Closer to the edge

Howdy from Albuquerque. As I sidled along tidy sidewalks next to cinder block walls and wooden fences in the neighborhood today, cold in the shade and warm in the sun, I pondered two things: the depthless blue of the late fall New Mexico sky and the progressive nature of mental illness.

Wait, Carol, what? Are you mentally ill? Well, what would you call a person who deliberately, almost rebelliously, even compulsively, eschews a traditional safe lifestyle for a path uncomfortably close to self-annihilation? I’ve been trying on the term minimalist. As in, Honey I shrunk myself and now I’m a minimalist! I’ve jettisoned possessions like an aged cat spews gas. If you don’t know me, it sounds plausible. Yeah, cool, Carol’s a minimalist. However, I know me, and I can’t hide behind a claim of minimalism. That would be a bit like spraying poo-pourri in the bathroom. We all know what goes on in there when you turn the faucet on full blast.

It could be that my mental compulsion to downsize is in alignment with the current zeitgeist of decluttering and simplifying. Some of you might say, Thank you, Carol, for living simply so that others might simply live. Right. You obviously don’t know me.

Doing a Marie Kondo on my life might actually be trendy but my hipness factor is unearned—in fact, if I'm hip for pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, it is purely coincidental. I was dismantling my life, or it was crumbling around me, long before it was cool to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Who cares. I’m beyond hip now. I’m out in the stratosphere, way past Swedish death cleaning, on my way to total erasure.

What is “pure” minimalism? Is that a thing? No idea.

As part of my quest to downsize after Mom died, I decided to move from Portland to Tucson. You all know the story. My decision was logical (I thought), based on my knowledge at the time. Now I know there were some things I didn’t know, and I didn’t realize then that I should have known them. For example, I didn’t know I was a credit ghost. That situation made it difficult to rent an apartment. (Embarrassing disclosure: I apparently failed to recall that I may have created that condition years ago myself by freezing my credit after some generic data breach. No recollection.) Second, I didn’t know how expensive car insurance was in Arizona (I could have researched it). Further, I didn’t know that fiber optic for internet is not a thing in my Tucson neighborhood and never will be (could have researched that, too). Finally, I’d heard rumors but didn’t fully understand that tenants in Arizona have almost no rights (it’s right there in the Arizona Landlord and Tenant Act, I could have looked it up and chosen to move to a different state—apparently Oregon has good tenants’ rights. Who knew).

I wasn’t totally ignorant. Some things I knew. Stuff we all know. You get what you pay for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. There’s a sucker born every minute. Nothing is guaranteed but death and taxes. Blink and you’ll miss it. The early bird gets the worm and then is annihilated by a diamond back rattlesnake. Never fall in love with a car.

I am not all-knowing. I doubt if anyone is, even though some people I’ve known sure act like it. Carol, you should [insert suggestion here]. I’m sure part of the reason I’m standing on the edge of the existential cliff overlooking a fresh new hell is because I deliberately did the opposite of what they all suggested. I'm obstinate that way. Hence, the diagnosis of mental illness. Well, the difference between a suggestion and a criticism is not hard to discern.

At some point, you have to stop peeling back the layers. If you peel too deep, what’s left? There’s just a gaping mouth, waiting for a kind soul to insert worms. Nobody is going to stuff food down my throat except me—at least, not until I’ve had a couple strokes and can no longer lift a fork to my lips. Whenever I feel like whining Oh, no, please don’t make me take care of myself, my mother’s voice rings in my ears. This not the voice of my demented mother, the one I trailed behind, stooping as needed to rescue a dropped glove, a used tissue. Rather, it is the voice of the mother who lived with my father and sneakily thwarted his wishes at every turn. He wanted me living in their basement forever, tied to his twenty-dollar bill gas-money handouts. She wanted me out of the house to sink or swim on my own. To motivate me, she spoke the dreaded words: “Carol, just get a job.”

As I contemplate the pursuit of a life shallow in material possessions but flowing with creativity, I hear her voice daily. Right on, Mom. I hear you. I could get a job, I bet. Probably. As long as it doesn’t involve leaning my head back or balancing on a ladder, there are many things I could do. Probably not driving, maybe not heavy lifting, but I could certainly sell small things to customers. How long before stoking the fires of consumer culture sent me running screaming into the night?

I’m squatting (stiffly, because of arthritis) at the intersection of a few questions. First, what is home? What is it, where is it, and how small can home be before it cannot support life? There must be someplace for me somewhere, probably more than one someplace. It’s a big country and it’s not like I’m moving to Mars. Here’s another question: What is freedom? Is anyone truly free? Where on the planet can you go to avoid someone holding up a book of statutes and telling you No, you can’t live like that?

What if I don’t want to be a tenant or a traditional homeowner? What other options are open to me? Even if I bought an undeveloped patch of land in the desert, there are laws about parking a “home” there. There are laws about parking a “home” on someone else’s land. There are laws about parking a “home” on BLM land, which supposedly belongs to all of us.

