do miss Dragnet. Strangely, after all these years I now think that was my all-time hands-down favorite TV show.
  44. My favorite magazine is The Economist.
  45. The magazines where I used to work as a staff editor — Phoenix Magazine and Arizona Highways — bore me stupid. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would pay to subscribe to those things.
  46. Actually, Highways is probably tolerable because of its superb photography. The copy? hmmmm….
  47. And speaking of for-the-life-of-me mysteries, I can not understand why on earth anyone would want to lay down wall-to-wall carpets throughout a house. Tile flooring is sooooo much easier to keep clean! And if your feet are cold? Hey: ever heard something called “slippers”? 😀
  48. My mother believed her mother died in early middle-age, supposedly of a uterine cancer. But I discovered — another miracle of the Internet — that she did NOT die in the late 1920s or early ’30’s , but in fact was still living when my son (her grandson) was born in 1979.
  49. Astonished by this little revelation, I continued poking around in historic documents and discovered that she married a prominent San Francisco businessman.
  50. Two streets converge in downtown San Francisco: one bears her first name and the other bears her and her husband’s last name.
  51. They meet in front of the bank where my highly independent great-aunt spent most of her adult life working as the bank president’s executive secretary.
  52. That aunt’s brother — my great-uncle — designed the Morrison Planetarium.
  53. I have always wished I could live in the beautiful house he and his wife built in the Sausalito hills.
  54. I’d ‘druther live with my dawg than another human, any day.
  55. Helle’s Belles! Here comes another cop helicopter. He’s about a block away…and here we go again.
  56. Glad the dawg and I went outside to do her business 15 minutes or so ago. Otherwise a plugged-up pooch and I could be stuck inside the house for quite awhile.
  57. Verging on Old As the Hills, I still have brown hair with blonde highlights. Gosh! My mother had gone completely gray by the time she reached my age.
  58. Well. Before she reached my age. She died nine years before she got that far.
  59. I find it hard to forgive her for smoking herself to death. She died nine years before her only grandchild was born. That doesn’t make any difference to the kid, though. But her peculiarly baroque style of suicide put my father through the tortures of the damned. And that is, yes: hard to forgive.
  60. I have yet to figure out how to get rid of the resident roof rats, some of whom have taken up residence in the attic. The exterminator I hired couldn’t do it, either.
  61. Corgis love to chase rats. A delighted corgi does a surprisingly good job at reducing the ratty population. Ergo: I love my corgi even more now than I did before our ratties came along.
  62. My brilliant cleaning lady is absolutely positively a gift from heaven.
  63. I need to track down a mortician or three and make pre-arrangements for my eventual exit from this earthly plane.
  64. Though I’d love to have my ashes interred in the church close, they charge FIFTEEN HUNDRED BUCKS for the privilege. So…I reckon my cremains will be flying off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, there to join the ashes of my former mother-in-law, who was similarly disposed of.
  65. I sure do miss singing on the church choir. Had to quit when the plague came up, though. It turns out choral singing is one of the most dangerous things you can do during time of contagion. And I’m highly susceptible to respiratory infections. (See above: parental smoking habit.)
  66. Speaking of the which, I’m still enjoying the aftereffects of the Covid infection I caught way back last autumn. Ugh!
  67. I had perfect teeth until was in my 30s.
  68. Now that I’m old, my teeth hurt.
  69. So does just about everything else, come to think of it. 😀
  70. Tomorrow — today, actually, it now being 4:19 a.m. as I continue to scribble this — I need to call a mortician (where? who??) and make arrangements to have my remains disposed of.
  71. I do not want to be laid to “rest” (does an urnful of ashes rest??) in Sun City, where my parents are at the Sunland Mortuary.
  72. Because I hated living in Sun City, the prospect of spending eternity in Whiteyville, where the residents went to hide from anyone and everyone who was at all different from them, makes me cringe.
  73. Plus I discovered that my father’s third wife’s idiot relatives have deposited her urn-full of ashes next to him, out there in Sun City.
  74. She was meaner than Pussley and made the last years of his life miserable. And now she’s out there with him and with my mother????? Holeee shee-ut!
  75. I’d like to be laid to rest in my church’s close, but recently learned the privilege costs fifteen hundred dollars. That’s fifteen hundred bucks that could and should go to my son.
  76. So tomorrow — well, today, after the sun comes up — I need to start calling around to find out about disposing of my earthly remains with the least amount of cost and headache for my son.
  77. Peripheral neuropathy hurts, hurts, and then hurts some more.
  78. I’m getting exceptionally tired of hurting.
  79. This makes the approaching end of my story look a lot less daunting than it would if life didn’t hurt all the time.
  80. I waste WAY too much time writing Quora posts!
  81. It occurs to me that I should paste this post into my blog, Funny about Money. Probably more folks would read it there than will read it on Quora.
  82. Not that it matters much, in the large scheme of things.
  83. That said, let us emphasize: this post is copyrighted by ME, not by Quora, and may be reproduced only with my permission.
  84. Have you noticed that a standard typewriter/computer keyboard doesn’t include a copyright symbol? It has an “at” symbol (which Quora won’t let me type here without dorking up and snafuing the formatting!), but it does not have a copyright symbol.
  85. I’m going to be peculiarly pissed if I discover that $1500 is cheap for getting rid of one’s earthly remains.
  86. Do you ever wonder why humans have to use EVERY opportunity, no matter how crass, to make money?
  87. I wonder what it would cost — if it could be done at all — to move my parents’ remains from the Sun City mortuary over to the church’s close?
  88. But on second and third thoughts, that wouldn’t be very respectful. My father loathed organized religion, his mother having been relieved of a substantial fortune by scammers who made her believe they could talk to the dead.
  89. No kidding. He described their pretending to levitate the dining-room table.
  90. She was a half-Indian woman — Choctaw, far as I can tell — and apparently quite vulnerable to woo-woo dispensed by white scammers.
  91. Her father’s family was named Donner. This is a weird coincidence, since my mother had ancestors who were in the ill-fated Donner party that got lost in the Sierra Nevadas and ate each other by way of trying to survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party
  92. The sky is lightening up. The birds are starting to sing. Morning is dawning, like the first day…
  93. Today is Tuesday. It will be largely consumed by the search for a new lawyer to replace my beloved lawyer, who dropped dead a few weeks ago.
  94. I need a lawyer to be sure the changes we made to my will actually DID get filed with the state.
  95. Have you noticed that whatever you have to do, it ALWAYS ends up having to be done the hard way?
  96. And can you believe that once it was safe enough here to leave the backyard gate unlocked?
  97. Now the alleys are infested with homeless transients and burglars. No one in their right mind would leave the gates to their backyard without padlocks.
  98. Lordie! I am sooooooo tired!
  99. I’m going back to bed…
  100. …dawn or no dawn.

