Dreaming of hopefullies

I had a topic in mind for today's blogpost, and then I took a nap and had a dream that I lost my cellphone. I woke up in tears, blaming myself for my carelessness, and when I looked inside my brain, all remnants of my previous topic idea had vanished. I hate it when that happens. I know better than to shut my eyes without writing the thing down, but there it goes, off into the ether to find a writer who is less careless with her ideas. It was such a great idea, too, one of my best. Really pithy and poignant. You would have been impressed. To tears. 

Meanwhile, in other news, the planning for the epic car camping journey of a lifetime continues. I guess I'm ready to drive off the cliff. Or wherever the road takes me. Hopefully not off a cliff. There are a lot of hopefullies associated with this trip, I'm noticing. Hopefully it will have stopped raining (and snowing) by the time I drive through California. Hopefully floodwaters and landslides will have receded. Hopefully I won't be dumb enough to rely on Google Maps this time. On my last trip I almost ended up in Salt Lake City.

Let me tell you about that dream. I was at somebody's big fancy house. There were movie stars! And an indoor pool! Somebody said, Carol, why don't you go for a swim? I peeled off most of my clothes and laid them by the poolside. Then I got distracted by something else in the dream. Next thing you know, I go back, all my stuff is gone. Stupid! I berated myself into wakefulness, and woke with great relief at finding I hadn't actually been that stupid. My cellphone sat silent nearby. I don't think I would have been so trusting in real life. But you never know. Movie stars! Indoor pools!

I'm not starstruck. In my former days as a custom clothing designer, I had occasion to meet a few movie stars. A few people whose names you would probably recognize. With one minor exception of somebody who held my hand just a wee tiny bit too long, they were all polite and professional. 

Hopefully I will find safe places to sleep along the route. Hopefully there will be cell service in all places so I can text my sister before she calls the local sheriff to send a search posse. Hopefully my car holds out. A lot of hopefullies.

I feel like I'm going off to summer camp or something.

Is it normal to feel trepidation? Hm. I was going to write that I am not used to undertaking big adventures on my own, but then I realized, hey, how do I think I got to Tucson in the first place? Epic car adventure! Three days of driving through Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona on tiny roads both gorgeous and godforsaken (because I missed my turn and ended up almost in Salt Lake City). Getting lost is how you see cool things. Hopefully I can seek out cool things to look at intentionally and get to actually appreciate their coolness, instead of berating myself for not being able to read road signs in the dark. I mean, I need to cut myself some slack: good eyesight is nice but perhaps slightly overrated when there's no one else on the road.

Hopefully somewhere along the journey, my head will settle enough to hear myself think. Hopefully I'll find a place that feels like home. Hopefully I won't lay my cell phone down somewhere and drive off without it. 

Home. That was the topic that floated off into the ether. Something to do with home. Home. Ho um. Ho hum. 

You wouldn't believe how many people would be happy to take my money in exchange for telling me what losing my cellphone means. Apparently, I am feeling disconnected and out of touch. My communications with others are broken, at risk, not going through. Hm. A good day for me is when the phone doesn't ring. 

I remember days before cellphones, do you? Color TV, cordless phones! IBM PCs, Macintoshes, and floppy disks! I remember life before the internet. It's hard to imagine life without it now, although I get to experience the tiny but excruciating loss frequently. The blazing fast internet here at the trailer is a bit temperamental. It goes out once in a while, usually for about three minutes. During those three minutes, do I sweat? Am I anxious? Do I watch the little circle representing the entirety of my existence and pray for the moment the happy broadcast waves return? No, because I know I cannot petition for restored internet with prayer. Duh.

I wonder how I will feel when I'm parked at some rest area or truck stop or Walmart in podunk California, debating how much data my hotspot would chew through because I felt compelled to check for nonexistent email from friends and scour my inbox of all the political entreaties, Pinterest clickbait, and Duolingo reminders. I guess I'll find out (assuming I'm not parked in a dead zone). 

