Guilty of sitcom behavior

My chest hurts from sneezing and coughing. My nose itches and burns. Have I finally been felled by Covid-19? Thanks for asking. No, it's just allergies—a reaction to one specific allergen, to be precise: black mold. 

Last night I was wracked by rounds of violent sneezes while I sat in my TV-watching chair enjoying SNL. My symptoms calmed down overnight but bloomed again this morning while I made coffee. It seems clear that the allergen is in my kitchen and possibly in the living room, not in the bedroom. I've sprayed the cracks in the kitchen ceiling, I've sprayed the cupboards . . . where was the source of my misery?

Today between drips and coughs, I hunted through the kitchen with my spray bottle of bleach held before me like an automatic pistol. I thought I had sprayed every possible nook and cranny. And then I looked behind my raincoat. The entire wall behind my long vinyl raincoat was speckled with black mold. A-ha! I blasted the mold with my magic mixture of bleach and water. A few hours later, my nose is starting to calm down. Mission accomplished. Until the next time. 

That's a really long way to say, the Love Shack is a toxic waste dump and it's time for me to go.

Speaking of moving, I jettisoned more surplus wood today. Almost all my walls are denuded of shelves, and now the shelves have found new homes with people who think shelves are the answer to life's myriad organizational challenges. I know better. Shelves are the answer to nothing. The answer is to not have so much stuff to begin with. I wish I'd learned that before I spent so much time and money wallpapering my apartment with shelves. My rationale of "getting things up off the floor" echoes as hollowly as my sniffles bouncing off the empty walls of the Love Shack. If you build shelves, stuff will come to fill them. This is what I know. I pass this nugget of wisdom on to you. You know what to do.

Right. Buy more stuff and build more shelves. It's the American way, after all. Gotta keep that economy humming. 

After pondering the philosophy behind landfills and waste streams, I'm leaning toward keeping my bed. It's old, but it's still working perfectly fine, adequately performing the function that a bed performs. It's a low-key bed. I don't expect a lot from it. Compared to those fancy foam things that adjust to your movement and temperature, that ascend and descend when your bed partner decides you are making too much noise, my bed is a total Zen master. It makes no sense to give away my bed or send it to the dump when it is still doing its job. Besides, I'll just have to buy another bed when I get to wherever I'm going, and what if that new bed is louder or pricklier or more demanding? Plus, you know what happens if you buy a new bed—then you have to buy all new sheets, and a plush of ten pillows, and a duvet made of Egyptian cotton. Well, then you can kiss your credit rating goodbye—you have fallen down the rabbit hole at the online furniture store and we won't see you till next Christmas. Next thing you know, there's a truckload of furniture outside your door and some husky dude demanding your signature.

That won't be me. I don't care about mundane things like credit ratings. And I don't expect to have visitors ever again, so I don't care if my sheets and pillowcases don't match. 

Speaking of not caring, I told my sister this week that I wash my clothes in the tub while I'm taking a bath. She said she wouldn't tell anyone, like it was sketchy behavior best kept secret. Was I supposed to be embarrassed? What I see as intelligent efficiency she apparently sees as a social peccadillo. It would not be the first time I've done something to embarrass a member of my family. My father was a master at the embarrassed eye-roll. I'm used to it. I know my sister loves me, even if I do scrub my laundry and take a bath at the same time. It has taken a lifetime of shame and guilt to achieve the nirvana of not giving a rat's ass about what others think of me. Freedom from guilt and shame is even better than freedom from shelves crammed full of stuff I can't take with me, in this move to a new home, or in whatever life comes after. 

Saddled with the job

Google is so funny. Whenever I log into this blog, it sends me alerts to tell me that I'm signing into my account from a new device. As if to warn me I might be having an out-of-body experience. I'm sure it makes sense to Google. My confusion is near-constant when it comes to the Internet. I've had to abandon several Gmail accounts because I couldn't remember the password, and even though there are other ways to verify my identity, Google has decided it just can't take a chance. After I give up, it sends me an email to my "verification" email stating that it just protected me from an unauthorized log in. As if it expects a pat on the head. For protecting me from myself. Hmmm. Maybe that makes sense after all.