And further ruminating…

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Yes. When you’ve lived in a neighborhood long enough to become a historic fixture, your brain is filled with layer on layer on layer of memories.

Just now the adorable young father of the incredibly adorable young kids in the house behind us, spouse of the spectacularly adorable young mother, is out in the backyard mowing grass. The kids are giggling and hollering and carrying on. The sun is setting and the evening is turning to dusk.

Oh, my,… HOW Sally, the former resident of that house, would be delighted to have that lovely young family in there. She and her room-mate: oh indeed, they would be thrilled.

The two women were grade-school teachers. Old Maids. Having never married, when they met each other on the job and figured they could tolerate each others’ company, they decided to go in together to buy a house in a lower-middle-income neighborhood of lovely (ahem: terrifying) Sunnyslope.

As it developed, SDXB moved in right straight across the street after I booted him out of my house, a block to the north and a block to the west.

So it was that we became friends with the Old Maids. And what fine neighbors they were.

Sally’s companion eventually passed away. Sally, seeing the end in sight herself, sold the place and moved into an old-folkerie. Time passed. SDXB, in terror of Tony the Romanian Landlord (he who threatened the judge in the lawsuit we won), moved to Sun City. I, having lived in Sun City once and decided that was quite enough, refused to go. Instead, I got out a number of…uhm, toys…armed myself to the teeth, scared the sh!t out of my lawyers, and cooed, Tony, make my day!

