Time to stop making sense

In my fledgling career as an amateur dogsitter, I can now claim to have cared for three dogs. Juno is the biggest dog, so far. She's an 11-year-old, slow-moving Rhodesian Ridgeback whose head is bigger than mine. She's old and arthritic, which means she doesn't go for walks and she sleeps most of the time. Except during the night, of course, when her bladder or bowels say it's time to go outside (rarely at the same time). 

My schedule is out the window when it comes to taking care of Juno. The dog's 5 am and 5 pm feeding schedule drives the entire show. The feeding schedule drives the poop and pee schedule. I have no choice, unless I want to experience the consequences, which I don't want to do, so I have my alarm set for 5 am. 

It's still dark here at 5 am but dogs' stomachs have their own internal driving force, and I live to serve, so I stagger off the couch and head for the fancy open-concept kitchen and the stainless steel fridge, where I rummage for the frozen veggies that make up one third of this dog's meal. The veggies go into the microwave to thaw. While that is happening, I put my head lamp on my head, click it to the dim setting, and grab a couple training treats, which I use to bribe Juno to go pee. She does, thankfully—like most of us, she'll do anything for treats. I admire the tepid air and the amazing array of stars overhead while she squats in the grass. Then we rush back inside for the main event. 

I get the other two elements of her meal out of the fridge: a huge round flat slab of raw hamburger and a raw chicken drumstick. These two things go into a big metal bowl.

By this point, Juno is going insane. Oh, have I mentioned, I am currently adhering to a vegan lifestyle? 

The thawed veggies get dumped into the metal bowl with the two hunks of raw meat. After a dousing of water from the reverse osmosis filtered water spigot, I feed Juno her two arthritis meds (wondering if they would do anything for my hip arthritis), and then we go outside onto the patio. 

Juno knows to sit, and I've learned to hold the dish high over my head so she doesn't knock it out of my hand. I set the dish on the Mexican tile flagstones, and Juno goes to town. It's a little disturbing to watch her polish off an entire chicken leg in two crunchy bites. She could probably do that to my hand, if she got a hankering for old lady bones. While she eats, I put the raw stuff back in the fridge. I make sure I have enough meat thawed for the next several meals. Finally, I clean up the dark granite countertops with antiseptic wipes, hoping none of that raw meat juice got on anything I care about. 

Juno returns in about 30 seconds. Her dish is licked clean. Juno goes back to bed on her 4-foot wide round cushion, and I wash out the metal bowl, wondering if it's worth going back to bed myself, or if I should just stay up for the sunrise. Usually I just lay there in the dark and listen to the AC system clicking on and ramping up as if we are about to be shot into orbit. 

Speaking of AC, I don't understand how it works, if it's me (residual hot flashes), or if the house is trying to kill me. Sometimes it seems hot in here, and sometimes it seems cold. Yesterday, I couldn't take having freezing feet when it's 108°F outside, so I nudged the thermostat from 78°F to 80°F. It seems better today.

In the evening, at 5 pm, we repeat the entire meal preparation process, sans the pills, and sans me going back to bed to try to catch a few more hours of shut-eye. By evening I'm in a bleary daze, wondering how I got here and where I'm going to end up next. I know that around 1 am, Juno, the pony-sized dog, is going to shake herself and head to the patio door, where she will poke at the glass with one huge black claw. I'm right behind with my head lamp, the beck and call girl for the creature temporarily at the center of my existence. 

I think back sometimes to the arc of this blog. Few of you are around anymore to reflect with me on the vagaries of this journey. This blog started out as a place to rant about the travesties of earning my PhD, oh woe is me, alas, alackaday. After some wandering aimlessly, the blog centered on the decline of my mother into dementia, and eventually her death. After that, what was there to talk about but me, as usual: downsizing, moving, searching for home, healthcare, and hoping to find my balance. It's hard to look back and see not an arc but a line. It all depends on what label I put on the y-axis, though, doesn't it? If I put financial success on that axis, the line descends into negative territory. Danger, Will Robinson! But if I put freedom on that axis, the line shoots out the top of the chart. 

The question remains: Would you rather be safe or would you rather be happy? It's really hard to find the intersection of both. 