Everything is back to normal at the Love Shack, that is to say, all effed up in the usual way, moving along according to the moving plan. The kitchen table and chairs departed this week with a grateful Freecycler. I still don't know how she managed to fit all three pieces into her little SUV. Maybe those things are roomier than they appear. I have one more shelf to donate to the local reclaim store. After that, there's just the bed. The question I'm now facing: at what point does one let go of one's bed? I still haven't shaken off the residual trauma left from two days of no heat. The thought of discarding my bed is fraught.

Nevertheless, I'm starting to get a sense of the rhythm of letting go. I thought at first the best strategy would be to hang onto the small stuff to the end. However, I've discovered all the small stuff takes a long time to unscrew and dismantle and pack up and discard. The big stuff leaves an obvious vacancy in the space near the front door—visible and therefore impressive. The small stuff, though—I'm talking about the knicky-knacky things, the shelves, the shower curtain (and rings), the mirrors, the plants, and the pots on the back porch, and the car gear in the basement—all that stuff takes up a lot of emotional space. The best strategy, no debate, is to tackle the small stuff while you are waiting for Freecyclers to venture out in the rain and snow to pick up the big stuff. 

Therefore, my downsizing victory today was removing the shower rings from the shower curtain rod. It was more difficult than I expected. I already packed the curtain. I never take showers because of the vertigo. 

My other victory today was enduring a Zoom meeting with my siblings without losing my serenity. Our mission was brief: to state aloud that we were all in agreement that we are going to hire the probate lawyer and to make a list of questions I am to ask her next week. I am not sure how I ended up the the facilitator of this endeavor, considering I am not the executor named in the will. Somewhere over the past five years, I volunteered to be Mom's personal rep, and even though now she's dead and doesn't need me anymore, I'm still it.  

The reward for being of service is the opportunity to do more service. It's easier for everyone if there is a control freak in the bunch, one person to step up and take the reins while the others enjoy the relief of not being saddled with the job. Did I just mangle some metaphors? Who is wearing the saddle in this case? I guess it is me. Well, get on up and hold on tight, kidlets. You asked for it. Away we go. Yee-haw. 

Stuck on a cold hard rock

Life for me seems to consist of a series of delays. Clearly the Universe has its own timeline. After my cat died, I thought, okay, now I can move to a house share while I wait for my mother to die. Then Covid-19 came along, and I was like, no, probably not a good time to have a roommate. So I stayed in the Love Shack and began the process of downsizing—jettisoning books, scanning drawings, shredding journals, getting ready for the move I knew would be coming. Then my mother had to move from a nursing home to a foster care home. That was an ordeal for sure, but I learned moving during Covid can be done. Then three months later, Mom died, and I was like, okay, maybe now I can begin the final countdown toward a move to warmer climes. 

Then... winter. Just a little slice of the wintry mix, compared to some parts of the country. I feel stupid complaining, it's just a few inches of snow, followed by a bit of freezing rain. And a little more snow, and now another half-inch or so of freezing rain. It's a parfait of winter, a little something for everyone. The skiers, snowshoers, and sledders are happy, that's for sure. The snowboarders scud along the center of the street in their big black boots, heading for the park. The skiers and snowshoers maneuver along the sidewalk, balancing with their poles. 

Snow ploughs came through a few times, followed by gravel trucks. The main road is mostly clear. Drivers don't seem fazed as they merrily attempt to park on the piles of dirty snow on either side of the road.  However, the unthinkable happened on Friday: Bus service, MAX service, and streetcar service—in other words all public transit—was shut down across the entire Portland metro. Has that ever happened? Apparently not. This would not be a good time to be carless. 

Speaking of cars, I think I have one, somewhere. It's buried on a side street about two hundred yards away from home. I don't feel like risking my neck on treacherous pavement to go see if it has been shredded by a snow plough. 

