Don't cry, it's just the end of civilization, not the end of the world

Today was a lovely spring Wednesday in Mt. Tabor Park. With all this extra time on our hands, and all this lovely sunshine after last week's bizarre snow storm, a walk in the park seemed like the thing to do. On Wednesdays, no cars are allowed to drive in the park. Thus, one day a week, the roads are filled with bicyclists, pedestrians, runners, and skateboarders. I walked diffidently along the park roads, rather than along the foot trails where I usually walk, making sure not to spew germs. As I walked, I watched to see if others were maintaining proper social distance.

I wasn't surprised to see families clustered together, walking dogs, riding miniature pink bikes, skipping and singing. I smiled at the little vectors of disease as they pedaled by, giving me sidelong glances. School has been cancelled for what, a week, now? Any moment, some of those little vermin will start to whine and cough. Wonder how that will work out. I have visions of virus sheriffs nailing doors shut, guns at the ready. These families walked near me, not three feet away in some cases, apparently not caring that I myself could be a vector of disease, a carrier, a spreader, a Typhoid Mary.

Lots of couples walked close together, some actually arm in arm! I can't look at television images of people shaking hands or kissing now without feeling queasy. It's the same feeling I have when I see old movies in which people drove without seat belts, smoked like chimneys, and littered without thinking. Eeewww. How could they have done that? I predict in only a few months, movies showing people snuggling and kissing will be X-rated. Images of men shaking hands will elicit groans from the audiences now too freaked out to watch movies with anyone else but still remembering how great it felt, sort of, to be touched by another person. No big surprise, the couples in the park ignored me as if I weren't there. Nobody notices old women.

In fact, the only park goers who stopped, stepped off the trail, or made wide detours near me were old women like me. We came close enough to make eye contact, but just a wary glance, as if we were assessing the risk of a rabid rush, a bite on the leg, a cough in the face. I smiled the thin-lipped smile I reserve for times when I am anxious but determined to acknowledge another person's presence despite my discomfort. I tried not to feel rejected or disappointed that my airspace was no longer tolerable.

The desire to make others feel okay is strong in me. My codependent nature wants everyone to feel safe and happy so they won't kill me. That used to mean smiling, waving, moving closer, patting, touching, shaking hands. Now taking care of others means avoiding them, shunning them, keeping my hands, voice, and breath to myself.

I'm finding some comfort in the stories of earth's ability to bounce back now that we have quit polluting the air and water. We thought it couldn't be done, that pie-in-the-sky climate agreement in which we cut our consumption so the earth can survive. Look at us now, cutting our consumption in half, at least. It's a sad but delicious irony that this pandemic will reduce the world's population and pollution load to the point at which some of humanity might survive.

Mom didn't have a great day today, I heard. She was asleep on the couch when I peered in her window this evening. Her eyes were closed; her mouth was open. Her dinner was untouched on the coffee table. I taped a little photo of a bouquet of daisies to the outside of her window, adding to the growing collection of clippings: flowers, a leprechaun, and my siblings faces taped to pink hearts. Then I just stood there and watched my mother breathe, as if I were watching a movie of a quiet peaceful moment in someone else's life.

Spring is a-maundering near the Love Shack

It's finally spring here in Portland, which means the east wind howls through bare branches, clouds roll over unexpectedly, and the temperature varies twenty degrees depending on what side of the apartment I am on. It could hail at any moment. Or not. I don't know whether I should open a window or crank up the heat.

I went for a walk in Mt. Tabor Park yesterday to stroll around the big reservoir. I shivered going up the east side of the hill in the shade and sweltered on the west side in the sun. I would have gladly stayed on the west side forever, under blue sky and balmy breezes but my feet started to hurt.

I usually bandage a toe on my left foot before I go walking. However, I haven't walked since last fall. On my third circuit around the reservoir, toes on both feet began to hurt. I expected some pain, but both feet? As I limped along, I tried to recall . . . did I bandage the wrong foot? I made a pit stop to sit on a step and pull off my right shoe and sock. Sure enough, I had bandaged the toe on my right foot and not the toe on the left foot. Looks like I lost a few more brain cells over the long winter.

My cuticles are shredded, a sure sign that I am stressed. Among my many fears, I am sure I have early dementia. I fear I'm going blind. I fear I'm a walking heart attack. I fear my mother will live forever. I fear she will run out of money and have to move in with me.

To stop thinking, I took the plastic sheeting off the kitchen windows. I hope I don't regret my quest for more light and fresh air. The sky is clouding over. Rain is on the way. It gets cold when the east wind blows in.

I figured out that my experience of life is the result of five factors: circumstance, luck, persistence, talent, and insanity, pretty much in that order. I have no control over the first two. I can't do much about the last two. It seems to me that persistence is where I can leverage my capacity as a going human concern. To that end, I'm trying to do the things on my list, no matter how trivial, and avoid thinking too much.

That is why I'm blogging right now. It's on my list. I usually blog after something noteworthy happens. The only memorable thing that has happened so far today is that my cat ate food and then upchucked on the rug. Hey, barf happens.

The trick is to put tasks on my list that matter, not trivial things that I would do anyway just so I have something to check off. Sometimes I need to do that, though, I confess. Demoralization sets in when I don't do at least one important thing per day. Sometimes taking out the compost bin is an accomplishment; however, usually, taking out the compost, trash, and recycling does not merit a place on my to-do list. I used to think I deserved a medal if I got up before nine o'clock. Now I don't care. My idea of what is important has evolved as I've aged.

Speaking of aging, my relationship with gravity continues to evolve. As I drive, I feel my muscles melting into goo. I would like to say I keep a smile on my face when I am in public, but that would be a lie. My face sags when I'm not paying attention. My expression morphs from grimacing, to pursing my lips, to squinting, to scowling. I'm sure I often look insane.

Did I mention I try not to think too much?

Let's think about something else. How is everyone doing? Thanks for asking. My sister is living an academic life in Rennes. That is to say, she pursues her research like a terrier with a bone. It is not easy. I vacation in France through her photos and emails. My friend Bravadita is almost done earning a teaching credential. I fear for her safety as a public school teacher but I don't tell her that. She's got enough on her plate writing meaningless essays about classroom management and learning theory. I hope I live long enough to read her memoir. It is going to be magnificent.

My mother exists in a strange world outside of time, going through the daily motions as if she's caught in a time loop. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, nap, visit from daughter, repeat. If she didn't have dementia I think she would be a lot more frustrated. The thought occurs to her—is that all there is? I can see it flit across her face, but then it's gone. M.A.S.H. is on: time to discuss the merits of Klinger's latest frock.

The chronic malcontent does a little clandestine gardening

Today I went for a walk around the reservoir before the heat ramped up and the smoky air moved in. The air was warm, the sky was still blue. I drank in the heat, although I admit I was flagging somewhat toward the end. In a fit of public service, I had brought an empty plastic bag with me in case I found some trash to pick up along my route. Not surprising, I found some trash.

I picked up a large aluminum ice-tea can, two big brown glass IPA bottles, a fast-food container I did not open, a small empty cardboard box, a piece of yellow do-not-cross plastic tape, and a square of black plastic whose purpose I could not identify. I was also packing my digital camera, my phone, and a half-bottle of water. I was dripping with self-righteousness when I finally made it up the hill to the recycling bins by the ranger station.

Having done my civic duty, I sauntered home and found to my relief it was still cooler in the Love Shack than it was outside. I hunkered down for the afternoon, catching up on my recordkeeping, bemoaning my lack of income, and waiting for my phone to alert me that it was time to head out in the heat to visit Mom and take the old ladies out for their evening smoke.

Tonight Mom's smoking buddy Jane seemed more anxious than usual. 

“Julie moved out,” Jane said glumly when we were seated in the smoking area. Julie was her neighbor, a younger woman who escaped the facility after healing from a broken hip. Maybe she even went back home.

“Julie was a nice person,” Mom said consolingly. “Vivian is still there, though,” she said, referring to the woman on Jane's other side.

“Well, I just can't stand it!” Jane said, lighting her cigarette with trembling hands.

“Don't you get along with Vivian?” I asked cautiously. Vivian seemed harmless to me. I've never spoken to her, but she's so tiny and hunched over, I doubt she could actually look me in the face. I could take her, I'm pretty sure, unless she knows kung fu.

“I'm afraid I won't be able to help if something goes wrong,” Jane said.

“But that isn't your job,” I pointed out.

“I guess I could just ring the call button,” Jane muttered.

By this point, my mother was halfway through her cigarette, which means her brain had turned into cotton candy. She alternated between staring at the ash at the end of her cigarette and staring at Jane's cigarette, I assume comparing her ashes to Jane's. Her eyes were big and a little wild.

“I don't think I can stand any more of this,” Jane said. “That rose bush is covering my window. I'm going to call the ombudsman if the manager doesn't get out here and cut it back!”

