Not quite over it, thanks for asking

Life goes on. I'm adapting to living life alone, just me in the Love Shack, bouncing from project to project, moment to moment. Now that I don't have to worry about disturbing a slumbering cat, I've vacuumed more in the last week than I have in the previous year. I can rearrange the furniture. I can pound on things. I can play loud music. I admit, it is nice not scooping poop or sweeping up cat litter. Once I've absorbed the cost of Eddie's demise, I predict I'm going to save a lot of money at the grocery store.

It's been just over a month. I'm not quite over it. That horrible it I'd rather not think about. I divide life into BDE and ADE (Before the death of Eddie and After the death of Eddie). I'm still sleeping with the rice-filled cat pillow. I find it comforting. However, you may be relieved to hear, the grief is lifting. Seeing BDE photos of Eddie and me on my screensaver is becoming less of a stab through the heart.

I used to be such a pot-stirrer, a brazen risk-taker, a leaper into abysses. I was always ready to move on . . . new city, new job, new relationship, one little hiccup and I was packed and gone. Old age has tempered my willingness to explore the unknown. I don't like change now, I realize. When my perception is that I'm hanging on to sanity by a thin thread, change can look a lot like a sharp pair of scissors. Change happens; I know I'm not immune. For instance, losing my mother will be a drastic change. I've wondered if my intense reaction to losing Eddie has been heightened by the slow grinding demise of my mother. She's dying in slow motion. I'm grieving in slow motion. I don't know. I don't live with my mother. Eddie and I were roommates for thirteen years. You get used to something after thirteen years. When it's gone, you miss it, even if it's a cat. I'd miss a ham sandwich if I lived with it for thirteen years.

When I realize most of my life is behind me, what used to seem important no longer interests me. I continue the process of jettisoning stuff from the Love Shack. I'm like a rocket burning off its boosters as it launches into the stratosphere. Why did I think I needed all this stuff? The books and DVDs are almost all gone now, donated to the library. My wardrobe is in tatters; if I ever move to warmer climes, I will consider replacing some clothes, but really, how much does one person need, especially considering the unpleasant consequences of unbridled consumption?

Well, let's be realistic. I guess I'm not ready to let go of everything. I'd miss my bathtub, if I didn't have one. And my coffee maker, can't live without that. I wouldn't miss my television but I'd probably stroke out if I had to go without my computer. So there's that. I still eat food I buy in stores, so I won't be foraging in the fields or making campfires in the near future. I wouldn't call what I do cooking, but I do heat food before I eat it. Although if the big one hits, we may all be pooping in holes and cooking mush over fires made from our broken furniture. Well, I'll help my neighbors in any way I can, if I can extricate myself from the wreckage of the basement.

At least my cat won't have to go through that trauma. A strange kind of blessing, to count up all the terrible things he has avoided by dying. That may someday be my strategy, when dementia scrapes away the rest of my functioning neurons. I hope I'll have a few brain cells left to help me make my escape when it's time to exit, stage right.

Feeling blue? Lift some weights

Apparently there was a salmonella recall on Trader Joe's peanutbutter. I didn't get the memo, so followed a couple crappy days. I lived. End of story. My solution was to go to ground (bed) as much as possible. That's my solution for every challenge. Even on good days, that is how I cope with the delicate chore of navigating life. Bed. Especially this time of year, when the light is dim and the rain is cold. If I could just go to bed and wake up next spring, no, make it early summer...

My father, on the other hand, used a different technique to cope with the blues. He used to lift weights. In fact, lifting weights was his answer to every problem. Heart disease? No problem, a few bicep curls will take care of it. Diabetes? Let me just get busy with my lats. Look at me go!

He kept a set of dumbbells near his TV chair, and whenever I visited, he would make a show of pulling one out and demonstrating his strength. For an old guy, his upper body was well developed. His lower body, that was a different story. He hated to walk; the older he got and the more wobbly he got, the less he wanted to walk. So his legs dwindled to sticks and in the end he couldn't carry all that upper body weight on those skinny weak stick legs. He fell. He broke his hip. He died.

I sometimes wonder if the just muscle through philosophy is what killed him. Who knows. I don't think my just go to bed philosophy is any healthier; probably it is less healthy, since at least he was occasionally elevating his heart rate, while I, in bed, am doing a fair imitation of a corpse. Not exactly what you would call aerobic exercise. Except in my dreams.

Ever since Hurricane Sandy, I've been having visions of disaster. Impending catastrophe. I've never subscribed to the end of days, doom and gloom position, but watching the people cope with the aftermath of the storm, I realized while my home may not be destroyed by a flood, it is possible I may lose everything in an earthquake, if it is as big as the experts are predicting. Even more likely would be a fire. My new neighbor, the silent one, hung up a plaque by her backdoor: Peace be here. Plus there's a windchimey looking thing. That probably means she uses candles. Whoosh! I can see it now.

