Another stupid cold holiday season begins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking for the new normal

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Sing it with me. Come on, Blobgots, I mean Blogbots, you know you want to, let me hear you bellow it out from your Zoom rooms. All you tiny squares, you. Dance too, if you feel like it, because I guarantee you, few of us are watching. It's too hard to see you against all your household detritus. You might consider noticing all the knick-knacks and gewgaws on the shelves behind you. Because we are. Oh, and please, some of you should dust off that ceiling fan, because that is all we can see of you when you Zoom on your smartphone.

I Zoom in front of a black curtain, because, well, you know, it's basically curtains for the human species from here on out. I don't know about you, but I am finding out a pandemic definitely complicates the chore of living. Everything seems more difficult. Maybe because everything is. I deserve a medal for just getting out of bed.

Being stuck at home means I'm excruciatingly aware of my physical presence in relation to the outside world. Did I bring the virus home with me today from the grocery store? Are my surfaces clean? Did something come in on my shoes, besides the usual bird poop and pollen? Did I scoop some of the virus into my lungs this week? Is this violent set of ten sneezes from breathing in birch tree pollen or COVID19? Did I transmit a tiny bit of virus to my mother's hearing aids, even though I wore a mask and gloves and sat outside the nursing home on a hard wooden bench when I swapped out the batteries last Sunday?

This stupid virus has made me ultra-conscious of my body. I'm experiencing corporeal disintegration  in real time. I can't point to any specific injury or illness. Rather, I'm riding a slow decline. The changes I see and feel are so gradual, I hardly notice them, until suddenly I realize it hurts to stand up, it hurts to bend over, it hurts to stretch, it hurts to breathe. Every damn thing hurts but not enough to take a pill and not enough to conclude it's the end. It's so odd to witness my activities become more and more constrained, like I'm standing outside myself watching the erosion of a shaky earthen dam. Do I try to patch the holes? What would that look like? People much older than I am push back against age. I doubt if I'm one of them. One marathon was enough for me.

Life as I knew it ended in January when my cat died. Already reeling from shock, it didn't really feel much more shocking when the virus came to town. First my cat, and then the pandemic. My response was, right, that makes sense. Total catastrophe is the only logical outcome. Finally, the chronic malcontent is vindicated. Since COVID19, it seems as if the world has joined me in my grief. My sadness is magnified a thousand fold everywhere I look. Even the stories of heroes, supposed to be uplifting, make me weep with despair. Nothing will ever be the same, not for me, not for any of us. I'm grieving a loss of innocence—I guess it is the illusion that the world was safe, that I was in control of my life, that I could predict what would happen next.

For some reason, I woke up the other night at exactly 3:45 a.m. and saw the final super moon of the year at its apogee, blazing brighter than a streetlight through the trees over the shoulder of the mountain. During the four-hour lull when the buses stop running, nights are dead silent up here on the hill. It's so loud I can hardly think. I am both alive and dead, like Schrodinger's cat, hunkered in a box originally of my own making but perpetuated by obligation, circumstance, and COVID19. I can't fully live until the maternal parental unit dies. But once she's gone, the box is open. I'm set free (assuming I outlast her), but the price is her death. And where would I go, how would I move, in a pandemic?

She's having a harder time getting up from her couch to visit me at the window. She shifts her fanny , then leans forward until she's got both hands flat on her coffee table. Slowly she gets her feet under her. I say, “Use your walker!” She pretends not to hear me. Bent at ninety degrees, she shuffles toward the window by hanging onto to her coffee table, then along the top of her flat-screen TV (pausing to read the sticky note I put there many months ago: Turn the TV on and off here, with an arrow pointing to the button), and finally, reaching the window. Clutching the window sill, she straightens up to look at me and smiles. She knows me. I'm never sure, until she smiles.

I remember when she used to walk me to the back door and we sang She'll be coming round the mountain together, me the thready alto, her the raspy tenor. The past two nights, she hasn't felt inclined to come to the window. I don't know if two data points make a pattern. Maybe we have a new normal. Every damn day is a new normal. After a while, normal ceases to have any meaning.

A talkative passenger gets the Chronic Malcontent thinking

Thinking is something I do a lot of, maybe too much of, considering that thoughts don't necessarily lead to action. Maybe you have figured out how to think and make things happen—think and grow rich? Think and get happy? Think and create success? If so, I applaud you, you dynamic thinker, you. For me, thinking is a convenient way to avoid doing stuff. It's so much easier to think (dream, ponder, ruminate) than it is to take action.

Consider the ritual of setting our clocks back one hour in the fall, such a colossally arrogant manipulation of our ridiculous human perception of time. Wait, what? Sounds like I still haven't caught up on my sleep. The cat, of course, did not set his clock, being a creature of earth rotation, so he's been on me all week at the hint of dawn, not my best time.

This year, I celebrated the clock-changing ritual by flipping my mattress, changing my sheets, and vacuuming the rugs. I like to do that twice a year. No need to be overly ambitious, especially when it comes to vacuuming. Dust mites have to live too, you know. I try to welcome all god's creatures.

My right leg has been falling asleep when I sit at my kitchen table. I looked it up: leg falls asleep while sitting. Lots of exciting possibilities. (How did we survive before Google?) Thanks to multiple web authors of dubious repute, I'm having one long continuous stroke, I've got a pinched nerve (not sure what that is), or I'm enjoying some sciatica.

I attended an event in Salem last weekend. Salem is an hour drive south of Portland. I attend this event every year. I look forward to the hypnotic drive down I-5 to our state's capital. The drive there and back is better than the event itself, mainly because I get to be alone and out of my house. This year, a member of the group texted me to ask if she could ride with me. Caught off guard, I discarded my first thought (no fricking way, eew) and texted back, okay. She gave me her address, which I recognized as being in the heart of what we for many years have disparagingly called Skid Row, long before our entire city has become one heartbreaking Skid Row of houseless, homeless, sad, cold, tired, hungry, messed up people.

“Just cross the Burnside Bridge and turn right,” she texted.

“I'll pick you up at 8:30,” I responded, wondering if I would be able to walk by the time I arrived in Salem.

Despite the fact that the Burnside Bridge was closed for repairs that weekend, I managed to be ten minutes early, because besides being chronically malcontented, I am chronically early. I sat outside a decrepit apartment building in the loading zone, watching men and women shuffle by with backpacks and shopping carts. I perused their attire and demeanor. I saw their social interactions. I'm learning through observation—in my precarious world, homelessness is always lurking around the corner. I'm lucky, though: I have a car.

Eventually, my passenger appeared. Let's call her Lee. Lee hopped into my car and off we went.

From the time we left her door until the time we arrived at the event venue, Lee talked incessantly. I found out she is a poet. She works as a caregiver for an obese woman, often taking her client to the opera. She told me things I would never have dreamed of asking, stories of childhood trauma and abandonment. She shared about unsuccessful marriages and relationships. I heard about her mother, her father, her siblings, and the siblings from her father's multiple extramarital escapades, some of whom she'd recently met.

I kept my eyes on the road, nodding occasionally, grunting a few times, reluctant to say anything substantive. Lee didn't mind. In fact, I don't think she noticed.  The angst in her voice began to grate on my nerves. It took me a while to figure out that she is drama junkie. I cannot match that level of excitement. By the time we reached the event venue, I was thoroughly blockaded behind my personal bubble, determined to ignore her as much as possible during the day until it was time to make the return trek to Portland.

At 4:30, we were on the road home. I was hoping she would be tired, inclined to doze off, maybe, but no, she seemed as energetic as ever. At one point, Lee said, “I know I talk a lot.”