Speaking of dead zones, I sent away for a USB tuner stick that will hopefully let me get broadcast channels on my laptop while I'm on the road. I tried it here at the trailer, and it worked. Unfortunately, it didn't get me any more channels than the bigger antenna does on my Mom's television. I guess broadcast airwaves is a physical thing. There's no magical USB device that will magically attract all those shy waves that are blocked by mountains, buildings, and stupid metal trailer awnings. If I could petition the broadcast airwave gods, I'd ask for a giant roof antenna. Some days, you need more than just ABC, PBS, and Univision.

There are so many criteria for a new home. What criteria do you consider important? Proximity to good schools? Safety? Green spaces? I'd already considered proximity to Winco as a dealbreaker, but now I think I should consider airwave reception. You might say, well, Carol, there's this thing called cable . . . I hear you, but I'm ignoring you. Meanwhile, I have one more blogging Sunday before go-live, go-big-or-go-home, drive-off-the-cliff time. See you then.

Stop making sense

If I could sum up my primary problem in one sentence, it would be this: I can't stop trying to make sense. Sense of my life, sense of others, sense of life in general. In other words, I keep trying to figure it all out. If I would just stop trying to make sense of everything, if I could stop trying to manage and control everything, maybe I could relax, maybe I could take things as they come. 

Do I want to relax? Thanks for asking. Apparently not, otherwise I would stop trying to make sense of everything.

The gentle yet brutal vacuum known as Swedish death cleaning appears to be sucking up the last dregs of my past. In my ongoing quest to make sense of my current so-called life, I spent part of the day purging a few more of my possessions. I persevered, even though I felt a little short of breath today. Either my heart is not pumping right or the air here in Minimal Town is growing more rarified. Am I rising in elevation as I jettison unneeded ballast, like a human hot air balloon? No wonder my inner ears are going crazy.

Today the item on the death-cleaning chopping block was my old mailbox. You might think, Carol, really? You dragged a mailbox with you all the way from Oregon? What kind of nut are you? 

Thanks for asking. I'm the kind of nut who paints mailboxes and then enjoys receiving mail in them for eighteen years and then decides when it is time to move away, that maybe there will be a place in my future life for my hand-painted mailbox. 

That kind of nut.

When I got to Tucson, it was pretty clear there was no place here in the desert for my hand-painted mailbox. Most apartments already have mailboxes. Even if I had needed a new mailbox, the colors definitely reflect a Northwest vibe—no Southwest desert colors on this thing. It's mostly orange blobs on a green-blue background, with some purple in there to make it pop, somewhat faded after eighteen years weathering Portland weather. I don't actually remember painting the mailbox, although they are definitely my colors, but I remember building the hand-painted wooden base with which I installed it on the metal railing outside my door at the Love Shack. It was a cantilevered contraption built of wood and bolts (also painted purple, orange, and greenish blue). The base kept my mailbox in an upright position until the day I dismantled it. I threw away the base and packed up the mailbox. Yes, I dragged it with me all the way from Oregon to Arizona. 

Today was the day I decided to let it go. I took a photo of the mailbox and put it into the give-away pile. 

As it turns out, there might be a place here for that mailbox after all. My housemate rescued the mailbox from the give-away box. With a stencil and a little green or blue spray paint, the number on the front can be revised to reflect the address of the Art Trailer. The Love Shack mailbox will live on.

I can't really express how happy and relieved I feel about the repurposing (I call it the resurrection) of my old mailbox. I have berated myself multiple times for bringing so many ridiculous and useless possessions with me from Oregon. Looking back, I realize I was out of my mind with panic, grief, and fear. It's no wonder I made some foolish choices. Some of the possessions have been easy to let go. The mailbox was one of the last pieces that had no purpose here, other than to remind me of what I've lost. 

I think the mailbox represents a time in my life when I had things more or less figured out. I wasn't exactly thrilled with my life in Portland, but I knew my place in it, and things made sense to me. I knew whose daughter I was. I knew whose employee I was. I had plans, and I was getting things done. 

I always knew that time of my life would eventually end. Employers go bankrupt, cats go to heaven, mold infects apartments, and old people get dementia and then die of an aneurysm. Life (and death) happen. I guess that is the only sort of sense I can derive from my experience. Life and death happen. I experience things, but I do not control them. For reasons I can't explain, it gives me hope that my old mailbox will live on after I'm gone.