Change is coming

I miss my stuff. Almost all my possessions are ensconced in a 5' x 5' storage unit over by the mall. The cubicle is 8 feet tall, otherwise no way could I have stacked my shelves, bins, and boxes into that small of a footprint. I marvel at how many possessions I still have, given all the moving and downsizing I have done in the past three or so years. Swedish death cleaning may be a thing, but in my case, it has not resulted in total cleaning . . . or death, I might add, so there's that.

Speaking of death, I'm feeling transparent these days, uprooted, barely clinging to something I don't recognize anymore. I just want to get away from everything, but of course, that is not possible, because as we know, wherever we go, there we are. However, I can live with myself in my own brain. What I cannot live with for long is the clamoring of well-meaning people who think they can save me. Or the criticisms of confounded people who can't understand why this is happening to me, given how white and well-educated I am. Or the judgments of fearful people who subconsciously realize their lives are one wildfire or flood or divorce away from being in the same predicament. 

I can live with my own fears, but I can't manage the fears and criticisms of others. 

Meanwhile, my dear friend from college is sinking fast into some terrible form of dementia. I don't know what the diagnosis is, but who cares what it is called when it's obvious her brain cells are exiting stage right, like rats from a sinking ship. Folding, perforating, evaporating, no idea what is happening in that head, but it is total disaster. Nothing is firing right in her brain anymore. It's utterly terrifying to witness. I could hardly sleep last night, and I'm not the one experiencing the inexorable disintegration of my executive functions. It's one thing when it happens to your 90-year-old mother. It's another thing entirely when it happens to your same-age friend. Death is staring her in the face, and she can't even find the words to express her despair. 

I'd rather have cancer, to be honest, than dementia. I can only pray to the gods of young drug addicts at the U of A campus that there will be a handful of fentanyl tabs left for me when it's time to go to the great art school in the sky. And that I remember what they are for and why I should quickly take them, before someone else does. I do not want to go gently into that big state-run memory care tenement, where I will be ignored by underpaid medical assistants and abandoned by distant family to overloaded social workers. I'm pretty sure there will be no internet. I mean, I ask you! No internet. If that happens, if I have a brain cell left in my head to make a decision, I will make a run for it, somehow, I will find a last shred of freedom. I'm not ashamed to be a silver alert. 

It's monsoon in southern AZ. It sucks, but no more than any other season here. I feel so out of place. I thought I would love this place . . . warm, dry, what's not to love? I used to chase the sun. In Portland, even as a kid, I would perk up whenever the sun came out. Clouds were my enemy. I craved blue skies. In Los Angeles, the sun was a gentle presence, filtered by fog and smog. Skies were pale robin's egg blue, like a fine china teacup. Not so in the desert. When the sky is blue, the sun is my enemy. Clouds are my shelter, even when winds are whipping up the dust and I'm dodging rain drops. I'd rather be struck by lightning than let the sun touch my skin.

The first monsoon was exciting. So energetic and raw, who knew! The novelty quickly wore off. If you've seen one spectacular desert sunset, you've truly seen them all. I have grown to hate this place. And this place hates me right back. No matter how many knuckles they have, or how gnarled their fingers, all the cactuses on all the hillsides everywhere I go have their middle fingers raised. Every last cactus in this dirty, noisy, unholy town is flipping me off. I ask you, have you ever been so aggressively dismissed by nature? I know. It seems impossible, and yet, everywhere I go, there they are, these angry bitter saguaros, telling me, You don't like it here? Go back to where you came from, gringa blanca. 

I don't want to go back to where I came from, but I know I can't stay here. I seem to have a habit of moving first and regretting later. Maybe this time I will try a new strategy. Maybe this time I will look first before I leap. Regret might follow, but at least I can say I tried my best to keep my eyes open. 

Spinning like nobody cares

A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. I know that is true because Fran said it in my favorite movie, "Strictly Ballroom," and Fran was a wise woman. It is possible to live one's entire life in fear. People do it all the time. I've been doing it. I can't think of many stretches of time when I didn't live my life in fear. Fear is as familiar and uncomfortable as a pair of old running shoes that have sprung a hole in the sole and are now taking on water with every step. 

Some fears are reasonable. We need those fears, and I will most likely keep them, the ones I have gathered close around me like a hazmat suit. For example, when I complain about being afraid of things, I'm not talking about fear of tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Fear of those things is rational. I'm not talking about the consequences of runaway climate change. I'm not talking about specific cases of insane or deluded people with guns. Those fears are rational. 