Now, I may have mentioned before that this rose bush is Jane's nemesis. Jane has only one window, so you can understand that her view is important to her. She likes to sit at her table and monitor who comes to the front door. She's monitored the hell out of me over the past year, until I started parking in the back and punching in a code to get in the back door.

When Mom first moved to the facility, back when she still had free will, Mom heard Jane complaining about the leggy rose bush that was blocking her view and decided to do something about it. She took her clippers and cut the thing back. Radically. Soon thereafter I received a terse email telling me to tell my mother never to cut the rose bush again. In fact, she should keep her clippers off all the plants in front, because that was the manager's territory.

Mom resentfully retired her clippers. However, Jane's complaints have continued relentlessly. All summer we've been discussing whether we should sneak out and cut back the bush. If Mom hadn't lost so many brain cells, she might have surreptitiously trimmed a stem or two. The thought of security cameras kept us from acting. Until tonight.

I walked Mom back to her room. We looked at each other. I'm pretty sure her mind was blank, but I was thinking, if anyone is going to trim that rose bush, it should be me. I dug into the old coffee can where Mom kept her clippers. I held them up.

“Should we do it?”

Mom started to grin and I knew she understood. “Do you think so?”

“Let's do it!” She grabbed her walker and we slowly beelined back down the hall toward the front door. When we got there, she hung back a little. I said, “Don't quit on me now. You gotta let me back in.” It only crossed my mind for a second that she might pretend she didn't know me. I pictured myself ringing the bell to get the med-aide to let me back in. Dead giveaway that we were up to something. No way could I say my mother was the mastermind, considering her mind is on vacation.

Too late to back out now. I was determined. I quickly opened the door and slipped out into the heat. I hustled over to the rose bush, clipped one long stem in one snip, and trotted back to the door. Mom peered through the window with wide eyes. Then she pushed open the door and let me in. We trucked back to her room, me trying to casually hold the thorny stems in one hand and sauntering a little in case we were on camera.

I don't know what Mom was thinking. She was silent. I was quiet too, but I hoped for several miracles: that the security cameras weren't working, that tomorrow the manager would not notice one stem gone, that Mom would immediately forget my dastardly deed, that Jane wouldn't notice the missing stem and turn me in, that nosy Sally (who cruises the halls everyday) would not ask me why I had parts of a rose bush clutched gingerly in one hand. You know, just your basic everyday prayers.

We made it back to her room undisturbed. One thorn scratch later, the evidence was successfully bagged and out of sight. The clippers were retired. Mom walked me to the back door, and I made my getaway. She gave me the peace sign as I drove away into the eerily glowing orange sunset.

The unicorn head is somewhat worse for wear but still grinning

Yesterday I braved impending wind and rain to slog around the reservoir. It wasn't terribly cold; I had no good excuse to stay home except the gray clouds piling up in the sky. As I scurried around the half-mile track, I noticed the north cell of Reservoir No. 6 had been drained for cleaning. A layer of mud coated the bottom, and crows and ducks were digging for tasty tidbits in the muck. In my typical oblivious fashion, though, I failed to notice the item lying on the mud in one far corner of the reservoir. Yep, it was my old friend, the severed unicorn head.

I wrote about this remarkable object last January. Back then, I posted a photo of the creepy thing on my Facebook page. The next time I walked around the reservoir, the plastic head was gone; I assumed some vigilant park ranger had managed to snag the head and drag it out of the water. Apparently that is giving too much credit to our over-burdened park budget. Now it is clear the head filled with water and sank, bobbed along the bottom over the ensuing months, and fetched up in the mud, still grinning. I posted another photo of it to document the event, more evidence that plastic does not decay, even when shaped like a unicorn head.

I relate to that unicorn head in the sense that I am feeling somewhat worse for wear but still grinning. Despite the cold wet spring, despite the lack of editing jobs, despite my mother's continued decline into dementia, I continue to show up for my life. I won't say I do it skillfully and some parts aren't pretty, but I haven't given up, even though sometimes I feel buried in mud to my chin.

I've started visiting the maternal parental unit every evening. I never know what I will find. Last week she was sitting outside when I arrived. She knew me, but not how she planned to get back into the building, considering the door gets locked at 5 pm. This week I found her in the hall. Some of her less demented peers were trying to help her figure out something. Mom was missing her upper dentures. Have you seen a loved one with no teeth? She certainly looked different. I found myself thinking of Granny Clampett and later realized I was humming the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.

Mom has lost seven pounds in five months. Now she weighs the same she weighed when she moved to the place one year ago: 96 pounds. Apparently weight loss can change the fit of a person's dentures. I made an appointment to take her to the dentist.

Mom had a successful trip to the dentist to get the upper plate realigned. By successful I mean she had no accidents and didn't die in the chair. The dentist prescribed a saline rinse twice a day. When I visited Mom the next day, I found a cup of salt on her counter. She pointed to it. “Someone left that here,” she said. I looked at it and figured out it was salt. It seemed clear to me at that point that the staff at the care center assumed Mom was capable of measuring half a teaspoon of salt into warm water, taking out her upper dentures, rinsing her mouth several times, and spitting out the salty water in the sink. Well, you know what happens when we assume.

We managed a partial rinse, and another one last night, before I called it good on the saline rinse. When I asked her, “Does your mouth hurt now?” she said no. I left the salt on the counter, though. Argh. I should not have done that.

Last night we sat outside, her smoking and me trying to dodge the smoke. I noticed she wasn't wearing socks. She didn't seem to care. She was more concerned that her cigarette holder was almost empty. When she was done smoking, I called for someone to let us back into the building. We made it back to her room. I got her some socks, which she managed to put on successfully. She couldn't figure out how to refill her cigarette holder. For the first time in my life, I opened a pack of cigarettes.  I was surprised to see those packs hold a lot of cigarettes.

As we were sitting on the couch, Mom pointed to the little box on the coffee table that her hearing aids came in. “What about that?” she said. The box was empty. I looked at her ears. No hearing aids. Yipes. I went over to her bedside table. Yep, there they were. Whew. $4,600 worth of electronics. I helped her put them in, silently berating myself for not noticing their absence.

I walked her through the process of sitting on the couch, taking off her shoes, putting her feet up, and covering herself with blanket. “What do I do now?” she said, looking up at me.

For a moment I was at a loss. Then I thought, what would I tell a two-year-old?

“Watch TV. Sleep if you can. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Last night I took a bath to relax before bed. Suddenly my right ear began to ring with a shrill tone. It didn't stop. My head felt lopsided. I was half-deaf in my right ear. With visions of urgent care in my mind, I squirted some nasal spray up my nose and went to bed, hoping for the best. Sometime during the night my ear cleared. I woke grateful to feel my old friend vertigo (three year anniversary this month) rush in to challenge my morning balance. Here's me, still grinning.

The Chronic Malcontent finds a unicorn

As most of the rest of our beleaguered nation shudders in single digit temperatures, we here in the Pacific Northwest (or as I like to call it, Resistance Country) have been sweltering under balmy skies. I kid you not, some lucky locals in certain Portland micro-climates enjoyed 60°F. And it's just mid-January! I know. Yesterday, even though the east wind was howling, and it actually felt more like 40, the blue sky and sunshine enticed me out of the house and into the park.

I often avoid the park on windy days. I'm no fool. I see the littered remains of pine branches all over the trails when I venture out after a windstorm. We've lost several trees in the past year—the park rangers sawed through the trunks to restore the trails, so I walk through them every time I go hiking. I don't mind some twigs falling on me, but I doubt I would survive being flattened by an entire tree. So, windy days, no thanks.

However, did I mention 60°F !? I couldn't resist. Whenever I take chances, I think about the odds of a bad thing occurring. Yep. I hide out in the safety of statistics. There are lots of trees, but not that many that could fall across a trail I might take at the exact day and time I happen to be strolling by. Plus I'm a moving target! It would take some seriously bad luck for me to get hit by a branch, let alone a whole tree.

I made it to the reservoir unscathed and started walking around the perimeter. Above me was a heavenly mix of blue sky and white clouds. The wind wasn't so harsh in the sun. A t-shirt, a fleece jacket, and a hoodie kept me the perfect temperature for walking. I let my hood down and put on my sunshades. I looked for a break in the stream of jogging stroller moms, runners, and dog-walkers. Let the strolling begin.

It's .56 miles around the main reservoir, which has two side-by-side cells. I don't know how deep these two pools are, but they used to hold a good portion of Portland's drinking water, so I can safely say there are millions of gallons in each reservoir. I aim for five times around and settle for four, most days, depending on how long my bladder holds out. I thought I might be able to make five laps, if I didn't lollygag. As I waited for a break in the traffic, I looked out across the wind-riled water glinting in the afternoon sun. Below me, a line of waterlogged tennis balls hugged the near shore, held by little wind-driven waves.

Today I hadn't gone more than 20 yards when I was brought up short by a puzzling sight. Bobbing at the edge of the water, just barely submerged, was the lifelike head of a white horse. 

