Losing sight of normal

I've been a nomad for a little over a month, skulking mostly around Tucson. The plan was to stick around for the month of April for a series of vestibular therapy appointments, and when they were done, I'd be cured and free to move on from this dusty windy incinerator. You might have noticed it's May now. I received my discharge summary from the PT (in short, nothing wrong with you, nothing I can treat). I have one more medical appointment tomorrow for a different issue, and after that I can adventurously seek out Walmarts in other cities. That will be fun.

What is wrong with this picture? 

No, I don't mean that picture. I mean, the picture of me getting used to (looking forward to?) finding new Walmart parking lots to sleep in. Is that normal? I don't think that is normal, but I can't be sure anymore. Nothing seems normal when all my routines have been obliterated. 

You've heard of the story about the frog in boiling water? The frog didn't get into the kettle while it was boiling. No normal frog would do that. No, the frog was just lounging in a kettle of water, enjoying some quiet time. Then, some mean human came along and turned the heat up under the kettle. You can imagine. Gradually the water got warm. The frog enjoyed it at first (mmm, jacuzzi). By the time the frog realized it was about to parboil, its spindly little legs were too weak to let the frog jump out of the kettle. Hence, lunch. 

Humans do something like that, too, according to the psychologists. Supposedly when our living conditions deteriorate gradually, we adapt to these conditions instead of changing them. By the time we realize we are effed, we are too effed up to escape. Boom. We are lunch.

It's not a perfect analogy to describe my situation. For one thing, I saw my living conditions deteriorating from a long way off, and I took action to mitigate the worst of it before I ran out of resources and had to give up. Second, and maybe more to the point, where would I "escape" to? A subsidized senior housing complex over by the I-10 freeway? Even if I wanted to stay in Tucson, and even if I could get onto the waitlist, I would rather live in my car. Who wants to live in a tenement building full of tottering old folks? (Said the tottering old folk). I just want my freedom. Is that such a surprise? I totally understand why houseless people prefer tents to institutionalized shelters. 

Speaking of tents, no. It's over 90°F outside. I'm coming to you from the food court inside the Tucson Mall. It's one of the few enclosed malls left, and let me tell you, I am super grateful for this mall and its covered parking area. Some of the Tucson libraries are nice, but their hours are limited, and they would not appreciate me jabbering on Zoom calls. The Mall is not ideal, but maybe it's my new normal, to be sitting at a table that is too tall for the chair, shaking out the pins and needles in my arms every few minutes. I'm learning to let the waves of noise wash past me with the hordes of shoppers, all of whom seem to be pushing their children in little red plastic cars that make fake motor sounds. It's the new normal. I sleep in a Walmart parking lot next to a road that turns into a race track on Saturday nights. I can new-normal my way through just about anything.

Next week, I hope to get out and up in elevation to beat the heat. I hope I can find some free camping on BLM land, but I'll settle for a new Walmart. Then I'll breeze back through Tucson, pick up my meds, and head north for a few weeks of dogsitting with the fabulous little maniac dog we call Maddie. That's the plan, anyway, unless conditions turn me in a new direction. 

Life comes at everyone

I can only remark that life is so strange so many times before it stops being strange and starts being the new normal. Everyone has challenges. On the continuum of challenges, mine are pretty shallow. Yes, I'm currently living in a very small space, but on the upside, I'm alive. Many people can no longer claim such a miracle. 

There's something great about writing this blogpost in my car listening to a transistor radio playing "ha, ha, ha, beautiful Sunday, my, my, my beautiful day." It's an insipid love song but it might as well be my theme song, at least for today. Oh, sorry. You're still stuck on the words "transistor radio." I know. Crazy. I remember I had one when I was a young teen. It ran on a 9- volt battery. This one runs on two AA batteries, but it's essentially the same thing: a little box that connects me to the outside world, which is especially welcome when I'm out on the BLM land. Unfortunately, the channel choices are slim out there. My options are country, hard rock, classical, hip hop, Spanish, and more country. Classical makes me insane, the hard rock is a little too head-bangy after a while, hip hop would be okay in small doses, and the Spanish channel is so exuberant I feel like taking a nap. So mostly I end up listening to country. I've never been a fan of country music. But it's better than doing van life chores in total silence with only the wind for company. What's more, none of the channels comes in clearly unless I'm holding the radio in my hand, which means I'm an antenna. It's hard to get things done with a radio in my hand all the time. 

That lovely rain I waxed poetic about last week trapped me in the desert for three days. I learned an important lesson: look at the dirt under my feet if I know the forecast calls for rain. The BLM land north of Tucson is not the gravel of Quartzsite. The roads to the camping area are soft red powder. You know what happens when it gets wet? Yes. Mud. No problem if you have 4-wheel drive, which I don't. So there I sat on my little rocky island, looking at the muddy ruts in the road fill with water and wondering how long I would be stuck. The trash bags were piling up, and some of them didn't smell so good, but I was mainly worried about running out of power. No sun means no solar charging. There are few things that make me crankier than running out of power. Imagine how you feel when the electricity goes out in your house. Yeah, like that, but with no utility company to call for the reassuring message telling you how many other households are affected and blaming some idiot for crashing into a power pole. 

On the third day, the sun came out. I charged up my power stations and started feeling better. By this time, though, I was a bit stir crazy. I tried to make a break for the main road and got partway there before I lost traction and had to park it on the rocky verge. I didn't want to risk getting mired in mud. So, there I sat, doing more van life chores, pondering the amazing amount of red mud on my tires, and waiting for the sun to dry up the land enough for me to escape.

I walked up to the main dirt road periodically, checking the condition of the ruts and grooves. Gradually the mush started to firm up. In the early afternoon, vehicles started flying by, mostly jeeps and big pickup trucks. When a small car went by, I knew I could probably get out if I could get from my parking spot to the road. With some careful maneuvering across ruts and between bushes, I eventually made it to the road. I fishtailed gingerly along the road until I came to civilization in the form of actual asphalt pavement. The land out there is beautiful, but roads are pretty nice, too. I was almost giddy to have real traction. The red mud fell off my tires as I roared down the road, singing "Here comes the sun" with the car radio (which has a big antenna, yay, oldies, finally!).

In my new adventure, I've had moments of delight. Stunning sunrises and sunsets. Spacious silence and wide-open vistas. Friendly Walmart parking lots and Walmart employees who show up at the exact moment I need help. The check engine light that comes on, and then goes off, as if to say, don't worry, be happy, it's all good, it's just one of those things. 

Life comes at everyone. It's coming at me, too. Or maybe I'm rushing to meet it. I can't really tell if I'm standing still or moving a million miles per hour through space. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the trick is to learn to be present, no matter what is happening.

Enjoy the eclipse. 

The buck stops here in the Arizona desert

I've been thinking about the past. You don't have to tell me that contemplating the past is rarely a good thing. Living today for a better past is normally not a goal of mine. However, reflecting on my present circumstances has brought into sharp focus the choices that I made that have led me here to now. I've talked about this before, so I won't yank off the scab again. Nobody wants to smell an old festering wound.

I'm doing my best to navigate my fear while I manage the fear of others. The existential fear of being homeless is deeply embedded in my local zeitgeist. It seems clear that some members of my close circle of family and friends would recommend I seek the quickest path to housing, no matter what. Who cares if I have to endure shared housing! Who cares if it's in a city I don't care for, in a climate that is not healthy for me! Other people have to do things they don't want to do, what gives you the right be such a Goldilocks hothouse flower? 

No right at all, I guess, other than the small easily overlooked fact that it is my life we are talking about, not yours. I acknowledge your fear, but I cannot live what's left of my life in such a way as to make it so you don't feel fear. It's not my job to manage your fear, nor is it even possible. 

Nobody knows how much time they have on the planet. No one knows when an asteroid is going to blindside us, despite all the efforts of science. No one can predict the next pandemic or anticipate how deadly it might be. Nobody knows if the next breath they take will be their last. We live our lives as if we are immortal, as if there will always be a tomorrow. Well, I'll speak for myself. I know I have. I've made many assumptions, and made choices based on those assumptions. For example, I assumed somehow my creative life would blossom into something that would support me. 

In my secret little wizened heart of hearts, I hold out hope that it still might. The rest of me has no hope, and I'm wise enough now to know that hope is not a requirement for success of any kind. What is required is action. This I know. 