You’ve probably heard people say something like “home is where the heart is” and thought, Aww, isn’t that sweet. I don’t find it all that helpful. My heart has been obliterated, shattered into a billion glittery bits that haven’t yet fallen to earth. Maybe they will eventually coalesce and stake a claim in some city I can find on a map. Silver City, my friend says. Bisbee, you would love it there, lots of artists. Sedona, Wickenberg, Green Valley, Ajo, Yuma, Quartzite.

One more truism: If you don’t have a “home,” then you can never be lost.

This ten-day cat-sitting house-sitting gig in Albuquerque has given me some valuable insights. Albuquerque is an appealing city, with its pueblo architecture and civilized sidewalks. Despite the dry air and nosebleeds, I have enjoyed seeing some local sights. For example, the petroglyphs are a twenty-minute walk away, how cool is that. However, if you’ve seen one ancient rock carving, you’ve pretty much seen them all, and the weather, despite the sunshine and blue sky, is colder than a snowball’s dirty brown underbelly, and being cold sucks. It’s not winter yet and the nighttime temps are below freezing. It's not news that I was not made for cold weather. I’ve been complaining about being cold forever. My blood slows to a viscous crawl below 50°F.

Regarding the house-sitting gig, this four-bedroom two-story condo would be great for someone young enough to be on the ascending side of a career trajectory. Owning a house like this says you have achieved the American dream, you have arrived, congratulations, you are finally a viable adult. (We were worried about you for a while.) For someone like me, a nontraditional oldster tumbling in freefall down the descending side of a career trajectory, living in a place like this would be a heavy drag on my quest for minimalism. It’s a lot of space that demands constant upkeep and cleaning for no good purpose except to store and display the trophies of success. I don’t need display shelves anymore. I never achieved success, and I gave what few trophies I earned to the thrift stores.

The best part of any home is the four-legged creatures who dwell within. However, much as I am enjoying caring for this funny little old cat, my heart has not found solace. It is great to feel cat fur again, but petting a cat who is not Eddie does not fill the massive Eddie-sized hole in my heart. 

And, oh yeah, the check engine light came on again. So, if I don’t see you here on this blog next Sunday, I’m stuck somewhere on I-25 or I-10 in the desert between Albuquerque and Tucson. I'd be obliged if you would send a posse.

A derailed life

Today I donned rain gear and risked a walk in the park. As I kept one eye on the clouds, I thought about how I would describe the evolution of my grief over the death of my cat. The fact that I'm thinking about words is a sign that I'm moving out of my broken heart and back into my crazy head.

Three weeks ago, my life was going in a direction. Yes, it was a confused, uncertain direction driven by my mother's slow descent into dementia. Still, it seemed like a positive direction . . . somehow I managed to keep creating, even in the limbo of my confusion. Then my cat died.

Now I seem to be derailed into a different direction, judging by the boxes of stuff I am preparing to cast out of the Love Shack. However, I'm aware it's possible I'm stuck on a siding. I can't be sure. Maybe the previous three years were actually a siding, and now I've been bumped back onto the main track. Who can say?

I've learned two things about myself.

First, I have learned I am capable of commitment. I wasn't sure. My track record of relationships seems to indicate otherwise. However, now I know I was fully committed to something. That seems reassuring on some level, to know I'm not devoid of a characteristic important to mature human interaction.

However, the other thing I learned is that I used that cat like an anchor, like ballast, to keep me on an even keel during the tumult of the rest of my life. He was the steady presence. What an unfair burden to place on another creature. Some part of me knew he would eventually leave me—nothing lasts forever, especially not a fat old cat. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

Reality seems nebulous now. As I walked today, I found myself mesmerized by the images of trees and clouds reflected in the mud puddles along the path. Sheltered from the wind, the mud puddles showed a dark alternative universe. I wondered what it would feel like to dive into that other world and sink into those black trees.

I can't yet occupy the middle of my twin-sized bed. To help me sleep, I made a cat-shaped pillow and filled it with dry rice. It takes up the space on my bed formerly occupied by my cat. Even though my cat was sixteen pounds, the inert heft of five pounds of rice resembles the presence of a sleeping cat. The first night I slept with my rice cat, it felt so authentic, I dissociated from reality. I wasn't sure if he was really dead or if he was there after all, pressing against the small of my back, and the horrible morning at the vet was just a horrible nightmare.

Now I say to myself, This is a pillow, this is not a cat. This is a pillow, this is not a cat. That seems to help.

A couple nights ago, I drove out to the emergency vet to pick up Eddie's ashes. The tech handed me a sky-blue box. I checked and saw Eddie's name and my last name on a label. I wanted to scream, but I thanked her and walked outside to my car. I patted the box and felt something like relief. Then I proceeded to get lost in the neighborhood trying to find my way among avenues, streets, and courts back to a familiar part of the city. Later that night, I saw on the news that there had been a shooting half a block away from the vet a half hour after I was there. Such is life.