One of Tony’s sterling characteristics — he has several — is that he is no fool. Yea verily: he is very, very smart. That being the case, he proved it by refraining to commit any new criminal frolics.

The dust has now settled. Tony and his lovely Pretty Daughter are deeply engaged in building their rental empire, and I’m still here. And…no one has had to make my day. ;-D

Because — of course — Tony is no fool.

Tony’s sweet and intelligent and horribly beaten-down Other Daughter lives two doors up the street from the Funny Farm. She is an excellent human being, IMHO. If I dared…if she dared…we would make good friends.

Oh, well.

The upshot is, she and I are not enemies. 😀

***

I don’t know if Tony is a good man. But I believe he is more than that: he is a great man.

Yes. In his context, he is a great man. He has accomplished feats that you and I could only fantasize about….partly because we couldn’t conceive of them and then, even if we did, couldn’t figure out how to pull them off, and partly — mostly — because none of us would be willing to work that hard.

Seriously: the things he has accomplished have simply defied belief. And if you stood back and watched him, the sheer amount of hard work he poured into those feats would boggle your little Yankee mind. He is, truly, an incredible man.

****

Is that why I’m not afraid of him?

Possibly. I’d like to say I’m not afraid of him much. I’d like to say I respect his intelligence and his ambition enough to know he’s not doing to fuck himself up.

But then there’s my Daddy. Yeah. The Daddy who taught me not to to be afraid of a helluva lot.

Who knows?

The truth is, Tony is dangerous. The truth is, Tony is too smart to engage that quality. The truth is, Tony is not gonna put all that he’s worked so hard for at risk. The truth is, my Daddy was right: stand your ground. The truth is, because Tony is no fool, he’s not very dangerous.

Bless’im.

Ohhh those beautful playing children. How I wish Sally could be here to be the melody of their laughing!

Stand your ground, Dear Daughter…

 

 

 

By Golly! Missed This!!

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Leastwise, I think I did. Just poured a glass of wine, sat back, and logged in to write a post. And…and…

And HERE’S THIS THING! 😀 Apparently it never went online.

So, dear friends and honored foes: The rumination from a few days ago…

****

Is it only driving in Phoenix that I hate? or is it living in Phoenix?

Doggywalk this morning took us past the {former!!!} home of a friend and erstwhile neighbor, now long gone, terrorized out of the neighborhood.

She was a teacher at the local high school. Dunno what he did, but whatever it was, between the two of them they could afford a very nice, LARGE house right across from one of the nicest parks in the city. So presumably they were not living in penury.  Not that it matters…

One day two guys showed up at their front door. The residents answered the doorbell, and the guys barged in. Tied them up and tossed both of them into the tub in an upstairs bathroom. Then proceeded to ransack the house.

Incredibly, they didn’t bother to kill the couple. Eventually, one of the spouses managed to work free of the binding. Got the other one out of the bathtub. Called the cops.

No, the perps were never caught. This IS lovely uptown Sunnyslope, after all. But my friends promptly sold the house and moved away. Where? I dunno. Presumably as far from here as they could afford to get.

Makes me angry every time I drive or walk past the place. And…to walk the dog around the park requires…yes! Walking past the place. Driving to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts or points southwesterly requires…yes! Driving past the place.

And every time I do walk or drive past the place, I can’t help but imagine the terror they must have felt. And I can’t help but think I wish I could afford to move to a home comparable to my own, far far from here.

But…but…where would I go?

* Item: Because we’re officially part of a slum called Sunnyslope (even though ours is what I’d call an upper-middle-class neighborhood), I wouldn’t be able to get into anything comparable without diving deep into my retirement savings…or into debt. Which is to say I can’t afford a place like this in a safer neighborhood.

* Item: My honored son WANTS my house. He has repeatedly asked me (begged me; ordered me) not to sell. And I would very much like him to have it.

*Item: Noooo, I do not KNOW that he realizes the Hood is actually part of Sunnyslope: We could call this Item XXX and counting:

* I do not know if he realizes (any of the above).
* Nor do I know whether he cares (I don’t, much, except when the consequences slap me in the face).
* Nor can I imagine how much the consequences would affect him as opposed to the way they affect me.

