I hope the new owners will be happy there. I hope I never have to see that condo again. I almost left them my phone number—I had it on a card, in my hand. I saw the son notice the card. Something held me back. My desire to be helpful warred with my desire to be done with the whole thing. Just a bad dream. It never happened.Meanwhile, the money is in the bank, my mother is waiting for the end of the world at the assisted living place, the spacebar on my keyboard is sticky, and I need to figure out how to live in the present. Same old.
I went for a walk in a rustic sprawling nature park with Bravadita. She's an unemployed cranky cancer survivor and I'm waiting for my mother to die so my life can begin. You can imagine how our conversations went as we plodded along dusty trails under hot sun. She complained about her roommate. I complained about my mother. Did we figure anything out? Pretty much, life sucks and then you die.
Yesterday evening I pulled all my scrap lumber out from behind my bedroom door. You might wonder why I have lumber in my bedroom. You mean, you don't? Well, I build stuff sometimes. Over the years, I've built a couch. I built some tables. I built some shelves. I built my cat a window seat so he could look out the bathroom window. That window seat fell down a few weeks ago. Hey, I said I build things, I didn't say I was a good carpenter. Whenever I build stuff, I understand why a former carpenter boyfriend was so angry all the time.
A few days ago, I built a new window seat for the cat. Compared to the old window seat, this arrangement is sleek and elegant. Just unpainted wood that I can take apart and recycle when we move out of the Love Shack. The cat seemed pretty happy to have his perch back. I felt good that I used some of my scrap lumber. Reuse, recycle.
So now I'm looking at the random piles of mdf, plywood scraps, 1 x 2s, a few 4-foot shelves, and one solitary 8-foot 2 x 4, all stacked around my living room. I'm amazed I was able to fit this much wood behind my bedroom door. My brother is supposed to come over today and haul it away. I'm not sure where he plans to take it. I sort of don't want to know. I just called him to remind him of the plan. He was watching TV. I'm skeptical he will feel like motivating in this heat.
I found some old paintings I did in 2001. I felt bleak and unhappy when I looked at them, so I covered them with white primer. I will give the boards away to some aspiring artist, along with some fancy paper, Bristol board, acrylic paint, and miscellaneous art supplies. I'm letting go of the past to make room for the future. Tra la la.
My sister visited Portland for 11 days. She stayed with me in the Love Shack. It was an experiment to see if we could possibly stand to be roommates when we are old. Unfortunately, Portland was sweltering under a heat wave, and I have no air conditioning, only a ceiling fan to stir up the hot air. She wilts in the heat. We spent a couple days at the mall, walking around looking at stuff. I like the heat, mostly, although 107° F was pretty warm, even for me.
I'm sure my sister won't move to Tucson to live with me when we are in our 80s. It's unlikely I'll be willing to move to anyplace that gets snow and ice in winter. Seems like Portugal might be a good compromise.
My sister helped me organize some of the stuff in my apartment. Under cover of darkness, we dragged out to the curb a heavy coffee table (yes, that I had built) that was taking up space under a table in my bedroom (so much stuff in my bedroom!). The coffee table was dark green, with wheels, and a built-in fish pond, I kid you not. Yep, a fish pond. Or you could plant succulents in it, very versatile. I was anxious that the thing would remain unclaimed for days and I would have to pay to have it hauled away. Happily, the table was gone early the next day. Now I know my curb is a black hole into which I can jettison other items I don't want. Very handy, living on the busiest bus route in the city.
The air is smoke-filled today because of wildfires burning in the state. Hot air and smoke is not good, but neither is 40 inches of rain and 130 mph winds. I'm feeling for the Texas gulf coast right now.
During the heat, I've had a problem with flies, not regular house flies, but particularly big, slow, noisy, intrusive flies called cluster flies, so-called because they congregate in clusters. I don't see them clustering, except after they are dead, shot out of the air with an alcohol mist. So cool and refreshing. Cluster flies (or any flies, or ants or spiders) don't care much for being sprayed with alcohol. Every time I spray a huge fly and watch it die in the bathtub, I feel a bit of my residual good karma peeling away. No doubt I will reincarnate as a cluster fly.
Only blogbots visit my blog these days. And my sister. And Bravadita. My blog heyday is past: my viewership is bumping along the bottom. I've lost the focus. I'm in waiting mode. I can only complain about being in waiting mode for so long. And nobody cares anyway. The days are punctuated with blips of energy: selling the condo, hosting my sister, seeing the eclipse. I dream of moving to the desert, as if I will be a different person after I move. I've done enough geographicals to know that wherever I go, there I am. I take all my quirks and foibles with me.
My new philosophy is to pare my life to the bone. Simplify everything. Discard irrelevance—furniture, dishes, books, art, clothing, thoughts, feelings. My future happiness lies in taking action. Don't think much, don't feel anything, just take action. Action is how change happens. I can't think my way out of life. I can't think my way to success—clearly, or I would have done it by now. No, thinking is highly overrated. And who needs feelings, they just get in the way. Feelings just block me from taking action. I'm jettisoning all my human weakness to emulate robothood. We'll see how that goes. It got the lumber out of my bedroom, so maybe it's starting to work. I'll keep you posted, Blogbots.
