The chronic malcontent comes clean

Tonight, I'm listening to old Monkee songs, feeling old, decrepit, and irrelevant (pirouette down palsied paths with pennies for the vendor ... really? Sounds like something my nine-year-old self wrote in secret journals.) I admit, silly as they are, the old songs are comforting to me. I turned 60 this week. I knew I was old, but now it's official. I just don't understand how on the inside I feel like I'm still twelve.

I guess there's a presidential election going on? What's that all about. I feel like I'm living in some weird parallel universe, where up is down, and mean is nice ... all I can say is, I hope my missing socks are around here somewhere. All these weird looking-glass people have some 'splainin' to do. I'd complain, but I'm afraid to open my mouth and let people know I'm a bleeding heart liberal, for fear I'll be run over by a gun-slinging, mud-throwing, SUV-driving maniac. Oh, hey, no offense to SUV drivers, jeez, what am I thinking. It's so hard to figure out what to say and what not to say these days, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

I'm glad I'm not a politician in today's political minefield. Imagine trying to thread the needles that seem to keep popping up out of the haystack of complaints, hacks, innuendos, and lies. I'm glad I'm not a politician, but in a weird way, I confess I'm glad I lived to see this circus, just to say I did. Kind of like experiencing other 100-year events like the Columbus Day storm and the Northridge earthquake. I can say with some awe, I was there.

I voted, just so you know. I always vote. It's so easy to vote by mail in Oregon, there's really no excuse for not voting. The voter's guide appears in my mailbox, and a few days, my ballot follows. I fill it out enthusiastically with a bold black ballpoint pen, because there are no wrong answers on this test, there are just my answers. I love vote-by-mail, but even if I had to stand in line at a polling place and wait my turn to punch dinky holes in a piece of paper with a stylus, I would still do it. It's all part of my American experience.

Now I'm listening to old Bowie songs from Heathen (2002). Funny, I'm starting to feel more grown-up and sophisticated. Hmmm.

I don't discuss politics with many people. I carefully tiptoe around the topic until I'm pretty sure we are on the same page. I don't want to make anyone feel bad. But if I'm feeling particularly frisky, I might say something like, yeah, I can't wait until we have truly open borders, one global nation! Come on down, all you tired and poor! and then cackle as my lunch partner's eyes bug out of her head. I don't get invited out much.

I don't understand why people dislike Secretary Clinton. Maybe they really like her but are too shy to admit it. Maybe they just say they dislike her because that seems to be the popular position, the way a horde of third-graders coalesce in a mob to bully the hapless nerd of the day. I don't care what they say, I like HRC. All that lack of transparency, all that sneakiness, in a man would be considered an asset. Am I right? If she were a man, they would call it strategic thinking. Talk about threading an impossible needle. Well, I am pretty sure that Mrs. Clinton will put her strategic skills to good use on behalf of the nation. She may not always explain what she's doing, but that's okay with me ... sort of like when my mother didn't always explain to us kids why she was so pissed off all the time, but I had no doubt that behind the scenes, some serious stuff was going on that the grownups were handling. Go back to bed, scram!

Speaking of my mother, she's still slowly circling the drain in la la land, muddling through from day to day, propped up by cigarettes, TV dinners, and frozen cherry pie. I know this because I'm the one who fetches and carries. Every few days, I buy an odd assortment of groceries. One banana, a round of red jello, two cartons of vanilla flavored rice milk, a bagful of generic cheerios, two mushrooms, four chocolate muffins, and a carton of the cheapest cigarettes on the market. I am looking forward to the day I turn 85; mark my words, on that day, I'm throwing out the food plan. I don't care if it cuts five years off my life span, I don't care if I get fat as a brick house. I'm going to plunge my face into a gallon of ice cream and slurp until I put myself into a coma.

Meanwhile, to all twelve of you die-hard fans, thanks for sticking by me, even though I hardly blog anymore. I'm hanging on by a thin thread (but aren't we all, really). The good news (I hope it's good news): I finally finished my first book. Next week I'll be entering the brave new world of print-on-demand (can we say vanity press?). I won't disclose the particulars because you probably aren't in my target market, but I hope you'll cross your fingers once or twice on my behalf. Maybe that ship that has been hanging offshore for 60 years will finally mosey up to the dock.

How to wash your mom's mini-blinds

A few weeks ago, Mom told me she wanted her mini-blinds cleaned. In her 3-bedroom condo, she has three medium-sized blinds (like 4 to 5 feet wide), four dinky blinds about a foot and a half wide, and one monster blind about 7 feet wide on the living room window. I called around and found out to have someone fetch, clean, and deliver would cost $3.50 a foot plus a $60 delivery charge. If I took them down and brought them to the blind place myself, the cost would be $2.50 a foot. I thought, maybe I can clean the blinds myself. How hard can it be to clean mini-blinds?

