Funny about Money

LOL! As dawn cracks, WordPress is bloody well NOT ABOUT to let me into Funny about Money. The system is set up to recognize me, and so I haven’t had to memorize the password…and I’ll be damned if I can find a clue to it. Usually I tape the things to the computer’s case, but this one…apparently not.

/eyeroll/  /exclamation point/

Well. For unknown reasons, the thing changed its mind. NOOOO idea why, but now it has let me in.  So let us scribble as fast as we can scribble, because for all we know this may be the world’s last FaM post.

Sick as a dawg. My son is also too sick to drag me out to the Mayo, wherein reside our quacks. It looks suspiciously like we are, coincidentally, both enjoying the Family Disease — diabetes. He’s much sicker than I am, for the nonce, though presumably this thing will also get worse for me, since it has started back up later.

Before there was such a thing as insulin, relatives of my mother croaked over from this disease. That’s how she got to California: the New York grandparents, who had her custody, died or became too overwhelmed to care for a kid, so she was shipped off to the famously roguish California relatives.

I expect M’hijito and I will survive it, at least for a few years, but only by dint of jabbing ourselves with shots every time we turn around.

What fun, eh?

Being twice my son’s age, I personally am ready to shuffle off this mortal coil — although I would prefer to do so with a minimum of pain and suffering. That doesn’t look like a likely prospect…ohhhh well!

And speaking of x as y, it’s colder than a by-gawd out there. Well…for Arizona it is. 😀 A bone-chilling 52 degrees.

This morning I’ll have to trek around — on foot, through the cold, since those bastards at the Mayo Clinic have decommissioned my driver’s license and my son has confiscated my car — to try to find a nearby doc who can test me for diabetes, thereby confirming my suspicion. If I’m right, at least maybe they can offer some treatment to ease the crazy-making symptoms.

If not…well…  I’m 80 years old: past time to go. So I don’t expect I’ll object too much to whatever I have to do to accelerate that process.

Can you imagine being that superannuated? Who would guess I’d ever reach this ripe old age?!?

LOL! I don’t expect it’s that huge a surprise, though. Women in my family who survived childbirth and cancer have lived well into their 90s. In fact…I believe my great-grandmother and her strait-laced daughter (that one decidedly not my grandmother…) were both 98 when they died.

On the other hand, those two women lived on the side of a steep hill in Berkeley, California. To get to the grocery store or to the stop where the aunt caught the train to her job in San Francisco, they had to walk up that hill. So that meant they got steady, regular exercise almost every day.

We do have some hills I could perambulate — but they’re in the Phoenix Mountain Park. After a couple of hair-raising experiences with some very shady, very scary sh!theads out there, I will NOT go on those trails by myself anymore. Used to hike there almost every day, but now I just don’t feel safe up there alone. And…who do you know who wants to spend two hours a day driving to and hiking around the local mountain park with some old bat?

So Ruby and I walk around the neighborhood, which unfortunately is 100 percent on the flat. That’s better than nothing, I guess…but frankly, I doubt if it’s adding more than about 6 hours to my total lifespan.

***

rrrroooaaarrr rrrrr rrrr roooaarrr roar roar…

NOW what?

Hmmmm… Appears to be the merry song of a weed-whacker. Check out front: no sign of Gerardo and the boys.

What a racket! Not even eight in the morning…grrrrrr!

Oh well. Just be glad you don’t have to make your living running a weed-whacker, eh? In the cold. Just as the sun is rising.

Actually, SDXB used to spring to life at exactly that time: sunrise. But…it was back when he lived here in the ‘Hood. Now he’s out in Sun City — assuming he’s still living. When last heard from, he was on his last paws.

Google him…and you can’t find a mention of the guy. His relatives must have contrived to take any links to him off the Internet — one presumes so, because a search for his name used to bring up a whole slew of links. He was a multi-award-winning investigative reporter…so his name was all over the regional publications and even in some national ones.

Stupid stuff, eh?

Y’know, the houses here in the ‘Hood were built by the same developer who built out Sun City. And my parents took up residence in that balmy burg, after my father retired. That’s how I ended up in lovely Arizona: my father dragged me here a year before I graduated from high school and dropped me in the University of Arizona. He thought the idea of a whole community where kids were not allowed was the most brilliant concept ever designed by the human brain.

No. He did NOT like kids. Never did figure out how my mother managed to persuade him to let her have me. Whatever: no more urchins were allowed in that household.

Anyway: it’s almost weird how much these houses look like Sun City houses. The neighborhood itself, in its overall design, is different from S.C., but the dinky little houses are very much like the little slump-block shacks out there. Oh, waitaminit, though: we have actual garages here. In S.C., you got a one-car carport, and that was it. 

Because after all, what retired couple needs more than one car, eh? And what burglar would be bothered with ripping off old people, eh?

Actually, the burglars loved the carports. The idiot developer installed an opening to the attic in the ceiling over the carport. Very convenient! If you were a burglar, you’d come along after everyone had turned off their lights, climb up on the car’s roof, slide open the attic entrance, and climb on in. Once inside, you’d wend your way over the beams to the area of the living room or kitchen, saw a hole in the ceiling drywall, and drop down into the house!

And voilà! While the superannuated residents snoozed, you’d make yourself to home. And make off with all the money and jewelry you could find.

LOL! The flimsy, stupidly designed construction is one of about a jillion reasons you couldn’t pay me to live out there.

She said: living in a flimsy, stupidly designed house, eh?

Well…, the construction quality here is notably better. Houses are sturdily built. Garages have actual doors, things that you can close and lock. Alleys run behind the rows of houses, providing a place to put your garbage where the city can pick it up. Backyards are surrounded by six- to eight-foot concrete block walls, making it harder for the burglars to come in the back door. (In Sun City: no walls for the likes of you, chucklehead! If any fences exist, they’re low wire numbers designed to keep your Chihuahua in.)

We’re still in a tract of look-alike houses, but…at least they’re better built houses.

Welp…speaking of our garden spot, I’d better get off my duff and take the Hound for a walk, before it gets much later. And so…arf!! awayyy!