Running to stay still

As I'm driving over hill and down dale in the green farmlands and woodsy forests of the hinterlands, trying to avoid toll roads if at all possible, I have lots of time to ponder my next blogpost. By the time I map to some Walmart, Lowe's, or rest area approximately three hours from the previous Walmart, Lowe's, or rest area, I've forgotten all the content, even the parts I wrote in my head and spoke out loud. Such is the nature of the aging memory. All that biting humor and pithy wisdom, lost. Alas, alackaday. 

What you are left with is me in the moment, trying to remember what it felt like to keep calm with the grill of a huge pickup truck inches from my back bumper. I'm just grateful to be stationary for a while, especially because here in Catskill, NY, I have a choice between a Walmart Supercenter or a Lowe's, both with enormous empty parking lots on a Sunday afternoon. Clouds have covered the sun. What a relief. It's not easy living in a mobile greenhouse. 

I bought some concoction at Walmart that is supposed to take the odors out of my car. Ha. Now I know how they get that Motel 6 smell. It comes in a can. Even with only one tiny slit uncovered, the smell is overwhelming. One thing they don't tell you about van life on these YouTube channels: You will spend three times as much money as you need to (or should) living this life, because most of the things you buy to make your life easier will actually make your life harder. You can't pack your mistakes around with you. Into the trash they go.

I don't think I've complained recently about the condition of my vestibular system. That's because I've been cured. Well, almost cured. The antiseizure med the neurologist prescribed actually started working. For the past month, I can happily say I've felt normal. I should have mentioned it, I suppose, but since when do you go around shouting, hey I feel normal! Yay. Let's hear it for normality.

Well, the happy days have come to an end. When I started getting low on the pills, I emailed the doctor to ask for a refill. I received what I thought was an affirmative response and gave the doctor's assistant the contact info for the nearest pharmacy that would have me in their system (Westerville, OH). I drove two hours south of where I wanted to be to pick up my refill. When I got to the pharmacy, no prescription. I emailed the doctor. Help! Refill! Now! Eventually the assistant called me on the phone to say no, no refill would be forthcoming. The "90-day supply" should last me until I return to Tucson at "the end of the month." 

Begging availed me nothing. 

I went back to my car and counted the pills. Then I counted the days on my calendar. Then I looked at the pill bottle. Then I panicked. Then I calmed down. Then I panicked again. I started trying to do math in my head, which is never a good sign for me, especially in the middle of the night. It took a while, but I figured out I got shorted 81 pills. My so-called 90-day supply was really a 63-day supply. I don't think she calculated the period of time during which the dosage ramped up to three pills a day. Today I have eighteen pills left. That means if I taper off to one pill a day, I will run out on October 9.

After two days of taking only one pill a day, rather than three, I am feeling the vertigo symptoms increase. Somebody put quarters in the the washing machine in my head, and it wasn't me. Here we go again, back into the swampy mess. I hope my calculations will convince her to rethink her refill refusal. She's out of the office until Tuesday. Surely she will see the light when she sees the facts. Facts are so convincing, so reassuring, right? Everyone trusts facts, even if they don't trust anything else, right? I have a feeling the response will be no, and don't call me Shirley.

Not quite brain dead

The neurologist was everything I'd expected but not quite what I had hoped for. I knew I was setting myself up for disappointment. How could I not? I've been waiting since October for this appointment. It's no big surprise I built up some expectations during these long months of wondering if this person would (a) diagnose my vestibular malady accurately, (b) have a remedy, and (c) give it to me without lollygagging. 

I showed up with my stack of paperwork, hoping I'd followed all the directions properly: no food for at least four hours prior to the appointment, no coffee, no opioids. Ha. I paid my copays, stomach growling, and waited until I was called. 

Before I was allowed into the neurologist's inner sanctum, I had to endure an hour of vestibular tests similar to the ones I had at the October ENT visits but more violent. A perky young woman with long flat blonde hair briskly outfitted me with heavy goggles that were supposed to measure my eye movements. I sat on the edge of the exam table and held on as she grabbed my head in both hands and proceeded to jerk my head up and down, side to side, hard and fast. 