I'm talking about the fear of alternative lifestyles, fear of unusual self-expression choices, fear of appearances and actions that fall outside the norm, way out there on the bell-shaped curve. Outliers used to scare me. I used to be afraid of anyone who looked weird. I viewed people who didn't conform with wary disdain. What kind of person leaves their holiday lights up all year round? That's just laziness. Who would patronize a store that opened inside what used to be a house? That's just wrong. It's so easy to be afraid of something unfamiliar, and from there it's an easy leap from that's scary to that's wrong to that should not be allowed to I need to join that mob over there and shut that thing down.

No worries. I'm not a joiner, not for Bluebirds and not for mobs, so I won't be coming for your Christmas lights anytime soon, or ever, actually, because in my old age, I have learned to appreciate people who tread the road less traveled. Go ahead, leave those lights up all year, and what's more, go ahead and turn those suckers on in July! Why not? We could use some holiday cheer in the dog days of summer. Feeling like wearing pajamas all the time? Me, too! Let's do it. Feel like swearing sometimes at the inanity of life? Me, too! No need to stand on decorum around me. Let it rip. 

Fear of dumb things is dumb. I think you get my point. But what about the options that fall in between? 

What if one person's fear is another person's adventure?

My head is spinning from the constant rise and fall of the barometer. It's monsoon in Southern Arizona, finally, and now it rains almost every day. It's great, don't get me wrong, but even as I'm out twirling in the rain, my head is a slushy mess from the sledgehammer pounding inside my brain. I sleep when I can, just to exit stage right for a while. The only time I know I'm safe is when I'm lying down. But I know I have to keep moving. I walk in the evenings to keep my arthritic hip from seizing up, but walking doesn't help the aberration bashing my cranial nerve every sixty to ninety seconds. I fear the side effects of the antiseizure drugs the ENT might prescribe, but at some point you just have to say, bring on the side effects, what could be worse than the maelstrom in my head? I have not been offered drugs yet, just to be clear. I see the ENT dude on Friday. I've been told another MRI is in my future.

I knew a cat who, when confronted with an earthquake in his house, ran fast and far and didn't stop until the shaking subsided. He ended up across the street under a neighbor's house. I feel kind of like doing the same thing: running fast and far until the quake in my head subsides. I fear I might be running forever. 

The five fingers of death take a holiday

I have an aversion to eating anything with a face. If a creature would run from me if it could, then I do not want to make it a meal. Even if I were lost in the wilderness, I would have a hard time eating grubs (not in the desert, however, because there are no grubs in the desert, just lizards and scorpions). Maybe I would get hungry enough to gum a lizard. Maybe not. I have a hazy assumption that I would somehow manage to pick, peel, and suck on a prickly pear. Right. Have you seen those things up close? All the flora in Southern Arizona is trying to kill me. It’s like its members spot a person with disequilibrium from afar, like a tick waiting for the unsuspecting hiker to pass by, and then they lean toward me with their feathery stickery arms and quivering bony spikes, hoping to impale me as I struggle to keep my balance.

You can tell I’m feeling persecuted by the desert.

This week when I was on my second road trip to Northern Arizona, I found the perfect place to take a fall and die. Have you been to Montezuma Well? It’s a natural springs that has bubbled up in a rock basin for thousands of years. The native inhabitants of the area used to live near the Well in cliffside dwellings they built from rocks. Even today, local tribes think of the Well as a sacred place. I can see why. It really feels magical, this unexpected oasis in the arid desert.

I was the first one at the gate, that's how eager I was. Being a tourist is fun sometimes. I sat and waited, and then more magic, but of the technological wireless variety. On the dot at 8:00 am, I heard a loud beeping, and the two metal gates swung open just for me.   

Ignorant whites named it after Montezuma, mistaking it for part of the Aztec civilization. On the upside, however, the park service built a meandering staircase of 112 steps so that visitors could descend close to the water. You can’t touch it, and I’m not sure you’d want to anyway, given the pondscum on the surface and the leeches that lurk in the depths. Still, it's water in the desert, and that is always a welcome sight. If you are feeling robust, and if it is still early in the day before the heat bakes you into a husk, it’s a descent worth taking.

So I took it.

