Home is a state of mind

A new freedom can lead to a new happiness. So they say. I was skeptical. The hardest part, I discovered, is launching from the familiar into the unknown. However, the fear of staying stuck finally outweighed my fear of change, and now here I am, free to start a new chapter. You could call it homelessness. You could call it an epic journey of a lifetime, a quest for my heart's desire. I don't care what you call it. It's not your journey. It's not your life.

Should I tell you about the challenges of living in a vehicle? No, you don't want to hear about the sordid realities of refilling water jugs and dumping plastic bags of poop. You just want to be reassured that I'm okay.

Don't worry. I'm okay. I'm actually more than okay. I'm starting to feel like myself again. Autonomous, independent, free to make my own foolish choices, unconstrained by the shackles of a temporary life that wasn't mine. Now I'm free to search for a new life, maybe a new place, I don't know. Time will tell.

When you don't have a lot of money, freedom requires a small footprint. My mission is to live within my means; hence, the car thing. For now, it's the only way to maintain a semblance of my preferred lifestyle without blowing through the last of my savings. You might be reassured to know I have everything I need (literally) at my fingertips. I can get almost anything just by reaching for it. That's one upside of living in a car. On the other hand, smells. 

Right now, I'm parked on BLM land north of Tucson. The rain that just soaked California is now soaking the desert. The sound of rain on my car roof is oddly soothing. I peer outside my windows through a veil of raindrops. Everything is so green out here. Spring in the desert is pretty amazing. I get why people come here. And I get why they leave along about mid-May. Words don't describe how hard it is to live here without air conditioning when the mercury soars past 95°F. Living in a trailer with metal awnings was hard enough, even with AC. Imagine how much harder it is to live in a car. 

Ah, but living in one's car means freedom to move on! As long as I have gas in the tank and the engine cranks and runs, I'm mobile. Like all nomads, when the season shifts, I will drive away to cooler climes. 

So far, all my moves have been about getting somewhere so I can finally start living. Now I live where I am. This lifestyle is about the journey, not the destination. I can't get lost living like this, because no matter where I am, I'm where I belong, in that moment. Maybe home isn't just one place. Maybe home isn't a place at all. Maybe home is a state of mind rather than a point on a map. 

Some things don't change

I was sifting through my hundreds of raw source drawings, created over many years of sitting in meetings trying not to argue, cry, laugh out loud, or fall asleep. I'm old, so I've been to many meetings. That means I have many drawings. Almost all of them were drawn on lined journal notebook paper, so the quality is terrible. I do my best to clean them up and downsize them so they don't take forever to download. As I was scrolling through the list, looking for today's selection, I came across this one and realized, hey, that's right. I've been homeless before.

Looking back from the ripeness of old age, it seems to me that being homeless when you are young is way cooler than it is when you are old, wrinkled, and slow. Being a young bohemian has that hipness factor, or it could. I never had it, I was always the pathetic person my friends felt obligated to help by lending a couch for a night or by buying me breakfast. I still have some of those friends. Amazing. 

Eventually I figured out a way to exist in the world and started paying my way, until old age, poverty, and the shortage of affordable housing caught up to me. Rather than burn through the last of my savings, I have opted, as you know, to downsize and go on an extended road trip until something changes. I'm open to whatever. Maybe the housing supply will catch up to demand (hey, it could happen). Maybe I'll win the lottery (unlikely, considering I don't play). Maybe I'll roll my car and it will all be over. 

Meanwhile, life goes on and I'm doing my best to live it with style and panache, but within my limited means. If you've read this blog (which nobody does, so I feel free to say what I want), then you know I've downsized into my minivan, which I fondly call The Beast. Well, no, I haven't named it yet. Van lifers often name their vehicles. I have a little philodendron in a clay pot, which I have named after my mother. But other than that, this vehicle is as yet nameless. 

I'm currently parked in a parking lot outside an outlet mall somewhere near Tucson. I opted to vacate my peaceful campsite in the desert because we are getting some rain and high winds, and I don't want to get trapped by a flash flood. I'm not worried that I will be washed away, but it will take a few days for the water to evaporate, and I do worry about getting stuck in the mud. So, hence, parking lot.