The purpose of this uncomfortable test (which cost me $100 because insurance doesn't cover it) was to see how much my eyes jiggled around as she upset the crystals in my ear canals. After a while, I felt like my neck was snapping, but I didn't come close to barfing. They keep trying, but I've been living on a boat (in my head) for years. I don't get seasick anymore. Plus, my stomach was empty. 

After a long tedious session, she freed me from the goggles. As I tried to regain eyelid function, she looked at the computer monitor showing a close-up of my half-open eyes, caught in a moment of misery, and said, "I saw a few small anomalies."

I waited for her to elaborate. She did not. She sent me back to wait in the hall for the main event, my session with the neurologist. At last I was ushered into a messy office dominated by a big wooden L-shaped desk. I sat in one of the two visitor chairs. She asked me to describe my experience, and when I did, she interrupted every few words with staccato questions. "What does that mean? When did that start? Can you be more precise?"

I tried my best. At one point, I felt myself choking up. Finally, someone was listening to me! I mean, someone who wasn't one of my long-suffering friends. I said, "I told myself I would not cry."

She said, "Go ahead and cry. People often do. Do you have a recent audiology test?"

"You have all my records," I said. "They were scanned a few weeks ago."

She glanced at the stack of paper on her desk. "I never look at them."

I opened the envelope of originals I had brought with me, thinking I bought a cheap Walmart printer just to print out all these records for you, can I kill you now? Lucky for her, my hands were busy searching through the stack of paper. It took a while, possibly because I was having caffeine withdrawals, but I finally located the two hearing tests and handed them over. 

"I'll have my assistant make copies of these," she said. "Follow me."

She had me walk up and down a narrow hallway in various postures: one foot in front of the other, like I was being tested for a DUI. Same thing, eyes closed. Stand on one foot, then the other, then again, with eyes closed. Sometimes I fell to the right, sometimes to the left. Each time, I caught myself against the wall, feeling like a clumsy idiot and wondering if I was passing or failing. 

"Let's go into the exam room."

I followed her tall chunky figure, grudgingly admiring her colorful swirly dress. I don't remember her footwear but I am sure she wore flats. She moved way too quickly and quietly to be wearing heels. Her movements indicated she'd seen a long procession of patients before me. Like, years and years of patients, all no doubt weeping and barfing as they fumbled through her tests. Not a motion was wasted. 

She sat me on the exam table. Then, oh no. More goggles! More head grabbing and jerking and shaking, plus lots of other tests involving eye tracking. And some of the basics. Moving fast, she tested my reflexes, looked in my ears, and listened to my heart. I saw her do a double-take. "Do you know you have an irregular heartbeat?"

I explained what I could about my wimpy case of aortic stenosis.

"I'm going to call your cardiologist. Okay? Now for the hyperventilation test," she said. "Breathe in and out of your mouth, fast, for forty seconds." My neck was starting to wilt with the weight of the goggles, but I held onto the table and gamely started panting like an old dog on a hot day. Pretty soon I was feeling lighter than air, but I kept at it, thinking if I pass out, let's see if she will catch me before I crack my head on the edge of the table. If I survive, I might get rich. "Don't worry, I'm watching the clock," she said at one point. I didn't believe her. My throat started feeling raw. I coughed but kept panting. A memory surfaced of hyperventilating with friends. How old was I? Old enough to know better. 

Finally, she stopped me, took off the goggles, and pointed to the computer monitor. "Your eyes are steady as a rock. You don't have vestibular paroxysmia."

"Really."

"I think you have BPPV in a hard-to-treat ear canal, which is why the Epley never worked well for you. And I think you have vestibular migraines. I want you to get some bloodwork. We have a lab here, if that is convenient."

I could hardly feel my feet as I staggered to the wing that held the lab. My brain was sizzling. I put my name on the sign-up list outside the door, and then saw the sign: out to lunch, back at 1:30. I looked at my phone. Barely past 12:30. Argh. I stood there debating. All I wanted was coffee and food, but who wants to go through all that fasting again? I decided to wait. It was only an hour. Surely I'd reached my misery quota for the day. I found a chair in the mostly empty waiting room outside the lab and the pain management clinic, spread out my stuff, and proceeded to feel sorry for myself.