I took the opening. “Are you afraid of silence? Some people don't like too much silence.”

She was silent for a couple breaths. I thought, oh, yay, is she going to finally shut up? Then, oh yay, did I insult her enough to get her to shut up? Less than twenty seconds later, she said, “I wanted to show you that I was thinking about your question.” Oh, no. Thinking too much traps even drama junkie poets. No one is immune to thinking overload. I can claim no superiority: There's nothing special about me falling into the thinking sinkhole.

A less self-obsessed person would have realized my passive aggressive question was really a cry for relief, a desperate plea for silence. I'm the fool. It wasn't worth the battle. I dropped my passenger at her front door, avoided the hugging ritual, and said I'd see her around. I drove slowly home to feed my hungry angry lonely cat.

An hour later, I dragged myself to my mother's and collapsed on her couch.

“What's wrong with you?” she said. “You look beat.”

I told my mother about my passenger from hell. “She never shut up,” I moaned. “She kept staring at me while I was driving. The entire time, she stared at me. And she kept leaning over and tapping me on the arm.”

“Oh, I hate that,” my mother commiserated, and just like that, I felt the heaviness lift. After all these years, a kind word from Mom takes all the pain away.

The Chronic Malcontent practices mouth breathing

I'm learning Spanish in preparation for moving to the desert. Está nublado y oscuro en mi cabeza hoy. On the dark side: Children deliberately orphaned by the U.S. government, mold spores in my damp kitchen cupboards erasing my neurons, cat barf in the shag rug, the burning of Notre Dame, spring allergies. On the bright side: poacher eaten by lions, a day of 70°F weather, spring flowers. I guess it is true what they say, nothing is ever all good or all bad. We can look for and (usually) find the bright spot in any disaster. Mr. Rogers recommended we look for the helpers. Even when bombs are falling, angels will try to dig you out of the rubble.

Speaking of rubble, the brain of my maternal parental unit continues to disintegrate. I'm resigned to the gradual decline of her capacity as a going human concern. I'm really getting my money's worth on this carnival ride. Unfortunately, like most carnival rides, you can't get off until the car comes to a full stop and the gate designed to keep you from falling to your death unlocks. Then you are free to resume your normal life.

I don't remember what normal is. I've orbited my mother in an increasingly tighter spiral for three years now. First, I helped her shop. Then I shopped for her. Then I took over managing her money and drove her to her appointments. Two years ago, she moved into a care facility. She's stopped playing the piano, reading, and knitting. She no longer turns on the computer to play games. She cannot easily talk on the phone. She can't figure out how to work the remote when somehow the TV power is on but the cable box power is off. The decline from day to day is slight. The decline over two years is obvious. It's like watching a niece grow up. If you only see her at Christmas, it's a shock.

Mom got her toenails trimmed this week. A family friend is a foot care specialist. For a modest amount, she will come out, kneel down in front of your elderly loved one, and clip and grind their toenails into a semblance of submission. I am there to chat and pay the bill. And help Mom to the bathroom when the urge comes on her.

The urge can strike at any moment. One minute she's happily reminiscing and then next moment she's leaping in slow motion from the couch. The urge struck twice during the pedicure. Our friend obligingly moved aside so Mom could shuffle to the bathroom. The first time she navigated the trip there and back successfully. The second time she had a disaster in her pants. When that happens, her brain cells flee to Florida, leaving a paralyzed husk with no capacity for thought. I've seen this episode before so I know what to do.

“You doing okay in there?” I asked, fingers crossed that she got there in time. She never closes the bathroom door: privacy means nothing. Doors are unnecessary obstacles.

“No...” She sat on the toilet, staring at the mess in her pants, at a complete loss.

I quickly shut off all air flow through my nose, rolled up my sleeves, and waded into action. Little globs of poop were on the bathroom floor, on her jeans, and on the trip-hazard rug she insists on putting in front of her toilet.

“Okay. Let's tear these things off.” From observation, I know that the pull-ups tear on the sides. Great idea. The pull-ups can be extricated and dumped without having to take them off over the feet. Brilliant. Holding my breath, I got the offending garment out from between her legs and into the trash can.

I know the drill now. “Shoes off. . . . Okay, jeans off. . . . Okay, stand up.”

I handed her a wad of wet wipes. “Wipe your bum.” She complied. I pointed to the trash can. She dropped the dirty wipes on top of the pull-up. I grabbed two more wipes. “Again,” I commanded.

We repeated the wiping ritual three times before we agreed she was probably clean enough. (I have refused to actually look at my mother's butt for reasons I don't need to explain to you.) I grabbed a new pair of pull-ups and a clean pair of jeans from the closet. “Sit back down there,” I said. She sat on the toilet. I maneuvered the new pull-ups over her feet. I helped her get her legs into a clean pair of jeans. I got her feet back into her shoes. She went back to visit with our friend, who was admiring the photos near the front door. I cleaned up the bathroom, tied off the plastic bag of trash, and put it into another trash can. I folded up the jeans and rug and put them in the laundry basket, briefly wondering if I should somehow rinse them off before discarding the idea as beyond my pay grade.

I washed my hands, still breathing through my mouth. Mom and our friend were chatting. I wrote a check and got Mom situated on the couch.

“I'll see you tonight,” I said and walked our friend out to her car.

“I told my folks you visit your Mom every day,” she said, putting her gear into the trunk. “Everyone thinks you are amazing.”

I wanted to cry but I did that oh, it's nothing, really eye roll and pretended la, la, la, it's all part of the service, as if I wasn't ready to collapse.

Parents clean up their kids' dirty diapers, multiple times a day, for years. My mother did that for me, second in a line of four children. I'm sure she was grossed out from time to time. That was before Pampers, before home diaper cleaning services. I remember seeing her on her knees rinsing my little brother's cloth diapers in the toilet. No wonder childhood was hell. Jeez. Who wouldn't be cranky all the time having to do that thankless chore?

I never wanted children. I never imagined I would be a caregiver, even to the minor extent that I am now called to be. The only training I've had in cleaning up haz mat disasters is scooping cat poop and sponging up barf. I don't know why this is my job, but it is. I do what is in front of me. Just for today, I'm showing up for poop duty. Maybe someday I'll retire to the desert and be able to say siempre hace sol aquí as I sip my iced tea and relax in the shade. Until it's time for someone else to come along behind me and scoop up my poop.

The chronic malcontent can't breathe

The wind turned again and brought the pall of smoke from the Eagle Creek Fire back to Portland. Last night the smell of smoke woke me. I got up and closed the windows I could reach in the dark. I feel sick imagining that I'm breathing the ashes of dead animals and burned up trees. It's beyond campfire smell. This is the smell of running for your life. This is the smell of the end of days. My chest is heavy. My sinuses are clogged. I want to throw open the windows to bring in some fresh air, but the air is cutting up my throat.

Good news, rain is on the way. Tomorrow with any luck, a bit of rain will wash the smoke out of Portland skies and start to tamp down the fire that rages 40 miles away. So far, over 40,000 acres have burned—not the biggest wildfire in the state, but certainly the one with the stupidest origin: fireworks set off by an oblivious self-centered teen. The fire has burned a few structures, a couple homes, shut down the highway for days, and forced hundreds of people to evacuate their pets and livestock. Right now, the fire is about 35% contained.

Bad news, the rain will drench hillsides barren of any growth, and all those dead trees and debris will slide down the steep hillsides to end up in creeks and across roads. I hope not in anyone's backyard, but gravity does what it will.

