I feel a road trip coming on

The end of a year inspires me to look past the daily grind of living to the broader panorama of my life. Maybe you could say I'm looking under the hood to see if my engine needs an overhaul. It's barely eight o'clock in the evening here in Tucson, and already I hear fireworks in the distance. Sometimes people like to set off rockets in the wash behind the trailer. If we're really lucky somebody will set something on fire (preferably not this trailer), and the sirens will inspire a coyote chorus. Nothing says you live in the stupid cold desert like hearing a bunch of howling coyotes. 

The drawing you see here is from 1997, when I was in freefall between Los Angeles and Portland. I was trying to look on the bright side. What did I know about being homeless? Clearly nothing, judging by the insipid enthusiasm on my face (yes, that is a self-portrait, and yes, I used to have hair in those days). I was just as prone to magical thinking then as I am now, but my yearnings these days are tempered by cynicism borne of aging. It's hard to conjure much enthusiasm for adventure (or fireworks) when one is worn out from the trials of being alive. 

Oh, woe is me, I'm alive. What a tragedy. 

Being alive beats the alternative, but it's hard sometimes. The air pressure ebbs and flows, which means my vestibular system is swamped at least once per minute. The noise in my right ear is deafening. My neck aches from valiantly trying to hold my head straight, to keep my sightlines steady. When my eyes are closed, I lean to the right, so I try not to close my eyes when I am standing up. Walking in the dark is difficult. Dangerous, probably, but when you gotta go, you gotta go. I don't think this vestibular paroxysmia malady is getting worse, but it's not getting any better. I am waiting impatiently for my visit to the neurologist in February. Maybe she'll have some answers about this downed powerline in my head. It's just as possible she will tell me to quit whining and send me home. 

Home. I still hope such a place exists. I plan to continue my quest. I could give up, surrender to Tucson, admit defeat, tell myself it doesn't matter if I live in a place that doesn't feel right to me. I could just suck it up, along with my physical maladies. But with the housing situation the way it is, I can't afford even the roach-ridden gun-infested sleazebag apartment I rented the first year I came here. My options have dwindled, and I don't think it's my fault. Rents have gone up all over the nation, and low-income seniors are being hit hard. I feel it. It hurts.

I was forty years old when I left Los Angeles to move back to Portland. I had parents then. I had a long-distance relationship that quickly fizzled and morphed into another quasi-committed relationship. In other words, I had multiple safety nets, the lowest and most moldy of which would have been my parents' basement. I never really worried about being homeless. It was kind of a cool bohemian dream, to be a vagabond. The nomad vanlife wasn't a thing yet (because YouTube hadn't been invented yet), although people did travel and live in motorhomes. I remember thinking it would be cool to live in a living room on wheels. I had a vision of selling paintings of mountains and waterfalls from the back window of my peddler's art wagon. My partner at the time was equally enamored of the possibilities of the nomad lifestyle, probably because he hoped to fly under his ex-wife's radar, maybe avoid paying taxes, skip out on child support, that sort of thing. Me, I just wanted freedom. 

Speaking of freedom, I'm headed out to Quartzsite in a week to hang out with the vanlifers, nomads, RVers, and schoolies. It will be crowded. I will not be alone. I will not be lonely. I will find kindred spirits. Or I will enjoy my solitude—just one small minivan among many travelers—cook food on my butane stove, and catch up on my sleep. I'm not sure what the internet situation will be. I don't really care. 

After that desert rendezvous ends, I'm planning on visiting my demented friend in Los Angeles. She's in a place now for nutty seniors. I complain a lot about my cognitive abilities (and I'm sure I'm dropping typos in my blogposts like my mother used to drop used tissues from every pocket), but I can still think and make decisions. Not great ones, sometimes, but I have autonomy. My poor friend has lost her ability to think, just like my mother did over the last few years of her life. But my friend is not even seventy. My heart is broken. 

Well, whose isn't, these days? If you haven't had some heartbreak in the past year, lucky you. I hope 2024 is better for all of us, no matter what kind of year we had. For those of us who struggle, I offer the familiar maxim, so 1970s but still true: not all who wander are lost. 

Got my oil changed and suvived to write about it

I'm always shocked when my car speaks to me, but I've learned to listen when the horrible chime jangles my nerves to tell me something needs attention. Most of the time it's the dreaded check engine light, the bane of my existence. Once it was an issue with the gas cap not being closed all the way. Recently the message in the odometer window was "low tire." My car plays coy, though. Not going to tell you which tire is low, ha ha, you figure it out. Given the weather had turned cold, I suspected it was all four. I am now the proud owner of a tire inflator machine. So fun. 