Today I threw handfuls of birdseed out the front door and back door and watched as little birds came by for a snack. I love animals. I confess, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching videos of animals being rescued by kind humans (who always happen to have a video camera handy, for some suspicious reason). I despise the algorithms that know me so well, even if I click on nothing. The more videos I watch, the more appear in my feed. Curses! I've seen the deer swimming in circles with a paint can on its head. I've seen sea turtles, dolphins, and whales trapped in fishing nets. I've seen two fighting elk stuck in a wire fence. I've seen a sloth stuck on a cold, hard rock half-submerged in a river (a real nail-biter, that one). I've seen myriad dogs rescued from various terrible situations, rushing rivers, busy highways, you name it. I've seen a horse mired in a mud pit and a donkey running in frantic circles at the bottom of a cone-shaped well. What idiot community would build such a thing, impossible to climb out of, if not to trap animals? I despair. I'm trapped watching humans rescue desperate trapped animals. I'm trying to rescue myself by watching social media. You can imagine how well that is going.

I sit at my computer with my feet on my Tupperware bug-out bin. I nestle my feet next to three grubby microwaved socks filled with dry rice. I hardly move, except to reheat the socks in the microwave. There is no heat in the kitchen or bathroom. I spend as little time in these rooms as possible. Occasionally I spray a solution of water and bleach on the cracks in the ceiling and in the empty cupboards to keep the black mold at a tolerable level. Along the walls in each room, I have stacked the boxes I plan to take with me. I forget what is in them now. Maybe I will just leave them all behind. Pack a bug-out bag, dig my car out of the snow, and head south. 

Well, I can dream. Another delay is on the horizon. It seems I might be the person called upon to manage the closing of our mother's estate. Of course, I will accept. I love my family. I live to serve. However, this is not how I pictured freedom, interfacing with lawyers and filling out paperwork. Looks like freedom has been delayed a little longer. Oh well. It doesn't matter what happens to me now. I did my job, and I did the best job I could. Now she's gone. I surrender to the whims of the Universe.  

The Chronic Malcontent fights instinction

Every time I jettison a piece of unwanted furniture to a new home, I feel lighter. That is the only way I know I am moving in the right direction. Yesterday a young couple loaded up an IKEA shelf into a pickup truck. The shelf was left behind by a former neighbor, and I enjoyed using it. However, I cannot take it with me. It made sense to pass it on. I was glad to see how happy the young people were to receive for free something I would have paid to discard. 

Part of me wants to hold on to all this stuff, the wooden evidence of my former life as a wannabe-interior designer slash carpenter. Soon after moving into this apartment, I realized I needed to think vertically. Shelves! My design approach was to build shelves on every wall to get my stuff up off the floor. I succeeded. Now I see my method was really a form of madness. Just as some people buy bigger houses to hold their growing piles of possessions, so I built more and more shelves to hold my books, binders, tools, and art. Now that most of the shelves are reduced to useless lumber, I see how well I accomplished my objective. I am now hemmed in on all sides by boxes filled with my possessions. I can hardly move. 

Today I finally broke open a roll of quarters and did three loads of laundry, the proper way, using the machines in the basement. The third load consisted of many kitchen towels, some bath towels, and a duvet cover. Can you tell me what law of physics makes towels migrate inside a duvet cover? All but one or two items somehow ended up at the bottom of the duvet cover, which then twisted on itself multiple times, like a painful intestinal condition that can't possibly end well. This is one of the confounding questions of my life, right up there with why men spit.

The boxes stacked in my bedroom are now draped with damp towels. I cranked the heat up and shut the door. I hope they will be dry by bedtime but things are pretty damp here in the Love Shack. You would not believe how much water my table salt swims in. It's ridiculous. No wonder mold is everywhere. 

This place used to be so charming, my quaint, quirky little nest on the side of the extinct volcano. I designed and decorated a great place, which I have enjoyed for seventeen years. When did it turn into a toxic waste dump? Sometime over the past few years, the charming details—the rusty sinks, the peeling paint, the fusty tiles—morphed into health hazards and disgusting eyesores. Clearly, it's time for this one to move on. Twizzle twazzle twozzle twome.