Meanwhile, life goes on, despite the disasters, natural and human-caused, that seem to pick at my fragile serenity. It's always some damn thing, isn't it? The airbag light won't go off. Sleekly sluggish giant rats come to feed at my bird feeder (can we say Lyme Disease?). My mother's diarrhea plague persists. The new wheelcover (replacing the one broken by the tire company when they sold me new tires) rubs against my wheel, click, click, click. My computer glasses no longer quite work because my arms got shorter or something. Dang it.

The poorly paying editing jobs stack up like planes circling Laguardia. The keyboard space bar sticks because of all the cat hair under the keys. One of my molars repeatedly shudders at cold or hot, bringing up visions of root canals and crowns. That's just stuff in my tiny parched world. Expand the lens out a few hundred feet and it's enough to make a person want to move to Mexico.

In fact, if things keep going here the way they've been going, I wouldn't be surprised to see the trickle of ex-pats moving south become a full torrent of people seeking asylum from Make America Great Again. The place is getting a little too damn great for me.

Oh, poor me, I live in the richest country on earth. Poor me. Of course, I'm not rich, but somewhere here, there are rich people, I'm pretty sure. I don't happen to know any, but I'm sure they are around somewhere. Not that they would do anything for me if they saw me on the street with my hand out, but I'm sure they donate to good causes. I get solicitor calls all the time for a woman who lives on the west side of town who happens to share my name. Somehow my phone number got attached to her address. I know she donates to many good causes. Good people are out there. Even though I'm pretty sure she also voted for Trump.                 Dang it, there goes the space bar again. Hold on, I gotta hit it to make it stop adding extra spaces. There.

I'd like to take a deep breath and start the day over, but the air in here is just a bit smoky. I hope when I wake tomorrow, the rain is pouring and the smoke is gone. I hope we all find freedom from suffering and the flies finally abandon my kitchen. I hope my airbag light magically goes off and I can go for a walk in the rain.

The chronic malcontent joins the tiny hat movement

Sometimes when I stand at my computer desk, staring morosely at my screen, my cat sneaks silently into the room and sits on the floor behind my feet. Inevitably, eventually, I step backward onto his tail. I think it's a ploy to get sympathy. I thought he wasn't all that bright, but maybe I'm wrong: He's figured out how to get love. That is more than some of us can say.

I'm seeking a hat that will clamp down on the vertigo. Is there such a thing? I have many kinds of hats: berets, cloches, stocking caps, straw hats, watch caps, baseball caps, and hats whose names I do not know. Most are black. None of the hats I have seems to mitigate the vertigo, so I'm hunting for a new hat. Maybe something in tin foil.

I wear a hat pretty much all the time. I wear a hat to the store. I wear a hat to job interviews. I even wear a hat to bed. I'm wearing a hat right now. The only time I don't wear a hat is when the temperature exceeds 90°. Then I'll let my scalp roam free. People are always shocked to find I actually do have hair. I suspect they believe I've been a cancer patient for years. Nope, sorry. I buzz my hair short on purpose.

Somebody should invent a hat that helps old people think. Teachers used to tell students, “Put on your thinking caps!” to imply that they were not thinking to their full potential. Did it inspire students to think harder? Deeper? Clearer? Who knows. All I know is, I want a thinking cap. I want one for my mother, and I want one for me. I don't care what color.

Lately I've been thinking that everyone should start wearing a hijab, the Muslim women's headscarf. If everyone walked around in hijabs, maybe people would get used to seeing them around town. Then they wouldn't be scared of hijabs. It's normal to be scared of things we don't understand. If you were wearing a headscarf on your head, you would understand it's a piece of cloth that wraps around your head. Then you wouldn't be scared of it.

I'm not much of a joiner. Groups make me feel uncomfortable, and the idea of joining a movement in a presidential election year really makes me queasy. (I might accidentally become a Trumpeter or something, and then I'd have to kill myself.) However, I don't think the tiny hat movement is all that well organized. I haven't seen any newsletters. I don't know if there is a website. In fact, I might be the first one in the tiny hat movement. It's hard to tell if I'm part of a movement when life is moving around me. Do you ever have that feeling?

Anyway, if you would like to join the tiny hat movement, leave a comment, and start wearing a hat.

Joke's on you, cave painters

Does it seem these days like we are all going to hell in a hand-basket? Maybe we've been in the hand-basket for a long time (like a few thousand years, maybe?). But like the proverbial frog sitting in the slowly heating pot of water, we are now too logy to do anything about escaping our imminent demise. Oh, we drop a few bombs here and there, attend a summit or two... but it's all feeling a little like, wheeeee, what's the use! Hell, here we come.

In honor of the end of 2015 (and possibly the end of Western civilization as we know it), I hereby present a compilation of some drawings I don't think I've used before. For your viewing pleasure. Enjoy. This is also in celebration of the fact that I can now drag and drop my jpegs directly into my post. (Thanks, Google. You've shown yourself a true friend, here at the end of the world. You have my gratitude. For as long as my brain holds out, which probably won't be all that much longer.)

When a year stumbles to a close, I sometimes review where I've been and think about where I'm going in the new year. I don't make resolutions anymore because it seems stupid to set intentions I have no intention of keeping. Lose weight, get more exercise, drink more water, read more literary fiction and less science fiction, sleep less, be nicer... yada, yada, yada. If the myriad dried-up pink post-it notes posted on my computer monitor and mirrors haven't convinced me that these are good ideas, then why would I imagine writing up a list of resolutions for 2016 would work any better? Deluded magical thinking. Again.

So, no, no resolutions for me. I can't even resolve to survive, considering that at any moment I could be smashed flat in an earthquake or gunned down by some stupid terrorist. Life has always been precarious, but I guess I had some hope that good could prevail, if not for me than for others. But now I'm thinking good is not a safe haven. Positive thinking is a waste of energy. Fighting for anything is futile. We're all going to hell in a hand-basket.

I used to worry my tiny head about whether I should settle for simply existing, or whether I should strive to thrive. As if I knew what thriving would actually look like. A newer car? Would that be thriving? More money in the bank? How much is more? How much is enough? I am beginning to think there is never enough of anything: love, money, safety, life. It's all impermanent. Uncertainty is the new god. Or maybe it's the old god who has been laughing at us the whole time as we tried to keep civilization together. Har har, joke's on you, cave painters!

I'm just cranky because my mother is declining into dementia and I can't earn enough money to survive. La la la, what else is new? Some people don't have mothers. Some people don't have jobs, or homes, or countries, even. Who am I to complain? But I can't help myself. I'm an American. I have a god-given right to bitch, bestowed upon my by a quirk of geographical fate. Of all the places you could be born, the gods are sending you to.... Oregon! Lucky baby! Yeah, your family is nuts, and you are going to grow up female in the 60s and 70s, but hey, it could be worse. You could have been born in Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Idaho. Stop yer belly-achin!

The holiday season is always fraught with ironies, and never more so than this year, I think. It cracks me up that Americans are rushing around trying to get the perfect gifts for their loved ones when the world is crashing. Is this a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? (I've always loved that image.) I don't think the human race is any more special than, say, polar bears or dolphins or honeybees. I just don't think we humans are constitutionally capable of playing well with others. Greed and self-centered fear creep into every culture, eventually. Is that true? Are there some indigenous cultures in little pockets of rain forest and desert that will survive the religious fanatics swarming the rest of the planet?

You know what else pisses me off? Chronic malcontents large and small are emerging from the woodwork, proclaiming the end of the world and running around like banshees trying to find their little slice of safety. More guns! Arm everyone! Build walls, keep out the invaders! Kill the insects, no, eat the insects, wait, what? So on top of my own little suitcase of troubles, now I have all this competition from other malcontents! What gives?