I won't stay here for the night. It's not a level lot, for one thing, so I would end up sleeping on the floor. The main reason, though, is that there is a carnival set up at the top of the lot behind me. Earlier in the day, it was quiet. I thought, great, how fun to have a ferris wheel to look at but no crowds. Surely they won't open in the rain. Well, don't call me Shirley, because at 4:00 pm, the fair opened. Families with little kids have been streaming past my car, heading toward the source of the pounding music. I have my window covers up on that side, but I peek out from time to time. It's pretty, if you like carnivals. To top it off, every five minutes or so, a freight train rolls through on a nearby railroad track.  

I'm going to cut this short so I can drive back to Walmart or to Cracker Barrel or Home Depot or someplace where I can blend in with all the other ubiquitous minivans, pickups, and SUVs. Judging by the quantity of reflectix in windshields, I think lots of people are living in their cars. 

The deadly season is approaching

After an interminable week of debilitating pain, it seems my clenched jaw has finally relaxed. What a relief. There's a thing called TMJ, who knew. Like TMI, but a lot more painful. My cheekbones are dented from my desperate attempts to grind my fingers into the pressure points (I learned that on Dr. YouTube). Pressing on the jaw hinge was a bad idea, I discovered. However, kneading my cheekbones as if my face was made of bread dough really helped relieve the tension. A twice-daily ibuprofen also helped. I'm happy to say, last night was my first night sleeping without a pill. 

In other news, last night was also my first night sleeping on my new camping mattress. I think I described my trip to the Phoenix foam store, how I asked for the firmest foam they had. Well, I got firm, all right. Maybe too firm. It's just one level softer than concrete, far as I can tell. On the upside, the 4-inch slab is good for sitting. On the downside, as a sleeping mattress, it is unforgiving to my arthritic hip. Today I caved and bought a foam topper at Walmart. I may be a stoic but I'm not a masochist. 

Speaking of masochists, I continue my headlong hurdle toward the edge of my personal housing cliff. In anticipation of my impending free fall, my friends and family are sending me Wikipedia links to Arizona towns they think might suit me. I dutifully check them out. Safford, Globe, Payson, Coolidge, Eloy. Lot of cool names. Like any place, each town has pros and cons. Too small, too hot, too cold, too near fire danger, too near a federal prison . . . But lots of interesting history, if you like mining. 

The thing about parking yourself in one place is you are stuck there. I don't know how you live, maybe you go out all the time, but me, I'm prone to hunkering in my burrow, immersed in my isolation. Being alone is my happy place. However, if the burrow I have rented is too hot, too cold, too noisy, too expensive, or otherwise not suitable, then picking up and moving to another burrow is not easy. I know this from experience.

Not so when your burrow is your car.

My generous friends in Scottsdale, the ones with the little dog, apparently feel bad that I might be living in my car for a while. This summer they have trips planned to exotic places. Would I like to take care of the small furry creature while they are gone? Of course, I said yes. I love that little dog, and the house has all the mod cons (plus, the pool got fixed). Lots of reasons to say yes. 

However, when I'm living in someone else's space, I am not inhabiting my own. You might think, oh, vacation, how nice. That is not how I see it. I see myself as neither guest nor employee, but some third thing. Friend, maybe, but a friend who is willing to leave half her life in her car in order to be at the beck and call of a dog and so my friends can enjoy their trips knowing the dog will be well loved. How they can leave their dog for so long is beyond my comprehension, but that's just me. I miss my cat daily.

Another drawback to saying yes to dogsitting is the season. Summer in Phoenix is brutal. In fact, summer is life threatening. It is not possible to live in a car during the summer in Phoenix. Activities are constrained to early morning. The rest of the time, except for brief excursions to the back yard to make sure the dog pees, I have to stay indoors. I tell myself, I will get a lot of writing done. I will get a lot of dog love (and we all know that will be good for a person with early stage heart failure). But I will be stuck in Phoenix at a time when anyone with the means to leave does.

Where would I be if I weren't in Scottsdale? Camping in the national forest outside of Flagstaff with all the other van life nomads, finding sunny places to set out my solar panels and listening to the wind riffle the tall pines.

Dog love or tall shady trees? 

Stoics don't cry

Last week I left you with a cliffhanger—would I survive the dental debacle or would I run screaming like a crybaby into oncoming traffic? Were you worried? I wasn't. But I should have been. I arrived to the emergency dental appointment on Tuesday, sure I was going to get a round of antibiotics and be feeling better in no time. That is not what happened.

The dentist took off the temporary crown and peered into the abyss. "I'm going to put some cold stuff on that back tooth and you tell me if it hurts," he said. 