When I finally got home, I opened the box. Inside was a nice wooden cube engraved with Eddie in gold letters. They also included a little clay tablet imprint of Eddie's paw and a tiny plastic envelope of his hair. I don't know what is in the box (could be sand for all I know), and I don't know if the imprint really is of Eddie's paw. However, I do know those little snips of hair are Eddie's.

I put his box on the shelf above my computer desk next to a photo. Now he's home.

My loss seems trivial in light of the losses people face daily all around the world. When I cry, I try to include everyone and everything in my grief. That seems only fair; the death of one cat means something only to me, but the world is full of sorrows worth lamenting. Off the top of my head: The death of democracy; the death of a basketball star; the deaths from famine, earthquake, illness, and war; the deaths of millions of kangaroos and koalas . . . don't forget the slow death of a planet no longer capable of supporting human life. How do we put all this suffering into perspective? I don't know. I can't.

Meanwhile, here I go, back to my Swedish death cleaning in preparation for my new life.

Take me with you

The death of my cat smashed a hole in my life last week, leaving me a shattered mess. I've done my best to ride the waves of grief as I clean up and reclaim my space. It's not easy.

Thank you to all who reached out to sympathize and console me. Thank you to my sister-in-law who carted off the leftover cat food and cat litter. And the toys, fleastop, and fur grooming devices. I hope she will come with a truck and take up the six-foot tall cat tree occupying five square feet of my living room.

This week, I've coped by staying busy. I felt compelled to move furniture around, to take down the cat perches in every room, to do all the noisy home projects I postponed to avoid disturbing sacred nap time. I washed four loads of cat bedding. I vacuumed cat hair tumbleweeds. Even so, tiny balls of fur remain, stuck like burrs to blankets and rugs and all my fleece pants.

A thirteen year relationship ended in the space of two fraught days. I still can't believe he is gone. That cat was my parent, my child, my spouse, my business partner, my interior decorator, my personal trainer, my meditation coach, and my best friend. He filled more roles than any human could, and he did it with something as close to unconditional love as you will ever find in a living creature. I would gladly trade a lifetime of cat litter in my bed to have that cat back again.

People who are not cat people have asked me when I will get another cat. As if cats are interchangeable. As if any random bundle of fur will do. I can't imagine another cat taking Eddie's place. Cats are no more interchangeable than are spouses or children. Maybe someday I will welcome a new cat, but it won't be to replace Eddie. He was one of a kind.

Grief has its pace and tone. I don't need to defend or justify my sorrow. Let me put it like this. I don't care if you think I should be over it by now. I try not to burden others with my sorrow. However, sometimes grief takes me down. Not for long. I can't breathe when I start keening. My congested sinuses don't allow much wallowing. Still, I feel what I feel. I can't be your Little Mary Sunshine. I can't get my face to fight gravity right now. Every part of me sags. If you spent thirteen years with something you loved, you'd miss it if it suddenly disappeared. The pain of loss is physical. I would gladly trade my mother to hold my cat in my arms again.

I dread coming home to an empty house. My heart tears open that moment when I enter and smell only mold and cooked onions. The place smells unoccupied now, like no one lives here. The absence of his presence is profound. For a small creature, he commanded a lot of space. He was sixteen pounds of energy, even when he was sleeping. That was never more clear than when the vet gave him a sedative. My weary sick cat sank into my arms, all sixteen pounds, nose in my jacket, finally at rest, finally out of pain, while I stroked his fur and dripped tears. I wish I could forget that moment. I wish I could freeze that moment in time. Stop time, right there, when he was alive but not in pain. Twenty seconds later, he was dead.

Maybe if I had had more time to let him go, this wouldn't be so hard. You know, months or years of pumping him full of treatments to keep him going so I could postpone this awful moment. We had thirteen wonderful years together, just us. He suffered two days and exited, stage right, leaving me in free fall. I don't know what comes next, but now I'm closer to finding out.

The terrible no good very bad king hell bummer week

I wish I could say it was my mother, but no, it was my cat. On Tuesday last week, I took him to the vet for his annual wellness exam. They cleaned out his ears and treated him for an ear infection. Somewhere along the way, he apparently had a stroke. By Thursday morning, I could tell he was going to die soon. I took him to the emergency vet. An hour later, he died in my arms.

I am destroyed.

Happy Earth Day from the Chronic Malcontent

As a long-practicing dermatillomaniac, I assess my mental state by how many raw open bloody wounds festoon my cuticles on any given day. A few nights ago I noticed all ten of my fingertips were devoid of wounds. I was astounded. The pressure was apparently too much; the next day I counted six open wounds and two hangnails I hadn't yet been able to yank. Sigh. As my cuticles go, there goes my serenity.

Why am I so anxious? Thanks for asking. As a self-described chronic malcontent, I always have a tenuous relationship with relaxation, peace, and serenity. My normal state is morose discontented fretfulness, as evidenced by the deep vertical furrow between my eyebrows. (Today I met a man who has a matching brow furrow! I didn't say anything to him about it, of course, but I felt better, somehow, knowing I'm not the only one who wears a sure sign of malcontentedness for everyone to see.) Anyway, fretful anxiety is my default state.

