Archive for the ‘A Musing’ Category
Be it Ever so Jumbled — er, Humble
We’re still asked – at least a couple of times a day – why we moved to Aridzona. 
And have to explain away that look of askance when the questioners learn we’ve moved here from San Diego.
This move from paradisiacal Pacific Beach cooled by a breeze that’s kissed some 7,000 miles of ocean to the middle of Aridzona was seeded years ago when Bev began a campaign to move close to daughter and grandkids.
I saw no reason to leave the Golden State and the best climate in the galaxy until …
While delivering Meals on Wheels for more than nine years (woulda got my 10-year pin this summer), I watched a couple of dozen people struggle mightily to age in their homes. They were engaging and smiling when I first knocked on their door. Gradually, they would take a bit longer to answer, the house became darker and, soon after, strangers (caregivers — usually in hospital scrubs) would take the meal from me and the man of the house, or the woman, or both might wave from a chair as they oozed too quickly into a drooling sleeping lump. Instead of being cared for in a bright, active aging-assistance community by strangers, they were being cared for in their rotting residence by a series of strangers.
I didn’t want that to happen to me.
Memories and mental images also were recalled of trauma experienced by mentaly slipping family members when they were uprooted from their homes and transported to – “tossed into” is a more accurate description – senior “facilities.”
I didn’t want that to happen to me.
Late last year, Bev had spinal surgery to alleviate (and hopefully repair) nerve damage in her right arm and hand. While she was in hospital, I realized I probably cannot live alone for any length of time. When she came home and I had to minister to her after surgery. I also realized I couldn’t maintain that level of care if she needed it for any length of time.
So the decision was made to make a move. If we were going to move into what now is called an “independent living” community, we might as well look at moving in Bev’s direction – to Aridzona.
During our Christmas visit to the Grand Canyon State with the grandkids last year, I asked everyone – almost stopped people on the street — what they liked and didn’t like about the place. Without hesitation, they all pointed out that there are four months of hell – The Summer Heat. The rest of the year is great.
We knew from visiting that everything here is cheaper than in California — gasoline, health insurance, auto insurance, groceries, taxes, housing, everything.
One day in the shower, I looked down at one of my hands. It was the hand of an old man. I also realized that, should Bev fall, I could no longer pick her up. And, if I fell, she sure as heck couldn’t pick me up.
Friends and family concerned that we “weren’t ready” for an old-farts’ facility urged us to buy a condo before hurling ourselves pell mell into a senior citizens’ complex. That didn’t solve our picking-each-other-up dilemma. If we moved into a condo, we’d still have face a move into a senior citizens’ community. And when would we be “ready.”
We came to realize that folks move into such facilities either too early or too late. In our case, it was too early. BUT, we made our own decision..
And it was time.
–30–
Driving With ‘Zonies
It took a couple of months after moving to Aridzona, but we finally found something with which all Grand Canyon Staters seem to agree, without realizing they’re talking about themselves:
Aridzona Drivers Are Idiots
This is something Californians have known for decades because of the annual ‘Zonies infestation from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
One example: Drivers here never look to the side when changing lanes or pulling out of a side street or parking lot or … you get the idea.
This (mal)practice manifested itself publicly a few weeks ago when a self-driven Uber vehicle was involved in a traffic accident in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. The accident occurred because the human driver behind the wheel of the other vehicle didn’t yield the right of way.
We should have realized this reality when we got our Aridzona drivers’ licenses. I’m 82 and my spouse just turned 75. We drove up to the MVD — Motor Vehicle Department here – showed them our California drivers’ licenses and our passports, had our pictures taken, paid them $20 ($10 for each of us) and got our new drivers’ licenses good for the next five years.
That was it. And the Phoenix metroplex wound up with a couple more old farts who weren’t even asked if they knew what side of the road to drive on or had their vision checked.
So we’re now ‘Zonies officially but you’ll recognize us because we still look to the side before entering an intersection or changing lanes or coming out of a parking lot or … well you get the idea.
— 30 —
While “Do Unto Others” …
. . . butters the skids that silkens society, the 11th Commandment (which was among the five commandments lost when, according to Mel Brooks, Moses dropped the third tablet coming down the mountain), is much more important:
Thou shalt not get in the way
— especially in department store doorways, single-lane roads, viewpoints established to take panoramic scenic take-home pictures…and anywhere else.
The Electoral College Works . . .
.. the way it’s supposed to when you consider the following statistics brought to light by a San Diego Union-Tribune letter to the editor.
According to the writer, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 4.2 million votes in California. But her popular-vote margin nationally was only 2.7 million, which means Donald beat Hillary by 1.5 million votes in the rest of the country.
Without taking any side, it appears the Electoral College did what it was designed to do: prevent one or more factions or groups or states from determining the will of the entire nation.
It Used to be Lynch Mobs . . .
. . . solved some of our problems.