He sprayed something on a q-tip and poked the tooth.

"Yow!" I said, just about levitating out of the chair.

"It's not infected," he said. "And you don't need a root canal. If the nerves were dead, you wouldn't feel a thing. Let's try putting some desensitizing liquid on it and put the temporary back on. See what happens. Sound good? Okay. Maybe we can numb it up a little bit," he said. 

What do you mean, a little bit? I didn't find the uncertainty in his voice reassuring. I laid there with some misgivings as he prepared the giant silver needle ray gun. He came at me from below, thinking he could fool me, but this was not my first rodeo in a dental chair. However, I welcomed the pinch and pull and stabbing pain with my trademark stoicism because I was pretty sure sweet oblivion would soon be happening.

"I'm going to go check on my other patient," the dentist said, stripping off his gloves. I sat in the chair and stared out the window at the cloudy sky, hoping to soon be able to rest my tense shoulders and relax my furrowed brow. I patted my face a few times. Was it getting numb? Not fast enough for me. 

All too soon, the dentist returned.

"It's not numb," I said.

"I think the desensitizing agent will help," he said. "But it is going to be very cold at first. And I have to paint all four nerves."

Four nerves! I was definitely on my last one. However, I dutifully winched open my mouth. He dipped a giant q-tip in something and painted my tooth. Instantly, pain shot down through my jaw into my spine, shattering my vertebrae as it went. I whimpered a tiny bit until the pain receded. 

"Hang on," he said and painted another part of the tooth. 

I groaned. I'd never experienced pain like this in my life. Worse than being socked in the jaw by my older brother. Worse than falling nose first onto concrete (also courtesy of my older brother). I realize now how fortunate I have been to have escaped serious pain until age 67. My luck had just run out. 

He painted another part of the tooth. I gripped my own hand and dug in. I would have drawn blood if I'd had any fingernails. The pain was excruciating. I could not help moaning. One of my moans turned into a despairing chuckle.

"People don't usually laugh when I do this," he said. Then he painted another side of the tooth. At that point, I wasn't sure if I was going to pass out, choke on my own spit, or have a heart attack. Any of those would have been fine with me if they would just lead to a cessation of pain.

"Almost done," he said and came at me again. The word torture crossed my mind several times. 

Finally, the tooth painting was over. He slapped the temporary back on and let his assistant deal with my trauma while he went to take care of his next patient. My woes had put a serious dent in their schedule. I successfully resisted the urge to apologize. 

I staggered out the door. The taste in my mouth, the smell in my head, the pounding in my jaw . . . I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to my car. I gagged a couple times, and prepared myself to hurl into the dirt beyond the curb. Gradually, the pain settled to a one-mule kick in the jaw instead of a twenty-mule team kick. I got into my car and thought maybe, just maybe, I might make it. 

Within five minutes, I was feeling great. Well, great in comparison to what I'd just experienced. Being relatively pain free compared to enduring the most horrendous pain I'd ever felt in my life is the most amazing kind of freedom. Going through such exquisite gut-wrenching pain and emerging victorious made me feel like I could do just about anything.

Which is a good thing, because on Friday, I was back in the hot seat for the permanent crowns. I was apprehensive but the prospect of finally having two crowns and a lovely bridge in between was a siren call lulling me into believing everything would be okay. Call it vanity if you must. I just really wanted a tooth back in that gap. 

"Do you want novocaine?" the assistant asked me. 

I felt my body clench from jaw to pelvis. "Do you think I should?"

"It shouldn't hurt much," she said. "Most people don't need it."

I grimaced, not wanting her to think me a wimp. "Okay, let's try it." 

It took over an hour for the dentist to grind the new appliance into shape so I could bite without breaking my jaw. In and out, in and out, pressing hard, youch, bite now, bite and chew, bite, bite, bite, okay. Check the little paper. Grinding, polishing, grind some more, bite bite bite. 

"This a strange form of sculpture, isn't it?" I mused during one short grinding break. It occurred to me, I probably would have made a good cosmetic dentist, back in my younger days when my eyes and hands were cooperating. 

"You have a deep overbite," he said. 

"You make it sound like that's a bad thing," I said. 

"If you don't mind . . . " he said and proceeded to grind some of the enamel off the upper teeth on that side. Whatever, I thought. It's on the inside, nobody will see. 

After an hour and a half, we agreed the bite was satisfactory. 