At first, my brain stuttered as it tried to figure out what I was seeing. Was it, could it possibly be, no, no way could this be real. Where was the blood and sinews? Where was the gore? I've seen enough CSI: Name your City to imagine what a submerged dead animal might look like. This odd flotsam had definitely never been alive. Judging by its condition, my guess would be rubbery molded white plastic.

And what's more, it was not just a horse. I finally noticed between its two charming ears the horn sticking out of its forehead. Oh my, this was the head of a unicorn. Whoa. Not how I expected to see my first unicorn.

I took a picture of it with my cell phone and kept on walking. Five times I passed the unicorn head. Each time I neared its location, I watched to see if anyone else had noticed it. Little clumps of people would stop to marvel, take a picture, and move on. When I got home I Googled “unicorn head in reservoir” but didn't get much, although I did see images of unicorn heads that you can buy online. Yikes, why would you buy a unicorn head? Apparently people hang them on the walls in their daughters' rooms. Here you go, honey. I bagged that unicorn you've been bugging me about since you were five. Is it just me, or is that creepy? 

When I walk I have lots of time to think about things. However, I rarely reach any decisions or figure anything out. And I am relieved to report I don't rely on magical creatures like unicorns and other sparkly higher powers to rescue me. Because that poor old drowned unicorn is not going to be rescuing anyone. I can just imagine some female adolescent furiously heaving the head over the iron railing into the water. I wanted a pony, not a severed unicorn head, dammit!

Meanwhile, yada yada. Life goes on, death creeps closer, the bank account dwindles, and winter returns tomorrow. Spring is great, but it never lasts.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Chronic Malcontent

Howdy, Blogbots. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you are fortunate enough to spend the day doing something you love with people you love.

Here in Portland, it's a balmy 60°F. Windy, yes, and wet ... but warm! In fact, a third day of balminess! In spite of my chronic vertigo, I don't want to miss a minute of this bizarre gift of global climate change. After lunch (actually, breakfast, but who cares?), I dressed in wind-breaking waterproof layers and went for a walk around the big reservoir (0.56 miles around) in Mt. Tabor Park. It's my favorite meditative walk.  Five times around is usually all I can do before my bladder kicks me back up the hill toward home. Sometimes I even run a bit, but not today. I'm tired.

Yesterday the air was calm. The water in the big ponds was still as jello, barely jiggling. The hills and trees and clouds were perfectly replicated in the water. Today, not even close. The water was lively. Leaves flew everywhere. The colony of ducks snoozed on the concrete berm at the water's edge, out of the reach of dogs and children. A few raindrops splattered my glasses but off in the distance some part of the city to the south was enjoying some short-lived sunshine. Typical fall day, except for the balmy temperature.

As I was walking around the reservoir musing about what I'm going to do if I run out of money, an older guy in an overcoat came toward me the other way, pushing a big stroller filled with a wide-eyed toddler under a pink blanket. I smiled at her and kept going. When I passed them again, the man asked me something. I had my earbuds in and he didn't speak loudly, but I could read his lips.

“Is she asleep?” He pointed to the kid in the pram.

I looked at her big round eyes and said, “Nope.”

He winced. I chuckled and kept walking.

The next time around, the kid's eyes were half open. Progress. I don't know what happened after that. It was time for me to head back up the hill. I hope the kid finally fell asleep. I'm sure her grandfather could have used some rest. It's a half-mile around that thing!

Last year, my mother and I went out to her favorite restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm pretty sure she ate turkey. I'm pretty sure I ate eggs and pancakes. Or maybe that was Christmas. Maybe it was both. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. Now we are in a new era. The era of eating out at restaurants with my mother is over. Now we are in the era of eating alone.

Tonight I will visit my mother at the assisted living place. We will sit outside in the dark smoking area on plastic chairs with a little LED lantern to give us weak light. As she lights up her cigarette, I will ask her if she had turkey today. I'm relatively confident she will be able to tell me. As her brain flakes away, the only thing left to talk about is the food. I can count on her to have something to say. She knows she doesn't like the food, even if she can't remember what she ate.

I guess that sums up my experience of life so far. I can't remember all that much about it, but I know I didn't like it. Eggs and pancakes would probably fill the hole for a little while. Except I only eat pancakes when I go out for holidays with Mom. I've lost my dining partner. Today I'm alone.

Don't whine. Advice from the chronic malcontent: Get busy

Today as I was slicing a bulbous slippery yam, the knife slipped and chopped down on my left pinky. Afraid to look, I wrapped a wad of paper towel around my finger, gripped it hard, and did a little dance of pain. I had visions of the decision in front of me . . . would I prefer to lose the tip of my finger or would I prefer to pay the cost of going to the doctor? Hmmm. Finger . . . money. . . So hard to decide. For a few more months, I think, I still have health insurance, unless the Republicans figure out how to get along. Luckily, two band-aids did the trick, and now I'm typing, woohoo, look at me go. Dodged that bullet. Knife. Whatever.

Do you worry about losing your health insurance? At first I was worried, but now I am resigned. Soon my health insurance plan will be once again don't get sick and be careful with knives. I remember surviving years with no health insurance, with just the L.A. Free Clinic as my medical provider. Of course, I was a lot younger then.

The reservoirs at Mt. Tabor Park are full of water. The wind comes from the west and ripples the surface, reflecting the sky. We haven't had rain in over a month. Two nights ago, as the sun was setting, I was striding around the reservoir, enjoying the cool air. Suddenly I spotted a duck marching along the path ahead, followed by a brood (paddle? army? platoon?) of five barely fuzzy ducklings, trucking along in the gloaming, looking for a way to get down to the water. Runners and walkers went by, barely noticing the duck as she marched in a zigzag pattern toward me. Whenever she stopped, her kids would plop down on their fuzzy butts, hunkering until Mom started moving again. I didn't move, and she waddled right by me. She looked like any young mother with five infants: thin and frazzled.

As I was walking along the park trail last night, I had a disconcerting thought: I have passed my peak. My prime has come and gone. My best years are most likely behind me. If I was ever going to succeed, it most likely would have happened in my 40s. If I was going to be a great painter, a great writer, it would probably have happened by now. I don't have the energy to feel bad about it. Now I'm 60, and I no longer care about things like career, ambition, making a difference. I just want to survive until I can start taking social security. If there will be such a thing when I'm 62.

Like many cities in this new bizarre era, Portland is having a housing shortage. Decrepit motor homes and campers line many city streets. Tent cities mushroom around freeway interchanges. Residents are furious. Some houseless people aren't good neighbors, apparently. At the behest of irate taxpayers, city officials are passing laws prohibiting camping, parking, sleeping on sidewalks. Where are these people supposed to go? I feel like I'm about three months away from living in my car. I can't move into my mother's spare bedroom anymore. The sale of her condo is pending.

I've decided to stop dreaming of my future after I move to some hot, dry desert town. It's making me crazy to imagine moving but not be able to take much concrete action. While I am slowly downsizing, I am trying to enjoy my mother while I can. It has to be enough, to just be here now. That is how she is living these days, fully immersed in the moment. I call her the Zen Master.

I feel like I'm holding my breath. I'm waiting for the signal that tells me it's time for a change. Meanwhile, I'm in a slowly degrading holding pattern. My resources are draining out of my leaky life, drip drip drip.

Well, the good news is, I don't have to care about anything. I don't have to believe in anything. I just have to show up, one day at a time, and do the work. Time to get busy.

Put a frame on it and call it art

In honor of the end of summer, I took an extra long walk tonight, hiking around the north and south reservoirs four times. That equals 2.24 miles, but who is counting. As I walked along, I felt my left cheek twitching. My face cheek that is, although other cheeks have been known to twitch from time to time. My left cheek has been twitching for a month or two now. I'm pretty sure it's a sign of stress, but then I didn't need an extra sign to know I'm ready to spontaneously combust.


The sun was descending over the west hills as I strode along the path, being passed by old men on bikes, old ladies walking, and mothers walking with little kids. A snappy breeze gave my baseball cap a bit of a lift. I noticed the paddling of eight ducks had moved from Mt. Tabor Park's south reservoir to the north reservoir, not sure why. Uptown water, I guess. These are your historic reservoirs! No longer Portland's drinking water, thanks to the EPA.

I brought my digital camera with me tonight. It's an old dinosaur of a silver box, sluggish shutter, feeble focus... it seems to prefer three dimensional objects. Old posts, rocks, sewer gratings. Those are the photos that look the most interesting when I get them downloaded to my computer. The images of faraway downtown Portland are hazy, gray, and flat. I don't know much about photography, but I'm pretty sure if I had a better camera, I could take really good pictures.

It doesn't matter, though. Because I know the secret to making art. Whatever you have—photo, crayon drawing, pen-and-ink sketch, finger painting—whatever it is, all you have to do is put a frame around it. Whatever it is, if you are wondering if it could possibly be art, but you aren't quite sure, I tell you, just frame it! Framing any two-dimensional object automatically elevates it to the status of art. Take it from me. I used to be an artist. I know what I'm talking about.