The past two weeks have been unusually unsettling. First, we've had one day of sun to five days of rain. Portland is waterlogged. Not flooding, just saturated. Sun breaks happen, and I turn toward them like the hothouse flower I am, but within minutes the clouds roll back in and it's pouring. We had a crap winter—way more snow and ice than usual, and so far spring has been wetter and cooler than average. I dream of Arizona daily.

Second, my maternal parental unit chose an assisted living place to move into, and thus on April 7 we made it happen, me, my brother, and two hired movers—professionals who had all the equipment, a fancy truck, and knew what they were doing (minimum charge $300). I arranged the furniture, hung the paintings and photographs. I got a senior-friendly microwave. I built her a dinky round wood-top table to replace her kitchen table so she would have someplace to eat her Cheerios. I'm still fetching things from the condo. Today it was gardening tools.

Her brain works intermittently. She has had a few good days. One day last week, she said she took a shower and only sprayed the aide once. We had a good laugh at that. I brought her some of her old sheet music (stored at my house for the past year) and she tentatively picked out some tunes on the grand piano in the common room. I sat with her in the outdoor smoking area, talking about nothing in particular, as rain drops fell on the rhodies behind us. The air smelled like spring (as long as I was upwind).

Most of the time, though, my mother is depressed and cranky at losing her independence, even though it was her idea. She knows she can't get mad at me, because then who would fetch her cigarettes, but I can tell she sure would like to get some resentment off her chest. I'm the one that sent her to that prison. She hates the food; she can't figure out the schedule; everything is in the wrong place... she copes by going to bed. I don't think a whole lotta gardening will be going on, but she's got her clippers now, just in case. I hope I don't hear any complaints about Mom whacking the rose bushes.

Third, last week, my cat's eye got infected, and now we have the thrice daily ritual of me trying to hold his twisty body still for the few seconds I need to rub ointment on his cheek in the general vicinity of his eye. It's a battle I'm not winning, but his eye is looking much better, so some of the goop must be finding the mark. I call him Squint Eastwood. I'm just grateful I don't have to give him a pill. If you have ever tried to pill a cat, you know what I mean.

A few days ago, I went for a walk around the Mt. Tabor reservoirs (.56 of a mile in circumference). The walk started out sunny, ended up rainy, ho hum, what's new. Someone had dragged an old well-used black leather office chair up the path to the reservoir and left it there in the walkway, where runners and walkers detoured around it. Maybe whoever donated it to the park thought people would like to sit there to watch the sun go down beyond the hills. Ha. Joke. What sun?

I walked past the chair a few times as I made my circuit, hunkered in my rain gear, watching it get wet. On my fifth circuit, the rain was pelting down and no one was nearby, so I grabbed that old chair and dragged it to a spot next to a park bench. I felt quite satisfied as I walked around the reservoirs one more time. I felt I had beaten back a tiny bit of the chaos, now that the seating was arranged to my liking. I hope no one saw me indulging my inner OCD tyrant.

As I was driving to my meeting today in my fossil-fuel burning car and remembering picking up trash in front of my elementary school on the first Earth Day in 1970, I thought about how hellish old age really is. People don't talk about it much. People don't talk about the food that goes through you so fast you don't have time to make it to the bathroom before it's dripping down your leg. Nobody wants to think about how it feels to see your contemporaries pushing wheelchairs and walkers up and down the hallways, heads bent, eyes dull. In the morning, you hear the hollering of Bingo numbers from the activities room. In the evening, you hear the droning of prayers over the dying woman in the room next door. You hear the chatter of the aides (the jailers) swooping by in their colorful scrubs, and for a moment you think, what weird hotel is this place? Then you remember, this isn't a hotel. This is where you go to die.

I am becoming more and more certain that if I am able to make the decision and execute it, I will opt out sooner not later, rather than wait until it's too late. I don't want to end up warehoused in a barracks for old people. Sure, maybe I would have some of my furniture and pictures around me—my Mom's place looks strangely familiar with her old flowered couch and chair, but you can't fool her. It's still a prison, and she knows it.

You know it's hot when the cat sleeps in the tub

During the spring, winter, and fall, I often try to remember how it feels to swelter in 90°+ heat. I never can. I know for my friends in Arizona, 90° is practically sweater weather. We aren't used to it so much, here in Stumptown. This year is unusual. June was a record breaker: nine days over 90, 21 days over 80, and 25 consecutive days with no rain. We joke around here that summer starts July 5: not this year. Summer arrived early and brought the fire season with it. The fireworks show at Fort Vancouver just about burned down the fort! WTF, you guys in The Couv!

I'm hunkered in front of the computer, waiting for the sun to stop scorching my front windows: To pass the time, I poured cold water on my head. The cat is dozing stoically in the bathtub. I wonder what he would do if I turned on the cold water. Yowwww!