I had a one-day window: no papers to edit and good weather. I assembled my gear: pretty much the same stuff I would use to wash my car, were I so inclined, which I'm not. Bucket, ragmop glove thingie, and an old piece of chamois to soak up the water. I used a cleaning solution consisting of a dollop of rubbing alcohol, a dollop of ammonia, a bit of dish soap, mixed into water. The only other tool I needed was a hose with a sprayer device on the end. I was set.

Mom abandoned her cereal bowl to watch.

I started with two small blinds to see if this was actually something I could do. The condo has two narrow windows on either side of the fireplace. I chose the blind on the left, figuring I'd work my way from left to right. On a previous visit, I had figured out how to release the blinds from the wall: lift the metal tabs at each end that hold the blind in place. I pulled the strings to shorten the blind as much as possible, pulled the blind out of the sockets, and carried it outside to the patio. I awkwardly used my right hand to let the cord loose to stretch the blind to its full length. Then I turned the stick gizmo to get the slats to lay down flat and spread the blind on the patio, trying not to step on it.

“Go finish your breakfast,” I told Mom, who was hovering in the doorway. I could tell I was a huge disruption in her routine. She disappeared.

Next, I sprayed the blind with the hose. So far, so good. I soaked my ragmop mitt with soapy water and rubbed the slats. When I finished mopping the blind, I sprayed it down with the hose. I was getting pretty wet by this point, but the sunshine was warm and bright. I tucked my baggy plaid pants into my socks to keep them from dragging on the wet patio and turned the blind over. I soaped up the other side, sprayed it down. I lifted the blind in my left hand and sprayed it down with my right. Then I stood there wondering what to do next.

My mother's patio is enclosed in a six-foot tall wooden fence. I thought, hey, maybe I can hang the blinds on the top of the fence. That actually worked, sort of. I balanced the top of the blind precariously on the top rail of the fence and attempted to squeegee the excess water off with the chamois. That worked not at all, so I left the blind to air dry, hanging atop the fence. I started in on the next blind. When two blinds were hanging drying in the sun, I went inside and washed the windows.

When I went inside, my mother was nowhere to be seen. I went along the hall, thinking I'd better get the blind out of the bedroom before she took her afternoon nap. I found her in her little office, playing Castle Camelot.

“I want to get the blind out of your bedroom,” I said. She continued to stare intently at the screen, which was making bleeping blooping noises as she clicked on cards. The soldiers on the castle wall raised their swords and shouted, Hey! I could tell she hadn't heard me. I repeated myself, a bit more loudly. She jerked up out of her chair in surprise, as if she had forgotten I was in her house.

I got the bedroom blind down and went back outside to continue with the narrow blinds. Pretty soon, the first set of two seemed marginally dry, at least, they were no longer dripping, so I brought them into the living room and hung them back up. Not bad.

I headed down the hall to her office. It was empty and her bedroom door was closed. Naptime. I brought the 4-foot blinds from the office and the spare bedroom out to the patio. They were heavier, harder to manage, harder to avoid stepping on. The office blind was filthy with 10 years of cigarette smoke, permanently stained yellow. Some of it came off, not all, leaving the slats tinted a pale grimy yellow.

Finally, I was ready to do the living room blind. I should have gone for the step ladder, but I thought, hey, her couch is right here, surely I can use that to reach the ends of the blinds? I stepped onto a cushion and almost fell over the end onto a side table. The cushions were so soft my foot went all the way down to the frame of the couch. I had to stand on the hard back of her 1980s flowered sofa to reach the two ends of the blind, leaning against the window for support. Seven feet of aluminum blind is heavy and awkward. What could possibly go wrong?

Luckily, I succeeded in getting the monster blind down and out the back door without breaking anything. The huge blind took up most of the patio. I sprayed it with the hose and scrubbed it down as best I could, hoping that there wouldn't be knee marks to show where I knelt on the blind to reach all the parts.

I won't bore you with the details of how long it took me to re-hang that 7-foot blind or how I almost fell through the plate glass window I had just finished cleaning. I eventually triumphed, I didn't fall and cut myself into shreds, and now my mother's blinds are as clean as they will likely ever be, and her windows are spotless (on the inside, at least). I accomplished my task.

I cleaned everything up and left her napping.

A few days later she said, “We should get your brother to take down that living room blind and clean it.” She didn't realize I'd managed to clean that big blind. When I modestly claimed victory, she was suitably impressed. My reward was a little bit of cash (“for gas money”) and a grocery list for things to buy at Winco. There you go. The reward for doing service is the opportunity to do more service.

I'm trying to enjoy these days, because I know they are limited. I think I will look back on this time as the golden months (hopefully maybe years) when my mother was still mostly managing to live her own life, her own way, with a little help from her kids and friends. I'd want the same for me, when my turn comes. Wouldn't you?