"The cement will be cold," he warned. He loaded up the glue and jammed the new bridge home. 

"Yow!" I grunted incoherently as he held the thing in place and zapped it with a blue light to cure the glue. Irradiated and in misery, all I could do was lie there and hope I would not choke on my own saliva. Breathe, I told myself, just breathe.

This back and forth had taken longer than expected. He was running way late. Once again I resisted the urge to apologize. Finally he unclipped my bib. As I wobbled to my feet, he told me I needed to get a special kind of floss to clean under the bridge so I wouldn't get tooth decay there, causing the whole thing to fail. 

And then he was gone to the room next door. I heard him welcome his patient with a jovial tone, as if he hadn't just spent a tedious hour installing an edifice over the chasm in my jaw. I thought, maybe he just really likes his job. Later I found out he was starting a week's vacation the next day. 

Since then, pain comes and goes. It moves around. The brutalized tooth seems quiescent. However, my jaw hinge throbs sometimes, and the nerves that he shot with his nasty silver needle ray gun sometimes quiver with rage. My neck has knots like the bumps on an alligator. I wonder if I will ever be the same.

Good news: ibuprofen. Other good news: lousy memory. By the time the next dental crisis rolls around, I will probably have forgotten how it felt to experience the worst pain of my life.  Someday soon, I predict I will be chomping apples on that fake tooth without a care. Even if I reread this blog, I won't remember the depth of my misery. It will all blend into one traumatic experience that I survived. The silver lining in the ongoing old age slow-motion catastrophe that is me.   

Going with the punches

Here we are again. I'm here for my weekly therapeutic blog dump. Stand back, all four of you blogbots, so you don't get spattered. Urp. Hm. Tastes like chicken. The theme of this week is teeth. Like, mainly, how annoying it is that they don't heal themselves. My car's check engine light actually has a better chance of self-healing (as long as I give it decent gasoline) than my teeth do. How come bones can heal but teeth can't, riddle me this. 

Three years ago, you might recall, a root canal went gunnysack, and I had to have the tooth extracted. It was less than a month before my move to Tucson. Implants were booked out weeks. So I moved house, proceeded to figure out life in the desert, and gradually got used to having a gap in my jawline. 

After so long of chewing on empty air, I thought, it's past time to get a bridge over the yawning chasm. It would be nice to chew food there again, if possible. Besides, the two teeth on either side were cracked and in need of crowns anyway, and insurance was paying for half, so I figured now was the time. 

On Monday I coughed and moaned like the stoic trooper I am while the dentist and his assistant did their best to choke me with my own spit. After two hours of grinding, I came away with a white blob of something that resembles silly putty covering the two brutalized teeth and the gap in between. It hurt for a day and then stopped hurting, and I thought, yay. Then it started hurting again, and now it feels like a squabble of angry worms are drilling tunnels through my jaw. It took a trip to the storage unit, but thank god, I found my acetaminophen and ibuprofen, yay, so the worms are sedated to a sluggish writhing. 

My friend noticed I seemed a bit under the weather on a recent Zoom call. Her partner is a retired medical professional, which means he has lots of knowledge and even more opinions. I appreciate both. He suggested I call the emergency after-hours number. I stared at the phone for a while, feeling reluctant to admit I might need some help. Finally, I called the office number, got the office recording, and wrote down the emergency number. After the beep, I left a whiny message. I don't feel so good. Then I sat around moping for a bit, wondering if this amount of pain constitutes a "true dental emergency," which is the requirement before you call the after-hours desperation hotline. However, I knew my friend would be checking on me, and I sure didn't want to be scolded by the medical professional partner for being too stoic, so I called the emergency number. I got a recorded message from my actual dentist himself. I was kind of relieved. I imagined he was out enjoying a lovely meal with this wife or maybe resting up for another week of jamming his hands into slobbery mouths. I would have been flustered if he had answered the phone in person. Sorry to bother. 

So far, no call back. 

Part of me is like, well, this is how it goes for me. Life comes at me swinging, and I either cave or pretend to cave and then pop up like a bobo doll, smirking I know you are but what am I. Right now I feel kind of crappy so I don't have the energy to bounce back to my feet. I'm more like a beached humpback whale, rolling with the flow and hoping the tide and a few valiant surfers will shove me back out to sea. 

I will feel better eventually, I am predicting, and then I can get back to the all-important task of jumping off a cliff. Eyes on the prize, people.