Eventually the phlebotemist returned. She poked me in a vein and drew many vials of blood. I lost count after eight. I was feeling pretty crappy at that point. Now I get why they have those adult-sized high chairs with the padded bar across the front. Just as I was thinking, bye bye, she yanked out the needle, gave me some water, and sent me on my way.

So there you have it. Apparently the tests do not lie, even when the diagnoses don't match my list of symptoms (although some studies have suggested about 60% of the hyperventilation tests are wrong). Of course, it is possible I have more than one illness. I'm willing to consider the BPPV diagnosis. I think the vestibular migraine diagnosis is misguided. I still think I have a case of vestibular paroxysmia. My symptoms fit, and the MRA shows that it is possible. 

Meanwhile, I have a referral to a vestibular physical therapist and yet another migraine diet handout. 

I'm going to try, I'm really going to try. I'll go to the PT. I'll let them twirl and bend me. I'll do the eye exercises. I'll eat twigs but no more nuts. No raisins, no citrus, no onions, no tomatoes. And in a few months, if I don't feel better, I will go back and beg for one of the drugs I saw on her list of medications, several of which were antiseizure medications often prescribed for vestibular paroxysmia. We'll see who wins in the end.

The Chronic Malcontent should not become a car mechanic

I'm bone-dog weary, but I keep slogging through the days. On the bright side, sunshine! On the dark side, dementia! Life is a balance sheet of debits and credits. I add up both sides and think I've got things figured out. Then pink eye! (Mom, not me). It's always something, even when I don't know what it is. We all know how the story ends, but how we get to the ending is the part that puts hair on my chest. And upper lip. And nostrils.

After our visit to urgent care to get the pink eye diagnosis, my mother called me to tell me one of my headlights was out. That was nice of her. Even more impressive, she remembered to call me even after trudging the three-minute hike back to her room, fifteen minutes after having a cigarette, which typically temporarily erases a good portion of her brain cells.

I went to the auto supply store yesterday to buy new headlight bulbs and new wipers. As I pulled out my debit card, I kept waiting for the clerk to offer to install them for me, at least, the wipers. They've done it in the past for me, in a fraction of the time it usually takes me to do it. It's not like there was a line, but apparently he didn't want to go outside. So off I went, $47.00 poorer with some trepidation about what would come next.

I had previously checked YouTube for a video that would show me how to replace a headlight bulb in a decrepit old Ford Focus. Videos abound. When I backed my car into my usual parking spot in front of the laurel hedge, I felt well equipped with the knowledge of headlight replacement. I gathered my tools: gloves, basically. The nice mechanic on the video said don't touch the bulbs with your bare hands. I pulled on my lavender rubber-palmed gardening gloves and smacked them together in anticipation of success to come.

First, I optimistically opened the package of new headlight bulbs. Then I yanked on the hood release and managed to get the hood up and onto the support stick. Next, I peeled off the rubber gaskets that covered the headlight assembly, thinking eeew, these things look remarkably like dusty black contraceptive diaphragms. I set them aside. A fleeting thought crossed my mind: I hope I will remember to replace them when I'm done.

I reached my hand into the space by the left headlight assembly. There I encountered my first problem, I mean, challenge. The guy in the video seemed to have a lot more space to maneuver than I was finding in my car. I could barely get one hand in there to try to loosen the plastic retainer ring holding the bulb in place. I could feel the ring, though, so I persevered.

The ring wouldn't budge. I tried one hand, then the other hand. If I could only get both hands in there! I tried to picture my mechanic undertaking this task. Nuh-uh. Not going to happen. Maybe I'm doing this wrong. I switched to the other headlight, and twisted the ring. It came off easily and fell down into the engine compartment.

I stared down into the depths of the engine, feeling my heart rate go up, and wondering what would happen if I pretended like that hadn't happened? Would the ring melt and start a fire as I was cruising along the freeway? Would the car even start?