I am not a quitter. Neither am I a person who seeks to be subsidized, not by friends, not by family, not by the government. Call me a homeless loser if you must (I know you won't say it aloud to my face), but the buck stops here, with me. 

At least for the next few minutes, I choose to frame my circumstances as an invitation to meander through the field of infinite possibility. Your comments tell me you assume the worst, but we are not victims of the universe. The universe does not care about us. Bad things happen, but so do good things. Usually it is hard to tell which is which, and it doesn't matter. As long as I'm breathing and able to think and decide and take action for myself, I can set aside your fear long enough to see my life as an amazing adventure. I can see the road less traveled unfolding before me, inviting me to see what happens next. 

Time to stop making sense

In my fledgling career as an amateur dogsitter, I can now claim to have cared for three dogs. Juno is the biggest dog, so far. She's an 11-year-old, slow-moving Rhodesian Ridgeback whose head is bigger than mine. She's old and arthritic, which means she doesn't go for walks and she sleeps most of the time. Except during the night, of course, when her bladder or bowels say it's time to go outside (rarely at the same time). 

My schedule is out the window when it comes to taking care of Juno. The dog's 5 am and 5 pm feeding schedule drives the entire show. The feeding schedule drives the poop and pee schedule. I have no choice, unless I want to experience the consequences, which I don't want to do, so I have my alarm set for 5 am. 

It's still dark here at 5 am but dogs' stomachs have their own internal driving force, and I live to serve, so I stagger off the couch and head for the fancy open-concept kitchen and the stainless steel fridge, where I rummage for the frozen veggies that make up one third of this dog's meal. The veggies go into the microwave to thaw. While that is happening, I put my head lamp on my head, click it to the dim setting, and grab a couple training treats, which I use to bribe Juno to go pee. She does, thankfully—like most of us, she'll do anything for treats. I admire the tepid air and the amazing array of stars overhead while she squats in the grass. Then we rush back inside for the main event. 

I get the other two elements of her meal out of the fridge: a huge round flat slab of raw hamburger and a raw chicken drumstick. These two things go into a big metal bowl.

By this point, Juno is going insane. Oh, have I mentioned, I am currently adhering to a vegan lifestyle? 

The thawed veggies get dumped into the metal bowl with the two hunks of raw meat. After a dousing of water from the reverse osmosis filtered water spigot, I feed Juno her two arthritis meds (wondering if they would do anything for my hip arthritis), and then we go outside onto the patio. 

Juno knows to sit, and I've learned to hold the dish high over my head so she doesn't knock it out of my hand. I set the dish on the Mexican tile flagstones, and Juno goes to town. It's a little disturbing to watch her polish off an entire chicken leg in two crunchy bites. She could probably do that to my hand, if she got a hankering for old lady bones. While she eats, I put the raw stuff back in the fridge. I make sure I have enough meat thawed for the next several meals. Finally, I clean up the dark granite countertops with antiseptic wipes, hoping none of that raw meat juice got on anything I care about. 

Juno returns in about 30 seconds. Her dish is licked clean. Juno goes back to bed on her 4-foot wide round cushion, and I wash out the metal bowl, wondering if it's worth going back to bed myself, or if I should just stay up for the sunrise. Usually I just lay there in the dark and listen to the AC system clicking on and ramping up as if we are about to be shot into orbit. 

Speaking of AC, I don't understand how it works, if it's me (residual hot flashes), or if the house is trying to kill me. Sometimes it seems hot in here, and sometimes it seems cold. Yesterday, I couldn't take having freezing feet when it's 108°F outside, so I nudged the thermostat from 78°F to 80°F. It seems better today.

In the evening, at 5 pm, we repeat the entire meal preparation process, sans the pills, and sans me going back to bed to try to catch a few more hours of shut-eye. By evening I'm in a bleary daze, wondering how I got here and where I'm going to end up next. I know that around 1 am, Juno, the pony-sized dog, is going to shake herself and head to the patio door, where she will poke at the glass with one huge black claw. I'm right behind with my head lamp, the beck and call girl for the creature temporarily at the center of my existence. 

I think back sometimes to the arc of this blog. Few of you are around anymore to reflect with me on the vagaries of this journey. This blog started out as a place to rant about the travesties of earning my PhD, oh woe is me, alas, alackaday. After some wandering aimlessly, the blog centered on the decline of my mother into dementia, and eventually her death. After that, what was there to talk about but me, as usual: downsizing, moving, searching for home, healthcare, and hoping to find my balance. It's hard to look back and see not an arc but a line. It all depends on what label I put on the y-axis, though, doesn't it? If I put financial success on that axis, the line descends into negative territory. Danger, Will Robinson! But if I put freedom on that axis, the line shoots out the top of the chart. 

The question remains: Would you rather be safe or would you rather be happy? It's really hard to find the intersection of both. 

Busy getting something done

Do I exist? I'm beginning to doubt my identity. Google certainly does, and I'm pretty sure Google runs the world, so it's no wonder I am starting to think I need a verification code every time I do something, just to make sure it's me doing it and not some hacker from Podunk. I blog every week, you'd think Google would catch on, but no, something shifted in the alignment of the planets and suddenly Google is asking me to verify my identity. Are you really who you say you are? Is anyone, really? How would you know? 

You might scoff but I don't take Google for granted. I've been locked out of two Google properties simply because I can't verify my identity. There's no reasoning with Google, because there is no one there at Google. The company consists of a bunch of bots, rolling up and down aisles night and day blowing dust off servers. You could go and knock on the door, but even if someone came to let you in, you'd still have to prove you are you. What do you mean you don't have that phone number anymore? Don't you know your phone number is more precious than your social security number? No, I didn't know that. Too late for me.

So now I question my existence.

When I used to teach business classes at a career college a long time ago, I ran across a concept that haunts me still: the idea of efficiency versus effectiveness. I think I was the only person really floored by the idea that I could appear to be super busy but never do anything worthwhile. 

I can spend my days doing the things on my calendar task list, showing up for appointments, fulfilling my volunteer service commitments, paying my bills, maintaining my body and my car . . . and the things I think are important don't get done because they don't make it onto my task list. It's an insidious form of self-sabotage, to avoid acknowledging that things I care about don't get the attention they deserve. Whatever they are, doesn't matter. Some things are hard to do, and so I avoid doing them. 

Some people are very effective. They use their time wisely, they manage their resources well, and they accomplish the tasks that are important to them. Other people are very busy getting nothing done. I think I'm somewhere in the middle, most of the time. I ponder this conundrum while I'm watching Facebook videos of baby sloths being rescued by kind humans and returned to their smiling sloth mothers. Baby deer stuck in a fence, rescued by kind human and his companions with smartphones. Baby monkey stuck in a pond. Baby elephant in a hole. Baby moose stuck in the rapids, heading over the falls, oh no. Facebook has my number, for sure. And how many of those videos were taken by humans who created the dire situation and then filmed themselves coming to the rescue? Oh, cynical me. 

I was thinking today as I was riding my bike around the mobile home park in the dark that it really doesn't matter what I do, or if I do anything at all. Effective or efficient, who cares? Nobody cares. I'm not being tested. I'm not being surveilled. Nobody is counting the diminishing words in my vocabulary and going, she lost ten more words this week, assisted living, here she comes. It's kind of a relief to realize as long as I pay my bills, nobody will chastise me if I choose to do nothing. 

It's called retirement, I guess. I've been retired in my mind my entire life. I was born retired. That is, I was born believing I should be allowed to do what I want whenever I want, and that includes the privilege of doing nothing at all. You can imagine how well that has worked out. 

The sunset tonight was astounding. Wish you were here, Mom. 

Legacy DNA leaves a mark

For some reason I thought that after my parents died, I would not longer be  . . . what's the word I'm looking for? Not troubled. Not haunted. I don't know. That my parental units would no longer have an influence on my life? They have shuffled off the mortal coil, and even though I think of them, I am no longer troubled by them, if you know what I mean. No, of course you don't know what I mean, because I haven't told you yet. 