This heat has slowed me down a bit. So has my new pedestrian lifestyle. I'm still managing to maneuver around, though, more or less. On Thursday I hopped on the #15 bus to join Bravadita in the Pearl District in NW Portland for the monthly First Thursday gallery walk. We met first at Powell's Books in 90°+ heat and sat in the AC for a while, talking, postponing the moment when we would enter the furnace outside to find our first gallery. Finally, we could postpone no longer. Water bottles in hand, we plunged into the heat.

Did you know sweaty feet and sandal leather combine to make blisters? Argh. I hobbled gamely from gallery to gallery, looking for something, I'm not sure what. Inspiration? A place to sit down? Affirmation that I'm still an artist? Huh. I don't see my art hanging on any walls except the Love Shack's. We were swinging with the young and hip crowd, wandering from painting to photograph. I took surreptitious photos of Bravadita when I thought she was ignoring me.

Sometimes I wonder where my acrylic paints are (what box, buried in what closet). I wonder if the ultramarine blue is moldy, or if the cadmium red is crusty and desiccated. I wonder where my good paintbrushes are (what drawer, what box). I wonder what it would be like to paint something. Anything. And then I think, where would I put it when it's finished? Every inch of wall space is covered with shelves or art.

I remember in art class years ago, we had an assignment to paint on a 11 x 14 panel, photograph the image, and paint a new image over the old image, over and over. I painted about 50 images in the space of several hours. I still have the slides somewhere (what box, what drawer). I could repeat that assignment again. Paint, photograph, and repaint, over and over. In a year, I would have one painting and 365 photographs of paintings that existed for one day. Oh, art, how transient thou art.

I'm running out of food. The heat wave has conspired to keep me housebound. Walking in this heat is not healthy, and I'm not a morning person. I won't starve, no worries. I don't feel like eating much in this heat, anyway. If I get really hungry, I can always order online and get stuff delivered. In a few more days, the heat will break, we'll be back to our usual cloudy damp gray skies, and I'll try once again to remember what it felt like to be sweltering in my cave.

The chronic malcontent suffers from a vestibular disturbance

I had to get out of the Love Shack for a while today. Three reasons: The morning clouds dissipated around noon, good time to go out for a sunshine fix. Second, my own personal ocean in my inner ears (vertigo) was relatively calm. I knew it wouldn't last long, no matter how still and level I tried to keep my head. And third, the boots pounding on the roof were too much to bear. Yep, that's right. Today the Love Shack is getting a new roof.

I don't own the Love Shack, in case you were wondering if I had anything to do with it. I've never seen the roof. It's flat, that's all I know. I can only imagine on a wet day it's a sloggy mess of mushy holly berries, never-decaying holly leaves, maple tree whirly seeds, raccoon nests, and bird poop. On a dry day, it's a dusty toxic mix of all that stuff. I feel sad for the three Spanish-speaking men who have been marching around on the roof ripping stuff apart since 8:45 this morning.

My cat is not amused. He spent the morning hunkered under the couch with a concerned look on his face, probably wondering who won't stop pounding at the door. I've been trying to write. Between the pounding, hammering, scraping, and tearing, and the intermittent growl of the compressor parked at the bottom of my back steps, I was somewhat distracted. My head was starting to vibrate, not a good sign. So I abandoned my cat and my writing project to go for a trot in Mt Tabor Park.

On Wednesdays no cars are allowed. The roads are safe for bicyclists, joggers, and dog walkers. The air today was lush with spring. Spring is a special time in Portland. The leaves are a billion shades of green (and purple in some cases, what are those weird trees, anyway?). The smell of newly whacked grass wafted along the trails, cut by... let's call them workers from the county sheriffs office, brought by van to do community service in the park. I can think of worse ways to do penance for one's misdeeds.

Oddly enough, while I was jogging, my head felt fine. It was only after I stopped moving that the waves of vertigo swept through my head. The lesson is, don't stop moving, I guess. But sooner or later, I get tired (sooner, usually), and I must stop. As I'm typing this, the vestibular ocean in my inner ears rises up and falls back, shaking me like a toyboat. I'm ignoring it.

As I walked up the street toward the park, I realized the roofer has roofed three houses in this one block in two days. I guess the mantra this week is make roofs while the sun shines. These guys are efficient: plan, approach, and execution in a matter of hours. I met the roofer (a non-Hispanic White guy) when he knocked on my door asking for access to the basement so he could plug in his infernal compressor. Beyond that one interaction, I haven't seen him. I imagine he's supervising a dozen other roofs in the neighborhood.

These guys aren't super big, but they wield aluminum ladders like swords and then climb up them like ninja warriors. I doubt if these roofers suffer from vertigo. Dehydration, maybe, but not vertigo. My new theory about inner ears is that my ear crystals are clumped somewhere in the vicinity of the ear equivalent of my toes into boulders that sluggishly crash into all the nerve endings in their path. In other words, ear sludge is creating a slow-motion train wreck in my head. That is why the Epley Maneuver is only partially successful. I fear I'm too impatient, advancing through the moves before gravity can budge the sludge. Either that or I'm doing it wrong. Or I have a brain tumor. Whatever.