Hey, ask anybody, if you don't want to take my word for it. I know, you don't even know me. Talk to one of your artistic friends, I'm sure you have a few lurking in nearby lofts and basements. If you can get them to take a break from making art, show them two pictures, one framed and one unframed. Ask them to point to the one that is art. I'm sure they will pick the one in the frame every time.

The nice thing is, it doesn't even have to be a fancy frame. Any crappy frame will do, even one that your niece made out of cardboard and dry macaroni. Even a frame of seashells. Hey, I once made a frame of red hot tamale candies! I kid you not. I glued the hot tamales on a box frame, painted them glorious jewel colors, and sprayed the thing with clear lacquer. What a shining thing of beauty. I actually forget what was surrounded by this wondrous frame, but it was art, let me assure you. The frame hung on my wall near the ceiling for years. I would show you a picture of the frame but last year the ants found the red tamales and started hauling bits of candy into the molding around the ceiling. That was the end of that frame. The ant trail remains, embedded in the off-white paint. If I could figure out how to put a frame on that ant trail, I bet I could call it art.

The world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, as usual. Maybe we are falling toward hell a little faster these days, it's hard to tell. It might just be the stinky election season making me feel like life is spinning out of control faster than usual. Probably not. It's hard to have perspective sometimes. I try to imagine what the 2010s would look like from the 1940s and I think, well, probably it's about the same in some ways, better in others. Don't let me complain about never winning anything! I breathe a sigh of relief every day when I realize I won the white American lottery.

Up close, my mother continues to disintegrate in slow motion, one molecule, one day at a time. I haven't quite figured out yet that I can't stop it, hence the cheek twitch and the persistent vertigo. I'm taking time out from editing a boring dissertation to write this blog post. From 30,000 meters up, it's all good, right? And then we die. From an altitude of 30 centimeters, it's an endless grind of pushing pebbles up a tiny hill. I'm trying to put a frame on my experience, thinking I can elevate the status of my life to art. Is it working? Hmmm. I don't think so. Wait, let me get out my glue and pasta shells! Where's my glitter?

The chronic malcontent muses while jogging: Don't try this at home

Today for the first time this spring, I put on my jogging togs and headed for Mt. Tabor Park. As I marched up the hill, I tried not to notice how tight my running shorts were or how my belly bulged over the waistband. I plodded up the main staircase, admiring my black polyester (or are they nylon) pants with the modest belled bottoms and racy white stripes, thinking these pants will be around until the apocalypse. I made it to the top of the staircase. I only had to pull the band of my sports bra out to give my lungs some room to expand twice on the way. Progress!

The cloud-filtered early afternoon sunlight was warm, and I was overdressed: long t-shirt, short jacket, long pants, baseball cap. Ready to start trotting. Any moment now.

Finally, I urged my legs to a trot, first trot of the season. Argh. I was aghast at how creaky my ankles and knees felt. The pain reminded me of my vegan debacle, from which I thought I had recovered. Mentally I reviewed my diet. Have I been eating enough protein? I've been doing protein smoothies almost every day, plus my usual eggs... hmmm. I heard Bravadita's voice in my head: Americans eat too much protein, more than they really need (those selfish hogs). So, add in my broccoli and maybe I'm getting 45 grams of protein a day? I don't think that's enough, sorry, Bravadita. My joints are telling me I need more protein. And probably more water, too.

As I trotted down and around the hill, feeling every little sinew between my hips and ankles, feeling every scraping bone and twinging muscle, I lamented the loss of strength, stamina, flexibility...and even as I lamented those prized assets, I knew if I really wanted them badly enough, I could get them back. At that point, gravity sucked my facial skin into a sinkhole somewhere around my knees and my brain along with it. Save that conundrum for a rainy day.

Still, I had to count my blessings: the vertigo was bad this morning, but it calmed down while I was finishing the final edits on a small job, an insubstantial treatise on the casual carpooling phenomenon now occurring in San Francisco. (Who knew! People are so amazing.) My jagged jogging didn't seem to stir the accursed ear rocks up much, I'm happy to say. I'm going to try not to move my head much while I type this and hope for the best.

After my choppy scoot down and around the road, I walked once around one of the reservoirs, admiring the deep green water, noting the occasional floating cup lid and tennis ball, and then headed up one of the dirt trails toward the northeastern flank of the mountain. As I walked, I began to feel sad, and then I remembered why sometimes I don't like to go walking: Walking gives me time to think, and when I have time to think, I feel sad.

First, I grieved the loss of my mother (she's not dead yet, she's actually doing better, but that doesn't stop me from indulging in the wreckage of the future). Then I grieved for the plight of people suffering at the hands of terrorists. Next, I grieved for the plight of animals suffering at the hands of mean people. Finally, I grieved for the plight of the planet, weighed down by humanity's greed and selfishness. All this grief I felt as I sauntered along the dirt paths wearing polyester (or nylon) pants, listening to an mp3 player that I charged with electricity generated by coal plants (and maybe some hydropower—this is the Pacific Northwest, after all). And now I'm blogging about my sadness while enjoying a cup of tepid coffee (think I'll heat it up in my microwave) and listening to Ultravox's Hiroshima Mon Amour on Window Media Player. Oh, how I suffer.

Pre-worrying solves nothing, but planning and action can help ease my fears about the future. I fear my mother's decline and eventual demise. I fear the impending earthquake and tsunami. I fear my landlord will evict me this summer so he can triple the rent and I'll have to move in with my mother. I fear my crappy car will croak; it's a Ford, after all—found on road dead. I fear I'll never finish my book (I'm almost done). I fear ridicule for my attempt to write a screenplay (but I submitted it to a contest anyway). I fear I'll soon be size extra fat instead of just medium fat (I still went jogging).

Nobody knows the future, except for the one thing we all know and don't want to talk about: We all will die. We don't know when, we don't know how, but we know we can't escape it. The essential, mind-blowing question is (and has always been), how do we want to live until we die? You know what they say: A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. Do I want to get to the end and realize I was a bystander in my own life? How many of us just trudge through our days without letting ourselves feel anything? I know that's what I do. I don't feel much rage anymore—I go straight to sorrow.

I don't like to feel sorrow, so I avoid feeling anything. But I've learned that the sun only comes out after I feel the sorrow, after I acknowledge the pain of living life, after I let myself feel the feelings. Then I can shrug, take a nap, have a blueberry smoothie, and get on with the business of living.

The cable company has eaten my brain

I do a lot of thinking while I'm trotting the trails and roads in Mt. Tabor Park. I don't figure anything out, but I try. I start out slowly, treading cautiously on unreliable ankles, while my brain churns through the current list of resentments: Mom, cable company, fall, Mom, steep hill (ugh), cable company, end of summer (grrrr), no car, Mom... round and round as I shuffle along the trail. Pretty soon my knees limber up, my lungs stop laboring, and my brain sinks into a welcome sludge of endorphins. Ahhhh.

Occasionally I notice that I'm being passed up by just about everyone in the park. Long-legged tanned age-indeterminate men, young short-legged women in spandex pants, yappy dogs, long-haired skateboarders, bicyclists, they all go speeding by me as I plod along at the edge of the road. The only people I overtake are old ladies, so I guess I'm still doing okay.

You may recall that the maternal parental unit dragged up on apartment living, opting to move back to her cave-like condo, where she can step five paces to her private smoking area, where her garden is just over the fence, and her friends are a yell away. I've got to credit the old bat: She went all in on the move to the retirement community. There wasn't a single gray pantie left in the condo when she moved out. Everything but the kitchen sink got moved; I know, because I helped move it. Then, when she made up her mind that she wanted to move back, she didn't waste any time. She called the movers on Monday and by Friday the fancy retirement apartment was empty. Just a couple nails in the wall showed that anyone had come and gone.

I haven't been over to the condo yet to see the disarray. I've been wrestling with the cable company to get my mother's landline activated (by phone, of course—I haven't actually gone over to their retail outlet to challenge them to an arm wrestling match, although that could be my next ploy). The cable TV and internet modem were activated successfully, but I don't know what it is about my mother's phone number. For some reason, the phone gods don't want to release it from limbo.

You know how you run into a brick wall sometimes, metaphorically speaking... you bash into it and get rocked back on your metaphorical heels. You say, whoa, what was that? Then you run at the wall again, because you don't really know how thick or how high the wall is. You don't know what it is made of, either: are they real bricks or those phony papier mache bricks that they use on movie sets? Bam, you try again. Hmmm. Could be they are real bricks, you think to yourself. Well, but if I just keep bashing into the wall, sooner or later, it will crumble, right? It will give way before my dedicated onslaught. My passionate energetic relentless assault will reduce it to rubble, sooner or later... right?