I'm glad my car has enough of a brain to tell me when something is wrong, rather than shutting off with no notice and leaving me stranded, as has happened with cars in my past. They did the best they could. I'm sure someday if I live long enough I will have a car that actually talks to me. Not like that car in Knight Rider. I'm thinking more along the lines of My Mother the Car. I can just imagine my mother being reincarnated as a 1994 Toyota Camry. Nothing fancy. She would say "I need an oil change and Jiffy Lube is having a special, but don't let them sell you an air filter because I don't need one yet, and you can do that yourself." 

My car has the brain of an infant savant, more or less. It doesn't speak, but it makes noises that get under my skin, particularly that gruesome chime. I hate that sound. When my car dinged a couple days ago as I was firing it up to go shopping, I was confused at first, because the check engine light was blessedly dark. Then I saw the message in the odometer window: oil change.

According to the sticker dangling in the corner of my windshield by the last oil change provider, I should have had another thousand miles, but I stopped patronizing that shop because I finally figured out, after thousands of dollars, that they had taken advantage, and not only that, they smoked weed as a group in the back of their shop, which is right by the bike path where I frequently walk. Nothing against those who indulge, as long as they aren't working on my car while they do it. Anyway, I found a new mechanic in the neighborhood. So when my car told me it wanted new oil, I went there.

Sadly for me, the gray clouds that had threatened to explode finally did, which is good if you like rain, as we often do in the desert, but this rain was the kind I know from the Pacific Northwest, that is to say, the kind that moves in and squats over the city like a brood hen trying to hatch a cold dead egg. In the desert, I've come to know the nature of monsoon, the weather phenomenon that boils up out of nowhere, destroys the place with lightning, hail, wind, torrential rain, and flash floods and then evaporates, leaving you wondering what the heck! This week's rain was not like that. The radar showed Tucson under a huge green splat, which meant it was going to be raining for a while.

I drove to the mechanic and dashed through the rain to the office. I was greeted by a surly middle-aged man who reluctantly agreed to do the oil change on the spot (well, within three hours) and what kind of oil did I want? Like I would know the answer to that question. I said, "You are assuming I know the answer to that question." He looked at me with that long-suffering look I've seen on countless sales reps' faces over years and years of me not trusting that I know more than I think I do. Finally we figured it out, and pretty soon we were getting along. 

"Are you going to wait or are you going walk around the mall?" he asked. 

"Oh, I'll go hang out at the mall," I said, like an idiot. I had a raincoat. How bad could it be?

I'd forgotten it was a few days until Christmas. I don't pay attention to the holidays, except to be annoyed that they encroach on my routines. I guess I assumed yet again that everyone else was like me but you know what happens when we assume. I headed off in the rain toward the mall and soon realized I was way out of my comfort zone. Even on a good day, malls are trying to kill me. During this Christmas shopping season, a sense of desperation and panic hung over the whole retail neighborhood. The streets were jammed with SUVs all trying to turn into the mall parking lot without getting T-boned by oncoming traffic. Pedestrians had no chance, but what choice did I have? Sit in the waiting room? I chanced it. 

I wandered the edge of the wide parking lot past the empty Sears store, crossing the traffic lanes near JC Penney, and meandered past REI and the Container Store, loathe to actually go inside the mall itself. As I stumbled over curbs and puddles, I got the bright idea to walk up the street to Best Buy. I needed new headphones, and it wasn't too far away. On a good weather day, it would have been a pleasant stroll. Not today.

Between the rain and the speeding cars, I was a soggy ragged breathless mess by the time I got there. Unbeknownst to me, my raincoat had lost its ability to repel water, so I was drenched through my hoodie sweatshirt through my T-shirt through my tanktop to my skin. My sweatpants, so cozy just an hour earlier, were soaked from the knees down. I was half-blind from glasses covered with raindrops. Lucky for me, not expecting to have to walk very far, I had worn my thirty-year-old waterproof Merrell mules instead of my sneakers. Thus, although tired, my feet were warm and dry. 

I made it to Best Buy, found the things I needed, and ventured back out into the slogfest. No letup in the rain, no letup in the traffic. If anything, both seemed to be growing more intense by the minute. At the intersection between me and the mechanic's shop, I made sure to press the walk button. With my eye on the walk sign and the opposite curb, four lanes away, I watched for oncoming traffic making a left turn in front of me. All good. 