“Failure is not an option,” I muttered. I left the hood up and went into my apartment, seeking inspiration. I grabbed a 36-inch metal ruler, a roll of duct tape, and an X-acto knife. The cat looked askance at me as I hurried back out the door.

When I returned to the car, I looked into the engine, trying to find the ring, but my eyes weren't adjusting to the bright sunshine. I couldn't see a thing, just velvety darkness. I rummaged in the glove box. Where the heck is my flashlight? Don't I have a flashlight? Note to self: get a flashlight!

I was going to run back into the apartment for a flashlight but remembered the Multnomah County Library keychain flashlight I had received at 2017 Wordstock. I clicked the tiny button and shone the LED beam into the engine. Yep, there it was, that stupid ring, sitting on a horizontal surface much closer to the ground than to the hood. Too far for me to reach, even if there had been room to insert my arm into the narrow space.

I shoved the metal ruler down toward the area where the ring was sitting, hoping I wouldn't dislodge something essential, like, I don't know, the engine. I applied my former skill as a golfer to putt the ring toward an opening where I thought it could potentially fall down onto the ground. After some tries, success! The ring fell on the ground. I bent down, reached under the car, and snatched it up triumphantly, holding it aloft like a trophy. I glanced surreptitiously at the diners eating at the tables outside the cafe across the street but nobody was watching.

By now I was a good twenty minutes into the job and I hadn't even managed to remove the old headlights. Nevertheless, I persisted.

I yanked out the old bulb assembly from the right headlight. I removed the old bulb from the thingamajig that it plugged into, you know, the thing with all those scary looking wires no doubt leading to my car's electronic brain, if it has such a thing, which I doubt. I tossed the old bulb into the trash. I inserted the new bulb into the thingamajig and poked it back into the hole leading into the headlight area. It did not slide in as easily as it popped out.

Did you know you can look through the headlight cover and see from the front what your hand is doing from the back? I poked the bulb into the hole and watched from the front as it refused to line up. And kept on refusing. What the heck?

Now I'm sweating and my back is aching from bending over the front of the car. I straightened up and stared at the partly cloudy sky. Briefly I thought, too bad I can't enjoy this lovely day. Looking for a miracle, I switched to the other headlight, thinking, I don't know what I was thinking. I was in a state of low-grade panic, you know the feeling, where your brain is one stresser away from shutting down and forcing your body into the fetal position?

I used my right hand to try to loosen the plastic ring. It came off immediately. I figured out that unplugging the thingamajig with the wires was the easiest way to get the ring off. Wish I'd figured that out for the other side! Now I could take out the old bulb and insert the new one. It worked! Now to get the ring back on. Wait, which way does it go?

I tried it one way, I tried it the other way. Finally, something clicked. The ring went on. I turned it a bit to lock it in place, reattached the wire thing, and voila! Success. Now to replicate my success on the other side.

I wrestled for many long minutes before I finally got the bulb into the socket, the ring on and tightened, and the wires plugged back in. Wow. What an ordeal.

I was ready to close the hood when I remembered the plastic covers. Whew. They were a lot harder going back on than they were coming off, but finally I got them back into place. I shut the hood. I noticed the hood was slightly askew. Wha—? I opened the hood again and found I'd shut the old bulb from the right headlight into the space where mechanics typically lay their tools, up by the wipers. I grabbed the bulb and tossed it in the trash with the other one.

Now the moment of truth. I put the key in the ignition and started the car. In bright daylight it was hard to see, but it appeared that both headlights were working. The test would come when I visited Mom in the evening.

My next task was to replace both front wipers, which I managed to do in record time (like 10 minutes). I think I was still riding my competence high. You know how that is, when you accomplish something you weren't 100% sure you could do and then you feel like you can run a marathon or make a cold call? If I could bottle and sell that feeling, I'd be in Tahiti right now. Assuming no hurricanes or typhoons were headed for me, of course.

Now I feel like I should vacuum my car out and get it washed. What is up with that? You fix one thing, suddenly everything needs fixing. Just a few minutes ago, I dusted some shelves and suddenly had the urge to vacuum. That compulsion can go on indefinitely. Next thing you know, you start looking for a new apartment.

