My son will soon be over here to drag me over to the (hateful!!) physical therapy studio. Ohhhh gawd how could I do without that place and its mindless routines?
Said routines do nothing to help the spavined hip and back. What helps, apparently, is Time and the River Flowing. And walking, walking, walking, walking…
Trotted up to the northside shopping center this afternoon. A beautiful afternoon, we might add. Enjoyed schmoozing with the employees. Eyeballing the weirdos who live in the slum apartment complexes across the road. Strolling around the rest of the mall. Headed back to the Funny Farm…
On the way, passed by the Ole Guy’s house.
The Ole Guy was a retired gentleman who lived in a corner house just to the northwest of our part of the ‘Hood. And he was on in years: I’d guess he was in his late 70s or mid-80s.
SDXB and I would march around the neighborhood every morning, by way of exercise. And generally he would be out puttering in his yard when we passed by. WHAT a nice man!!
His main concern, as the weeks and months passed, was for his wife. He felt she was no longer able to stay in the house unassisted. Wanted to put her in a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie called the Beatitudes.
She was having none o’ that!!
The quarrel…uhm, discussion…went on for months.
We would see him every day; say hello as we passed; get the current neighborhood and family gossip.
But..yea verily. One day he was no longer there. The only way he could get her locked up was to lock himself up with her, o’course. And so when the time came, they both disappeared from our parts.
Much missed, we might add.
Dunno who lives there now: one never sees them outside
Ruby the Corgi and I are outside in front just now…as befits old folks, I guess? Ruby is telling every passer-by how the proverbial cow ate the proverbial cabbage. I am…umh…loafing
And waiting for my son to show up and tote me off to the endlessly annoying physical therapy gym.
My gawd, how I hate that place. Its exercising hassle truly IS the biggest waste of time I can imagine, other than solving algebra problems for your ninth-grade math class….
So this will blow away the evening, a pretty evening when Ruby and I should be strolling from one end of the ‘Hood to the other.
One night I got pissed off with the frustration and the time wastage and sneaked out the door. Took off down the road on foot.
M’hijito had gone home, I think (or somewhere), to wait out the time with less boredom.
He was mightily annoyed when he showed up there to collect me and discovered I’d escaped.
😀
So now he won’t leave. He brings something to read and wastes his own goddamn evening sitting there while nothing useful is being done to me.
Make it stop, God!
Okay okay…sooner or later He will. But…wouldn’t it be nice if that “sooner or later” time could pass without endless annoyance?
😀
Hmmm… A neighbor’s fire alarm seems to be on the fritz. It’s going quack!….quack!….quack!….
Ah…apparently it either ran out of juice or somebody came along and shut it off.
Hmmm… Speaking of front yards in the neighborhood, we could so with a li’l maintenance here at the Funny Farm. Couple of plants need some serious pruning. And a spot where another shrub died could be cleared out and replanted with something new and classy.
Well…we can pounce poor old Gerardo with that. Get him to work on it before the weather is too hot for working.
Hm,….quack! quack! quack!
Dammit! The defunct fire alarm was not. Defunct, that is. It’s back to quacking…and quacking…and quacking.
Uh oh. Here’s the Kid. Sooo…bye!
Gosh, I hope I’ll be able to hang onto this place until then. Really, that only needs to be another eight or ten years. As we scribble, Zillow claims this place is worth about five times what I paid for it. My first house here is supposedly worth some four times more than I paid…and it’s almost two blocks closer to the spectacularly noisy Main Drag West.