If I were Little Mary Sunshine, which I'm not, I would say, oh, pish posh, tempest in a teapot, drink some water, and recycle your plastics. Instead I will say, merry ho ho and happy Christmas from the Hellish Hand-basket. Now put down your weapons, back away slowly, and maybe you can have some pie.

The chronic malcontent comes up for air

Humble apologies to all four of my blog readers, who all reached out to me to find out if I was getting ready to jump off a bridge. We have a lot of bridges here in Portland, so their concern was not entirely unfounded. If I had to choose the bridge of my demise, I think I would choose the St. Johns Bridge. It's tall enough that odds are I'd die upon impact, so no chance of slow drowning. Plus it's in an area some distance from the main city waterfront, so I wouldn't upset tourists, and bicyclists and joggers wouldn't feel compelled to stop and watch me flail. (I'm not much of a swimmer.) And what's more, I hate to be cold and wet (I know, why am I in Portland?) So a quick exit would be the best for me. But I'm not planning on doing that, jumping, exiting, or swimming. You all can simmer down: I'm hunkered in the Love Shack, getting on with life.

The bane of my trouble, the source of all that is, of course, is the maternal parental unit, who has gone somewhat mentally offline in recent months. I fear her double move over the summer gummed up her mental gears. This once vibrant and energetic dynamo (her nickname used to be “Mighty Mouse”) is now a shadow, physically and mentally. She's a fragile twig, tottering on tiny Merrell-encased feet. Indoors or out, she bundles in previously worn fleece jackets, usually bright red, which are pockmarked down the front with cigarette ash burns. (It's a wonder she hasn't spontaneously combusted.) Things fall out of her pockets. She carries her cellphone in a little case attached to a wrist bracelet, like an oversized life alert. It's painful to see her like this. Sometime over the summer, she lost her mojo.

She is well aware that her mind is failing. She is anxious about it, but growing resigned to the muddle. Her world is shrinking. Yesterday some estate sale people came to wrap up and remove decades of collected china, glassware, dishes, and knickknacks. Some of the stuff was probably 100 years old. What do you do with all that stuff, if your adult children don't want it? Dump it on the solitary grandchild, who has her own life and family in Sacramento? Mom is detaching from life, and that means, for her, emptying the china cabinet is a victory. One more thing to check off the checklist.

My victory came when (after a long overdue flurry of tears), I realized that this transition, rather than being a tragedy, could be an opportunity to welcome in a hurricane of love.

Mom had four kids. In essence, she created a small troop of willing and stalwart (but somewhat unskilled) laborers, and we lift and tote and schlep and reassure as best we can—four hearts and minds to support her as she eases out of this world. What else are children for? She and my father apparently did a good job parenting us, if we are all willing to hang around and help her. That is, if caring for the aging parent is the job of the children.

That question is the bug up my dark place, as you may have guessed. As Bravadita pointed out, the logical next step would be for me to offer to give up my apartment and move in with my mother. (Not going to happen.) If I had a big home with a sunny spare room, I'd invite her to live with me, no hesitation, well, not much hesitation. But I live in the Love Shack, which is barely big enough for me, the cat, and a thousand or so books. Steps. Uneven rugs. Cat toys. Dust. Detritus. Squalor. Nobody should be living here in these conditions, not even me. There's definitely no way Mom could move in here.

Mom's condo is a dark cave, darker even than the Love Shack. Only one window faces east, and she keeps that barricaded against the light. The living room window faces west, receiving golden sunsets in the summer, but not much light in the winter, thanks to the angle of the sun and the corner of her garage. Being the hothouse flower that I am, I would not survive long in that cave. However, long before I withered from lack of light, she (being an energy vampire, aka an extravert) would have sucked the life from my bones and tossed my desiccated carcass into the spare bedroom. No, moving in with my mother would not be a good idea for either one of us.

The alternatives are two: move someone else into the condo to live with her, or move her out to someplace else.

I can feel the will to live draining away as I write this. Hokay. Maybe this is enough for today. Now I need to find some ironic yet poignant silly drawing to go with this half-baked post. The world is crumbling. I should stop whining. Eventually I will, but not today.

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 braces for change

The moon must be aligned with Uranus or something. Fruit basket upset! Everyone important to me seems to be on the move. My jet-set sister, after presenting at a conference in France, is traipsing off to Vatican City to scour some libraries for medieval treasure (aka old books). Bravadita is moving to Gladstone, of all the godforsaken burbs a person could go to, so far away: no more monthly Willamette Writers meetings, my convenient excuse to see her smiling face. And to top it all off, my 85-year-old mother has tossed a grenade into my tenuous tranquility by declaring her intent to move out of her condo into a retirement community. Argh. Change is coming!

My brain is a shattered mess. I'm trying to hold all the bits of lumpy gray matter together, but my natural pessimism tells me it's no use, what's the point. (Don't let anyone tell you chronic malcontentedness is not like a disease. Tell me, would you judge me if I had tuberculosis?)

When I can't breathe I call upon my secret rescue inhaler: I ask myself, what would my extroverted friends do right now? Would they let this excess of exuberant change pummel them into a puddle of goo? No. They would not. They would rush out the door to meet it for coffee, preferably with a horde of friends all driving Kia Souls and Mini Coopers. Re-frame! Re-boot the shattered brain!

Lucky me! Between editing dissertations about China's healthcare system, cosmopolitan-thinking in the world's education system, and culturally relevant pedagogy in American middle schools, I get to visit retirement homes.

And when I'm not doing that, I am earning some money by calling people in faraway places to interview them for a research study about fluid connectors. So far I've dragged my double-wide out of bed before dawn to dial people in Italy, Germany, and Minneapolis. Talk about exotic locales! And Shanghai, China, too, although that interview took place at a very civilized evening hour. I am really starting to get a sense of the size of the planet by calculating time zone differences. (Big place.) Although I have to use Excel to figure it out. Or my fingers. I have always had a precarious relationship with analog time. I have no pictures in my head to explain time. I dread the moment we shift from Standard time to Daylight Savings.

Part of my problem is I think making my mother's last years pleasant is my responsibility. I want her to be happy. She's not happy. Last week she had a doctor's appointment. I offered her a ride, and she accepted: Warning sign #1.

Her doctor was a tall, slender Asian man with a scraggly beard and a charming smile. He didn't hesitate to shake my hand (germs, dude! Really?). My mother and I sat on the two square stiffly cushioned blue chairs, the kind you've seen in waiting rooms everywhere. The doctor sat on the rolling stool, waiting calmly, looking at my mother. I waited, too. My mother scooted forward in her chair. Warning sign #2. I thought, she's getting ready to make a presentation. The audience is in place. Showtime.

“My digestive tract seems to be on the mend the past three days,” she began. Good news for my scrawny mother who eats like a sparrow and weighs barely 94 pounds.

“Great,” said the doctor.

“But I just don't seem to want to eat anything.”

The doctor and I both looked at her expectantly.

“I hate to cook, I always have,” she said. I could have said something, but I didn't. Memories of canned green(ish) beans and gray peas floated through my mind. “I just don't feel like cooking or eating much of anything,” she added, frowning. I felt guilty for not cooking for my mother. Even though I'm a worse cook than she is.

“Are you depressed?” asked the doctor.

My mother thought for a few seconds. “No,” she said flatly. “I'm bored.” Immediately, I felt guilty for not doing a better job of entertaining my mother.