Tonight I'll go visit Mom and take her outside with her smoking buddy so they can have their after-dinner cigarette. Mom's eye is looking much better, thanks for asking. I'm ready for rain, darkness, and whatever else might be headed this way.

The chronic malcontent receives a challenge

I let a friend read my anonymous blog. The next time I saw her she said, “I have a challenge for you.” I thought she was going to ask me how to cook an artichoke or replace a plastic wheel cover, but no such luck. “I challenge you to write a blog post about the opposite of the chronic malcontent.”

I gaped at her. What would that be? Would that be my ridiculously happy inner optimist? She seemed awfully certain such a persona bubbled somewhere inside me. My brain instantly fried at the idea.

I'm sure as I gaped I rolled my eyes. Although I've sought spiritual help for that particular character flaw, my eye-rolling habit hasn't eased up much, probably because eye-rolling expresses so eloquently what I am so often thinking and feeling without my having to say a word. “I'll give it some thought,” I said, not willing to promise something I couldn't deliver.

I didn't want to admit I've worked hard over the years to erase my inner optimist. As a founding member of Optimists Anonymous, I can claim many years of continuous abstinence from optimism. Like all members of Opt-Anon, I've trained myself to look only on the dark side. I sing only dirges, if I sing at all. Mostly I just moan. I admit, sometimes I smile. But I'm crying on the inside.

We've got a lot to cry about these days. Lately, I bury my nose in my cat's fur and groan. What's my problem? For once, it isn't about me. I want to know, how can optimism cure the illnesses of the world?

I have deep sadness for all the people who suffer everywhere, too many to name. I'm sure you do too. Tragedy isn't about optimism or pessimism. How I feel affects nothing. I weep at the photos of California burning. I moan at stories of Puerto Ricans dying from lack of clean water. I gnash my teeth and wail at the photos of Rohingya women whose children have been snatched from their arms and thrown alive into fires. It is all too clear, life sucks and then we die.

I want to move to a village of women, surrounded by a wall of thorns, preferably somewhere with affordable health insurance and endless sunshine. I might be willing to blow my Opt-Anon program to sing and dance with my arms waving free. I might even take my top off, who knows, and help with child care.

The end feels near, but quietly near: I expect to go out with a whimper, not a bang. Apocalypses are for dramatic people. Us bland folks just wither, shrivel, and blow away with civilization's dusty hair balls. Meanwhile, I keep my head down and trudge the road of malcontented destiny. It doesn't matter how we feel, people. Nobody cares what we think. It's all about action. Gotta keep on truckin' til it's over.

#where'sthebarf?

I've been wearing the same tired old pair of winter shoes for five years. I love my beat-up Merrills. They've taken me through mud puddles and ice puddles, across cement sidewalks and gravel driveways all over NW Portland. These shoes are shaped like torpedoes, which means these shoes aren't great for running, but I can kick things with them, like falling trees, attacking dogs, and marauding children, although I haven't actually had to do much of that. The black suede is gray and crusty with dirt and dust. Sadly, the soles are wearing down. I estimate they might give me another five years of service.

I know what you are thinking—five-year-old shoes, and you think they will last another five years? Are you nuts? More to the point, are you completely outside all bounds of respect for fashion?

I can hear your incredulity. I'm amazed you can conjure so much incredulity, considering the state of our national politics, but hey, more power to you. Whatever gets you foaming at the mouth. It takes more than out-of-style shoes to get my heart rate up, but I respect your indignation, whatever prods it to the surface.

I used to be a slave to fashion. To be precise, I was a slave to other people's ideas of fashion. I used to make custom clothing for a living, back in one of my former lives as a . . . well, let's just name it what it was—seamstress!—in Hollywood. Yep, the one in California. My clients brought me pictures of gravity-defying outfits (inevitably designed for a size zero) and demanded I make the outfits for them (in polyester satin, sans beading, in size 16, for my daughter's wedding, which by the way is next Saturday). I know I don't have the right to use the word slave, considering my skin color and life of lower-middle class blue-collar privilege, but maybe some of what I felt in those days was a ghost of slavery. I certainly felt trapped in a horrible job, bent over hot machines doing the bidding of harsh judgmental mistresses.