*****

Just back from the nearest Leslie’s Pool store. They’re overpriced — many of the supplies there can be had much more cheaply from Home Depot or Lowe’s. However, for your money you get smart, experienced staffers who dispense invaluable advice.

Today, though, even the Leslie’s guy hadn’t a clue.

Out in the shed, I found a floater gadget that seems to be designed for…uhhhhh….something. But what? It’s not a pool tab floater. So…what is it?

So for the helluvit, I took the thing by that store and asked.

Leslie’s Dude allowed as how it appeared to be a pool gadget, yep yep. But WHAT pool gadget? He didn’t know any more than I do.

LOL!

So if I can catch Pool Dude — not an easy trick, as he ghosts in and out without making a sound — I’ll ask him what it is.

****

The brain remains numb, as it has been for weeks and, yea verily, months. I’ve assumed this was a manifestation of looming senility — seriously, some days I can’t remember my name, to say nothing of remembering anything important. But NO!

It develops that the cutely named “brain fog” lingers for months after a fine case of covid.

And we know I had covid last fall: it was diagnosed while I was visiting the ER at the Mayo Clinic. Apparently it takes six to nine months (!!!) to get over this manifestation.

Jayzuz!! No wonder the kid thinks I’m getting senile.

But much more annoying, as covid aftereffects go, is the endless tingling in the hands & feet and the endless ringing in the ears. Truly, truly crazy-making.

Not that I wasn’t already crazy…but really, I didn’t need another excuse to be nuts.

Lawyer, eh? Think again about that…

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LOL! Last time I posted I ruminated on about how easy it would be to find a replacement for my late beloved estate (and miscellaneous other matters…) lawyer, DXH having been a prominent legal eagle here in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean-Sun.

WRONG!

DXH has been retired for so long that all his colleagues have flown the coop, too. Didn’t have a suggestion.

So it was down to the church, that Institution of Old Phoenix that holds forth in ritzy-titzy North Central. If anyone knows lawyers currently in practice, they do.

Well.

No.

They may know someone, but evidently they’re reluctant to make any recommends.

Goddammit.

So now I have no lawyer and I don’t know which way to jump to find one. And because Mike, the beloved and high-powered legal bulldog, was working on the latest iteration of my will, I have no valid will on record!

At least, I probably don’t. Mike may (or may not) have filed our new, revised will before he dropped dead. But no one knows, and I have no clue who to call at the State of Arizona to even ask whether a new will has been filed.

Godlmighty.

At this point, I’m not sure which way to jump. I actually called the County Bar Association to see if they could recommend an estate lawyer. Singularly unhelpful, thankyouverymuch.

I guess maybe the next effort will be to Google “estate planner” and start calling at random.

{gulp!}

That’s not very…reassuring.

Almost Time to Go…

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Heh…perhaps metaphorically, as well as literally.

My head is spinning like a top. No head congestion, so it’s apparently not sinus trouble. And THAT doesn’t bode well.

Headed up into nearby Moon Valley to visit a New Doc, later on today.

Beloved Y0ung Dr. Kildare (YDK) has left the practice of medicine again. This is the second time (far’s I know…).

Tina, my business partner, had introduced me to him. I liked him a lot: he has common sense, a precious rarity among doctors in general practice.

His office was way to Hell and Gone over on the west side: almost an hour’s drive over a hectic freeway. But BFD: the Mayo is way the Hell and Gone over on the east side: another hour’s drive over insane surface streets.

But then YDK’s practice closed. His partners moved a few blocks up the street, but he didn’t go with him. The implication was that he wasn’t invited to go with them: NOT a good sign.

He took over as executive director of a major charity here. Then a few months ago, he returned to the practice of medicine AND came to light just up the road from here: an easy drive.

But now he seems to be gone again. Got a message from this new practice that I’m supposed to see Dr. Humbuggadoodle at 1:15 today.

Y’know…I don’t think I’m asking too much. All I want is a sane doctor who LISTENS to me and who seems to have a brain lodged between his ears.