I visited my mother. We had a conversation about what we would take if our places caught fire. I watched her run around looking for stuff: checkbook, cash, phone numbers. In short order she was overwhelmed. I was, too. Who can really prepare for a disaster? We can't control it. We don't know what it will look like or when it will happen. All we can do is reinforce our foundations, buy some fire extinguishers, and pack a bug-out bag. Or lift some weights. Or go to bed.

The good life

I've decided to stop complaining about the weather. I'm sure you can figure out why. What's a few raindrops, compared to what Superstorm Sandy wrought this week on the east coast. No more whining from me. My life is good.

So what if my feet are cold. At least I have electricity, even if the electric baseboard heaters do a crappy job of heating this apartment. No complaints from me. I can always put my socks in the microwave, right? (Is that possible? Will they catch fire? Hmmm. Fire extinguisher at the ready, please stand by.) I'm ashamed to say, I take electricity for granted. What a miracle.

I also can walk out my door and find my car not submerged in five feet of toxic waste water. How cool is that? Truly, my life is blessed. No, I'm not joking. So what if I step in dog poop, left by the abysmally productive little dog that moved in next door. At least the walkway isn't underwater. I could see the path, and the poop, if it weren't so dark back there at night. I try to remember to carry my flashlight from the car to the house, but sometimes I forget. Luckily, I have clean, running water with which to wash my shoes. Life is good, seriously.

And so what if I am mired in the longest running higher education nightmare of my sorry-ass life. Luxury problem! I have electricity to power a computer, a light, a printer... too bad it doesn't power my brain, too, but hey, no complaints. Light and heat never seemed so wonderful to me until this week.

Every time I reflect on my charmed life, my next thought is always, What could possibly go wrong? Well, let's see. I live on the buttside of an extinct volcano, which means flooding has a statistical likelihood of zero. But fire? Now, fire could be a problem. Wind-whipped fire climbs hillsides fast, devouring everything in its path. If a fire got started, after the big earthquake that is coming soon, for instance, and we happened to be having a windstorm, which we do get occasionally, well, you could kiss the Love Shack good-bye. Whoosh. All that would be left the next day would be the smoldering concrete foundation.

Well, it's probably more likely my cat will stash a combustible toy by the heater, thereby starting a fire that burns the place to the ground. Or my new neighbors could leave candles burning. Or their holiday trees could spontaneously combust. (Luckily I have a holiday stick, so dry and drooping pine needles won't be a problem for me.) Gosh, it could happen anytime. And I wouldn't be able to do much about it. Grab the cat and run.

I started making a list of items to pack in my bug-out bag, just in case. No whining. But that doesn't mean I can't be ready for the worst. I am a chronic malcontent after all. It's my job.

If it's not one thing, it's another

I'm enjoying how smartly the water swirls down the drain of my kitchen sink, newly reopened thanks to landlord George's relentless assault on the basement pipes. In my previous post I described some of the unclogging process. What stuck with me, though, was the off-hand question I posed to George while I was sitting at my kitchen table, sipping my cold tea and watching him laboring under the sink.

"How well do you think this place would do in an earthquake?"

I live in a 1940s wooden, flat-topped triplex. Like an old lady removing her girdle after a hard decade, this place has settled. Despite a new coat of taupe paint and snazzy blue doors, the place is definitely showing signs of wear. The aluminum-framed windows, added in an upgrade, are etched with condensation that has been trapped between the panes. The windows that raise vertically are off their tracks. They have two states: open or closed. I open them once in the Spring and close them once in the Fall. During the winter, I tape clear plastic to the inside of the window frames to help keep out the east wind.

George's response was not exactly reassuring. "About as well as any other building in the neighborhood," he said. Apparently, it's not a question of if, but when. Portland sits on some recently discovered fault lines, and the granddaddy of local fault lines, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, lies 84 km off shore. According to geologists, we have a 10-14% chance of a large earthquake in the next 50 years. Portland's infrastructure will be critically damaged, destroying our local economy. What they mean is, all the bridges spanning the Willamette River will crumble. The on-ramps to bridges and freeways will crack apart and fall down. All the brick schools and public buildings built before about 1990 will shake to pieces. The city will basically be destroyed. I was in Los Angeles in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. This will be worse.

But this hill I live on probably won't move. This building sits on the shoulder of an extinct volcano. No worries. I will probably survive if I'm at home. Then again, the foundation is marbled with cracks, some serious. If there were an earthquake, it's possible my unit would end up in the basement. Maybe I should get a tent and a propane stove in case I have to camp out in the park. But what about my cat? Argh. This is starting to feel rather dreary.

It's possible I won't be at home when the earthquake hits. I could be at my mother's. I could be at work. I could be driving across the Fremont Bridge. (Game over.) I could be visiting my brother who lives in Seaside. We will have 15 minutes to evacuate to higher ground.

There's no point in worrying, is there? Experts can't predict when it will happen. But there is a point in trying to be prepared. Am I prepared? Not hardly. I have some tuna fish, some cat food, and a package of toilet paper. It will be a long time before someone comes to rescue me. I guess I'll be getting to know my neighbors.