I guess I have associated fashion with pain, embarrassment, and resentment, which might explain why my current modus operandi is to use things till they disintegrate. It's how I treat my automobiles: drive 'em till they drop. It's how I treat my clothes: wear them until they shred into tiny pieces. So it's no big surprise that is how I treat my footwear.

All that is the long way to announce, in honor of spring, I bought a new pair of walking shoes. I bought them online, which is always a crap shoot, I'm sure you know—the convenience of purchasing in my pajamas is often outweighed by the disappointment of shoes that don't fit and look stupid.

In this case, when I opened the box and saw my new all-black walking shoes, I thought, hmmmm, these look like . . .  old lady shoes! They might as well be Easy Spirits! Humph. Even I have my fashion limits. I'll wear bell bottoms or pegged trousers, I don't care what the shape of my pants is, but I draw the line at wearing Easy Spirits. Probably because they were my mother's preferred brand, before I sold her on the style benefits of Merrills.

I tried these new style-less shoes on with my thick running socks, thinking, well if they don't feel perfectly awesome, I can wrap them up and ship them back, no questions asked. I trotted around the carpet, testing them, tuned to every rub and pinch. My right foot is wider than my left, don't ask me why, which means I must compromise between loose fit on the left and tight fit on the right. I guess my left foot is a 6 1/2 but I buy a size 7 to accommodate my wider right foot. When I buy running shoes, which I wear with a thicker sock, I usually order size 7 1/2s. That means I occasionally look down and experience a shock at how long my feet look.

I trotted around my living room for three days, wondering, should I send them back, should I keep them? Finally, I decided to send them back and try again. I got out the box and checked the soles of the shoes to make sure they were clean . . .  oh, no. What? Between the grooves on the left shoe was smashed an all-too-familiar sight: cat barf! No way!

Well, you know what they say: you step in it, you bought the shoes. Resigned, I took the shoes out to the store yesterday for a little spin and was pleasantly relieved: no blisters, no pain. Today I took them out for a 2-mile hike around the reservoir in the rain. The shoes warmed right up and melted to the shape of my foot. By the time I got home, they fit perfectly.

But I have looked all over my place and I still can't find the pile of cat barf I stepped in. I guess if my sinuses weren't so clogged with allergies, cat hair, and mold spores, I might be able to sniff it out. Maybe someday, or not. I never claimed to be a great housekeeper, a fact I hope my sister remembers when she comes to visit this summer.

I don't care how I look anymore. My shoes might look stupid, but they feel great. I'm greatly relieved. Freedom from pain is worth looking old and foolishly out of style.

Sail on, sailor

This just in: getting old sucks. Where do I start? Well, let's start with the reason I haven't blogged this week. I'm sailing rough seas in a tiny boat. I'm on an elevator that sometimes goes sideways. What am I talking about? I've got one word for you: vertigo.

That's right. My right ear is infected, somewhere deep in darkest Africa. Tiny calcium crystals have shaken loose from their moorings and they are wreaking havoc among the delicate and sensitive and completely blameless little hairs and nerve endings that tell my brain that we are upright in a crazy world. I'm swaying, I'm staggering, I'm flailing from doorpost to chair back. This is a righteous drag. Although, looking on the bright side, I haven't puked yet.

I'm not going to write much today, because sitting at the keyboard makes it worse. Who knew typing was such a balancing act? Tiny motions, little movements of my head, my hands, and I'm swirling again. I can't find my place in time and space. I can feel my blood, though, crashing in my head. It's loud in here. Once again I discover the truth: my mind is trying to kill me.

I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, if I can last that long. And I have a 55,000-word paper between me and freedom. I almost turned it down, but it will pay my rent. Beggars, choosers. This is a torture I never imagined, editing with vertigo. I'd cry, but I need to hold my head still.

I have so much to catch you up on: At the top of the list is the ongoing saga of finding my mother a place to live. My sister is coming to town in two weeks. The siblings are going to be together, all four us, to discuss the situation with Mom. My poor old scrawny mother will probably feel like it's an intervention. Luckily, she is still a free agent: it's her money, her life, her last years. I hope she goes out fighting. But not with me, I don't want to be the caregiver she gifts with a black eye. Just so we are clear.