Lucky for me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the huge black monster truck making a right turn as I stepped off the curb. I don't think the driver saw me, at least, I hope that is the case. I hate to think they made that dangerous turn on purpose. The holidays can make people do things they would not normally do. I can be magnanimous now, given I lived to write this blogpost. 

I stopped walking and let the truck blast by in front of me, close enough to touch. I had time to admire enormous rugged tires. I wasn't thinking at that moment, oh, nice tires. In that moment, I yelled and gestured, which felt pretty good, actually, since I rarely yell and gesture. I dashed across the street and made it to the far curb unscathed, calcified heart valve pounding. 

As I continued my walk, I was gifted with more opportunities to yell and gesture, this time at the drivers who sped through the standing water, drenching me as I walked on the sidewalk. If it hadn't been so miserably uncomfortable, it would have been hilarious. I could have been starring in a rom-com. Hapless hero facing conflicts before achieving the goal of happiness, which in my case was getting back to my car alive.

I returned early to the mechanic and sat shivering in the waiting room scrolling through my phone like a zombie. Eventually my car was ready. Now I know the holiday spirits were looking out for me, partly because I survived the walk to Best Buy and back, but mostly because the mechanics didn't find anything else wrong with the car, other than the obligatory notice to get my fuel injectors cleaned. I'll wait until my car tells me its time.

Happy holidays from the Hellish Handbasket. Hope your new year is better than the last.

Happy holidays from the Hellish Handbasket

Here we are again, heading into another holiday season. It's not my favorite time of year, because 75°F is still too cold for this hothouse flower. And because grocery shopping is twenty times more difficult. And because one of my preferred radio stations seems to have sold its soul to the Christmas music devil. And because one of the neighbors here in the trailer park gave me a little loaf of banana bread and a baggy of Chex mix and I ate them both in ten minutes. For all those reasons [urp], this is not my favorite time of year. But what do you expect from a self-proclaimed chronic malcontent?

I'm kind of over the malcontent thing. With all the troubles in the world today, it seems pretty self-centered to act like my little dramas are so important. I may be heading toward houselessness, but at least bombs aren't falling on my head. I mean, we need to keep things in perspective. Yes, I ate the entire loaf of banana bread but that constitutes dinner, and tomorrow I will do better, because the banana bread is now gone. 

I'm learning the only way through these strange days is to keep my head down, focus on what I can do here and now, and not get enmeshed in other people's drama. Some people like drama. Just because I got weary of self-made drama and let it go doesn't mean other people have to do the same. Drama can be fun and exciting. I used to be a drama addict. Now, all I have to do is remember that one of my close friends has dementia, and another friend's mother just died, and I get back to right-size. Good things happen sometimes. It's not all bad. I mentioned last week I didn't get that job I had applied for (which probably would have changed my life, at least for one year), but I had some editing work this week. I keep showing up for life, and somehow I keep on living. So weird. 

Meanwhile, I continue to write a story a day, why, I'm not really sure. You can't really call them stories. More like . . . scenes. Musings. Little upchuckings. Sometimes I have an idea of what I want to write. Stories come to me while I'm out walking. That's fun, trying to see if I will remember them by the time I get home. Other times I open up the page and stare at it. Classic writer angst, right? To bemoan the blank page? I don't really bemoan anymore. As long as it's not the white screen of death, I'm good. I just start typing. Kind of like how I'm writing this blog right now. Wow. So meta. 

Here are a few holiday wishes from the Hellish Handbasket. I hope this holiday season is joyful for you, or at least not miserable. I hope the weather doesn't totally suck where you are. I hope the suffering you might be feeling doesn't drag you down into depression. I hope your family doesn't criticize you too much and if they do, that you have a safe place to hide out with a good book. I hope you can experience the holiday lights, the aromas, the shoppers, the music, without going completely insane and wishing you could hibernate till spring. Please don't poke your eyes out. Please don't overdose on oxy. Please don't eat an entire loaf of banana bread at one sitting. Be kind to yourself, just for a few days., till this thing is over. We'll get through it together. Then in January we can commiserate when winter really hits the fan. 

