Elder Challenges

I love a good rant. I'm seeing a few of my blogbuds rant admirably in the last few days so thought to join them. We should have an annual award for the best one of the year.

First of all Home Care Health Assistance.

I'm at the stage where I need this. Not for everything. Maybe a couple of hours a week. It's a vast warren of web-links to get to the mechanics of doing this. Finally I get to the bottom line, and it's call a phone number. Why not put the effin number at the beginning of the pages of meaningless drivel, you bureaucratic morons?

So I call. But it's Covid Time, so I leave a message outlining my situation. I get a call a few days later. The nurse/helper/clerk asks a lot of questions, mainly focused on my body. Can I brush my hair, can I wash my hair, can I brush my teeth, how is my personal hygiene overall. I explain: I have seating to assist me everywhere: shower seat, sink seat, helpful bars. But the problem is, sez I, I can't stand for long periods so I need help with floors, sheet changing, dishes now and again, stove cleaning, fridge, my laundry. General tidying like dusting. Well then, sez she, we can't help you. What, sez I? I have mobility challenges! You're still maintaining personal hygiene, sez she, so that means you're fine. So, sez I, if I tell you I'm a filthy, flea-ridden encrusted old wreck I would qualify for some home care? Well, yes. So you'd rather spend several thousand dollars putting me in an assisted living
home than shell out a couple of hundred dollars a month to assist me to live on my own? Yes, that's right, by the way you sound very young, how old did you say you were? I'll be 77 in August, sez I. You sound so much younger! (Translation: you're articulate, old people are usually senile and believe my rubbish answers.). Needless to say, for you know me well, I am not resting quietly and going away.

Secondly Toyota. Yes again.

My car is wobbling. There's only 20Km on her so fairly new. I had the tire people check to make sure it wasn't the tires. They said it's brakes. She was left out in all sorts of weather for weeks (months?) on end, rust probably. Thank you Covid. I phoned my dealer. Appointment for August 31. What? sez I have an unsafe vehicle, under warranty, I'm supposed to lurch around the city for another 5 weeks? You could bring her in at 7.30 a.m. and wait and see if we have any gaps or cancellations. Oh, sez I, pack a lunch, bring a couple of books, my trusty George (my cane), and wait all day to see if you have the good grace to serve me at some point or not? With my mask on and my sanitizer spraying everything? And to keep coming back every day haunting the place until I get lucky enough to get my crippled car seen to? I didn't pull the age and mobility card.

Yeah, privileged to have these problems, but seriously? I'm not built for these battles anymore. Does life get easier? No, it gets more fraught with absolute effin moronic stupidity.

Once upon a time, in a car dealership far, far, away….

So it’s like this.

I’m at the Toyota Dealership to get the winter tires on – a huge joke as it’s been warmer than South Carolina here. Seriously. Every bit of good weather on the planet earth has been tucked away in our corner of Newfoundland, for like months now. We go around grinning at each other, exchanging daily reports of the weather elsewhere: did you hear about Roscommon, under two feet of snow? Arf-Arf. And Ontario ? My God, 30 below. Snorfle, snorfle. And now it’s hotter than Florida here, snort, guffaw. Guys are out running in SHORTS here.

So I mention a funny noise coming from the car to the service guy. A noise I enjoyed a lot as my little Toyota - Strawbella - makes out like she’s a big hairy Jeep. But knowing cops and their sensitivity to this kind of thing, I thought I’d better get it checked.

Oh, exhaust pipe and gaskets and bolties, oh my? OK I tell him, go ahead with the extra work.

Then I’m paged again.

Oh, we don’t like the look of your brake pads at all, actually you don’t have brake pads to look at? Well, l think, with over 130,000k on her, baby should have herself a new pair of shoes. OK, I tell him, go ahead.

This all takes hours. I read, I knit, I stretch, I scratch myself, I play with lipstick in the bathroom, I drink some miserable masquerade of faux java and frown at the Timbits ™ in the nice glass container. I feel like a loser. Those with lives are taking the courtesy shuffle to all sorts of destinations around the city. Me, with no life, I’ve nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. Just wait around 4 hours longer than I’d planned for my car to emerge.

Now the waiting room is down to 2 losers. Me and a woman of my age who looks oddly familiar. It comes to me. She looks amazingly like my dear treasured friend who recently died. Only 30 years younger.

I put down the book and say, in the manner in which all Newfoundlanders are speaking in this yucking it up way these days: Sunscreen weather, ha?

She chortles obligingly and says, my god where are you from?

Cork, I say, astonished – and so are you?

Yes, she sez, from East Cork originally.

Go on! sez I, me too! and where did you go to school?

St. Al’s, sez she.

I faint dead away.

Two Old Girls from the same Cork, Ireland, Secondary School, in a Toyota dealership waiting room. In St. John’s, Newfoundland.

And yes, we’re getting together for lunch soon.

You can’t make this stuff up!