Funny about Money

So as the summer dawn cracked, it was off for the daily doggy-walk. The Human does not get far around the Funny Farm without having to take the Dawg for the morning perambulation around the Park. This morning — probably because it’s Sunday and most of the other humans do not have to go to work today — only eight dogs were taking up space over there.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Another reason for the paucity of human-and-dog teams was no doubt the weather: hot, swampy, next to intolerable. Just GAWDAWFUL out there!

July and especially August form the worst time of year here in the lovely low desert. It’s almost as humid as Saudi Arabia was, and in Ras Tanura we were right on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Here, the humidity wafts up from the Gulf of Mexico…a distance from Phoenix, but close enough to create a soggy atmosphere at this time of year.

As usual, the morons who can’t read signs posting the park’s rules (“DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH”) were letting their critters run loose. This meant we who are not fond of dog fights  had to walk past the park on the far side of the road — quite a nuisance because of the cars, the gravel surface, and the fenced dogs in their own yards going berserk as we pass.

Godlmighty, but I hate stupid people!

Anyway, we got around the park without serious incident, probably because it’s so hot and wet out there that few people want to leave their dogs out in the yards and fewer still want to stumble around in the park.

A house we have to walk past to get home  has a backyard fence that runs directly adjacent to the sidewalk. The morons who live there keep two huge, aggressive, LOUD dogs in that yard. These beasts, which apparently are left outside all the time, go freaking BATSH!T every…single…time we walk past. As usual, they went alarmingly berserk as we headed homeward.

Thank heavens for small favors: we don’t live next door to those idiots.

Our gay neighbor: friendly as usual. Effusively joyous over Ruby the Corgi. 😀  Why, I wonder, do gays favor older urban neighborhoods? We used to have several gay couples where we lived in the historic Encanto district. They would put on THE most amazing parties.

A block later, we finally reach the house: back home at 7:15, after an hour’s walk.

• Me: soaking wet
• Pool: hot
• Morning: Hot hot hot hot!

Jeez. What a place to live…

Sooo…. Having discovered that I apparently have a dire condition of Olde Age that is likely to render me a vegetable — or at best, insure that I can’t remember my name — I discovered STILL MORE:  It develops that a woo-woo product called inulin MAY help preserve brain function for those of us who have reached an age where we have holes in our head. It’s cheap and apparently it does no harm, even if it does no good. Actually, it appears the stuff may have some unpleasant side effects, but none of them are life-threatening or likely to put you in the hospital.

Tried to order the dope on Amazon, which carries it a-plenty. But I simply could not get through! Amazon would not take my name, it would not take my credit info, it WOULD NOT cooperate.

Soooo….

Sprouts, as you may know, carries vast shelves full of woo-woo alternative “medicines.” And lo! There’s a Sprouts just down the road from the Funny Farm.

Hop in the car, drive down there, and try to find the stuff.

No luck, of course.

Find a clerk. She appears to have no more functioning brain cells than I do…. But after several attempts to explain what I’m looking for, she finally grasps the message, and yes! She DOES find a whole plastic bottleful of the stuff.

Fly home. Bolt one of the gigantic pills down. Hope for the best.

Let’s see what it does. With any luck, it won’t make me sick (a lot of these types of woo-woo do exactly that). With a WHOLE lot more luck, maybe it will address the fast-growing cognitive failure.

As you may guess by this little flap, I am scared sh!tless of this latest ailment. Truly, truly I would rather die than end up in a nursing home. That isn’t living, after all. I know: I watched my father’s old age. And he did NOT have Alzheimer’s.

Neither, we might add, did any of the relatives on either side who lived long enough to get it…that we know of.

Problem is, we DON’T know much of what happened on my father’s side. His father apparently committed suicide (there’s a good probability that he was murdered). His mother, a Choctaw woman, apparently lived to a ripe age, but it’s unclear what kind of shape she was in at the end. Far as I can tell, none of her three sons lost their marbles in old age…but I don’t know enough about the cowhand brother to be sure of that.

My mother’s grandparents? Her paternal grandmother: diabetes. The grandfather: unknown.. Her mother: died of a reproductive cancer in early middle age. Her maternal grandparents? Grandmother lived into her 90s in high health; grandfather died in middle age of causes unknown to me. But…he was only 65 when he died, if online information is correct.

What that boils down to is…two of my grandparents died in middle age.

Presumably, if this probiotic woo-woo has any positive effect, it will be weeks before we can tell. But…it looks like the stuff is unlikely to do much harm, other than inducing diarrhea. We shall soon see….

What was I saying about it never staying hot & muggy in Arizona long enough to make you crazy?

Uh oh! Here come the white coats!

Apparently my marbles had slipped out my ears when I wrote that squib… It is so hot and so gooey out there that it indeed does feel just like Saudi Arabia. I can’t remember the weather here ever being this bad. And it’s only July: normally a hot and dry period. Yes, hot, but because of the dessication, not usually all that uncomfortable. Just now, at 8:25 in the morning, it’s overcast and 98 out there, with 20 percent humidity.

Twenty percent of the air is water? Eeek!  😀

Silliness aside, it really does look strangely grim out there.

***

Waiting for M’hijito to come pick me up. We’re off to the Mayo today, where I expect to be adjudged mentally incompetent, in the not a joke department.

Yes. My son has decided I’m non compos mentis, and he’s been dragging me out there for all sorts of pointless, fruitless, time-wasting meetings.

A day ago, I found myself sitting beside a doctor and being catechized on how to use an appointment calendar.

No joke! They give their brain-dead clients a stupid little calendar with dates, lines to enter reminders, and little squares to check off things you’ve somehow, miraculously remembered to do. This woman sat me down and guided me through every step of how to enter an appointment, and how to find an appointment, and how to check it off the list. Seriously. I had sit through a half-hour catechism on how to use a calendar.

I have a calendar in my office that keeps track of all appointments and to-do’s. A whiteboard on my office door that lists the current day’s to-do’s. And another whiteboard in the kitchen that lists things like workmen to call and grocery/household items to buy at the store. Extra reminders for the most urgent tasks appear on a pad on the refrigerator. Sorry: but I don’t think I need a fourth to-do list.

Explaining to her that I do not carry a purse in which to lug her marvelous notebook and that I am not about to start carrying a purse did not make so much as a tiny dent in the woman’s determination.

Jayzus! What a bore, and what a waste of time.

Today we go to a weekly time-wasting group where we sit there for an hour listening to brain-withered oldsters natter on about how they forgot where they put their shoes!

No joke. That is exactly what we heard in the last meeting.

What makes this even more annoying is that the Mayo is almost an hour’s drive from here. So the round trip blows away well over 90 minutes on the road…almost two hours wasted for the privilege of wasting an hour on the Mayo’s campus.

I’m finding this very frustrating.