Outer solar system or bust

When I was an adolescent, I shared a room with my sister. A large black fly got in through the window and hung around. We named it Fred. Fred was big and slow, and he didn't make a mess. Fred was a perfect pet. One day our father visited us in our room after work. He was still wearing his senior trooper uniform and tall boots. Fred made the mistake of flying by, and our father clapped his hands. In a moment, Fred was flattened. 

"Dad, that was Fred!" we cried. Dad looked both surprised and sheepish. He probably thought he was doing us a favor. I don't recall if we had a funeral. I'll have to ask my sister. If she's still talking to me.

Despite misgivings from family, I'm firmly committed to continuing my epic roadtrip. After Portland, I headed east and then I turned north, hoping to avoid the heat wave that was coming to the west. I passed through Spokane and then crossed the border into Idaho. I spent the night in Coeur d' Alene. After the artsy energy of Spokane, Coeur d'Alene felt lacking for some reason, or maybe it was just the uneasy night I spent alone in a Fred Meyer parking lot. In any case, I didn't feel a connection to that city, so onward I went. I crossed the Idaho panhandle, winding through spectacular forests, thinking, oh boy, one tossed cigarette and we are literally toast. Note to self: avoid living in a fire zone. And on a flood plain. And while you are making a list, try to avoid earthquake fault lines, tsunami zones, tornado alley, and gulf coast hurricanes. I guess that leaves Corvallis.  

I made it as far as Missoula, MT, before the wildfire smoke in western Montana caught up with me. I checked the smoke map and saw that I was caught in a eastward drifting plume. I liked Missoula. Charming college town. I'd never live there in the winter, not being a cold weather person, but in the summer, it would be a great retreat from the Arizona heat. I would have stayed longer if not for the smoke. After two days, I left Missoula and kept going east, hoping to outrun the smoke plume, if not the heat. 

I found a place to park in Bozeman that felt pretty good. In the morning, smoke obscured the view of the mountains. My lungs and eyes were burning. I had planned to stay another night, but I was more interested in breathing, so I filled up the gas tank and hit the road, thinking, Billings, maybe Billings. 

The smoke map showed Billings on the edge of the smoke plume. Argh. I'd asked the long-suffering GPS lady to lead me to a mall, and she delivered. I parked in the lot outside the main entrance and checked the smoke map. I could have gone indoors and breathed fresh air-conditioned air along with a thousand other pairs of lungs. But what about after the mall closed? Where would I go? Assuming I wanted to avoid spending $150 on a motel room. 

It didn't take long to figure out Billings was not going to be safe, so I got more gas and resumed my route on 94 east. A few hours later, I fetched up in Miles City, Montana. The sky was clear when I got here at about 1:00. The temperature was a toasty 92°F, hotter than the Oregon coast, but not as hot as Phoenix. 

Now I'm sitting on a side street around the corner from Walmart, parked in the shade, waiting for the sun to go down, and wondering if I could get in trouble for transporting flies across state lines. 

Yes, I've unintentionally picked up a few winged hitchhikers on my journey. Usually my windows are closed when I'm driving to avoid losing my nice cool AC air. However, when I stop, when it's hot, I have to open the windows or run the risk of melting in my own juices. Right now my door is open and I've given up the fight. I've been overrun by flies. Not biting flies, not giant cluster flies, not slow and lazy flies. Just zippy little dudes curious to see what new smells and tastes have come into their territory. Yum! I have given up trying to shoot them with my only weapon:  a little plastic spray bottle of 70% rubbing alcohol. They seem impervious, and I'm almost out of ammo. It's hard to type with flies crawling on my arm and dive bombing my head. I don't know why I think my life is more important than theirs, but I'd still like to murder them. Sadly, they outnumber me, and they are fast. If only I had wings. Or some better ammo. 

Speaking of wings, I'm on my epic roadtrip, as I mentioned, and it seems some of my family aren't exactly happy with my bid for freedom. My theory is that they are envious because I'm free to travel and they are not. I'm trying not to let their fear and criticism stop me from enjoying my adventure. I imagine a rubberband stretched between me and the west coast. The further I push eastward, the tighter the band stretches. 

"Why don't you go back to Oregon?" family said.

I said, "What's in Oregon?"

"What if you get sick? What if you break down?"

"Medicare and road side assistance," I replied.

"What do you want?" they said. "What are you running away from?"

Those questions flummoxed me, so I consulted a friend to help. "Adventure and nothing," she texted.