“I'm tired all the time. I think I'm bored. All I do is play video games on my computer,” she said. It suddenly dawned on me that since my mother's co-treasurer position on the condo board ended last fall, she's got nobody to complain about. Oh, she always finds something, but without the monthly hassles and gossip of the condo meetings, she's bereft. My mother the pitchfork-wielding extraverted rabble-rouser. No wonder she's bored. She needs a cause!

“I've got too much stuff,” she complained. “I want to move.” No use uttering a squeak as my heart fell into my stomach: I've known this day was coming for a while. I just... I guess there's just no good time for change, is there?

“If you moved into a retirement community, you would have more social interaction,” the doctor observed. “You would probably eat more.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” she said. “I have friends in a place over by Mall 205.”

“That's all you need,” the doctor agreed. “More friends.”

And that is how I agreed to take my mother to a retirement place next week to eat a free lunch and take a tour. I can hardly wait. Next chore: get boxes, start sorting out the ten years of junk she collected since she moved into the condo and the sixty or so years of crap she's dragged with her from place to place along with a husband and four kids. I'm just really glad she doesn't collect Franklin Mint plates or Beanie Babies.

Random thoughts from a stinky cheese chronic malcontent

Bless me, Hellish Hand-basket readers. It's been over a week since my last blog post. My excuse is that I've been immersed once again in dissertation editing hell, editing someone else's massive, wretched, poorly written tome rather than my own. I've been diving deep into the quandary of social injustice in the State of Hawaii. The upside is that I know more than I ever knew about Hawaiian history, and have a whole new perspective into the world of social work (which consists of poorly paid people helping other poorly paid people perpetuate a nonprofit machine in which everyone is poorly paid while chasing charity dollars. I'm super glad I didn't pursue a career in counseling!) The downside is that, by the time I finished combing the wretched tome for extra spaces, misplaced periods, and renegade pronouns, I calculated I earned just over $16.00 per hour. Clearly something is wrong with my business model.

Today, with the wretched tome off my plate, I was able to hunt and gather at the local grocery store, put unleaded into my ancient, tired, dusty, fossil-fuel burning Focus, and put on a load of wash. I love multitasking, which to me means doing the laundry while cooking dinner while running a virus scan while talking on the phone. Look at me go!

The weather is weirdly awesome. It's currently 86° at PDX, which means some tropical pockets of Portland will probably hit 90° in the next few minutes before cooling back down to 60° overnight. While it's not unheard of, it is pretty unusual for the weather to be this warm in early October. I went for a trot in the park and soaked in the heat through my scrawny pale legs, wishing I could stop time before the leaves turn orange.

Yesterday I drove over to my mother's condo to help celebrate my little brother's birthday. He's turning... let me think, I guess he's turning 54. Yipes. My baby brother is over the hill. Guess that makes me over the hill and halfway into the graveyard. Well, no use complaining, especially where the really old folks can hear. Don't bother looking for sympathy from old people; that is like going to the garbage dump for bread.Two of the neighbors who came to the party, a couple in their mid-80s, sharp and caustic as ever, were not inclined to hear my brother whine about how his joints ache in the morning. I knew better; I kept my mouth shut.

Birthday parties never have amounted to much in my family. I'm not sure why. I have my theories. This party was relatively painless as birthday parties go—all of us were ready for a nap after barely an hour. I managed to leave all the cake and ice cream with my mother, although my digestive system paid the price today for what I ate yesterday. I think that if I'm going to get sick from eating cake and ice cream, the pain ought to be worth it. Like excellent tiramisu or German chocolate cake. Sadly, 'twas not the case.

It's hard to sum up life these days. From one angle, everything looks like crap. I'm barely earning, doing something I hate almost as much as I hated sewing and driving a school bus and teaching keyboarding, and I'm wondering why I seem to figure out what to do by doing everything I don't want to do first. I know I'm running out of time. The thought makes me want to give up and embrace my inner homeless person.

On the other hand, I'm not sewing, or driving a school bus, or teaching keyboard! Yay! On top of that, the weather is awesome, and while I don't have a steady job, well, I don't have to get up tomorrow and go to a steady job! No getting up early, no dressing up in a uniform, no worrying about my nose hairs and my blossoming sideburns. That's pretty great, don't you think? Actually, I think the longer I'm out of the workforce, the more unemployable I get, sort of like the opposite of a fine wine, more like a stinky cheese.

I would take all the blame for everything, but I think there might be something going on in the local economy. For example, the rental market is tighter than a frog's sphincter, and as a consequence, my friend Bravadita is dragging up on her cute apartment in downtown Portland in favor of shared housing in Gladstone. Her rent decreases in inverse proportion to her public transit commute, which extends an extra hour per day. I find it sad; I fear something similar will happen to me in the next year. My landshark and his wife could boot me out of the Love Shack, fix up the antiquated bathroom and kitchen, and easily lease it to some marketing wizkid for double the rent. I would find myself rooming with my mother, or possibly hunkering down in the Section 8 housing across the street from her condo, where police seem to be on standby.

It's an unsettling, unsettled, yet oddly fertile time. As I approach my 58th birthday, I don't have a whole lot of hope, but freefall is a surprisingly freeing state of mind. My life certainly doesn't look the way I thought it would. I aimed for Santa Barbara and ended up in Pacoima, figuratively speaking. Maybe more like, I aimed for Fiji and ended up in the armpit of Portland. Whatever. I'm trying to live fearlessly, and failing daily, but fearlessness is something to aim for, in the absence of job security and impending old age. The good thing is that since fearlessness is a state of mind, I don't have to leave home to find it.

Uh-oh. Can I get the cat back into the bag?

I would like to shout out a big welcome to the newest Hellish Handbasket reader: my mother. Yep. You heard right. My scrawny almost-85-year-old Wild-West mother is back online and tearing up the broadest band she's ever had. Speedy doesn't begin to describe her presence on the Internet. With one breath she's complaining that she can't remember how to use her computer. With the next breath, she's leaving snide comments on Facebook and forwarding chain emails to her entire contact list. Way to go, Mom.

A few nights ago, my mother and I were talking on the phone. I don't remember who called who, but as she is wont to do, she asked me what I've been working on. My first thought was to change the subject. My second thought was to lie. But sadly, I don't lie well, especially to my mother, so I took a deep breath and told her about the Hellish Handbasket ebook, which I had just published.

“Oh, what is it about?” she asked.

“It's called 'Welcome to Dissertation Hell,' and it is a collection of selected posts from my blog,” I replied.

“Oh. You know, I don't think I've ever seen your blog,” she said.

“You've been offline for a while,” I said, trying to steer her away to a different topic.

“Where is your blog?”

Suddenly, in a nanosecond, my future life as a demented person who wears her underwear on the outside of her clothes in public, on Trimet, passed before my eyes. Dirty red underbelly alert! Alert! Not... happening. My brain worked feverishly as I considered and discarded 50 lame reasons why I shouldn't give her the URL to my blog. In the end, I came up with zip. Zilch. There was no good reason to exclude my curious mother from reading my anonymous blog. The thought of telling her she couldn't read it felt worse than the thought of her reading it. Still, I made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade her.

“You know I blog anonymously, right? That means you can't tell your condo friends, 'My daughter has a blog.'”

“OK.”

“And you know I write about personal things, right? So you can't be offended.”

“OK.”

So, I sent her the URL to this blog in an email, hoping she would accidentally delete it or corrupt it or something. Well, I can hope, can't I? No such luck.

The next day she called.

“Hello, Mudder,” I answered, as I always do when I hear her voice blasting through the phone.