A ladder has now appeared outside my front window, followed by heavy pounding. Three guys sure can make a lot of noise. I just plugged my mp3 headphones in my ears: Psychedelic Furs. I sail away on my cerebral sea while my cat stoically endures.

The chronic malcontent runs in circles

I ran the paths in Mt Tabor Park yesterday. Well, let's be honest: I trotted. First, I trotted around the big reservoir on 60th Avenue (0.56 miles, so we aren't talking marathon here). Facing west, I saw layers of gray clouds over the West Hills above Portland. The wind in my face was chilly, and I wished I had a hat with ear flaps. Must have been 63°. Brrrr, said the hothouse flower.

I turned the corner of the reservoir, heading north, and suddenly saw bright blue reflected in the water below where a murder of crows was lustily bathing. Lo, the clouds had parted in the east. Between a bank of fluffy white clouds rushing northward before the wind was a thin swathe of amazing turquoise sky. Brilliant, glowing, azure turquoise, beyond blue, definitely not the sky blue color in your crayon box. A brilliant glowing window into the universe.

The clouds rolled on and the blue sky disappeared. But I was happy as I panted and sweated, knowing that just a few thousand feet above my head, the entire sky was that mind-boggling blue.

Today, the clouds fled. Rain is due tomorrow, I think, but today was delicious. I went out in it as the sun was setting to soak up light and warmth, like a hothouse flower, like a horde of other Portlanders who bloom when the sun shines. Sunshine makes everything more tolerable. I even saw my neighbor to the south, whom I rarely see. The only way I know he is still alive is the growing collection of beer, wine, and tequila bottles in the yellow recycling bin. Which he often forgets to put out on collection day. I wonder why.

When I got back to the Love Shack, the living room was glowing with golden light. My cat lay in it, happily wrestling with his blue rug, glorying in the rays. Five minutes of light, and then it was gone. The sun sunk below the eave of the building across the street. The living room turned gray. The cat got up and left the room.

How to choose a carpet color (when you have a cat)

Today I went in for my quarterly tune-up with Dr. Tony, the eccentric but lovable naturopath. Every visit is a new adventure. Today the presenting issue was—surprise!—hormones.

“How old are you?” he asked me hesitantly. Actually, he didn't say it like that. He said, “How many years young are you?” Then he smirked a little bit. “Are you still menstruating?”

Even on a good day, even with a good friend, I dislike any mention of women's bodily functions, but in this case, seeing as how I am fifty-seven, I can honestly say, Dude, I haven't menstruated in so many years, I don't even remember what it was like. I didn't say that out loud, though, because it's not entirely true. I do remember what it was like, but I'd prefer to forget.

“Something wacky with my hormones?” I asked, not all that interested.

“Something related to your uterus,” he replied, eliciting a grimace from me. I'll admit to having a stomach, but please, not a uterus. Quelle horror.

“And your thyroid,” he added, rubbing his hands together, a trademark sign I've come to realize means a couple things: Oh, boy, time for some fun! and Oh, boy, now I can shave another slice off my student loans!

He got out his little silver gun and laid that nearby. In case I was thinking of misbehaving. Then he went out into the office area and came back with a zip case, which held all the little glass vials that on my last visit were stashed on the floor in a plastic bag. The Total Body Modification techniques were a new part of Dr. Tony's repertoire three months ago. Today the word of the day was efficiency.

He took one of the vials and waved it around my head and down my spine. Oh, brother. Then he did some baby karate chops on my neck and shot several of my vertebrae with the silver gun, and lo, I was cured. Suddenly I felt all tingly and energized. So weird.

He gave me a homeopathic in a cute little blue bottle, and told me to take Vitamin D and Cortrex every day, and come back in three months. I'm on maintenance mode!

So, anyway, here's the rest, and the reason for the title of this post.

I came home and because I felt so full of energy, I decided to vacuum in preparation for the visit of a friend. Yes, tomorrow someone is coming over to the Love Shack. I can't do much about the old cat barf stains, but I can at least suck up the kitty litter, fur balls, and dust bunnies with my fabulous but rarely used vacuum cleaner. Within 30 seconds of switching on the machine, I began to sneeze. Hard. Repeatedly. I expected it, however, and I was armed with fresh boxes of tissue placed strategically along my path. But I always forget how long the swollen sinuses last, how incessant the post nasal drip, how dreary the headache.

Which brings me to my advice about choosing your carpet color, if you happen to have a cat. As I see it, you have several options. You can go with a dull pearl gray, which will camouflage the speckles of kitty litter that your cat tracks all over the house, no matter how many little rugs you put down in front of his box. Pearl gray is a modern neutral, guaranteed to go with any wall covering. I myself have covered my walls with shelves full of books and binders, but you might have expanses of blank wall, which can be painted virtually any color with confidence, if your carpet color choice is gray.