These days, we just hold elections.
My wife drives like . . .
. . . people should drive.
The problem is, people don’t drive like they should.
Swimming Against the Tide . . .
. . . or running in sand is wearying at the best of times.
But it gets painful when Kismet, the stars, fate and its fickle finger, aura, vibes, luck, serendipity, the crumbling cookie, circumstance, fortune, karma and the gods line up against you.
They all turned on us recently when hackers smacked everybody in my email address book with a request for $2,000 to bail me out of a jam in the Philippines. It happened the morning we motored over the mountains into the desert enroute to visit the grandkids. Bev checked her phone messages during our gas stop in Yuma and had a text message from son Michael informing us of the breach. On arrival in Phoenix, I immediately changed my email password but was unable to notify everybody of the scam because I couldn’t access my address book from our kids’ computer.
Upon returning home Monday afternoon, I learned I no longer had an address book. There were about a dozen addresses left, including my wife’s. She did not receive the fraudulent Philippines plea. So we surmised that the address for each person contacted was chewed up and spat into cyberspace.
I’m rebuilding my address list and copying it onto a thumb drive as redundancy dictates.
At the same time, the rotted floor of our outdoor wooden paint-and-gardening-stuff storage cabinet beside the garage finally gave way and tumbled against a wooden fence dividing our yard from our neighbor’s. We trundled off to Home Depot to pick up a plastic replacement that required assembly.
While I was trying to catch-up on some writing chores, our printer pooped out so it was it was off to Staples. We found the latest version of our four-in-one that just died. The rest of the day was eaten up getting it installed and running on all three desktops and then catching up our print chores.
The next day was devoted to putting together the plastic storage shed like a big Lego puzzle and tucking it tightly against a concrete-block wall at the rear of the property between the garage and lot-line fence.
Since mishaps and miracles seem to run in threes, it appeared we had traversed the hump.
Until Saturday morning. The sewer backed up. Despite the threat and trauma, we were fortunate on a few counts. One, only the toilet and drain in my shower at the rear of the house was backing up. Two, the back-up was mainly water from the washer and Bev’s shower – she was taking a shower while doing the laundry. Three, I happened to be in the bathroom in time to see the water pouring over the shower-floor ledge so I hollered at Bev to stop her shower and turn off the washer. We grabbed all the towels within reach to soak up the water at my bathroom door so it wouldn’t cascade out onto the carpet in our back bedroom, which would have magnified a calamity into a catastrophe requiring knocking heads with insurance adjusters.
I pounded the plunger on the shower drain for five or 10 minutes. Nothing happened. So we called our friendly drain service. Less than five minutes later, we heard a series of loud pops and gurgles as the water plopped down the drain. When the drain cleaners arrived, he did a quick survey and we all agreed where the problem was. He and his helper screwed out the driveway plug on the line draining into the city sewer line in the alley and screwed out the plug in the side of the house that accesses the shower line. Extracting the plugs took some sweat and swearing because both had been wrenched tightly into place since we remodeled the house in 1987. Anyhow, the drain was cleaned and cleared and has been working magnificently.
After writing out the check to the plumbers, I figured that was it.
Until I got back to putting stuff back into the storage shed and reinforcing the concrete-block wall supporting it. The six-foot shed was about a foot taller than the existing wall so I gathered up a half-dozen spare concrete blocks hanging around the yard under potted plants and things like that to shove them atop the fence to hide the shed. It was during one of these shoves that I tweaked me back. It was just a tick at the time but that was Saturday. On Monday, I couldn’t even climb into my car. If I had got in, I would never have got out unless someone called 911 and they came with the Jaws of Life.
Just recounting all this is painful but, at the same time, it’s a bit cathartic.
As Father’s Day Approaches …
. . . the thought surfaces that one’s life is made whole by knowing one’s own.
Did you know your dad? And did you get to know your sister? How about your son?
There’s a wholeness and wholesomeness about recalling the times when they might have shared their favorite song or their proudest moment.
For many, there’s a feeling of sadness in the stew of sentiment that lingers long after family members are gone that’s seasoned with the salt of guilt for not taking the time to get to know them mixed with a pinch of bitterness and anger for not being given the opportunity to do so.
At My Age …
. . . it’s easy to tell when I’m awake:
I’m either hungry or have to go to the bathroom.
Cars Should be Banned Because . . .
… we’ve been told tobacco is bad for us and it’s now illegal to smoke in public buildings and most stores/saloons/restaurants/etc., the World Health Organization proclaimed recently that processed meats can cause cancer and a group of food distributors has announced already it no longer will handle them, some folks want to boycott McDonalds because they blame its food for making kids fat, and there’s a clamor to outlaw guns because they kill people, yet cars kill more people than each of the above and are acknowledged culprits in carbon-related climate warming but suggesting they be junked is met with a patronizing what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about attitude even while many households have at least two of them.
–– Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features 