My father's DNA legacy reached out from beyond the blue horizon to let me know that I am still my father's daughter, even though he's been dead for eighteen years. He had an enlarged heart, apparently a genetic defect. Well, guess what? That insurance company house call doctor was right! The cardiologist refuted my primary NP's claim of predominantly opening snap, whatever the heck that is, and concurred with the cardiologist's diagnosis of a two-on-a-scale-of-six heart murmur. Thanks a lot, Dad.

Something isn't working quite right but the doctor couldn't be certain exactly what part was failing to meet standards. More to be revealed, as they say. Specifically, echocardiogram in my not-too-distant future (September). Apparently it's not an emergency. Yay.

In other news, I had my first and I hope last MRI this week. I'm sure many of you have had MRIs, it's probably quite common, what do I know? Like getting your nails done. Not for me. I don't get my nails done, and I don't have MRIs. 

In fact, all my life, I have gone to great lengths to avoid getting enmeshed with medical care. I'm the type to pretend not only is there nothing wrong, there's not actually a body. Nothing to see here, move along. I'm just an incorporeal intellect fluttering around somewhere in Tucson, completely detached from any sort of human biological disaster that might need to be shoved inside a big noisy person-sized tube.

An MRI is quite an experience. Not an adventure. Not an ordeal. Somewhere in between. I was warned it would be noisy and that I would be given headphones to protect my ears. I pictured vacuum cleaner noisy. Nope, not like that at all. It was loud, all right, but all the banging, thumping, buzzing, whirring, and beeping made me fear I had been swallowed by a demonic washing machine. 

Before she pressed the button that sent me into the tube, the med tech asked, "What music do you want?"

She didn't seem surprised when I said "60s or 70s rock-and-roll, please."

Pretty soon, I heard Jim Morrison singing "Light my Fire" far off in the distance.

From time to time, obscuring the old rockers singing in the background, I heard a prerecorded dude's voice say, "Take a breath . . .  Let it out . . . Take a breath . . . and hold it." Fifteen seconds later, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Breathe normally."

For forty-five minutes, I enjoyed a cacophony of old rock music, directions to hold my breath, and the bed-rattling, bone-shaking clanging and banging of the machine. As I said, it was quite an experience. There's something surreal about listening to In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida while wearing a hospital gown and lying on a bed that goes in and out of a metal cylinder. At the time, I didn't appreciate the metaphor. There's a joke there somewhere but I can't quite put my finger on it. 

I was glad to discover I am not claustrophobic. With the earphones, I didn't mind the noise. The only thing I did not enjoy was having an IV port inserted into my vein. Having never had an IV port before, or an MRI, I was anxious about being dosed with the gadolinium contrast dye. The med tech said she would warn me when she was going to send it into my vein, and she did. A few seconds later, I felt my entire body flush with a chill I can't describe. Muscles in my belly started twitching. Before I could say oh hell, it passed and I was fine, other than a freezing right hand, which I can tolerate, having lived most of my life with freezing hands.

I don't know which parent to blame for the genes that landed me in an MRI cylinder. I'm suspecting my mother. I'm going to go out on a little dinky limb here and self-diagnose with digestive issues related to dairy and possibly eggs. Alternatively, it could be a hernia. 

What it is not, thank god, is cancer. 

The gadolinium gave me a new layer of dizziness to my vertigo, but it passed by the next day. As instructed, I drank lots of water. And tried to breathe normally. Thus, I live to fight another day.

Living a life sublime

Howdy Blogbots. You’ll be happy to hear I finally have fast internet. Fast enough, anyway. What a relief. Being on the wrong side of the digital divide is debilitating in all kinds of ways. I’m sure you are greatly relieved as well. Now you can hope I will stop complaining about it.

Here's the story, thanks for asking. After a massive fail by Century Link, I am now a customer of their Tucson competitor, Cox Communications. I’ve learned so much. For example, I now understand what the Century Link technician meant when he said “Cox uses a different system.” It’s cable, dude! Cox uses cable, Century Link uses DSL phone lines. You are probably thinking, duh, Carol, everyone knows that, it’s like the battle between the evil titans Comcast and Century Link in Portland, have you been living under a rock? In my defense, I say, yes, I have been living under a rock of sorts. A rock I fondly called Mom.

Anyway, after a long trek across Tucson to f*ckall woebegone, I found the only Cox store in town, waited in line, paid a $50.00 deposit, and was granted the privilege of renting a cheap plastic modem to take home and self-install.

If you know me, you know that any word with self in front of it makes me quail.

“Will I be able to figure this out?” I asked the rep who took my money and handed me a white box with a handy built-in plastic handle. 

She stared at me over her mask. I could see her mentally shift gears. She opened the box and quickly described the attachment process. I felt like one of those cartoon dogs listening to their owner, where the dialog balloon is nothing but bla bla bla bacon bla bla walk bla bla, except minus the cue words bacon and walk.

I went outside with my little box. I put the box gently on the seat and took a minute to pour a dinky bottle of mechanic-in-a-can into my car’s gas tank. The beast threw a shoe, I mean, a code, that morning. Ding, the familiar check engine light came on, indicating a problem in the exhaust system. Anything from a bad gas cap to an expensive oxygen sensor problem or an even more expensive catalytic converter fail. The light does not identify the exact problem. It’s like when your property manager texts you there’s a gas leak in the building, get out now. It helps to have specifics, like, which apartment do I really live in? So now I have the fun job of trying to discern whether the check engine light problem stems from the work that I had the dealer do on May 19. It’s unlikely that their work is under warranty but it would be stupid not to ask. If they say bring it in, I know what will happen. I have some alternative recommendations for car repair places, none of which is within easy walking distance of the Bat Cave.

My father told me never to fall in love with a car. That is still good advice.

Two steps forward, two or three steps back, then one step forward, then fall in a hole for a while. That is my life in Tucson. I finally get an apartment, but can’t get internet. I finally get internet, but the car goes gunnysack. The neighbors with quiet car stereos have loud car engines and vice versa. The property manager returns from a three-week COVID-19 vacation (yay, she lives!) but fails to respond (again) to my emails. Meanwhile, the waves of vertigo in my head are a constant reminder that I control nothing and nobody.

After a while, does it do any good to use the words good or bad to describe what happens? It’s all just life. Maybe the word stupid would be more apropos. I could equally use the word sublime. Ridiculous and rapturous. Absurd and . . . hmm, I’m having trouble coming up with opposites that express my dichotomous brain. I found some fun words, though: cockamamie, dunderheaded, doltish, nutty. Humans have many words to express their displeasure with circumstance. Absurd, ridiculous, and nutty have a lot of company in the thesaurus. Synonyms for triumphant and celebratory are sparse.

As I walked in the hot morning sun today, eyes on the cracked asphalt to avoid stumbles, I had time to think about what it means to be alone. No one depends on me, not a cat, not a mother, not a sibling, not a friend. Nobody really knows where I am. A few people have my street address, but no one could rush to my rescue, or ask me to rush to theirs. I no longer live my life in the context of someone else’s. I’m effectively alone.

I can hear you, you know. You are thinking, oh, no, there she goes again. She’s going to do that off-putting grieving thing. She’s fallen into that sorrow-shaped hole in the sidewalk. Now the whining will begin and it will take meeting another horny lonely eighty-two-year-old to get her mind off it so she can find the humor in her nutty, absurd, confounding, ridiculously sublime existence.

In my defense—do I seem to be writing that phrase more than usual lately? Argh. I’ll let you decide if grief is a defense for wackiness. Everything has happened so fast (she whined). Ten months ago, Mom went and died, setting off a cascade of actions and events that propelled me to another state. Bam, in slow motion, I'm thrown into a new life. Wait, let's be clear: I threw myself.

I wake up at night confused. I don’t know where I am. What bed, what room, what city, what year. I hope it is grief and not early-stage Alzheimer’s. Nothing makes sense except for the veneer of meaning I paint onto my experiences, and my mental paintbrush lags a disturbing two or more seconds behind reality. (Hence my confusion when I opened the Cox box and saw a coaxial cable instead of a DSL phone line.)

One of my favorite Monkees songs (yes, I’m still a fan) has a grammatically incorrect line that resonates: Where my foot steps down is where is home. Every time I go walking, I look at the blue sky and think, oh my god, how gorgeous, is this my home? It’s a real question with as yet no answer. I don’t know if this is home. And yes, the sky is sublime.