Geezers gotta get up and go

I'm currently residing in a pretty big mobile home park. I'm not sure how many homes there are here, a few hundred, I think. I got lost the first time I tried to find the exit. Now, after walking this village many times over the past couple years, I know the streets well. I don't know a lot of people, but I wave and smile and chat a moment if they have a cute dog that seems inclined to be friendly. Not all people are friendly, just like not all dogs are friendly. Lexi, for instance, is a poodle from hell, but that is a different story. 

Life in the mobile home park has a rhythm, and lots of things can upset that rhythm. The big upset the past week or so has been a paving project. The management sent around a Google earth map of the village, with streets marked in dingy colors to indicate what part of the park would be paved on what day. Brilliant, right? We were all informed we better move our cars if we needed to go anywhere, because for two days, the streets would be impassable. The first day was for the paving. The second day was for striping. These things take time to dry.

The forecast called for rain, and according to Contractor Google, you aren't supposed to lay down this slurry stuff in the rain. Apparently, these guys didn't get the memo. The contractors roped off the streets, including ours, with flags and cones and put cones in front of everyone's driveways, just in case they got a wild hair to go out for breakfast. The team of guys in their filthy neon green gear got busy with their machines and pretty soon we had a really nice layer of sticky black slurry on our street. 

Just as they finished our street, it rained. The contractors packed up and went away, leaving our street roped off. It was the only street in the whole place that was closed to traffic.

The old folks stuck it out for two days (that was the agreement), but with all the humidity in the air, the black tarry stuff on the street was slow to dry. Pretty soon, the pristine paving job was gouged with tire tracks. Some looked like they might have been left by the mailtruck. The bigger ones were probably FedEx or UPS. But the little ones were definitely left by my neighbors, because you could see the slurry traces in their driveways. Caught you red-handed, Susie. There were plenty of footprints, too, both human and nonhuman. Maybe some were from neighbors walking their dogs, and one little skidmark was mine where I lost my balance as I tried to walk in the concrete gutter, but I bet most of them were rabbits. After all, you can't stop our resident hordes of rascally rabbits from dashing from cactus to driveway and back again. Just like you can't stop Mr. Gimp (the coyote) from giving chase. Fresh paving means nothing to them. 

The management sent around a resentful email chastizing us for wrecking the paving job, yada yada, but here's my take on it. First, everyone knew (or could have known) that it was going to rain, and you can't pave in the rain. Duh. I checked the slurry paving rules, because I'm a meddling researcher, and I checked the radar. When you see a splat of green over Tucson, you know it's raining. So that's the first thing. 

But more important, you cannot trap old folks in their homes and expect them to stay there for long. They have grandkids to see, stores to patronize, pancakes to eat at Denny's. Seniors are like cats. They can't be fully tamed, you can't herd them, and they are mostly untrainable. And why would you expect anything different? Time is a-wastin' when you are old and running out of road. You have to get going now, or risk stroking out before you get to the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is one step below fear of dying before I get there (FODBIGT). 

I can just imagine my wizened neighbors chafing at the bit, staring out the window at the clouds, looking at the slurry mess and wondering when it was ever going to dry. As soon as they saw the mailtruck or whatever it was that made that first long gouge in the asphalt, they were like, lemme outta here. If that guy can do it, so can I. And off they went.

Eventually the street dried. The contractors came back, took down the ropes and cones, and got busy paving other streets in the park, which were soon gouged to the bedrock with tire tracks, human tracks, and animal tracks. I'm guessing the trash truck had a go, judging by the chassis width and tire tread of the most impressive gouge, all splashy and drippy on both sides of the track. I took a photo because it looks like art. 

This whole week, as I've walked the park in the evening, avoiding the freshly glistening asphalt slurry, I wondered what future archaeologists would make of these remants of human existence. The way we marvel at the footprints embedded in a former lakebed, preserved for a million years, would future scientists scratch their heads and propose theories about how we used to live in the olden days? Must have been a religious ritual, they would guess. Or maybe some kind of sacred art? I know, I know! Ley lines, embedded in tar, leading to various spiritual centers, perhaps used for human sacrifice, judging by the many human footprints showing people were running, slipping, and sliding in the muck. 

The contractors are returning tomorrow to redo our street and the rest of this end of the park pushed to the back of the calendar because of the rain. We are expecting good weather. But no matter what, you can't keep old folks trapped in their trailers. Old folks gotta roam. 

By the way, in case you are wondering, I did not get that job. One door closes, the door leading to the vast Arizona desert BLM land opens. More to be revealed.