Meanwhile, my car is still going, my cat is still operational, the weather alternates between awesome and abysmal (it's spring in Portland). Everything has a new uncertainty these days, when vertical is no longer something to be taken for granted. A symptom of old age, so I read. I'd like to see this experience as a sign of my increasing wisdom, but I'm pretty sure I peaked in my 40s. Downhill from here, folks, in a hellish hand-basket.

Dangling by the leg over the abyss of old age

Today the universe presented me with a chance to practice patience and gratitude. Because I spend so much time alone at home, I don't get many opportunities to practice these two important qualities. Well, I practice on my cat occasionally, but the real test is when you practice on a parent, am I right? Today I was aware that I had some choices, although I'm not sure if I learned the lesson. Here is what happened.

I took my mother to the credit union for the second time in two weeks to get some signatures on her account. I always drive when we go someplace, so I don't have first-hand knowledge of my mother's deteriorating driving skills. Unlike my brother, who called me in outrage last week, the day after he met our mother at the credit union.

“Your mother is a crappy driver!” he snarled and proceeded to tell me all about it. The next day my mother called me and said, “Did your brother call you about my driving?” I guess another conversation must happen soon about how much longer Mom can go on terrorizing the neighborhood with her old Toyota Camry. A topic for another blog post.

Today the adventure at the credit union took a bit longer than expected because she had forgotten her wallet (and ID) at home. She was understandably upset. To a young(er) person, forgetting a wallet at home might be attributed to stress or carelessness or just plain laziness. When you are 85, a lapse in attention is a harbinger of impending institutionalization. As we went back out to the car, I tried to help her put her lapse into perspective.

“It could be a whole lot worse,” I said. I went on to say how lucky we were (us privileged white Americans, is what I was thinking) to be born here and now, and not over there, or way back when... it could be a lot worse. “And look, it's not snowing, or even raining. If you have to forget your wallet, today is the perfect day to do it.”

She didn't look convinced, but by the time we drove back to the credit union with her wallet, I suspected it had faded from short-term memory. At last we sat down with a rep at the credit union, who couldn't seem to figure out what we were there for. After much confusion and checking with managers, it seemed that no signatures were needed after all.

Mom was miffed, but I was resigned, not angry. It does no good to get angry over these things, I now know. Anger is the dubious luxury of the so-called normal people. Whoever they are. I have no idea. I'm not normal, I know this... but actually, I don't think I know any normal people. Huh. Maybe I'm just running with the wrong crowd. Or maybe I'm defining normal in some weird way, like people who drive SUVs and own poodles.

With the credit union drama over, my main objective of the day with Mom was to calculate her income, expenses, and assets, so we can go shopping for a retirement community armed with accurate information about her finances. When we got back to the condo, I pulled out my laptop and looked for room at the kitchen table to set it up.

I don't know how your mother's kitchen table looks, but this is what I saw on my mother's table. Not counting the dusty table cloth and stained placemats: two commuter coffee mugs waiting to be donated to the thrift store; a brass teapot filled with loose change; a tired aloe vera plant in a clay pot; a stack of handwritten lists and notes (important items!); various sizes of manila envelopes; a half-used book of stamps; a small stack of plastic clamshell-type packaging items (trash); a pile of kitchen implements, including baking pans and utensils, also bound for the thrift store; her old black cordless telephone; her current library book; a coffee cup with successive black rings around the inside; a small open box of Belgian chocolate (sent by my sister from Europe), a couple pieces looking slightly nibbled; an unruly stack of newspapers; and four white facial tissues, well-used and wadded into balls, clearly set aside to be used again.