“You sound like you are the most frustrated person who ever existed!” she shouted. Oh Lord Kumbaya. She read my blog.

“Ma, relax, it's therapy for me,” I tried to explain.

“You are frustrated!” she accused.

“OK, I'm frustrated!” I agreed. “But it's also an exciting time in my life! It's not bad! It's good!”

There was a moment of silence while we both pondered our next move. In used car sales transactions, the person who speaks first loses. So I took a breath and waited.

“Your younger brother tripped over the cat and fell down the stairs,” she said. Whew. Won that round. The equivalent of a 1968 Dodge Dart, I guess. That is to say, not a huge win.

So now I'm outed to my mother, which may possibly be worse than being outed to the entire world, because only mothers can press all the buttons that put us into that special orbit we experience as frustration. I'm not worried she'll reveal my identity... it's out there in the ebook. And who cares if a few silver-haired old ladies know who The Chronic Malcontent is? Not me.

My fear is that knowing my mother is possibly going to read this blog will cause me to censor my words. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, certainly not hers. I don't think I've said anything too derogatory toward her, have I? Besides calling her scrawny. Which I'm sure she would agree with; anyone can see the woman is a stick.

Well, no use fretting over the wreckage of the future. The cat is on my lap, but he would fight to the death to avoid going into any bag, so it looks like I'm going to have to let this one go. I surrender, Mom. Welcome to my blog.

The Chronic Malcontent succumbs to shameless commerce

Well, I did it. I've been thinking about doing it for a while (thanks to the encouragement of my sister and my friends), and I finally did it. For the past month I have been compiling posts from the Hellish Handbasket blog, in preparation for turning it into an ebook. Yep. A compendium, call it a handbook, maybe, of dissertation-related posts for aspiring doctoral learners. Yesterday, I did it. It's done. I've officially gone over to the dark side of shameless self-centered commerce.

All I've ever wanted to do, since I was nine years old, was write and illustrate my own books. Sometime during elementary school, evil powers convinced me it was an impossible dream, so I pivoted toward painting. Equally foolish pursuit, I was told. Thus, in college (the first of many attempts at higher education), I gave up painting for graphic design (or "commercial art" as it was known in the x-acto knife and rubber cement, layout and paste-up days. Wow, I'm old.)

Unfortunately, I sucked at graphic design. But I loved fashion! I used my hazy vision of taking over the fashion world as a fashion illustrator and designer as an excuse to take a geographical to Los Angeles, where I fell awkwardly into costume design, started my own business, and got into debt. The rest is the boring history of me crawling out of the various holes I dug for myself over the ensuing 20 years. But you can't take the dream out of the girl, apparently, even when she's middle-aged, sagging, and growing a mustache. All I ever really wanted to do was create my own books.

It just wasn't the right time, it seems. Until now. All it took was for the world of technology to catch up to my vision and make it possible. Yay.

Of course, the world of technology also has made it possible for millions of other would-be authors to realize their visions of publishing, too. I find I am a speck, invisible in the vast and swarming tide of people who can also proudly claim they are ebook authors. Anyone can write and publish an ebook. (Even my mother could do it, and she just might, who knows! My scrawny 84-year-old mother just relaunched her online presence! Look out, Internet!)

As part of the gigantic and vibrant marketplace of ebooks, odds of being found are not in my favor. Especially considering my ebook is (more or less) an anonymous entry. Some marketing ploys to boost awareness of the new ebook may be undesirable, if I want to stay anonymous. Am I really hidden? No...anyone who wants to find me, can. I'm not well hidden, I'm not really anonymous. Who cares? Once again I find myself questioning my identity. Who am I? Who am I now? On so many levels, I'm still so confused.

But I finally got something done! Something is now present in the world that wasn't present before, and I was responsible for making that happen. That is the victory for me. If the universe wants to take note of it, so be it. If not, whatever. I'm on to my next ebook. My car may have a layer of moss on it, for being parked in the same spot for so long. But not me!

If you are interested in ordering or sampling the ebook, you can find it at Smashwords. And if you want more info, check out the Welcome to Dissertation Hell: the ebook page on this blog.

The chronic malcontent gets on with the business of living

I'm pleased with myself tonight. If I weren't so tired, I'd be typing this dancing. Well, maybe not dancing, but shuffling. Why am I pleased? I figured out how to give a special gift to the wonderful folks who register on my website. No, it's not a box of chocolate, sorry, in case you were thinking of signing up. It's just a boring white paper about a topic I fear only I am interested in. But whatever. I'm dipping my timid toe into the raging current known as content marketing. So, kudos to me.

That's my technological victory. Not terribly impressive, I know. In a few months when I want to offer a different gift, we'll see if I'm able to remember how I did it. That's the problem with technological victories. They don't come with handbooks my brain can retain. I have to start over from scratch. Thank god for the Internet.

Any other victories to report? No progress on the ant situation: I continue to battle for space in the kitchen, and I'm not above eating them (although fear of being dinner doesn't seem to faze their industrious foraging).

I can report a little forward motion on the networking front. I went to a marketing event on Wednesday evening. Once again I braved the rain to join the unwashed masses on mass transit. The vent was at an independent theater near the famous Powell's bookstore. The event was a lecture by a marketing research guy. The topic: writing effective survey questions. I went to find out what I don't know. You know, the holes in my knowledge. As it turns out, I know a lot, which is nice, and (almost) worth the $40 it cost me to attend.

There weren't many people there, maybe 30 at the most. Not surprisingly, almost all of them were much younger than me. They're so attractive. And they talk so fast, these young marketers. So energetic. Where do they get their energy? Oh, I know, don't tell me. Red Bull. Mountain Dew. Well, I wasn't born yesterday. Obviously: I remember when Mountain Dew was a hillbilly beverage. Now Mountain Dew's former tagline is the name of my email provider. What the f—?

I managed to participate in and even instigate a few conversations, but failed the next day to convert anyone into a LinkedIn connection. I've lost steam on my quest to gain connections. I haven't even hit 100 yet; I'm bogged down in why bother? I get the idea in principle, but in practice, it seems like a futile bit of ego-stroking. Look how many connections I have! Nobody cares.

I wish life were only full of victories. But I guess I have a defeat to report. Victory... defeat... who is to say? It feels like a defeat to me. My mother thinks it is a victory. What am I talking about? This week I agreed to teach one two-hour marketing class per week for the next 11 weeks at a for-profit university in the Tigard triangle. That is the area of the city that has become a hub, a mecca, a swamp of higher education. I won't name the place I signed on with. Who cares. The gig starts Tuesday.

The good news is their rate is more than twice what I was paid at the career college that laid me off last year. The bad news is the class is only two hours a week. The good news is I'll be teaching marketing! (Instead of keyboarding, or Word, or Excel...) The bad news is that it could take me almost an hour to get there if there is traffic. The good news is my car gets pretty good gas mileage. The bad news is... there are only four students in the class. Argh. But the good news... and why my mother is pleased: it's money. It's postponing the moment when she feels compelled to swoop in and rescue me. And more good news: it's blog fodder.

So... victory or defeat? Who knows. It's like any situation: It has pluses and minuses. After a while, when your head stops spinning, you slow down and realize it really doesn't matter. In the end all we have is right now, this moment. Tomorrow is out of our control. Time to stop judging and get on with the business of living.

The chronic malcontent whines about "snowpocalypse"

I've had it with snow. After three windy blizzards in three days, I am ready to go back to bed to wait for spring. I'm fed up with seeing families cavort past my snow-covered steps, carrying their sleds and boogie boards up to the park. Wipe those smiles off your faces! Stop laughing! Don't you know some of us prefer to suffer?