If gray seems too cold, you can try a warm beige tweedy tone. Walk over and look at the dry food in your cat's dish. About that color, is what I'm thinking. My cat gets a multicolored dry kibble, so me, I would choose a sort of muted confetti palette. What you want is something that can hide the stains left by the piles of cat food that your cat horks up in the middle of the night. Warm beige tones are always in style, and I've heard they are the neutral of choice if you are planning on putting your home on the market.

Your last carpet color choice would, of course, be the color of your cat's fur. I only have one cat, which should make it simpler for me. But he happens to be multicolored, sort of dark on top and lighter underneath, which means I find clumps of various hued hair all over the house. I would have to choose something like a tightly woven oriental design, where if you squinted your eyes, the piles of hair could look kind of like paisleys. You know, part of the design. I don't know what you should do if you have more than one cat, though. Maybe scatter rugs?

My cat heard me typing. He hates that. Now he's lying between my hands, purring. Actually, you could say he's dictating. What color of carpet should we get, little dude? Brrrrrowwnnnn! Well, if money were no object, meaning if I had lots of the stuff, then I would re-tile the kitchen floor with a speckley gray-on-gray linoleum, so I'd never have to sweep again. Then I would carpet the main room in something tweedy with a very low pile so barf couldn't get down into the warp and weft to rot. Finally, I would carpet the bedroom in some wild paisley print. (It wouldn't keep me awake: I can't see much without my glasses.)

And that is how you choose a carpet color when you have a cat. Did I make myself clear? If you choose your carpet color wisely, you will never have to vacuum again, thereby saving your sinuses hours of throbbing grief. You're welcome. If you found this helpful—or if you want further clarification—please tell my cat. He is looking forward to hearing from you.

One small resolution for a better new year—for other drivers, anyway

The beginning of a new year is a good time to clean house, review past performance, and make plans for the future. I'm sneaking up on all three, in good malcontent fashion, doing a little here and there and pretending I'm making progress. Little things hinder forward movement. For example, stepping in cat barf. I think it was cat barf. My sinuses are chronically clogged (the Love Shack is a dust and hairball museum), so I'm not totally sure it wasn't cat poop. I didn't smell anything, so I didn't know immediately that disaster had struck. All I know is, at some point when I navigated the dim hallway to the bathroom, I stepped in something that unbeknownst to me adhered itself to the bottom of my shoe. I then proceeded to track it all over the house.

Eventually I caught on, when I saw the cat sniffing my footsteps. I washed my shoe, groaning loudly all the while. The cat watched, looking a little bemused. Like, WTF, dude, didn't you smell it? Why didn't you step around it? If only. I laugh when I look at my little collection of outdoor shoes, neatly parked inside my back door. It is possible my outdoor shoes are cleaner than my indoor shoes. Well, on the bright side, that miserable toy poodle who used to live next door and leave me miniature poop bombs along the back walkway is out of my life.

Well, if stepping in cat barf is the worst thing that happens, I won't complain. It could be worse. My friends in Minnesota are slammed with excruciatingly cold temperatures, just inhumanly cold arctic air, snow, ice, and wind. It's nuts. I'm such a weather wimp, I can hardly handle 40°. Although I've heard people from back East tell me that Portland has a special brand of damp winter cold that gets in the bones and stays for days, often in the form of pneumonia.

We all have our ways of coping. Me, I just microwave my rice-filled foot warmer and hunker down to wait it out. If you wait long enough, even a crappy fog inversion layer will eventually dissipate to reveal blue sky. Today we had sunshine, real honest-to-goodness sunshine, but the arc of the sun is so low in the sky, we might as well be in Alaska. It's barely 3:30 in the afternoon and already it's twilight in the north shadow of Mt. Tabor. There's no point in trying to go for a walk. Even if I find some dregs of sunshine on the west side of the hill, the shady sidewalks and roads will be treacherous. Because a hip fracture took down my dad, I am understandably wary of pavement covered with frost, ice, moss, or even just deceptively dangerous plain old rain.

I've decided that one of my resolutions for the new year is to stop calling other drivers terms of endearment like Jacka-- and F---head. I say these names with very little animosity, more like a greeting, really. Like, Hey, what's going on, Jacka--? Still, if anyone heard me (and sometimes my mother does), one might think I was angry (sometimes I get frustrated, but it's always short-lived; the adrenalin is not worth the effort). So, in an effort to do my part to make the world a slightly better place, I hereby resolve to use the kinder terms Jackrabbit and Furhead when I am greeting drivers who are attracting my attention with their odd, quirky, charming, stupefying, and otherwise incomprehensible behavior. And Gramps always works, too.

Will I ever stop doubting? It's doubtful

I'm in maniac writing mode, trying to finish Chapter 4 of my dissertation to upload to my Chairperson this week. This thing just keeps expanding. It's a bloated blob of muck now, completely out of control. I keep stirring it with my stick, trying to make sense of it all, hoping it will come clear.