The delusions of an impostor

I'm typing my final Portland blogpost from a miniature desk crammed into the chaotic mess in the main room of the Love Shack, a place I have enjoyed for almost eighteen years. It feels surreal to be leaving. I can't believe this is really happening, even after I loaded up a U-Box with most of my possessions and approved its departure to some unknown facility in Tucson. I am fully prepared to never see my stuff again. My next challenge is to get myself there. Departure is set for Thursday. 

My brain swings between delusionary extremes. I try to plan, organize, manage, control. I can't seem to predict circumstances with any accuracy. On the bright side, I was pleasantly surprised to find the U-Box held a lot more than anticipated. I was afraid I would have to abandon all my lovely handmade lopsided wooden shelves. They all fit! Plus my work chair and my TV watching chair, in pieces. If I ever find the allen bolts (carefully stored somewhere in a plastic bag), I can reassemble two chairs. Awesome. 

On the opposite end of the delusionary scale was my assumption that buying a used car would be an easy, smooth, painless process. I'm not even factoring in the tooth extraction and subsequent round of antibiotics (I'm fine now, thanks). You should assume that people don't sell cars they love. They only sell cars that are currently or imminently going to have a conniption fit. On the bright side, I have learned so much about myself in the process of getting a new radio installed. I look forward to another learning experience tomorrow when I attempt to locate a mechanic who can diagnose and resolve the mysterious check engine light, the dreaded indicator that could mean mutiny among the oxygen sensors. 

I fear my apartment has more stuff in it than can fit in the car with me on this trip to Tucson. I've built boxes for Mom's TV, my computer, and my computer monitor. Perhaps I was overly generous with the cardboard, I don't know. I'm not sure there will be room for me in the car. I laid some boards in the cargo space to get a sense of a floor plan. In my mind, I pictured something larger. That is another instance of delusion usurping reality. Reality wins every time when it comes to cargo space and cubic feet. I may be sleeping in the driver's seat. 

Another delusion I have entertained lately is the idea that I will be a different person when I move to a new city in a new state. I know in my heart that executing a geographical won't change me. However, I am hoping that I might, I don't know, be able to eat things that normal people eat. Bread. Cheese. Pasta. Milk. Sugar. I might start wearing bright colors, cotton dresses, bras, sandals. Hey, I might not like eating cheese and wearing dresses. To be honest, I doubt I will feel comfortable wearing a bra ever again. However, I reserve the right to try on another persona, at least for a while. Everyone who moves far away should have the right to make new style choices. I might even grow my hair, who knows.  

Yesterday while I waited for my new radio to be installed, I visited a nearby grocery store and bought a Honey Crisp apple, a protein bar, and a box of plant-based chocolate chip cookies. I ate the apple first, sitting on a bench in the shade outside a Kohl's store. Between bites, I wrote in my journal and consulted my calendar to make sure my afternoon was on track. The weather was gorgeous, summer-like temperatures and soaring blue sky. The heat felt great, even though the dry air was turning the skin on my hands into crepe paper. Next, I ate the protein bar. Feeling adventurous, I tore into the box of cookies. Six cookies nestled in a plastic tray and wrapped in plastic. I didn't feel quite so happy after seeing the wasteful packaging (and realizing only six cookies came in the box). 

I bit into the first cookie (mmm, chocolate) but was distracted by a commotion ensuing about thirty yards away, outside the door of the store. A large bedraggled white woman and a chubby Black teen in a heavy jacket were coming toward me. The kid pushed a beat up bicycle. The woman was yelling, "I need to sit down, my feet are f**king killing me!" Despite other bench options, she made a beeline for my bench.

As she aimed her butt toward the space between me and the arm of the bench, I hastily closed my notebook, stashed my pen, stuffed the box of cookies in my bag, and leaped to my feet.

"You don't have to leave!" she whined. I don't know what she saw in my eyes. Being so close to another human felt shocking. I was wearing a mask. She was not. She wore dirty leggings, Birkenstocks, and a stained skirt. I suspect she was on drugs, not that I'm an expert. Her companion walked his bike away from the woman, moving from the shade into the sun. "Winston, wait, don't leave me!" He kept walking across the empty parking lot.

I backed away from the bench expropriator. "Wait, is this yours?" She picked up a piece of metal from the bench. We both stared at the object. It looked like a large paperclip, bent out of shape. I shook my head, confused. She tossed it toward me, and it bounced off my sneaker. "Oh, sorry," she laughed.

I hiked with purpose around the corner of the building, trying to avoid the other local houseless crazies and druggies who wander the parking lots, panhandling and socializing. They live in tents tied to fences and trees and inhabit decrepit RVs rusting along the nearby side streets. I could so easily be one of them. Yesterday, temporarily, I was an impostor, sitting on a bench eating my snack, briefly blending in with the other parking lot zombies while I waited for a radio to be installed in my fancy used car. When I walked back to the shop, the technician demonstrated the radio. The gizmo lights up, connects to my phone, and does everything but call me by name. As I sat in my fancy car looking at my fancy new radio, I still felt like an impostor. 

I am guessing a road trip through the desert will change me in ways I cannot yet predict. I'll update you when I find out who I am. 

The Chronic Malcontent makes end-of-life plans

Howdy, Blogbots. How's it going? How are you doing on your end-of-life plans? Oh, you don't have any? Good for you, you eternal optimist, you. I'm sad when young people end their lives, whether or not it is on purpose, but as an older person who has lived a relatively long life, I respect our right to exit on our own terms, if we happen to be so lucky. I think a lot about how I would like the end of my life to be, especially after I visit my mother at the assisted living facility.

Last night, as usual, we sat on the couch watching reruns of M.A.S.H. I heard loud moaning coming from the hall. It sounded like what I imagine a cow being slaughtered might sound like. I ignored the din until a commercial break.

“What is that noise?” I asked.

“Oh, that's Rosy,” Mom said. “She does that.”

“What is wrong with her?”

“She's getting ready to croak.”

I was slightly taken aback at her word choice, but then I realized my mother has no illusions about what is happening there. People don't go to assisted living to recuperate, rehab, and return to their homes to live blissfully independent lives. It's a rare broken hip or leg who escapes from the nursing home. Everyone knows that these warehouses have one purpose: to make money by taking care of old people until they die.

Old people used to die at home, cared for by family members. Generations lived together under one roof. What changed? Women got jobs. Kids went to daycare. Seniors went to adult daycare. Very old seniors went into care facilities—what do we call them? Retirement homes, nursing homes, assisted living . .  euphemisms for warehouses designed to house nonproductive humans.

Mom isn't into bingo or crafts. She naps on her pastel-flowered couch between meals. The activities people, the chefs, the entertainers, the managers . . . everyone disappears by six o'clock, right after supper. The Med Aide turns the hall lights low. The staff start putting the residents to bed. By the time Mom walks me down the hall at seven, the place is a ghost town. I hear a few televisions blaring from behind closed doors. I see an occasional aide exiting a room carrying a plastic trash bag. I think I know what is in those trash bags: dirty adult diapers.

For the past week, the old woman in the last room down the hall has been having some incontinence issues. The stench emanating from her room is nauseating. My mother doesn't seem to notice. She sings our current favorite song, She'll be coming round the mountain, right to the back door. I must stop singing because I have to breathe through my mouth. It's either that or barf. This is what we have to look forward to if we are lucky enough to live long lives. Whether we age at home or in a warehouse, eventually the systems give out. Growing old is not for wimps.

I'm formulating my end-of-life plan. If I'm fortunate enough to have the mental and physical capacity to choose my end, I have some preferences. I won't share them with you; you might think I'm depressed or something. I'm not depressed. I try to live each day as it comes, stay productive, focus on being useful . . . but I have no illusions either. Like Mom, I know I will die someday. I hope it's not soon. I hope I can enjoy some warm desert air before I go. If I can, I'd like to choose the nature and timing of my demise. But nobody knows where, when, or how,  not for certain. The question, as always, is how do we want to spend our time until our time is over. Living is not for wimps, either.

The chronic malcontent cleans house

In summer 1977, I was an immature twenty-year-old, recently flown the nest in favor of sunny Los Angeles to find my fortune among the stars and palm trees. I was unaware that in 1977, NASA launched two school bus-sized spacecraft, Voyager 1 in September and Voyager 2 in August, aimed for Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. The most concrete memory I have of the word Voyager is the ridiculous revelation in the 1979 Star Trek movie that the enemy V'Ger is actually Earth's Voyager 6. That sounds less ridiculous to me today, given, well, you know, everything.