This morning I swept my front porch and steps, cutting a narrow trail to a plastic-wrapped newspaper someone dumped on my front walk, a paper I never ordered and don't want. A few minutes after I ducked back into my warm cave, it started snowing again. Within minutes my steps were an inch deep in white powder, and it hasn't let up since. My friends in Minnesota are probably playing the tiny whiny violin right now, but they don't understand that Portland is not equipped for more than three inches of snow. The city is shut down, essentially. The MAX and streetcars are running just to keep the lines clear, but many buses are on snow routes.

Up here on the shoulder of Mt. Tabor, I've heard some snow plows go by. I rush to the window to see flashing tail lights disappear around the corner. Sometimes they leave a trail of gravel in their wake. But buses are as rare as blue whales. It seems we have been abandoned, here on the busiest bus route of the city. The last bus I saw gingerly turning the corner onto Belmont was early on Thursday  morning. Now it's Saturday. Apparently we have been forgotten by mass transit. If I want off this hill, I'm going to have to hike down.

Luckily I have food. As long as the power stays on, I'm good. And I have snow boots (purchased after the snowstorm of 2008, learned my lesson), if I really have to get out of here. Meanwhile, there's nothing to do but focus on the things I am trying to avoid. The things that scare me. Like... marketing.

I remember one memorable winter in the 1960s when it snowed for days. We kids were in heaven, digging snow caves in 6-foot drifts. It was so cold in our drafty old farmhouse that my family camped out in the living room in front of the fireplace. As a pre-teen, I loved it. Later, I can say that the prospect of enduring more winters like that one was why I headed south as soon as I was old enough to fly the nest.

It may be a couple more days until the mess outside turns into slush and I can get my car out. I look forward to the moment. By then I will be out of eggs and fresh produce. I fear my cat might start to look strangely appetizing.

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.

The chronic malcontent caves to the imperious creative urge

My Chair tossed me a shred of good news today. She's “touching bases” with the Nameless, Faceless Committee (which I believe consists of one person, the subject matter expert, AKA the SME), and so far, she's found only “minor” revisions. Now, her idea of minor may not match mine, but still, in my world, any hint that I might not have a total rewrite ahead of me is excellent news. I hesitate to offer prayers to the Universe for fear of jinxing the whole thing: along the lines of What you resist, persists, or You attract what you focus on... as if we had that much power! But I'm not taking any chances. If there is the slightest possibility I can jinx it, I must take steps to counterjinx it.

Counterjinx isn't a real word. Blogger doesn't like it, and I'm sure Webster's doesn't like it, but I like it, so I'm going to use it. That is how language grows, right? Because some idiot somewhere said he was going to post some funny pictures of his cat, now we have cat bearding. And twerking? Really? I went Googling for some other words and got caught up in reading an essay about unusable words. I was reminded of earlier days when I had a fairly good sized vocabulary. Earlier days, like the 1970s. When my brain was young and pliable, and I loved words for their own sake. Now I'm down to a menu of about twenty-three words and phrases, used on a rotating basis. It's sad, really. But I just had a birthday. What can one expect? The chronic malcontent is getting old.

Back to counterjinxing. You know what I mean, right? I mean, admit it, you have a pair of lucky socks, too, I bet. Am I right? I was born on October 13, so for me, the 13th has always been an appealing number. But some people get nervous when the 13th happens to fall on a Friday. How do you feel about black cats, ladders, and mirrors? Maybe you have a ritual you do to help your team win? I don't subscribe to common superstitions. But if turning around seven times will undo any bad ju-ju I may have inadvertently attracted by focusing too intently on my desire to receive “minor” revisions, well, gimme the rabbit's foot! Sorry, Thumper!

Today I cleared away some wreckage from my past. In fact, I didn't even go out of the house. As I was cleaning, I opened a dusty plastic tote box and found some heavy wool knitted fabric, which I had purchased years ago at a thrift store, mainly because of the delicious tweedy green color. I like green. So, in my best DIY fashion, I fashioned a jacket from it, sans pattern. I just started whacking with the scissors. As I worked, I found a handful of moth holes, as well as some knitted-in flaws. That didn't stop me. I was indulging the imperious urge of my creative muse, whatever the hell that is. Similar to indigestion, I think. Anyway, you can probably guess that with no pattern, I ended up with some unexpected results, which required the insertion of some gussets. I'll let you look up that one yourself. No, it's not contagious.

Many years ago, in another life, I lived in Los Angeles, where I operated a custom clothing design business for about ten years. I did a lot of sewing. After I shut it down, I swore I'd never sew again. It's hard to keep an oath like that; buttons fall off, hems need rehemming, you know, so I've done a little bit of sewing, here and there, but nothing like today. Today was like... cooking with no recipe. Today was like painting with your fingers—with your eyes closed. It's guess-and-by-golly creativity, the most free-wheeling—and freeing —kind. But of course, when you jump off a cliff, creatively speaking, you don't always have control over crosswinds and landing places. In other words, you get what you get. What I got was a super warm jacket crafted from a fabulous greenish knitted wool, with one sleeve sewn inside out, and a few moth holes. What can I say. My eyesight isn't what it used to be.

I don't know that I'll finish it. It needs a hem and some buttons. And I'm allergic to wool. One thing for sure, though: The day reminded me of why I hate to sew. And it proves the old adage, just because you are good at something doesn't mean you should spend your time doing it. Especially if you don't like it all that much. And when you aren't that good at it anymore.

Losing brain cells to the social media time suck

The word has come down from on high (Salem): I am now officially self-employed. How weird to go from unemployed to self-employed. I guess you can now call me a job creator. I made a job for myself. I think I should go on strike. This job doesn't pay sh--t. And I'm not sure I get along with the boss.

But here I am, a solopreneur, a little sooner than I expected, but excited nonetheless. However, if I want to receive assistance from the State of Oregon, I must “work” at this new job at least 40 hours a week. Forty hours! They obviously don't know I am also trying to finish my doctorate. Well, they do know, because I told them on the application form, but they obviously don't care. They apparently also don't know that I am trying to catch up on the sleep I lost over the past ten years of split shifts. They just want me off the dole ASAP. I want that, too, I really do. I want this little one-person business to put down some roots and grow.

What am I selling? Thanks for asking. I'm not sure yet. (That sounds promising, doesn't it?) Here's what I know: it's something to do with marketing research consulting. Soon I will send a message in a bottle out to the universe (also known as a survey) to ask small business owners what they know about marketing research, if they use it, if they would pay someone to do it for them, and how much would they pay. From the responses, I anticipate gleaning some insight into what to do next.

In the meantime, I'm.... I guess you could say I'm building infrastructure. I opened a post office box today, and a business checking account at the local credit union. I made business cards. I started my business plan. And I revived my old Facebook account and attached a Page for my new business. Then I got sucked down the invisible black hole of social media. When I clawed my way out, it was after 10:00 pm. Wha—? Who knew Facebook was such a delirious time suck? Why didn't anyone tell me! I'm like Rip Van Winkle, I'm ninety now, I've lost all my brain cells and my fingers are crumbling bony sticks. What in tarnation!? Why, it's the devil's invention, I tell you. Well, I don't believe in the devil, so how about it's a scrawny pimply-faced multi-gazillionaire pipsqueak's invention. Why, I oughta...