Well, maybe not. This is what is known as escalation of commitment. In the real world, this kind of brainless doubling-down gets countries embroiled in wars. In business, this kind of stubborn resistance to reason results in products like New Coke (which just happened to turn out well, lucky break). In my own tiny world, if I count up how many hours I've spent on the phone with the cable company yelling “technical support!” into my handset and listening to their insipid hold music, it would add up to a week's worth of time spent not earning. I'm doubling-down on that damn phone number. After all the time I spent getting it ported over from the phone company, there is no way I'm going to give it up and settle for a new number. It's a matter of principle now. And brick walls. And sore heads (mine, of course; the cable company couldn't care less, I'm sure.)

I called Mom on her cell phone to give her the update on her landline situation. She sounded as weary as I felt. Tomorrow she will come over to drop off the last of the empty boxes she borrowed from me, and I think she will hand me a little stack of cash. It's guilt money. (She can't call it gas money anymore, because I no longer have a gas tank to fill. But she'd better not call it wages.)

She knows she put her kids through a wringer these past few weeks. Moving her was no small feat, emotionally or physically. Even though she hired movers to move her back, she knows we are all exhausted.

“We just want you to be happy,” I said for the umpteenth time. Hey, fake it till you make it.

“Where would I be without you kids?” she said, and I could tell from her voice, she wasn't joking.

“You don't have to pay for love,” I said, thinking, why, oh why, doesn't she give me enough money to make a difference! Argh.

She's safe. She's home. I don't think we dodged a bullet; I think we all pretty much took a shot to the gut. But we survived. Tonight I feel pleasantly beat up after my slog in the park. Just for today, I'm present, or as present as I'm going to get. Tomorrow I'll do a little dance for the phone gods and hope for a miracle.

The chronic malcontent suffers from a vestibular disturbance

I had to get out of the Love Shack for a while today. Three reasons: The morning clouds dissipated around noon, good time to go out for a sunshine fix. Second, my own personal ocean in my inner ears (vertigo) was relatively calm. I knew it wouldn't last long, no matter how still and level I tried to keep my head. And third, the boots pounding on the roof were too much to bear. Yep, that's right. Today the Love Shack is getting a new roof.

I don't own the Love Shack, in case you were wondering if I had anything to do with it. I've never seen the roof. It's flat, that's all I know. I can only imagine on a wet day it's a sloggy mess of mushy holly berries, never-decaying holly leaves, maple tree whirly seeds, raccoon nests, and bird poop. On a dry day, it's a dusty toxic mix of all that stuff. I feel sad for the three Spanish-speaking men who have been marching around on the roof ripping stuff apart since 8:45 this morning.

My cat is not amused. He spent the morning hunkered under the couch with a concerned look on his face, probably wondering who won't stop pounding at the door. I've been trying to write. Between the pounding, hammering, scraping, and tearing, and the intermittent growl of the compressor parked at the bottom of my back steps, I was somewhat distracted. My head was starting to vibrate, not a good sign. So I abandoned my cat and my writing project to go for a trot in Mt Tabor Park.

On Wednesdays no cars are allowed. The roads are safe for bicyclists, joggers, and dog walkers. The air today was lush with spring. Spring is a special time in Portland. The leaves are a billion shades of green (and purple in some cases, what are those weird trees, anyway?). The smell of newly whacked grass wafted along the trails, cut by... let's call them workers from the county sheriffs office, brought by van to do community service in the park. I can think of worse ways to do penance for one's misdeeds.

Oddly enough, while I was jogging, my head felt fine. It was only after I stopped moving that the waves of vertigo swept through my head. The lesson is, don't stop moving, I guess. But sooner or later, I get tired (sooner, usually), and I must stop. As I'm typing this, the vestibular ocean in my inner ears rises up and falls back, shaking me like a toyboat. I'm ignoring it.

As I walked up the street toward the park, I realized the roofer has roofed three houses in this one block in two days. I guess the mantra this week is make roofs while the sun shines. These guys are efficient: plan, approach, and execution in a matter of hours. I met the roofer (a non-Hispanic White guy) when he knocked on my door asking for access to the basement so he could plug in his infernal compressor. Beyond that one interaction, I haven't seen him. I imagine he's supervising a dozen other roofs in the neighborhood.

These guys aren't super big, but they wield aluminum ladders like swords and then climb up them like ninja warriors. I doubt if these roofers suffer from vertigo. Dehydration, maybe, but not vertigo. My new theory about inner ears is that my ear crystals are clumped somewhere in the vicinity of the ear equivalent of my toes into boulders that sluggishly crash into all the nerve endings in their path. In other words, ear sludge is creating a slow-motion train wreck in my head. That is why the Epley Maneuver is only partially successful. I fear I'm too impatient, advancing through the moves before gravity can budge the sludge. Either that or I'm doing it wrong. Or I have a brain tumor. Whatever.

A ladder has now appeared outside my front window, followed by heavy pounding. Three guys sure can make a lot of noise. I just plugged my mp3 headphones in my ears: Psychedelic Furs. I sail away on my cerebral sea while my cat stoically endures.

The chronic malcontent leans in... and out

As I shake the cat hair and fingernail clippings out of my keyboard, I reflect on the possibility that sometimes vertigo is just vertigo. It doesn't have to be metaphor for anything else in my life. Right? Like, oh, I don't know...balance, maybe?

Yesterday in a fit of frustration, I put on my jogging duds and staggered up the main staircase to the top of Mt. Tabor. From the summit, I trotted down and around the road, marveling at how level-headed I felt but on the lookout in case the ground suddenly turned into an asphalt trampoline. The sun was warm. The park was crowded with Sunday pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, and dogs. I felt happy to be outside, trudging my trails at half-speed while joggers blazed by me on both sides. Balance, I thought smugly. Take that.

A half hour after I got home, wham, the floor suddenly became jello and I was back on the open seas in a tiny boat. Ho hum, said I. I am quite familiar with the nuances of fluid in my head now. I picture my brain awash in a viscous murky muddy sea, but I know that isn't what is really happening. Dinky little ear rocks are meandering around, sightseeing where they shouldn't be, shredding my balance and creating the loudest, most cringe-inducing silent roar I've ever not heard.

I'm becoming a quasi-expert on performing the Epley on myself. Not expert yet, because if I were an expert, I would have effected my own cure, right? No, I'm still practicing. I love YouTube—every ENT in the world has posted a demonstration of how to do the Epley. It's great. They all do it differently, too, which is somewhat perplexing for the novice, but hey, I'm all for creativity, as long as it doesn't break my neck. So far my neck is still intact, although it is somewhat stiff from trying to hold my head level all the time. (No, I don't think it is meningitis, but thanks for asking).

What is the Epley, you ask? It's a maneuver you can perform to make use of gravity to get the ear rocks to float back along the tube into the hole. Yeah, I know those aren't the technical terms, but hey, I'm not an ENT. You can look up the anatomical terms if you really care. Rocks, tube, hole, that's all you really need to know. It's a bit like miniature putt-putt golf, but inside your inner ear, where it's dark so you have to maneuver by feel. Like, how close to barfing am I right now, scale of 1 to 10?

Actually, I haven't barfed yet, I am proud to say. I know pride goeth, etc. etc., but I'm hopeful that as long as I have to put up with this vertigo crap, that it will remain the subjective type rather than morph into the objective type. Subjective vertigo is where I feel like I'm moving. Objective vertigo is where the world seems like it is spinning around me. Like how you feel when the Roundup starts twirling and you realize you've made a terrible mistake by eating your corndog before the ride rather than after.

The Epley is like a slow motion head waggle followed by a half-pirouette, performed horizontally. You can't picture it? Well, like I said, there are multiple methods to execute an Epley, but the one I am finding easiest goes like this: (while lying on your back with your head hanging over a pillow), BAD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then GOOD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then roll on the good shoulder, look down, and SPIT. Hold until the boat stops rocking or you are thoroughly disgusted.

Well, actually the spitting part is optional, I just added that because usually I've found that I'm not miraculously cured when I roll over and that makes me so angry I feel like I could spit. But at that point, my nose is all but buried in my lime green shag rug and I'm thinking as I'm counting the seconds in my head: ants, cat barf, dust mites. I feel obligated to refrain from adding my spit to the mix, mostly because who knows what will rush in if I open my mouth. Besides, according to my older brother, when I was about five, I proclaimed in my sleep, if you turn over and spit, you'll die, and even though that was 50-some years ago, I'm not willing to press my luck.

The thing about the Epley is this: It's not an instantaneous cure. It takes time for the ear rocks to settle in properly, and some of them still seem inclined to go gallivanting. So if you are going to try this at home, you may have to do it more than once. I also read that you should sleep sitting up for two nights afterward, but I haven't been able to accomplish that feat. Maybe that is why I'm still whining about vertigo. Well, hell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. Like, ants on my desk? WTF!?

If I wait long enough

I realized last night as I tried to fall asleep after watching back-to-back episodes of The Walking Dead on the re-run channel, few things give me more pleasure than posting to this blog. I return to this blog like returning to a old friend, the kind of friend who listens unconditionally, thereby giving me space to say the next stupid thing that comes to mind. How rare is that, to find that generous a friend?