I got my laptop set up and got to work. While I struggled to decipher the penciled figures in her tiny notebook (e.g., groc 6.81, gas 20, cigs 47) and enter the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, my mother prepared her breakfast. I tried not to look, but I couldn't help but hear. She poured a bowl of store-brand Cheerios while two pieces of day-old bread toasted in the toaster oven. Tick, tick, tick, tick. She shook up a box of almond milk, opened it, and poured it over her cereal. Sploosh, crackle. (I guess I should be thankful she wasn't eating store-brand Rice Krispies.) Next I heard her buttering her toast: scratch, scrape, scritch, scritch. She put the bowl on the table next to me and laid two burned pieces of buttered toast directly on the placement where you would normally place a drinking glass. No plate, is what I'm saying.

She ate. Crunch, crunch, gloop, glug, swallow, crunch. Can you tell I'm a misophoniac? I am desperately averse to certain sounds. Eating sounds might as well be fingernails on a blackboard. Meanwhile, I am thinking to myself, thank you for this opportunity to refrain from strangling the woman who gave birth to me. Thank you, thank you, universe, whatever you are.

Finally I wrangled the numbers into the spreadsheet and throttled some formulas into telling us the bottom line. If she doesn't fall down any more stairs or get pneumonia or give her money away to destitute children, she can afford to move into a retirement community and maintain her current lifestyle for at least another ten years. Of course, this means we sell the condo and liquidate all her assets, but it is good news. She seemed greatly relieved.

I had some moments in which I could not identify what I was feeling. One of those moments occurred when I realized that my mother's monthly income, most months, is barely over $1,200. Another odd moment occurred when I entered her expenses: she spends as much on cigarettes as she does on food. Then I thought: Who will do this for me when my turn comes?

I still don't know what I'm feeling. I suppose I should take a nap. This odd freefall feeling will fade, and I'll be back in denial, trusting the universe to catch me as I daily leap off metaphorical cliffs. The cat snores in the chair next to me. I sit staring at this blog post, thinking about suffering and uncertainty at home and abroad, and wonder...am I too self-centered and depressed to acknowledge today's lesson of patience and gratitude? Yeah, probably.

Living life takes courage

As I sit at my computer with my feet encased in a rice-filled, microwaved (four minutes) sack of my own design, I peruse the temperature gadgets on my desktop and reflect for the umpteenth time that making my happiness contingent upon weather only leads to disappointment. The temperature in grayish PDX is a normal 42°. If I had stayed in Los Angeles, I would be basking in 80° heat. On the other hand, my friends in Minneapolis are stoically enduring 8°, which is better, I must say, than the minus temps they were experiencing a few days ago. News flash, Carol: Weather is relative and changeable. Duh. And there I go again, pinning my mental well-being on a flimsy hope of catching a glimpse of the sun.

The recycling truck is grinding along the street in front of the Love Shack. I know it's the recycling truck because I hear roaring sounds followed by clinking sounds. I'm distracted by everything, which means I am avoiding something. I keep looking out the window, but I don't know what I'm looking for. Right livelihood, I think. I'm looking for the Right Livelihood boutique, but all I see is the trash truck.

I'm blogging because I'm stymied. Each time I start running for the garden of right livelihood I'm sure is just around the next bend in the path, I find myself walking away from the garden, back to the weed patch. I'd say argh, but that doesn't really sum up my frustration at finding myself once again poking around this wretched weed patch. I was picturing something a little different, maybe something...I don't know...a bit more picturesque and a little less weedy.

If I could just be someone else for long enough, I'm sure I could figure this out. I blame my own brain for this disappointment, but perhaps that's not fair. It is doing the best it can. Unfortunately, my brain seems to be hard at work designing my demise in a perverted attempt to protect me from the ravages of living. Death by brain is slow and tedious, but less risky than death by living life. Living life takes courage.

I suspect the words I'm using to frame my complaint are part of my problem. Contrasting garden with weed patch, while visually satisfying, gives me only two choices, two ends of the spectrum of possibility. Desirable versus undesirable, good versus bad. Of course I want the garden, who wouldn't? But what if there were other places along the continuum, like treehouse, or life raft, or sunny beach? And what if among the weeds are herbs and flowers? I didn't really stop long enough to check. Good or bad, who knows anymore? Not me. Just two overused words that mean nothing.

Warm is good, cold is bad? I feel compelled to mention that yesterday the temperature in Portland was 57°, one degree short of a January record.