Another stupid cold holiday season begins

As usual, the holidays stir up mixed feelings in my brain. Beyond the basics of cold, hungry, tired, or leave me alone, I often have no idea what I want or need, and it always seems worse this time of year. Is that normal? I suspect not. You probably love the holidays, am I right? All those songs, those lights, those smells emanating from frantic shoppers. What's more, I bet you go through this season knowing exactly what you want and need. The reason I claim this is because I used to know exactly what I wanted and needed. Or I thought I did. Now I know nothing, not about holiday cheer, pecan pie, or anything else.

For example, once I was positive I would have a career in the arts. Everyone around me thought so, and so did I. Now, looking back, I find I actually have had no career at all. I don't think many people who aren't in the arts can say that. Normal people go to school, get jobs that constitute careers, have families, accumulate wealth, retire, and then die. Oh, sure, they have hiccups, farts, and belches along the way in the form of divorces, deaths, illness, what have you, but those things would have happened anyway, no matter what their career, given that people are codependent frightened amygdalas most of the time. Oh, sorry, this has nothing to do with the holidays, does it? This sometimes happens. It's the end-of-year what-fresh-hell-is-this time of reflection.

My amygdala is running flat out these days, trying to get me to stop, just stop. I seem hell bent on jumping in a handbasket and setting a course straight for hell. I think I can add "as usual," because this is normal for me, this is my norm, this is my M.O. I'm regressing to my mean. I'm trying to be nice about it, but the holiday music sometimes gets under my skin. Misophonic dermatillomaniac. 

What I am trying to say? I'm saying I'm nuts. To really put paid to this season of holiday hell, I applied for a job, and this week, I had a Zoom interview. (No, it's not a Christmas sales job, although that could be a fun form of purgatory for someone who chases misery.) It's just a semi-white collar grant-funded one-year temp gig. Part of me thinks they'd be crazy not to hire me. If they do, there's a chance I might be moving to northern Arizona. However, there is an equal chance I will be moving into my car and parking it on BLM land somewhere to wait for affordable housing to catch up to the senior housing crisis. 

I'm trying to imagine how I will feel if I don't get the job. Will rejection confirm all the negative beliefs I've dragged around like a PigPen blanket all these years? Oh, woe is me, alas, alackaday, they hate me, time for some worm stew. My own private rain cloud will let loose, and I will accept it, because I rarely use an umbrella, but mainly because that is what I'm used to. I land somewhere by accident, I perch for a while, and then a strong wind (usually blown out my own butt) sends me toppling into free fall, until I fetch up on some other ledge or branch, wondering what the hell just happened.

But, holy crapolly momma moly, what if I get the job? Who will I be then? Someone whose skills are in demand? Someone chosen to be part of a team? My brain is like a piece of slimy meat that refuses to wrap around the stick. I need a new brain. I need a new persona, a new self-concept, if you will. This stupid cold season really tends to bring out my chronic malcontent. Kind of like Beauty and the Beast. No, more like Jeckyll and Hyde. Mutt and Jeff. Chip and Dale. Sonny and Cher. Bread and butter. Gay and apparel. Wait. What? 

I can write what I want here because this blog is still (more or less) anonymous and because nobody reads it anymore anyway. Or if they do, they are much too polite to bring up my latest melancholic diatribe about my attempts to live life on its own stupid terms. If I had been writing like this twenty years ago, my family and friends would have stormed me with an intervention. I'd be in rehab. Ninety in ninety, phone it in every day. 

Now, my friends and family are busy, living busy interesting lives. To be sure, some of them are probably as miserable as I am, falling down stairs and losing mothers. But others are busy going on fabulous trips to exotic places, embarking on romantic relationships, worrying about quiche and cats and husbands, oh my. None of them has time for my drama. This is healthy, this is good. Everyone has drama. They just don't barf it out in a blog. At least, not that I know of. Hm. Omigorsh, would it not be hilariously wonderful if we were all blogging anonymously? 

Meanwhile, the alarm clock in my brain is still going off once per minute, 24/7, and I'm still writing and posting a story a day on my non-anonymous blog, where I go on and on and on, simply to practice my craft. And because I said I would, and I am not a quitter. Wonder of wonders! No wonder I'm nuts. Writing a story a day is harder than showing up to write a literature review for a dissertation no one will ever read. 

Sorry to the bots, this blog is the landfill where the garbage trucks dump the crap. 

Welcome to a new season of endless cranky fun from the Hellish Handbasket.