PBS showed an update a couple weeks ago of the Voyager mission. I was surprisingly moved by the journeys of the intrepid spacecraft, chugging along toward deep space with their primitive computer brains. Any number of times, they could have been lost, but they both successfully matriculated—they have crossed the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. Off they go, like kids to college. We will never see them again, obviously, and they are having a harder and harder time phoning home. Eventually the signals will be too faint to hear.

Both Voyager spacecraft carry copies of a twelve-inch disc known as the Golden Record, crammed with as much data as NASA engineers could fit on a round gold-plated piece of copper. The Golden Record contains images and music, math and science—humankind's achievements (as of 1977, that is).

The Golden Records are a message to the universe that we existed, we were here. The discs should last at least a billion years, long after the human species has destroyed its habitat and gone extinct. I get a little weepy when I imagine some far away alien child finding a gold record buried in its backyard, figuring out how to play the disc, and discovering Chuck Berry, many light years from Earth. Oh, Carol, don't let him steal your heart away!

I'm back in the present. Today rain and sun have battled for supremacy. That is how we know it is almost spring here in the Pacific Northwest. Despite the 45°F temperature, I tore down some of the plastic sheeting that protected us from the worst of the east wind. I opened multiple windows.

When I can't figure out what to do next, I embark on a cleaning binge. I started with the bathroom, on the assumption that my effort will be most obvious in the smallest room. It's good I did. Under the cat's cozy fleece window seat in the bathroom were layers of moldy wet towels. Gross. No wonder my sinuses are constantly clogged.

After throwing all the moldy towels in the washer ($2.00 to wash, $2.00 to dry), I tackled the bedroom rug with my old Tidy Maid, something I do a few times a year. However, I soon noticed I wasn't having much success—the machine was not hoovering! Argh. I diagnosed the problem with a flashlight: The vacuum cleaner was gagging on a gargantuan hairball stuck in its craw, I mean, its hose, halfway between the entry and exit.

Oh, yippee, a rare chance to use my human ingenuity to solve a domestic problem! Rare because I so rarely do anything domestic besides cooking and eating food. Time to exercise the calcifying brain cells. I got busy strategizing my approach. Yes, in case you are wondering, I remembered to unplug the vacuum cleaner before I started poking around with metal tools.

First, I tried the cat's wooden-dowel play stick (good for making mysterious under-the-rug creatures that are super fun to pounce on . . . so it seems, I mean, not that I would know). The stick was too short. Next, I tried an untwisted and unbent hanger, repurposed to catch and pull out the hair clog. No luck. Both the stick and the hanger were too weak and too short. Hmmm. I know that feeling. I debated doing a Cesarean on the plastic hose, but wasn't sure I could duct-tape the thing back up successfully. Thinking, thinking . . . a-ha! The broom! The broom handle turned out to be the right length, weight, and thickness to shove that clog down the tube and into the belly of the machine. Because I had removed the dust bag, leaving only the gaping exit hole, I witnessed the birth. I even helped, although sadly, the clog came apart in chunks. Eeeww. I thought maybe I had sucked up a cat toy. Nope. The clog was just a solid mass of cat hair, dust, and detritus. After the hairball was ejected, the vacuum cleaner sucked like a dream. Back to work.

While I vacuumed (multitasking!), I washed a load of bed linens and miscellaneous t-shirts and socks (another $4.00). Only items made from synthetics ever truly get dry in this dryer. I often must festoon my apartment with slightly damp clothing and towels. Today when I pulled the mass of laundry from the dryer, I could tell right away that it was nowhere near dry. What gives? I discovered that every single item—fitted sheet, pillowcases, socks, towels, underwear, t-shirts—had all somehow magically been sucked inside the duvet cover. Not a single thing remained. Everything was neatly bundled in a sodden heap inside the giant pillowcase. I couldn't have done it better myself.

Doing laundry opens a window into parallel universe, whose inhabitants apparently sometimes need just one beige sock. I wish they would at least ask. I don't mind loaning a sock once in awhile. But they just take it. Sometimes they return it, sometimes they don't. Today they didn't appear to take anything . . . they just wanted to have some fun, I guess. Ha ha. Now the Love Shack looks like a cheap clothing store after a hurricane.

All these daily challenges that sometimes seem so overwhelming (I want my darn sock back!) pale in comparison to the challenge humans are currently facing. I can't do much to save the world. I can't call out to outerspace . . . save us, superior beings, wherever you are! My song is not on that Golden Record. In fifty years, heck, in twenty years, no one will remember me or my tirade about recalcitrant laundry and missing socks. Sometimes I'm sad about that. The stories I write will disappear into the past along with my bones. Maybe in some cosmic scrapbook, all our stories shine forever, who knows. 

I'm not twenty anymore. I don't have a lot of time left. Humans have such a short blip of time to make our mark. Not everyone makes it into the history books. I'm okay with anonymity. Just another bozo on the bus.

The chronic malcontent has an epiphany about mindfulness

I have epiphanies about as often as I vacuum my carpet, which is to say, about once or twice a year, so when they happen, I try to milk them for all they are worth. Ditto when I vacuum. I roll around on the floor for months afterward, reveling in the absence of cat barf. Lately I've had a spate of little revelations related to the meaning of life and death, nothing really earth shattering, you know, just realizations along the lines of you can't take it with you, so you might as well dump it all now.

In certain circles (of which I am on the periphery, like when I was a barely tolerated 15-year-old lurking among the fringe loonies orbiting the center hall socialites), it seems I hear words like mindfulness with some frequency. Mindful seems to toddle along with words like right thinking, right livelihood, that sort of thing. It's very Zen. I don't know much about all that meditation yoga chi chi hoohaw, so I won't offer an opinion. But my epiphany is related to mindfulness, so if I'm going to write about it, it's quite likely you'll see me roll an eye or two, if you happen to be watching. Which I hope you aren't, because the place is a mess. I need to vacuum.

I've been worrying lately that I'm not mindful enough. What does that even mean? Thanks for asking. I'm not really sure. Suddenly I'm dumbfounded: I have been stewing and fretting, wondering if I should be pursuing mindfulness without fully knowing what it actually is. That's just nuts, when I think about it. That's like saying yes, please, I'd like a full glass of retsina without sipping someone else's first.

What does mindfulness mean to you? What words come to mind when you are feeling mindful? (Har har.) The word mind is starting to look odd as I'm typing it. Am I misspelling mind? (Would you mind?) Whoa. Suddenly I'm feeling a wave of vertigo. What is going on? My mind is trying to kill me. Let's assume it's a hot flash of creativity and move on, shall we?

Back to mindfulness. At first, I thought mindful meant being hyper self-aware. I've heard people say, “When I swim [or run or dance or make art], I'm fully present.” I think they are referring to a type of mindfulness, a feeling of being aware of being in one's skin. Wow, that's so meta. They swear they feel one with the universe, whatever that means. Even though they look like nerds with their goofy swim goggles. We are all just tiny specks, how can we be one with the universe? The universe is really big. Whatever. Anyway, I thought, it's one of those Zen things. After meditating for an hour, eat some rice cakes with soy butter and wash it down with wheat grass. Like that.

I wonder, why would anyone want to be that self-aware? Isn't life excruciating enough as it is? I do all I can to avoid feeling fully present. A normal person can't take a lot of self-awareness. That's what pork rinds and Pepsi are for, to dull the roar, so you can function. Am I right? Maybe that's why most Americans are getting fat. They are rebelling against being mindful.

Back to my epiphany. Here's what I think about mindfulness. I think mindfulness is just another form of self-obsession. Yep. I said it. It's out there now. What do I mean? Well, take mindful eating. People who don't read novels or newspapers while they eat are sneaks. They could interrupt you at any second with some inane comment about how delicious their organic potatoes are. Like I care. I'm reading, for god's sake!

They count their chews, they count their steps, they count their pennies, maybe all that weighing and measuring is all just self-obsession, masquerading as self-awareness. Whoa, am I going to get it from my Zen yoga junkie friends. I just basically called them all self-obsessed wackjobs.