What shall I tell you today, friend? Would you like to hear about the unseasonably warm weather we are having here on the west coast? No, probably not, not if you live on the east coast, where you are slipping on ice or buried under seven feet of snow. I'm sorry for you, truly. Out here on the frontier the air is downright balmy. I still fear winter will return with a vengeance, but the trees, shrubs, and daffodils apparently don't agree. Nor does my cat, who after fluffing up during the month of January is now shedding like it's spring. The National Weather Service informs me that it is 56°F here in the Mt. Tabor area of the Rose City, and it's only 1:00 p.m. This is bizarre. My conclusion is that I don't have to pack up and move to a warmer, drier climate; apparently if I wait long enough, my preferred climate will come to me.

Still, it's a mixed blessing: I enjoy these warmer drier days, but I know we need snow on our mountain if we will avoid water shortages next summer. And if I were a skier or snowboarder or a snow resort operator on Mt. Hood, I would be totally bummed. The sun is trying to shine right now. I'm opting for living in the moment.

But enough about our warm winter. What else can I tell you?

My scrawny old mother and I are still trying to find a retirement community for her to join. On Tuesday morning we met at a third place, just up the street from her condo. I was a bit perplexed at not being able to find its website, but our senior placement adviser, Doug, had assured us he had placed many happy old folks there. Mom was skeptical, but doing our due diligence, we thought we should at least go look at the place. The sky was blue, the sun was warm. Great day to tour an old folks' home.

I got there early. I parked on a side street and started walking around the parking lot of the two-building complex. As far as I could tell, the place consisted of artists' lofts, studios, and gallery spaces. I didn't see any wheelchair ramps. No blue-haired women pushing walkers. No wobbling old bald men soaking up the sun. The place looked quiet and deserted, and the signs around the parking lot advised us to park elsewhere.

I turned and spotted my mother trotting toward me. She wore her trademark red fleece jacket and thrift store faded blue jeans with tidy creases permanently sewn in. She sported huge dark glasses over her regular glasses and a knitted cap on her short gray hair. I wore much the same thing (sans the huge dark glasses and the creases in my jeans).

“Where do we go?” she said.

“I don't think it's here anymore,” I replied. “All I see is a gallery, and it's closed. That building says 'Lofts' and that building says 'Studios.'”

A long-haired young woman wearing Uggs was scuffing slowly along on the sidewalk near us, smoking a cigarette. I stopped her and asked if she knew anything about the buildings.

“Yeah, I live here,” she said neutrally.

I asked if there was a retirement community here. She said no, not anymore, and wandered on her way. Mom and I did a 360, eyeballing nearby buildings. Nothing but houses and small apartment buildings, nothing big enough to house 100+ old folks. The buildings were here, but the retirement community was gone.

I walked Mom back to her car. We agreed it was a good thing that we hadn't driven clear across town to see a place that wasn't there. She had more errands to run: post office, day-old bread store, library, I don't know what all... errands that keep her connected to the world (and driving on city streets). I watched her motor away and walked back to my own car. I drove home, made lunch, and continued editing a paper on evaluating the differences between Ed.D and Ph.D. degrees. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, Doug the senior placement adviser is AWOL, not responding to email or phone calls. I am imagining that he got tired of wrangling needy desperate clients who want the best facility for the least amount of money.

We'll carry on without him. Next up is a place in Milwaukie where Mom has some friends. It has a garden. I'm hopeful that eventually we will find the right place. I don't want to let this search drag on too long. The old mother I used to have, the one with stained bent teeth, bulging biceps, and a determined stride has been replaced by a stranger with perfect dentures, sagging arms, and a wary, wobbly step. I guess if we wait long enough, none of this will matter. But I want her to be safe and happy in her last days, at least until the money runs out.

I used to imagine that someday—and I am not proud of this—that someday after both parents were gone, that there would be some money for me and my siblings. If I just waited long enough, maybe some of the pressure of scrabbling for a living would ease. Maybe I would be able to retire, or at least not worry so much. If I just waited long enough.

Now that scenario seems pretty unlikely. Now that I know how much money my mother really has, and how much income she receives, I see that there is no safety net there, no ease, just more of the same. Of course, we all know that I'm not required to worry. Everyone has challenges but suffering is optional. That thought doesn't really make me feel better, but it does motivate me to pull my head out of my own butt just a little. I guess that is a start.

And I know that if I wait long enough, none of this will matter. It's hard for a chronic malcontent to have hope these days. Climate change, terrorists, Russia, nuclear war, and stupid people who care more about money than about people... the odds are not looking good for the human species—or any other species on Planet Earth. I carry on as if my tiny life matters, but I know that in the end, nothing matters. I'm a speck. Suns explode, planets are hit by asteroids, new havens appear in distant galaxies, and life (most likely) carries on. There is no question we all die; the question is how to live until then. I'm still working on it.

Death by bug

This week I took time out between rainstorms to go for a jog. I slogged along in my running gear, following my usual path through the park. First, I climbed the main staircase to warm up. I went at a pretty good clip, considering I'm an aging slacker couch potato. I tried to keep my chin ahead of my hips...that seems to propel me forward somehow, as long as my feet catch up in time. I breathed through my nose as well as I could, considering my sinuses are chronically clogged. (Breathing through my mouth makes me look desperate: older gal, trying too hard.)

Every week, no matter how I push myself, young things of various genders leap up the steps past me like gazelles. They make it look effortless. I feel the wind of their passing, and I breathe in the fumes of their coconut body wash, but I keep my head down, watching where I place my feet. Eventually, I get to the top, the summit of the hill, formerly a volcano, now a flat tree-lined avenue of grass where children chase dogs chasing Frisbees. The sweeping evergreens were a lot smaller 40 years ago when my boyfriend used to park his Buick Special overlooking the city so we could smoke weed and do other fun stuff.

The gazelles were long gone by the time I gained the summit. I walked to catch my breath and looked at the city through gaps in the trees. Then I started jogging again, going back down the hill, but the long way this time, down and around, along the gently sloping road, which led me eventually to the reservoirs we hope to save from the EPA, the agency I usually like but currently wish would let our city water be. Whatever. The jog down the hill always feels like a cop-out, especially when some runners pass me going uphill in the opposite direction. My excuse is that I'm old.

At the reservoir road, I stopped and stretched and looked at the sky to see if I should linger or keep moving to avoid oncoming rain clouds. Sometimes you can see it coming right at you and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes, though, you can stay ahead if you hurry.

This week, I thought, I need to up my game. Thinking of my still-too-tight Levis and the ass that I drag around behind me, I decided to run back uphill the way I had come down, vowing to keep going as long as my various body parts held together. Things were going good. I was feeling strong, watching my feet as I plodded steadily along the edge of the road, one eye out for bicycles. Pretty soon, my heart rate began to rise, and then to soar. My left ankle began to twinge, followed by my left knee, not enough to make me stop, but enough to make me reflect on old joints and tired ligaments.

Finally, my congested sinuses couldn't siphon enough oxygen out of the air to keep my tired muscles firing, and I began to breathe through my mouth, although I shut it every time I met someone coming in the opposite direction, to preserve my illusion of youthful vigor. I wasn't gulping air, really, just scooping air, kind of like a whale scoops plankton as it moves through the ocean depths. And that's when I scooped up the bug.

I should have scooped through my teeth. If I had, I would have caught the sucker before it made it halfway down my throat toward my laboring lungs. As it was, my throat closed in the nick of time, and left the bug stuck, halfway down, too far down to come back up, except by the most drastic and messy of measures. Contemplating a finger-jam-induced upchuck in the park with dogs and kids and runners and Frisbees nearby didn't last long, so I did the logical thing and swallowed.

After a few convulsive swallows and some loud hacking-style coughs, with me bent over, hands on knees, tongue hanging out, the bug slid the rest of the way down my gullet. Protein, I reassured myself. Everyone needs more protein. I tried not to imagine the bug was kicking out its last moments while it paddled around in my stomach acid.

As I walked the rest of the way up the hill, I wondered what would have happened if my throat hadn't closed in time, if that bug had stuck there, blocking my airway, and no one had happened by to find out why the old lady was laying in the road turning blue? Would the coroner find the bug during the autopsy? Would the ruling be death by bug? Or would it be ruled accidental death due to a foolish old person's illusion that just because she once finished a marathon twenty years ago that she can trot up a long hill with impunity?

Obviously, I lived to tell the tale. I didn't get an upset tummy or have projectile diarrhea. The bug did not crawl out of my throat (or any other orifice) later while I was sleeping, at least, not that I know of. (Eeewww.) I once read that the average person inadvertently eats several spiders a year. So, what's one more bug? Maybe I should be saying yum.

The chronic malcontent cavorts on Easter Sunday

When the sun shines, people in Portland come out of their burrows and cavort. On Easter Sunday, they cavort in fancy clothes. I just got back from a trot (my version of cavorting) in Mt. Tabor Park and saw numerous women (and a couple of men) attempting to navigate steep dirt trails in platform shoes and long skirts.