I got back on the other text thread. "Adventure and nothing," I typed into the text window.

After some more back and forth during which I felt the box around me tightening, I finally texted, "Why don't you want me to have my adventure?"

After a few beats, the message came back: "Go, have your adventure! Have fun!" The subtext, I think, if I'm reading the faint smudges between the lines correctly is, go, have your adventure, even though I'm stuck here. Go, have fun, even though I'm not having any. 

I almost caved. I almost turned around, partly to assuage the fears of family, and partly because the smoke was getting to me. I started getting scared. Even though I know only the courageous cross the Continental Divide, doubt and fear cluttered my mind. 

Then I thought, when am I ever going to have another chance like this? If not now, when? I didn't get my adventure when my family member got theirs, gallivanting overseas. Did I worry? Of course! But I never said, don't go, better go back to Oregon where it's safe. I spent five increasingly intense years taking care of our mother. Five years during which I was blissfully unaware of all the physical maladies that would soon plague me. (Well, except for the vertigo, which started in 2015, but certainly all my other infirmities weren't yet on my radar.) 

Let's face it, sooner or later, if we live long enough, we become the primary adult caregivers in our own lives. I feel old age breathing down my neck. Decrepitude, dementia, and broken hips are just around the corner. Soon I won't be able to attempt a journey like this one. So, let the adventure continue! Next stop: outer solar system, or the Enchanted Highway, whichever comes first!

Going round the bend

Today I heard someone on a video meeting casually express an interest in moving to another city, as if that were normal, natural, and doable. As if everyone were doing it, or had done it, or will do it at some point in the future. I didn't hear any angst in their voice. Instead, I heard a sense of excitement, as if a move was an impending adventure. The exciting part, it sounded like, was the mystery of the move. Where might I go, they mused. I could go anywhere!

Hearing this person talk about moving in such a positive, almost nonchalant way made me think perhaps I've been overthinking my city search. Maybe it's not the problem I'm making it out to be. Maybe it's a grand and intriguing mystery.  

What if choosing a new city to live in really could be an adventure?

I don't know what criteria the person was applying to help them narrow down their choices. Me, my criteria are pretty simple: clean, safe, affordable, AC and heat, and internet. Oh, a place to park would be good. A lot of cities and towns meet my criteria. It's not like I'm asking for a hot tub and a butler. 

A few minutes ago, while I was doomscrolling on a social media channel, I was presented with a video about hermit crabs exchanging shells. The gist was that even if the shell you end up with is too small, too dingy, and has a hole in it, you'd better take it, because having a crummy shell is better than having no shell at all. Homelessness is fatal for a hermit crab. The last hermit crab in the shell exchange skulked into the defective shell, looking somewhat embarrassed and demoralized at failing to have scored something better. Was it too slow? Should it have put its name on a waitlist sooner, even before seeing the shell?

Wait, what? Am I talking about me or am I talking about a hermit crab? The lines are somewhat blurred these days. Is confusion really a state of grace? More like evidence of dementia.

I've been trying to come up with metaphors to explain the doings in my head. The latest metaphor is a little complicated. 

Imagine you are immersed in a big bucket of gunky water that is just over your head. Sometimes your feet touch the bottom of the bucket, but most of the time you are floating with your nose above the water. Now picture a toy train running on a track past your gunky bucket. It's a small town, so the train goes by your bucket every minute or so. Here's the fun part. Every time the train goes by, some bored kid reaches out the train window and slaps the side of your bucket. 

You don't have time to curse the kid because you are busy for the next ten or fifteen seconds trying to maintain your equilibrium in the sloshing bucket. The water slams you this way and that, up and down, from side to side. It's all you can do to stay upright and not go under. Sometimes you do go under. You feel pressure moving through your sinuses in uneven waves as you fight for your balance. While this is going on, your right ear crackles. That's the train whistle. Whoo whoo! 

Finally, the water begins to settle. You start to feel a little more normal. The crackling din in your right ear fades to silence. You resume whatever you were doing before the bucket started sloshing. 

A minute later, the train comes around the track again, and that stupid kid slaps the side of your bucket. Whoo whoo! 

This scenario describes what is happening in my head. I'm normally a pretty calm person, but I'd kill that kid if I could, just saying.

I find it difficult to maintain my focus when the train is roaring through the station in my head, upsetting the bucket and tipping my ear into bedlam. I have to admit, the noise and pressure get to me sometimes. At times, I feel like ramming a pencil into my ear, just to see what would happen, sort of a DIY tympanoplasty. The bubbly ENT I saw last year suggested we try that as a remedy for the crackling, even though it probably wouldn't work, she said, and insurance wouldn't cover it, and it would hurt like hell. 