I am embarrassed to even mention this topic. I know I've cursed social media time and again in this blog, or if I didn't, I meant to. Curse you, Facebook! Curse you, LinkedIn! The last thing the maniacally introverted Chronic Malcontent wants to do is open her door to the entire world and say howdy, come on in. Oh Lord Kumbaya. Seriously? This is how people spend their time? Why don't they just shove a vacuum cleaner into their ear and let it rip?

My vehement reaction invites introspection. That sounds like something my friend Valentina would say. I think I know what's up. Facebook is my shadow. Facebook is forcing—no, let's say Facebook is encouraging me, inviting me, offering me the opportunity—to let the world know me, and that does not come easily to a rabid snarling introvert. Voluntarily opening my metaphorical door to strangers makes my skin crawl. For someone as self-obsessed as me, you would think I'd be thrilled to get some extra attention. Nope. No thanks. Introversion is one rabbit hole I can slide down forever if I'm not careful. I'd call it a progressive illness if I wouldn't immediately feel compelled to start a Twelve Step program about it. Introverts Anonymous.

Slowly my path comes clear. The only way through this mental minefield is to focus on service. Service. My north star. Service. To imagine my business providing value, to picture myself being of service to happy clients, to recognize I am bringing something good into the world. Ommmmm. That's better. The heavy knot of fear in my chest starts to release its stranglehold around my skittery heart. I can breathe again. That was close. Time to turn off the computer and retreat behind the flimsy sheltering walls of the Love Shack. Take that, Facebook.

Reality takes a holiday

Last night, with two days to go until I'm officially unemployed, a student looked at me and said, “You don't look so good.”

I know she was trying to offer me some sympathy for my plight. She's young, not even 21, and not all that skillful a communicator. Under normal circumstances, I would just let a comment like that slide. But now, operating on the premise that any moment can be a teaching moment, I bit back.

“You are assuming you know how I feel by looking at me,” I said. Actually, I wasn't feeling all that bad. No worse than normal anyway, and certainly not as bad as you might expect considering I'm losing my job in two days.

“Oh, sorry!” the student exclaimed. “I didn't mean...”

I almost started to explain how I have a permanent frown line between my eyebrows that makes me appear as though I'm always scowling or perhaps like I'm about to hurl. But my enthusiasm for the teaching moment deflated as fast as it had bubbled up, and I just let it go. Nobody cares how I look or how I feel. Everyone is completely preoccupied with how he or she is experiencing the closing of our campus and the prospect of what is to come.

Mella came to work with a new attitude yesterday, after a hard weekend of mourning the loss of her job. She apparently was in denial about the finality of the layoff. Now I'm wondering, maybe she really did incite students to post those flyers: Save Mella! Maybe it was a last ditch effort to manipulate the school into taking her back. When the flyer ploy failed to do anything except raise the wrath of Mr. Freeper, the awful reality became too real to ignore. She said she cried all day Sunday. But the new Mella is funnier than hell. She wasn't moping anymore. She snickered at our snarky jokes and bitter jibes and delivered some jabs of her own. If only Mr. Freeper and Ms. Sic-em could have been here to hear our futile naughtiness. Har har har.

We rebel in small ways. For example, we are dressing down. Sheryl wears denim to work now, although her version of denim is embroidered with flowers. Way to go, Sheryl, that's rebellion against the dress code! I'd love to see her in a pair of hole-riddled, dirt-encrusted Levis. (I'd wear mine if my ass wasn't too big to fit them.) Mella has a wardrobe of school-logo polo shirts in pastel colors. I'm going to encourage her to set them on fire on the smoker's patio. Maybe we can trigger the fire alarm. That would be a treat during finals week, eh?

No, not really. I like to think I'm such a rebel, such a chronic malcontent, past hope. The truth is, I fear people see me more clearly than I see myself. Maybe. Maybe not. Dave, our extroverted security guard (Oh! My! God! Carol's in the house!) said he would miss me. I think he might have felt obligated to say that due to an awkward moment when I asked him if he was looking forward to going to Wilsonville. He didn't want to appear too chipper, since he remains employed while do not, so I'm guessing he felt compelled to say something nice.

And then he experienced an escalation of commitment and said, “I'm going to miss your positive...” He trailed off, at a loss for words, maybe hoping I would fill in the blank for him, like my students do when taking tests. I just looked at him. I could have said, my positive...ly snarky attitude? My positive... ly scowling expression? I didn't. I just thanked him and moved away down the hall, so he didn't feel obligated to continue to dig up platitudes that neither one of us believed.

Look at me! What did I just say? I am assuming I know what he was feeling. Ha. (We know what happens when we assume, yada yada.) Actually, now that I think about it, knowing Dave, I could be standing over a dead body with a bloody hammer in my hand, and he would choose to believe in my innocence. That's Dave. He assumes the best. I assume the worst. Somewhere in the middle is reality, but who cares anymore?

Catching the disease of chronic malcontentedness

Everyone is unhappy, mostly about work. Does it seem that way to you? My sister, a published author and expert in her esoteric field of art history, hates her admin job so much she is ready to jump off a bridge. (I told her she would be missed.) Bravadita, my former colleague and now friend, is a talented writer/photographer wasting her creativity teaching bratty, germy children how to read. My friend in Minneapolis, I'll call her Chica, is itching to start her own digital marketing business. And then there's me, of course, on the verge of unemployment, hoarse from complaining about the unfairness of it all.

Is it something in the air? I'd say yes, but there are always exceptions. My friend E. has figured out the secret to happiness: condense your life to a 35-foot motorhome and hit the road. I dream of bundling my mother and my cat into an RV and heading south toward the warm desert air of Arizona or New Mexico. A silly dream: My cat would hate it. He would reward me by upchucking all over the linoleum. And my mother would probably die on the journey. I'd have to strap her coffin on top of the rig and head back home. We'd sail through little American towns trailing a stench behind us, sort of like a modern day Addie Bundren. I don't think my sensitive nose could handle it.

Well, we can't all take to the road in massive rolling living rooms. There wouldn't be enough room. Or enough fuel to keep us all moving. We'd have to hunker down, butt to nose, wherever we sputtered out of gas. We'd slide out our slide-outs and roll out our awnings all along the shoulders and gullies of the interstates. We'd have to live off of stuff people threw to us as they drove by. Here, catch! A bucket of the Colonel's extra crispy and some coleslaw, if you think fast.

I'm just yammering. It's a day for yammering. I'm waiting for my dissertation proposal to be rejected or approved. I'm waiting to find out if I will have a job when the term ends. It's a day for expressing my malcontentedness. It appears I'm in good company. With the exception of E., everyone I know seems malcontented to some degree or another, from mild to extreme, from resigned irritation to raging fury. I'm somewhere in between. My mother, though, is edging toward the boiling point. She's laid up with some weird swollen ankle disease, bored out of her mind.

“You need a new hobby,” I suggested when we talked on the phone.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I pondered, but couldn't come up with anything that she hasn't already done: knit, write letters, read books, do crosswords, play computer games. Maybe I need to get more creative. What if I could get her hooked on World of Warcraft? Or even Farmville. That always worked on our students. But Mom's Internet connection is too slow. (She's the only person on dial-up left in Portland. It takes 12 hours just to download an update to her virus program.) Hey, maybe she could open a phone sex business. Or be a phone psychic. That could be fun. (Hmmmm.....)

I know what she wants. What she wants is go outside and root around in her garden. It's spring. Things are blooming. The air smells like fragrant candy. There are about a billion shades of green going on. But it's been pouring rain off and on all day. I reminded her that we need the rain, that we are six inches below normal. She whined like a child: I'm booooorrrrred! Man, I'm glad I never had kids. I don't know how parents do it.