I don't know what it is about sunshine, but whatever it is, it was magnified today by Easter Sunday. Dueling drum circles of pot-smoking druids at the summit; teenagers in saggy pants standing around on restroom roofs like goats, clutching skateboards; women wrapped in flowered shawls and proudly sporting competing Easter bonnets; gleaming newly washed cars cruising for parking spots along the edges of the park's winding roads; family picnics, complete with hibachis and mouth watering odors; and a few runners, ears plugged with music, weaving in and out of the crowds. Sunday + sunshine + Easter = pandemonium at the park.

The reservoir that the young hoodlum urinated next to last week still slowly drains. It takes a while to drain 38 million gallons of water. It's so silly: A few ounces of pee in or near 38 million gallons of water won't cause any problems for anyone. Hell, we don't complain about bird crap. Portland has excellent drinking water. Too bad these 100-year-old reservoirs will soon be retired in favor of covered storage. I am sad to contemplate what will they will be used for next. Skate parks, probably. Shooting ranges. Miniature golf.

This maniacal Easter madness perplexes me. I don't consider myself a Christian, maybe that's why. I believe my family was marginally Presbyterian. However, we weren't devout; we weren't even interested: My mother liked to sing in the choir. She dragged us, her four adamantly unwilling children, to the big gray church and stashed us in Sunday school to get rid of us while she sang in the sanctuary (four screaming kids, I can imagine, relief at last!). In Sunday school, from well-meaning young white women in cotton dresses and flesh-toned pantyhose, I heard blood-curdling tales that convinced me Christianity is a cruel religion. You mean they pounded nails into that poor guy's hands and feet and hung him up to die? What kind of a society does that? These stories certainly left an impression on this six-year-old. I found no solace in the church of my mother.

I'm not ranting about religion, Christian or otherwise. That's a useless endeavor, even if I could figure out what I was upset about (too many people in my park!). If there is a god, I choose to believe he/she/it gave us all free will. I prefer to exercise mine by avoiding all the pointless ritual and arbitrary rigor that organized religion demands of its followers. Just give me universal healthcare, education, and adequate nutrition, cradle to grave, and I'm happy. And some sunshine doesn't hurt, either.

One small resolution for a better new year—for other drivers, anyway

The beginning of a new year is a good time to clean house, review past performance, and make plans for the future. I'm sneaking up on all three, in good malcontent fashion, doing a little here and there and pretending I'm making progress. Little things hinder forward movement. For example, stepping in cat barf. I think it was cat barf. My sinuses are chronically clogged (the Love Shack is a dust and hairball museum), so I'm not totally sure it wasn't cat poop. I didn't smell anything, so I didn't know immediately that disaster had struck. All I know is, at some point when I navigated the dim hallway to the bathroom, I stepped in something that unbeknownst to me adhered itself to the bottom of my shoe. I then proceeded to track it all over the house.

Eventually I caught on, when I saw the cat sniffing my footsteps. I washed my shoe, groaning loudly all the while. The cat watched, looking a little bemused. Like, WTF, dude, didn't you smell it? Why didn't you step around it? If only. I laugh when I look at my little collection of outdoor shoes, neatly parked inside my back door. It is possible my outdoor shoes are cleaner than my indoor shoes. Well, on the bright side, that miserable toy poodle who used to live next door and leave me miniature poop bombs along the back walkway is out of my life.

Well, if stepping in cat barf is the worst thing that happens, I won't complain. It could be worse. My friends in Minnesota are slammed with excruciatingly cold temperatures, just inhumanly cold arctic air, snow, ice, and wind. It's nuts. I'm such a weather wimp, I can hardly handle 40°. Although I've heard people from back East tell me that Portland has a special brand of damp winter cold that gets in the bones and stays for days, often in the form of pneumonia.

We all have our ways of coping. Me, I just microwave my rice-filled foot warmer and hunker down to wait it out. If you wait long enough, even a crappy fog inversion layer will eventually dissipate to reveal blue sky. Today we had sunshine, real honest-to-goodness sunshine, but the arc of the sun is so low in the sky, we might as well be in Alaska. It's barely 3:30 in the afternoon and already it's twilight in the north shadow of Mt. Tabor. There's no point in trying to go for a walk. Even if I find some dregs of sunshine on the west side of the hill, the shady sidewalks and roads will be treacherous. Because a hip fracture took down my dad, I am understandably wary of pavement covered with frost, ice, moss, or even just deceptively dangerous plain old rain.

I've decided that one of my resolutions for the new year is to stop calling other drivers terms of endearment like Jacka-- and F---head. I say these names with very little animosity, more like a greeting, really. Like, Hey, what's going on, Jacka--? Still, if anyone heard me (and sometimes my mother does), one might think I was angry (sometimes I get frustrated, but it's always short-lived; the adrenalin is not worth the effort). So, in an effort to do my part to make the world a slightly better place, I hereby resolve to use the kinder terms Jackrabbit and Furhead when I am greeting drivers who are attracting my attention with their odd, quirky, charming, stupefying, and otherwise incomprehensible behavior. And Gramps always works, too.

Cold remembrances of someone else's past

Self-imposed house arrest, in limbo, waiting for Monday, oral defense day. I made it to the store today, yay me. I had to go; I was out of eggs. Can't live without eggs. It's cold. The temperature almost made it above freezing, but I'm not going to complain: Minneapolis barely made it to 8° before the mercury plunged back down to 5° above. 20° I can handle; 8° would drive me under the covers. After a long hot bath.

While I wait for the waiting to be over, I am building shelves. As if I didn't have enough shelves already, you would no doubt say, if you've ever been lucky enough to see my place: The walls are papered with homemade wooden book shelves, which sag under the weight of books, binders, and more books. Most of the shelves are full. But you can never have too many shelves. The simple wooden shelves I build now will receive my journals as I continue to fill the pages and discard them, one per month, year after year since 1995. The boring story of my life, literally. It takes up a lot of space. Physically and otherwise.

And while I wait for the loden green latex to dry, I scan old family photos. I have only myself to blame. My mother wanted me to look through a stack of musty photo albums one day, and I made the mistake of saying, Hey, we need to scan these! Thus, I volunteered for this self-torture. The albums sat around my worktable for a few months while I wrote the massive tome we call my dissertation. Last week I realized now would be a good time to start clearing up the clutter (considering my compulsively neat friend Sheryl is coming over to be my proctor for my oral defense). Hence, scanning.

It's a mindless, tedious task involving removing old black and white photographs from little paper corners that someone painstakingly positioned 60 to 80 years ago. The album pages are dirty, dusty black paper, and reek of ancient cigarette smoke. It's fairly gross work. While I place five or six images on the scanner bed, I can see if someone wrote something on the back. Sometimes there are useful comments: Ray, Ruth, and me. (Me is my mother.) There are many pictures of my mother and her brother as children, fewer of them as teenagers, and hardly any of them as adults. I'm guessing by then my mother was the one behind the camera. My uncle was behind a glass of wine.

Other annotations were less helpful: This is a picture of the loading dock. Where, Grandpa? When? My mother's father was a sailor and then a longshoreman, first in San Francisco and then in Portland. I didn't know him well, although I could have if I hadn't been so nervous around him. As a very young man, he sailed on the Moshulu, a merchant sailing ship that went from the States to Australia and the Philippines. Some of the photos are obviously taken from the rigging, looking down on decks awash with ocean. Yikes. Now the Moshulu is refitted with fake masts and sails, serving as a restaurant in Philadelphia. And Grandpa is long gone.

Looking at all these photos of people I barely knew or didn't know at all, most of them dead now, makes me feel a little sad. It's a year-end kind of sadness, the sadness you get when it's garden-to-bed time, when it's fleece hat, electric blanket, and rice-filled foot-warmer time. Every summer there is a moment when I stop what I'm doing and think about how I will be feeling in six months, when I'm bundled in cat hair-covered fleece. When the electric baseboard heater is clicking and clacking as it churns out warm (ish) air. When I don't go outside for three days in a row and only then to refill the bird feeder and break the ice on the bird bath. Every summer I drag my feet on the paths of Mt Tabor, hoping I can make summer last a little longer, trying to postpone the horrible moment when there are more leaves underfoot than overhead. Time passes so quickly. Even though this week seems endless, next week will speed by, and the week after that, until all that is left of me and everything and everyone I love is a bunch of old photos in a stinky photo album.

The chronic malcontent deals with it

Waiting sucks. I don't know what to do with myself. I've washed just about everything in the apartment, except the cat. I've checked the course room twice a day since last Wednesday. I'm spending too much time surfing news sites, looking at pictures, reading about the government shutdown, wondering how many revisions I will have to do, how long it will take, how I will find the will to dig in deeper.