Going down wasn’t hard, you know, because of gravity, but there are no handrails, which is when I had the thought that I could fall here, just pitch right off the edge, and maybe that would not be so bad. My soul, if I have such a thing, would no doubt enjoy the dip in sacred waters, in spite of the leeches.

I didn’t fall. 

Coming back up the 112 steps, though, was a workout. I could hear the voices of the two park rangers, who were standing at an overlook at the rim a good fifty yards above me. I could see them from time to time as I paused on landings to catch my breath and wait for my heart to slow. The larger heavier ranger was teaching the younger skinnier ranger about the history of the Well. Their voices echoed in the basin. I wondered if they knew CPR. Most likely, probably it's a job requirement, not that CPR is something I would want, given what I now know, that CPR is not a thing most people survive, nor would they want to, if they knew what I know now.

Better to let me slip under the green and blue water and let the leeches suck my soul while the ducks nibble on my toes.

I didn’t fall. I didn’t have a heart attack and die. I made it to the top. After a good long moment to rest, I took a trail down to the place in the side of the hill where the outflow (the swallet) emerged through a narrow channel made by long-dead indigenous peoples. That water was used to irrigate the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. This practice endured for generations, until the tribes decided to uproot themselves and move south to join some villages that I guess seemed like more fun than farming the desert.

The day before I visited the Well, I saw the other part of the park system known as Montezuma Castle, which is the cliff dwelling clinging to the side of a high cliff about eleven miles away from the Well. That was an impressive construction feat, but as a visitor, I was disappointed, not by its construction, which is amazing, but because park visitors are not allowed to go up and walk around that dark castle, I guess for obvious reasons, but still. It would have been cool. Literally, it would probably have been much cooler up there in those carved caves—at ground level, it was easily 100°F at 4:30 when I was visiting just before closing time.

Montezuma Well was more satisfying in the sense that I could imagine I was walking in the footsteps of people who used to live and work there, finding physical and spiritual sustenance on the land because of that sacred water.

To celebrate my vacation, I did two food-related things. I ate ice cream. And I ate an English muffin. I know, I know. Some of you are saying, Carol, jeez, lighten up, no wonder you are so uptight, you need to eat more ice cream. And some of you are saying, oh no, you ate two of the five fingers of death! It’s curtains for you. The five fingers of death, if you don’t remember, are the invention of the erstwhile Dr. Tony, naturopathic bully: wheat, corn, soy, sugar, and dairy.

I try to minimize my intake of these foods. I hate to give Dr. Tony any credit for saving my life, but among the many wacky things he said and did, telling me to eat good food and drink water probably deserves a thanks. It doesn't mean I don't indulge in sugar in my oatmeal and soymilk in my tea, but I always feel a twinge of guilt, like, oh, no, what is the arrogant bully going to say this time as he sucks the money from my bank account? He has since retired to the godforsaken hinterlands of Oregon, also know as Bend, where I assume he is tormenting other willing victims who haven't yet caught on to his subtle yet nefarious passive aggressive quackish homeopathic ways. Me, resentful? No, but thanks for asking.

I am curiously waiting to try cultivated meat, vat-grown chicken, what are we calling it? Chicken cells grown in a stainless steel container. The intriguing thing is, no chickens are harmed in the creation of this product, although I’m not sure I totally buy that. No chicken would voluntarily donate its cells for science, even it meant all future chickens could escape the butcher's cleaver. I mean, we like chickens for lots of reasons, right, but we give them too much credit if we imagine they understand the moral and philosophical implications of offering up cells as a ploy to save chicken lives. They default to chicken run every time if given free range.

I want some of that protein, is all I’m saying, and I don’t want any chicken lives to be harmed in my attempt to get enough protein to stay alive, without resorting to eating bugs, grubs, and lizards.

I probably won’t live to see packages of cultivated chicken in the grocery store. I doubt I’ll live long enough to own an electric car. I probably won’t live to see a glut of affordable senior housing spring up about the land, driving rental prices down to the reach of any sad sack who needs a place to live. Too bad for me. I could be sad at the prospect of missing out on future prosperity, or I could be resentful, both really appealing and viable options. I'd like to know what happens after I’m gone, but unless there's something mystical that occurs after we die, probably once I'm gone, I'm gone, and none of this will matter, nobody will care. In a way, it's nice to know that life will go on, I just won’t be part of it anymore.