Meanwhile, my beloved barracuda lawyer died. This was the guy who had been DXH’s law partner for many a year, and was one of the best litigators in the state, if not the Southwest. If not the whole damn country.

So now I’m double-screwed:

  • * No regular doctor
  • * No lawyer

The lawyer issue is pretty easy, what with DXH having spent his whole career with two of the major law firms in the Southwest. But the doctor thing: HOLEE sh!t, what a conundrum.

****

Don’t have to leave for the new Quack’s appointment for another hour. So…here we are.

Head is spinning. This seems to be characteristic of whateverthehell is currently wrong with me. Would prefer not to drive to Young Dr. Kildare’s former office, but I have no choice. Unless I call an Uber (and how much will that cost me?), the only way to get up to Moon Valley is to drive oneself there.

My former Dear Best Friend lived up there. A saga appertains…best not to go into all that! 🙂 Suffice it to say that she, after her husband died, crawled off to some place in the Midwest, whence she came. I know nothing of what has become of her since then…or even, for sure, whether she’s still living.

She was about 10 years ahead of me, so that would make her freakin’ elderly. If she’s still living.

The question is: Am I still living?

Hope so. Because if I’m not, then that means the Afterlife is some kinda nonstop annoying Hell. Sorta like daily life in lovely Uptown America these days.

Huh! Wonder what the deal is with YDK…. This is the second (third?) time he’s dropped out of a very nice job and disappeared into the fog.

I loved YDK and have no desire to start AALLLL OVER with a new doc, who may or may not make me crazy. I need someone who is NOT with the Mayo (and therefore is not influenced by any preconceived opinions written into my charts) and who is smart, well-trained, and insightful.

Don’t ask for much, do I?

😀

Welp. It’s almost time to run out the door. Or rather, drive out the door.

Gawdlmighty, another new doctor. Just what I need: explain myself, explain myself, and explain myself again…it’s a long, long waste of breath.

Sincerely, I do hope this guy is not just another workaday quack, who listens to you with half an ear, dispenses clichéd advice, and leaves you royally pissed off but no better off than when you started.

Welp…off my duff and awwwayyyyy!

 

Gotta Make a Plan….

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…for making a plan.

Yeah. What’s happening here is that enough of my marbles are rolling out my ears that I can barely remember my name, much less all the stuff that has to be done — bills paid, workmen wrangled, vets visited, groceries bought, car maintained…on and on and on.

It’s getting harder and harder to remember — and handle — all the sh!t that has to be done: each day, each week, each month, each year.

Just now the AC Dude showed up at the front door. (Are you kidding, Dude? It’s freakin’ SUNDAY!) I had called a week or so ago to bellyache about the circular spinning attic vent, which was making an annoying noise — right over my bedroom — in the steady wind we were having.

Helle’s Belles! I’d forgotten why I called him. And he couldn’t find any problem with the gadget.

So whatever it was, it ain’t fixed now. Unless it fixed itself.

And here I am on the edge of the pool, with my tingling feet in the cool (not cold!) water.

No. The water is not anything like cool enough to be called “cold,” this being April in lovely uptown Arizona. But still…it’s cool enough to soothe the crazy-making tingling of peripheral neuropathy, my latest fine ailment. Instead of pounding my buzzing fingers on this keyboard, I should have the hands dangling in that water, too.

Fact is, the water is almost warm enough to swim in. Not quite, though. It’s still cool enough to soothe the bzzzzzz in the feet. Which is a godsend.

So…what next?

What next is: GOTTA MAKE A PLAN. And that plan has to cover and cope with all the annoying ditz of daily life here at the Funny Farm, plus managing hired help, wrangling doctors’ appointments, dealing with the Mayo Clinic and its ilk, driving from proverbial pillar to legendary post. Ugh, how I hate all this stuff…under the best of circumstances I’m not fond of running around the Valley and wrestling various tasks. But the way I feel now: ohhhh gawd, just leave me alone!

Realized what i need is a spiral-bound notebook or calendar that can record all this fooling around. That would be easier than trying to keep up with whiteboard notes.