Today I went out in the rain to renew my car registration. Every two years we have to take our cars to a Department of Environment Quality test station so they can make sure our carbon footprint isn't too big. My old Focus passed the test, no problem. Yay. A car that fails DEQ implies a moral failure, I'm pretty sure, so I was feeling smug. I was out of there in less than 15 minutes, $143 poorer and wondering, if I can't find work A.D. (after degree), will I have to park the car and start transiting with the masses? I'm not afraid of mass transit like my friend Sheryl. But mass transit is a devious invention cleverly devised to keep poor people poor.

Where would I be transiting to, though, is the question? Sheryl hasn't found work yet. I doubt I will be any luckier. No one wants to hire old women. Not when there are so many chirpy young people around who are eager to do the job. Maybe we should do what they used to do in Japan: take the old folks up the mountain and shove them off a cliff.

Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill are my heroes: two older gals who are still tearing up the airwaves. The only waves I can tear up are the ones in my microwave oven, and even that is iffy sometimes. Sometimes pressing the button gets you nothing but dead silence. The monster is old and tired. I am referring to the microwave.

After the rain stopped, the sun came out and the temperature dropped. I yanked on my (tight! ow!) spandex jogging gear and trotted up to Mt Tabor Park. I shuffled carefully along the slippery leaf-strewn roads, avoiding the muddy trails, very aware that one slip, one fracture, would change my life forever. There were about twenty Canadian geese honking and pooping happily in the reservoir. Big gray clouds intermittently hid the sun. These clouds are the storm cells that come in with colder air. I can see Bruce Sussman's weather map in my mind...yep, these are those patchy storm cells that can dump cold rain at any moment and then trudge on toward Mt Hood to lay down some snow. I hate snow. Not that you asked, just sayin'. It's 48° right now in Portland, and 83° in Phoenix. Enough said.

A boring day. I've lost my momentum, my mojo, waiting for feedback on my personal albatross. I might actually have to get out the sewing machine and start—gasp!—mending or making things. If you knew how much I hate to sew (long story), you would realize what a big deal this is.

I could start working on my business again. It's there, in the back of my mind, all the time, like an unhealed wound. No, that's a terrible metaphor. Let's say... the idea of working on my business is like having a grain of kitty litter stuck in my sock. A nagging irritation difficult to ignore (especially while I am trying to jog). I have some ideas, I have some half-formed plans, but I have no enthusiasm while waiting for feedback on this dissertation. I am frozen in time, like a decrepit bug stuck in amber.

Hi, my name is Carol and I'm a misanthrope

Today the weather was not nearly as fine as yesterday, but I ventured out anyway, thinking of the recent study that found a correlation between computer usage and ass width. I donned my protective gear: oversized black t-shirt over long black nylon pants, and lime green hoodie jacket equipped with lip balm, sunglasses, fingerless gloves (formerly known as socks), snotrag, and house key. On my head I wore a baseball cap that says Shannon heart Aunt Carol. On my feet I wore my beat up Sauconies. Beat up because I took a pair of scissors to them to make room for my droopy ankle bones, and they have been falling apart ever since. (My shoes, I mean, not my ankles.) I wear all this stuff to protect me from the elements. You know, rain, sun, cold air, and the lurking pervert leaping out from behind a tree to yank down my pants.

So, I was ready. Born to run. I exited my back door and headed for the street, only to stop in amazement. The street was lined with parked cars. What was happening? I saw an army of bicycles, riders of all shapes and ages, pedaling in both directions. Wha-? Oh, no, it's Sunday Parkways! Sunday Parkways is Portland's street festival, where the city blocks off streets in certain neighborhoods over the course of the summer, so that people can ride bikes and walk. There's music and theatre, lots of people, dogs, bikes, noise, energy.

I slapped my head. I had totally forgotten it was big event day in the park. My park. Yeah, you heard me. My park.

I guess I've become a bit territorial of Mt Tabor Park, but in my defense let me say that usually the park is sparsely populated, even on sunny weekends. The families hang out in the playground: I hear them, but they aren't in my way. I share the roads with skateboarders and the trails with dogwalkers and the occasional jogger. Mostly I am alone. Not today. Once I made it up the main staircase to the summit, it was bicycle pandemonium.

Not my preferred scene, not in my park. But as I trotted by a guy dressed like a clown and riding a bicycle to which he had strapped two huge speakers and a stereo system, I had to laugh. The noise was impressive. He rode nonchalantly around the summit, grinning beatifically in the pale sunshine. More than one dog looked slightly anxious. A group of chubby females peered out at him from under a New Age tent they had constructed among the trees out of ropes and fluttery translucent fabric. I kept on trotting down the hill and reflected that I was watching my tax dollars hard at work, paying for this event.

Some people would be angry about that, but not me. I like my tax dollars to pay for things that promote community, even though I don't particularly care for community myself. I would gladly pay more taxes so that everyone could have adequate healthcare and education, (as long as everyone else paid their share too, of course), because that builds a strong community. I always put people before profit, despite the fact that most of the time I don't really like people. As a founding member of Misanthropes Anonymous, my first thought when I see you is, hey, hi. My second thought is, how soon can you leave?

I'm not really a misanthrope. Actually, I guess I'm more of a tree-hugging, bleeding heart socialist liberal. I just happen to also be a self-obsessed malcontent and self-proclaimed introvert. I'm happiest when I'm alone, but I am a big fan of keeping the social fabric of our city from unraveling. If that takes street fairs, festivals, and fireworks, my thumbs are up, even while I'm hunkering down to wait it out.

When it is time to burst out of the bubble

This evening as the sun went down in between thick puffy clouds, I walked for an hour on the trails winding around the extinct volcano, half hoping for cataclysmic obliteration, but the caldera was silent, as usual, except for the shouts of the guys playing basketball. The air was cold for August, straight off the ocean 80 miles away. Not fall air, but ocean air. I was never alone for long: the trails were well populated with walkers and their dogs. I listened to music on my mp3 player—David Bowie, SuperTramp, Fleetwood Mac, U2—and planned how I would handle the moment when someone accosts me from behind. No one did, but it's good to be ready.

Walking in the park is a good time to review the week and ponder the glacial pace of my progress. When I say progress, I guess I'm referring to forward movement along the myriad frontlines of my life: academic, social, spiritual, physical, philosophical... as usual, it seems like I'm stuck, wallowing in the messy bog again, crying to heaven. Yesterday I surfed homes for sale in Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Desert Hot Springs, thinking I could buy some cardboard house out in a meth-infested desert town for a mortgage payment half of what I currently pay in rent. Today, when I close my eyes, I see palm trees, blue sky, and lawns of gravel.

This week one of my professional development students voiced something that got a collective sigh from the entire class. This student, I'll call her Tiralina, is a tall, slender, blonde stick of energy with braces and a habit of speaking whatever is on her mind. She's not belligerent; she just seems to have few boundaries when it comes to expressing herself. She's honest and direct, and I love her for it.

“I'm excited to finish school,” she said. “But I'm also scared!”

“Yeah, what's that all about, do you think?” I asked.

The professional development class is the one where students prepare their resumes and cover letters and practice their interviewing skills in preparation for graduation. Most of these students are in the Medical Assisting diploma program, a nine-month learning blitz, and in another month they will be scouring the city for an externship position to complete their education. 

“We have to leave the school bubble,” said Tiralina, “and I don't want to, but I do. But I don't.”

“Does anyone else feel that way?” I asked.

Everyone nodded and sighed. She had struck a collective nerve. As they shared their fear and excitement, I couldn't help wondering if I was also in the same boat: stuck in the school bubble, afraid to launch myself to the next level.

Today at work in Wilsonville, I sat in the restroom, psyching myself up for my four-hour Access and Excel teaching gig by stretching my face into a fake grin and saying over and over silently, “Everything is grrrreeaaattt!” I was aiming for a Tony the Tiger impression, failing, but not totally miserably, because they say even if you fake a smile, it produces endorphins. It worked, I think, for most of the four hours, until the point when the insane student who is addicted to tanning asked me to help her figure out how people on the Internet were tracking her in order to steal her identity.

What I wanted to say was, you knucklehead, you are such a loser, anyone who wants your identity would be doing you a huge favor. Imagine, you could start over and get it right this time! Of course, I didn't say that. I politely steered her toward the IT department. At that point it was time to go, and the more minutes tick by, the thicker the traffic going home, so I was itching to exit. I bailed with a “Good luck!” tossed over my shoulder. I always leave on Thursday afternoon with a feeling of profound relief, like I've just been released from prison. I also despair, because I know in a few days, I'll have to go back and do it all again.

So I walked the park trails and pondered my progress, and oddly enough, after I walked, I didn't feel quite so morose. Even though the sun sets sooner now, even though the night air is cold and it's time to pull out the flannel sheets, even though the stores are full of back-to-school and the dreaded holiday season is rushing at me, it's still better than lying dead in some alley in Aleppo. Is this all I have to complain about, my little existential angst tantrum? Really? Hey, you want my identity? It's a fixer-upper in a bad neighborhood, but it could be worse.