Maybe it would hurt, but maybe it would relieve the pressure and muffle the crackling. Pain could be a pathway into something else. Probably more pain, but maybe it would at least be quiet. I really crave solitude and silence. 

How much of my physical disability is factoring into my desire to move to someplace small, slow, and quiet? Where's the adventure in this? I'm not seeing it right now but I'm sure it's here somewhere.

Every moment is a new adventure

It's 449 miles between here and Albuquerque, a drive of approximately six and a half hours, or more like eight hours, the way I drive. I drive like my father, who coincidentally would have turned ninety-five today. Happy birthday, Pop. Your legacy lives on. I think of you whenever a semitruck blows me off the road. Well, what's the rush, right? I have one pace.

I'm driving to Albuquerque to cat-sit for a friend who is going out of town for the holiday. I'm thinking of this as another house-sitting job. I'm practicing for my new career. Yep. Intentional houselessness, here I come. I think. We'll see. I still have nine months on my lease. After that, who knows? Housing costs are going up everywhere, it appears, and so are Medicare premiums. 

My tentative plan is to dry up and blow away. I've achieved Stage 1 of my plan: contract osteoporosis. (Is osteoporosis something one can contract? I'm not sure. Mom had it so it's probably genetic. Which means Stage 2 will be dementia.)

My Tucson friend E has a dream of creating a hot springs oasis in the desert, a place to grow old soaking in hot water. I'm on board with that dream. I'd happily volunteer to be pool boy. Girl. Whatever I am. When all the hair migrates from your legs to your upper lip, gender tends to blur.

I published my second novel this week. Sorry I can't tell you what it is because this is an anonymous blog. Note to self: In the future, if you want to publicize your accomplishments, don't be anonymous. 

When I get back to Tucson, I have some medical and dental tasks on my calendar. It's not a surprise. I turned sixty-five and the grand vista of Medicare opened up before me. Over the past few years, I postponed my healthcare needs while I orbited my mother, knowing there would one day be a reckoning, and that reckoning has come.  

Is it true that we don't fall apart until we achieve the goal—then we relax and let go and everything falls apart? If that is a thing, then I am in trouble. I kept things together for five years, getting closer and closer to my own personal abyss as my mother inched closer to hers. (No, I did not push her off the cliff, although I thought about it, usually when I was mopping up her messes.) Now she's gone, and now it looks like the edge of my own cliff is crumbling under my feet. Maybe it's more like taking a used car to the mechanic. Fix one thing, get ready to fix everything. I got one tooth pulled and smithereens! 

What does smithereens look like? Thanks for asking. It's a systemic slow-motion mildly tragic disaster.  

My bone marrow, in its quest for sustenance, has apparently cannibalized my muscles, so now I'm a breakable stick with flaccid funbags. My joy at fitting into my old non-stretch Levi's has pretty much evaporated, because the pants no longer support my droopy butt. Now I look like an old baggy version of Mr. Green Jeans. I predict a hip replacement in my future, if I don't fall down and break them both first. 

My hair is falling out pretty much everywhere except my nose and upper lip. I have the beginnings of cataracts. I can't see well enough to pluck the whiskers from my upper lip but I can see my mother in the mirror just fine. This week, I think I somehow managed to contract a hernia. Is that a thing? Germs are everywhere, who knows, hernias could be, too. I wear my mask at the store, but hernias could be spewing out through the ventilation system, how would I know, until I bust a gut lifting my grocery bags into the car? I blame politics. 

On the bright side, I went for a bike ride on the bike path with my Tucson friend E. Luckily there weren't many up hills and down dales; thus, I managed to pedal the whole way and back without falling in the Rillito River or getting bit by a Gila monster. I thought there was a better than fifty-fifty chance either my brain would give out or my body would give up, but neither one came to pass. Once again, I discover I am capable of more than I thought. I am not a quitter in most things, but sometimes I give up on myself too soon.

Well, it's not time to give up yet. However, if dementia is in the cards for me, I have a plan. I hope it is a long distance in the future, because the plan is pretty vague at this point. The plan depends on many factors, few of which are in my control. However, I think it will involve hot springs, warm blue skies, good friends, something tasty to drink, and a few magical pills. 

Meanwhile, I have miles to go, people to enjoy, stories to write, and places to see. Until I reach the end of the road, the road trip continues.