There's another part to my epiphany. I can't share it with you, though, because if I do, it will lose its magic. When you have a really great idea, you should nurture it for awhile before you share it. That's how you help the magic grow. But I will say this: It's the opposite of being mindful, and it does not involve pork rinds.

Fool on a hill

I've only been to Skyline Memorial Cemetery once, with Mom to direct me, some years ago, so I wasn't sure I would find the place. The clouds were low over the West hills of Portland. The road was socked in with fog. I almost missed the sign. Luckily, I had viewed the place from satellite the night before (Google Earth!), so I knew that the funeral home office was just off the second driveway. I was 20 minutes early on purpose. I figured I'd use the restroom, get a map, and sneak into the periphery of the group somewhere near the grave site, if I could find it.

As it turned out, the family was gathering in the lobby of the funeral home office. The former wife of my youngest cousin was already there. We recognized each other, which for me is a big deal, for her, probably not so much. Still, she seemed glad to see me, and I was glad to see her. I like her. When I came out of the candlelit restroom, I greeted her with a hug. I was conscious of the degree of my social enthusiasm and wondered if I should dial it back a bit. Not that I'm so flamboyantly social, I've met her what, five times in 30 years? But it was a funeral. Well, at least I wore black.

People I didn't recognize came in out of the damp fog. In my cloud of social anxiety, I was just barely conscious of my awareness that most of them in my generation were overweight and obviously colored their hair. And they all looked so old. What happened to us? Dave was only 61; that seems so young to me. It occurred to me as I was standing awkwardly trying to keep an appropriately sad but welcoming look on my face, that I probably looked just as old and decrepit to them as they did to me. WTF.

I realized that some of the strangers were actually grownup children of my cousins, towing their own young daughters and sons. Some of the faces I may have seen once at a barbecue a few years back, at my aunt's 75th birthday. Seems like ancient history now. My memory fails me daily. Names and faces... like my mother, I am learning to fake it.

The funeral home assistant, a tall heavy young woman dressed in a parka and black leggings, perked up as soon as Cousin Dave's wife arrived. I could see her move into a brisk-but-sympathetic let's-get-this-show-on-the-road mode. I tried to model my face after her expression. Nobody noticed.

“If you want to drive your car to the site, just follow the truck.” She didn't have to say which truck. We all knew: The truck with the casket hanging out the back. I can only imagine what it was like to drive that truck from the house to the cemetery. Did they hang a festive red flag on the end of the casket? Would any nearby drivers realize that there was an embalmed body, sans a few organs, resting in the box? Now there's a plot for a story...

Someone murmured something about walking. That sounded good to me, and apparently to many others. We swarmed out the door into the drippy fog and walked in small groups out to the parking lot. My aunt came over, a tiny shred of an old woman wearing an eye-watering hot fuchsia windbreaker. I think my mother might actually have a pound or two over my aunt. (My aunt has always competed to be thinnest.)

She gave me a long, uncomfortable hug. Her eyebrows barely reached my chest. I'm not sure where she was looking—at my jacket, I guess. I stared off across the parking lot, patting her back, realizing belatedly that I was actually holding her up. I waited for her weight to transfer back onto her tiny feet and extricated myself from her embrace.

An exotic long-haired young woman came over and gave me a hug. Who...?

“I'm Julie,” she said in a choked voice. Oh, right. Julie. My brain scrambled, trying to unravel the family tree on the spot. Dave's second daughter. Oh, right. She just lost her father. Bummer.

My brother and his girlfriend were there, two familiar faces. The small crowd walked in groups up a small rise. As we crested the hill, a cold wind attacked. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical 40° damp wind we all know as Portland winter. We all huddled into our scarves and trudged onward.

Not far along the road was the mausoleum wall. About 20 yards below the road, a backhoe and a little pickup filled with gravel were parked on the muddy grass. An empty bier stood waiting for the casket. I presumed the bier hid the open grave beneath. Hey, I've seen funerals on TV, I know what's what. Pretty soon, six men of varying ages struggled into view, carrying the wooden casket across the slippery grass. I recognized Dave's two brothers and Dave's son. I thought of all the things that could go wrong, but they settled the box on the bier without mishap. 

I hovered on the periphery as about 30 people clustered around, facing a bearded guy wearing black and holding a book. Minister, pastor? Four members of the grounds crew waited respectfully nearby. One was a blond woman wearing enormous black gloves. I imagined they were itching to get back to backhoeing and spreading gravel.

As if on cue, as the minister led the crowd in the first of several prayers, the fog began to lift. The view was impressive. Far across the valley, sunlit glimmered on a section of the Willamette River. Dave's other daughter stood up to make some brief remarks. Fifteen minutes later, the wind was cutting through my jacket. Small children were crying out loud, the adults were sniffling into tissues, partly from grief, partly from the biting wind, and I was ready to bail.

After another prayer, a young girl stood by the box and faced the assembled group to sing an a capella hymn. The first stanza had everyone moaning and sobbing. So cute! So sweet. By the third stanza, people were starting to shift around in the mud and pull their scarves around their necks. By the fifth stanza, she was still going strong. Where's Monty Python when you need him? I gazed off over the open fields of the cemetery below, inching away from the mourners (prayer and hymns have that effect on me), and watched a crow fight off a hawk over our heads. The hawk kept circling, aloft on the wind, and lazily drifted away toward some distant trees. The crow returned to a tree near the mausoleum, the winner, for now.

The story should end here for effect, but life is so strange. The grounds crew lifted a white plastic cover and placed it over the casket. Unfortunately, the cover did not fit over the box. My youngest cousin, Dave's younger brother, had built the box himself with the assistance of Dave's son. He was standing next to me as we watched the dilemma unfold.

“Twenty-four inches tall and twenty-eight inches wide,” my cousin said. “That's what they told me. It better fit.”

People milled around for a few minutes, churning up the grass, then most retired to the shelter of the mausoleum wall, where the cemetery people had set up two rows of folding chairs covered in dark green fake fur (I kid you not). The cousins and sibling gathered in groups according to their age brackets, waiting for the cemetery crew to find a cover that would fit. I wandered a dozen yards away to see the grave marker for my grandparents, who both died in 1985. My girl cousin came over with her daughter.

“When Grandpa came to stay with my mother, after Grandma died, he was so sad,” my cousin said, glaring bleakly at her twig of a mother who was holding court by the mausoleum wall. “My mother had no compassion at all for him and what he was going through.”

She looked at me. “You know my mother.”

“I do know your mother,” I agreed. I thought about mothers. I decided that even as much as I'm struggling with my own mother, I would not want to trade. I know her mother.

The wind felt like it was coming straight off the ocean. At that point, I hit my limit. I didn't know I had a limit on graveside services, but apparently I do. I decided I didn't need to see my cousin's coffin lowered into the dirt. I said goodbye to my girl cousin and her daughter, and to my brother and headed away from the group to get up to the road. The grass in places was pure mud, which made walking treacherous. My brother's wife walked back to the parking lot with me. The hem of her long dress was wet from trailing in sodden grass. We talked about aging parents, but didn't figure anything out.

Cousin Dave is on the roof

I dreamed a mildly romantic dream last night. Sadly, though, no tongues to report; I rarely progress that far in dreams anymore. Don't know what that means, and it doesn't matter. I didn't regret the loss. I was more interested in the fact that, in my dream, I was ageless. I mean, I wasn't any specific age, as far as I could tell. I wasn't old or young. I just was. My perception of me existed outside time.

Sure, my dreams have changed over the years, whose haven't? When I was 6, I dreamed creatures from outer space were taking over the earth in flying saucers. That was the year the city adopted oscillating sirens on their police cars. I was sure invasion was imminent. When I was young, I used to fly a lot in my dreams. I don't fly anymore. I don't even run. Now all I do is stomp repeatedly on nonfunctional brakes. Or I lose my car altogether in some part of the city I've never seen before.

I feel like I live life interrupted, daily. I aim in one direction and find myself going in another. I wait in wait-and-see mode, not bothering anymore to wonder what the future holds. I know what it holds. I don't need a magic 8 ball to know where we are all headed. Yep, you got it. Hell in a hand-basket.

Cousin Dave died last week. His mother called me because she was afraid if she called my mother, the news would send her off her rocker. (Oh, sorry, that's a euphemism for lose her mind. No, that's a euphemism too. I mean, she would lose what cognitive ability she still has.) I was the designated bad-news bearer for my immediate family. I took the coward's way out and wrote an email to my siblings. But I called my mother first to give her the sad news.

“Cousin Dave died yesterday,” I said when I got her on the phone. Oh, darn. Should I have used a euphemism to soften the blow? Should I have said Cousin Dave is on the roof? I am a lousy liar. I can't even tell a good joke, because I dread making people wait through the setup. I should probably at least have made sure she was sitting down. Well, in my defense, I did wait until evening so I didn't ruin her afternoon nap.

My mother is a former nurse. And she's a former librarian. That means, to me, that if she hasn't seen death and dying up close in person, she's certainly shelved some books about it. I figured she would say, oh, that's terribly sad, grieve a bit, and move on. Unfortunately, my mother has been replaced by a pod person whom I no longer recognize. This new pod-mom creature was devastated by the news of the loss of Cousin Dave.

“Oh, no. Not Dave. No. Why couldn't it have been me?” she wailed. I cringed. I know it's not my mother anymore, but it's still hard to hear her suffer.

Cousin Dave was my mother's brother's eldest son. A heart attack laid him out. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead. Oh, wait, I should say he had passed. Or passed away? Is that the right euphemism? I can't keep track. I always thought passing was what one did on the two-lane road to the coast when you're stuck behind a log truck. Whatever. So, Dave is gone. We lost him.

Eventually Mom emerged from her blue funk to call my aunt and get the details. She called me the next day and sounded pretty calm as she told me about the casket-building her brother's remaining children and grandchildren were doing. I was impressed. Casket building would never have occurred to me. I'd be more likely to sew a shroud.

“They plan to wrap him in an elk hide,” my mother said bemusedly. “The other kids plan to put in a Native American blanket.” Right. For his trip to the happy hunting ground. I don't know what Dave's idea of heaven was, but I'm pretty sure it involved guns, judging by how many racks he had hanging in his living room. And when I say racks, I mean elk and deer antlers, just so we're clear.

I didn't know Dave well. I am closer to his sister, my only girl cousin. Dave was an enigma, like all older males. He grew a beard, married a Mormon, had a pack of kids and got divorced. He was happily remarried to a woman I met once or twice, who seemed to enjoy hunting as much as Dave did. I'm sad she's a widow. Dave was only 61, the same age as my older brother.

Mom told me today she doesn't feel up to attending the graveside service day after tomorrow. I guess I'll drive up the hill to... I don't even know what that part of the city is called...to Skyline Cemetery, a place I've only visited once, some years ago, to see the graves of my mother's parents. They died the same year, 1985, within months of each other. Dave's grave will be nearby, with a nice view.

When I was maybe 14 or 15, before I got my first boyfriend, I remember a family visit to Cousin Dave's house. I don't know if it was winter or summer, but I remember Dave, my handsome older boy cousin, offering to play some records for me on his record player. (If you don't know what a record player is, it's a device that played vinyl records.) He might have played more than one song, but the only one I remember is Chicago's Colour My World. To this day, I can't hear that song without thinking of Cousin Dave. RIP Cousin Dave. You will be missed.

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.

The chronic malcontent experiences ego deflation

Happy effing new year, readers. All 10 or 12 of you. I hope this year all your pleasant dreams come true (and none of the nightmares). Me, I just hope to stay present as the moments sweep me along, if not savoring each treacherous moment, at least, not wishing I were somewhere else doing something else. I'm just hoping to be here now. What else is there? I've spent years trying to fix my past and manage my future, and look where that got me. Broke, flabby, and discontented. Joke's on me.

Once again, it seems whatever mojo I enjoyed over the past few months has evaporated as I've been sinking into my mother's shrinking world. Aspirations of art, writing, doing something with myself, all seem to be misting into nothing. Late middle-aged woman, interrupted. Again. Interruptions in the past I blamed on partners. This time it's my maternal parental unit who has become the baby planet nucleus of my parched existence. I've whined about this before, sorry if it is getting boring. It's boring to me too, and it's my life. I suppose it's hard to sink lower than the realization that I'm bored with myself.

I had an idea for a story today. This is nothing new. I'm a dreamer, ideas are like breathing. The frothy cloud of creativity burbled in my chest. My heart rate accelerated. I suppose my eyes twinkled, although I'm not really sure (they sometimes dance from vertigo). I chortled once. If I remember, I will commit it to a Word doc and save it in a folder that I will rarely look into again. I have enough ideas in there to last a while. Unformed hazy potential.

As I've grown older and less optimistic, I've finally stopped seeing creativity as the antidote to my malcontentedness. My creative life has pretty much shrunk to this blog, the electronic platform from which I whine. I used to paint, but what do you do with a bunch of paintings nobody wants? Build furniture out of the particle board panels. Cut the canvases into strips and weave them into placements. See? An idea a minute. I sit in meetings and draw the images you see on this blog. I have a notebook-a-month going back to 1995. Who wants them, raise your hand.

The excessive-thinking malady brought on by fear of downsizing is cutting the crutches out from under my wobbly creative spirit. Too much stuff is at war with need more stuff. (What's up with stuff, anyway? How did it turn into my higher power? There's a topic for another rant.) The Love Shack is not a big place, but more to the point, I will not last forever. Before I die, if I have the choice, I would like to jettison some of this baggage and abandon myself to the creative spirit. I'm sure it's still in me somewhere, waiting patiently for an invitation to peek around the door.

Season's greetings from the Hellish Handbasket

'Tis the season for giving. A few minutes ago, the phone rang: Planned Parenthood, calling for donations. Dream on, dude. While I was listening to the telemarketer drone on about the litany of crimes committed by the opposition, there was a persistent knock at my door: another solicitor, seeking donations for some unknown cause.

I waved the phone at her. “I'll come back later,” she promised. I might turn on the porch light: It's pitch dark out there. Then again, I might not.

Bah humbug. I'm not in a giving mood. This week, the wind has been uprooting trees. Rivers are flooding roads and yards and basements in outlying areas. Entire apartment complexes are sliding down muddy hillsides. This morning I wasn't sure it was morning; I thought my clock was wrong, it was so dark outside. I don't have any extra to give—not money, not time, not love. Grrrrrr.

Last week, the family from out of town came and went in the blink of an eye. The long-awaited family discussion to talk about what's next for Mom barely happened. It wouldn't have happened at all, I suspect, if I hadn't started the ball rolling by looking at my mother as we all sat around her condo living room and saying, “So, Mom.... what do you want for the next phase of your life?”

She seemed a bit unsettled to be on the spot, which is unlike her, but possibly the new normal now that her brain seems to be disintegrating. The extroverted woman I used to know is gone, leaving this strange pod person in her place.

“Well, uh, I, uh... I want to just stay here for now,” she said apologetically. She probably knew that wasn't what her children wanted to hear. A few days before, she had mentioned her interest in touring adult care homes in the area. I was like, Yes!

I tried to remain calm.

“I've got my friend Summer to come and clean once in a while,” Mom said. My sister and I looked at each other. The guest bathroom was a mess.

“What about food?” my sister asked.

“The condo ladies go out to lunch every Thursday,” my mother said.

Great. At least she eats on Thursdays.

After driving everyone out to Gresham in pouring rain in my mother's old Camry, eating a rich dinner (including dessert), and driving back to Mom's condo, none of us was in a mood to dig into a compassionate, caring conversation about how Mom wants to live out her remaining days (weeks, months, years... her aunt lived to be 100, for chrissake). My brother wasn't feeling well. He went home.

Woozy from sugar, I drove my jet-lagged sister and her sometime husband to their downtown hotel. The rain had stopped. The lights of the city sparkled. Mom came along, riding shotgun like a sprightly wizened elf.

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 to the rescue

I root for underdogs. I cheer for the downtrodden. I'm a bleeding heart sentimentalist. I cringe at jokes that make fun of others: I hated Candid Camera. Suffering makes me tear my hair, especially the suffering of animals. Human suffering is a bummer too, but I figure humans can get therapy and eventually resolve their issues. Not so animals, so they get most of my compassion.

I've never been called to be a hero (until last week), so I haven't been too sure that I would man up for a challenge if one came my way. I can be a bit squeamish at the sight of blood. So when I saw a baby squirrel lying motionless on the patio at the base of my back steps last Thursday, my first thought was, Oohh, ick. Is it dead? I stared gingerly at the little body, noting its eyes were black slits. Bugs were crawling around its nose. I saw it draw a breath and heave a sigh. Alive!

I ran inside. I found an decrepit small round wicker basket and lined it with an old kitchen towel. Then I put on gloves and ran back outside. Must save squirrel! I carefully levered the squirrel into the basket. Now what? I saw my neighbor outside in his front yard.

“Hey Roger, do you know what to do with a baby squirrel?”

“No, sorry.” He didn't even want to look at it, although I held out the basket like an offering: Take this squirrel, please!

I took it inside the house, set the basket  on the stove, and texted my sister-in-law Dierdre, the one-woman animal rescue super hero. No response. I dialed the Audubon Society.

“I found a baby squirrel,” I said to the woman on the phone. “What should I do?”

“Is it red or gray?”

“Gray.”

“Nonnative, invasive species. Put it back outside and let nature take its course.”

I hung up, resigned. Trash squirrels apparently don't deserve to be rescued. Cute little gray squirrels grow up to be nasty invaders, crowding out the cute little red squirrels. Oh well. Kill one species to save another...

Suddenly the phone rang.

“Is this Carol? I'm Laurie. I'm calling about the baby squirrel?” I sent a prayer of thanks up: Dierdre had apparently called her squirrel rescue compadres.

“Audubon told me to leave it outside and let nature kill it.”

“No, no, they're wrong! I'll come and get it. Give me your address.” I told her how to find me and she told me what to do for the squirrel while I waited. Most important: keep it warm. “Put it inside your shirt,” she suggested.

“Not a chance,” I replied.

“Well, do you have a heating pad?”

“I'll figure out something,” I said. We hung up.

I turned the oven on warm and put the basket o' squirrel on the back burner. I went back to my editing project, checking on the squirrel every few minutes. Things soon got toasty on the stove. The squirrel started moving around and squeaking. Was that a good sign, or was it starting to cook?

“Chill out, Frank,” I told it. My cat sat nearby, looking perplexed.

Laurie had said wrap the squirrel up tight (“like it is the nest,” as if I've ever seen the inside of a squirrel nest), so I wrapped it not too tightly in a swatch of old fleece bathrobe and put it back in the basket. The next time I checked, it had crawled out of the fleece and the basket and was scrabbling blindly around on the edge of the hot stove. Another inch and it would have landed nose-first on the kitchen floor. I grabbed it and put it back in the basket. “WTF, Frank!?” Was it too hot, or was it looking for more heat? Who knows what is in the mind of an abandoned baby squirrel?

Two hours later, Laurie finally arrived. She'd come from the west side of Portland in rush hour traffic. Now, that is the mark of a super hero. I led her to the kitchen and showed her the basket on the stove. She rubbed the thing's stomach as if she'd done this many times before.

“Oh, it's a little girl,” she said happily. Okay, I thought, not Frank, Francis.

She wrapped the squirrel up in a fuzzy scarf. Then she looked at it more closely.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“Is it...?”

She started breathing into its face while I watched in appalled fascination.

“Come on, little girl, come on,” she murmured, doing squirrel CPR. I escorted her to the door and off she went into the night, carrying what might have been a recently deceased baby squirrel.

Or not. As long as I don't know for sure if the squirrel died, the squirrel exists in that quantum physics limbo, neither dead nor alive, but a strange combination of both. I still don't know the outcome. The squirrel probably died. But maybe not. It might have lived. For me, it's both alive and dead. A feeling I experience myself at times.

It's been a week, and I still think about that squirrel.

Rewind

I've been away from the blog for a while, immersed in life and not feeling energetic enough to share. The vertigo is destroying my frontal lobe, grinding off layers of brain matter with every wave. Well, I know that isn't really what is happening; I know vertigo is an inner ear problem, not a brain problem, but that is how it feels: like heavy ocean waves are beating the inside of my brain. I've found the symptoms get worse with stress. Ha. Does anything get better with stress. I ask you. Really. I'm asking. If you know, please tell me.

What am I so stressed out about? Thanks for asking. The usual crap: weather, earning, creativity, cancer (Bravadita's), transportation (lack thereof), and my mother.

Actually, news flash, the weather has been pretty excellent: mild late summer days punctuated by a little bit of much-needed rain. Really not much to complain about. It's that rich moment just before the leaves go golden. I guess it's really the turning of the earth and the angle of the sun that puts the melancholy in me. Sometimes I wish I could sleep until April. I've heard naps can be good for you. Maybe not that long, although I'd be willing to try it.

As far as earning goes, I am still editing other people's massive dissertation train wrecks for money. I don't like it, but I can say with a bit of pride that I'm getting better at it. I'm sure that is good for the clients. For me, maybe not so much: I don't think just because I'm good at something, that means I ought to do it. I got caught on that hook for years... sewing, typing, driving the short bus. Ack! My good friend said to me in 1989, “It's never too soon to stop doing what you hate and start doing what you love.” Those oddly convoluted words granted me permission to stop sewing for a living, an activity I detested. Maybe I can find another set of equally interesting words to set me free from editing. Hey, it could happen. All I have to do is finish my book, market it, and watch the cash roll in. Said the crazy insane woman.

I'm doing a fair amount of walking these days, compared to before my car went to Ford Focus heaven. I was sort of hoping to have achieved buns of steel by now. I'm sad to report that is not yet the case. I'm still working on it. Now I've almost convinced myself that I don't need a car, that in fact, I'm a better planetary citizen without a car. That doesn't stop me from eyeballing the shiny not-so-gently loved cars parked in the used car lots I walk by on my way to my weekly meeting. I'm just looking. Mostly at the little yellow striped mini. It's gone now. Oh well. Another missed opportunity.

My younger brother gave me a bicycle he wasn't using, in exchange for one I gave him that was too big for me. The exchange was leisurely, taking place over the span of ten years or so. In the interim, he seems to have lost the helmet I gave him, so I need to get a new bike helmet. Plus the bike he gave me has no front brakes and the seat is stuck too high. But it's got great big fat tires and it's small enough so that falling off it doesn't seem like it would be fatal. I wonder two things: Will riding a bike will retrain my brain to find its balance? And is this bike stolen?

I've saved the best (or worst) for last. Last month you may recall, my siblings and I moved our maternal parental unit into a lovely apartment in a large retirement community. I remember feeling a great sense of relief when we finally got pictures hung. Apart from the ongoing telecommunications nightmare requiring me to check in with the cable company every day, I thought things were going pretty good. Unfortunately (for me), my mother has hit the reset button on her move.

I accompanied her to her doctor's appointment last week. As I helped her fill in the forms in the waiting room, I started to get a bad, bad feeling that all was not right in retirement village heaven. Depressed, lonely, bored. Depressed, lonely, bored. In a warehouse for old people.

In the exam room, she sat on the exam table in a gown, with her old lady blue jeans half on her legs. When the doctor came in, she kicked her feet like a kid and said belligerently that she wanted to move back to the condo.

The doctor asked her to stick it out another month, but I knew that was a waste of breath. My mother is a bulldog. You wouldn't know it to look at her tiny 93-pound frame, but when she wants something, she goes after it with a single-minded focus. Maybe that's because she can only hold one thing in her mind at a time these days. The move pretty much destroyed her short-term memory. She may be hoping it will come back if she moves back to familiar territory. Logical. She reminds me of what a cat does during an earthquake: run until the earth stops shaking. Wherever the cat hunkers down equals safety. Right now Mom's world is shaking. The condo represents safety.

Most of my blog viewership has departed, leaving only a few friends and family members, all of whom are over 50, I believe. So you get the word rewind. I don't need to explain. If you are under 40, you may not be familiar with the word rewind. Just think of your parents' VCR. Or that old 8-track tape player in your basement (antique!). My mom wants a mulligan. A do-over. A reboot. She's calling a moving company tomorrow to help her rewind time.

My first thought was, how could she do this to me? Fortunately, my second thought was, how can I support her in her quest to be as happy as she can be in her final days? My third thought was, what the hell am I going to do when my turn comes?