The cat helps when he can. He just commandeered my chair, so I have to write standing up. The weather took a turn, my feet are cold, my ankles are swollen, and my Chapter 4 is a bloated fetid stinking mass of shite.

My cat poked me in the butt just now and said, “Are you okay?” He is watching me type. He doesn't like it. He would prefer I pay attention to him. I want to post something before I fall asleep on my feet, so I keep typing.

He pokes me again. This time he says quite clearly, “Do you work here?” What, does he want a drink? Sure, dude, I work here. What'll you have? He just wants me to stop typing and give him a rubdown.

It's probably not as bad as I think. I'm just feeling insecure. I live with doubt. I know I'm supposed to be a scholar, and I am almost there, sometimes. But this is new to me, and there are so many details to consider: content, structure, formatting... My fear is that I'll format the crap out of it and it will look like a million bucks, but the damn thing will make no sense. Completely miss the mark. Take off on a tangent, maybe one of those tempting frothy emotional appeals, and zoooom, it's gone, into the stratosphere, leaving the Problem Statement, the Purpose Statement, and the Significance of the Study behind in the mud. My mind is not a great place to be right now. I'm doubting everything. I look at words that I've typed a billion times—Administrative. Systems. Quality—and I wonder, did I spell that right? How many words have I left out? What am I not seeing? Dang it. I need to see it.

I once heard somebody say “I'll see it when I believe it” in reference to some seemingly impossible task. I'm sure he heard it from someone else. He's long gone so I can't ask him where the phrase came from. I'd really like to know if he ever believed it. People say we create our own reality. (Now there's a scary thought.) But I do know my mind is usually out to get me. Hence the constant state of doubt.

The cat looks permanently parked on my chair. Time to turn on the TV. There's nothing on, but I can immerse myself into something other than myself for a while. That will be a relief.

What I have learned about the dissertation journey

Earlier today I logged into the online course room and clicked the Accept button to give permission to the university to suck $794 out of my bank account. This gives me the privilege of earning one more credit and the delight of toiling another 12 weeks toward the goal of earning this wretched Ph.D., which lies somewhere off in the hazy distance where it's been for the past seven years like a ship that never comes to port. Ho hum. After seven years, I'm tired of waiting. The glow has faded. It's just a job, and not one that pays well. Actually, it's sort of like being a slave. A slave to a scholarly pursuit.

This evening I logged into the university course room again, after a technological meltdown resulting from a fight between Wordpress and Mailchimp, during which I inadvertently closed all the windows. Bam. Problem solved! Should have thought of that sooner.

On the university website, there are a handful of discussion folders in which students post questions, concerns, complaints, kudos. The only folder I visit is the one marked Dissertations. There are roughly 300 new posts a month in that folder, mostly along the lines of Oh, no! I'm starting Comps in a week! What can you tell me about Doctor So-and-So? Help! As if Doctor So-and-So is going to help them at all with Comps. Come on, people! It's a test!

I've lurked in this discussion folder for seven years, reading posts from all kinds of people on all kinds of topics. When someone successfully passes Comps, forty people shout out, Way to go! Congratulations! When someone's cat died, a crowd of students rushed to offer condolences. When someone is put on academic probation (which happens regularly), the students rally around with email addresses for the ombudsman, the dean, and the accreditation agency, urging unflagging persistence, don't back down!

I've seen people come and go. Some of them graduate and, before their email is disconnected, they come back to wave good-bye, to collect their litany of congratulations, and to exhort the rest of us to keep moving forward, never give up, we can do it, rah rah rah. Some of those left behind mention these winners in later posts, usually in response to a post in which a lost soul is bleating for help with their wretched concept paper or their confounded dissertation proposal. Call Dr. Nina! Call Doc Crock!

We've had our share of wackjobs. The discussions are like any other comment thread, where people say what they mean without really thinking about it, and other people take offense and retaliate, which provokes another attack... it can be just slightly less vitriolic than the comments I enjoy reading at the end of a Yahoo! article about the latest doings of the White House (but not nearly as entertaining. Just sayin.')

So immersed was I in the discussion folder, I almost failed to notice that my Chair had updated my first assignment. I haven't even posted an assignment, so I opened up the Activities tab to read her comment. The IRB has approved my revised recruiting methodology! Congrats!

Well, isn't that nice. I can now ask the administrator at the career college to forward my email invitation to the cowering, resentful, bitter, fearful faculty that remain after the closure of one campus. If I'm lucky some of them will express their willingness to participate in my study. They ought to have some interesting things to say.

Oh, what have I learned about this dissertation journey?

• You are on your own. No one cares.
• It always takes three times as long as you think it will.
• You can't force anyone to participate.
• Just do what your Chair tells you, don't whine and don't argue.
• If you feel compelled to argue, be ready to cite APA page numbers.
• Don't use their templates, because they don't know squat about styles in Word.
• Don't waste time in the dissertation folder reading the complaints of your classmates. Get busy.
• Don't think about how great it will be to finish. It will just depress you, because you aren't there yet. You still have to write the manuscript and defend it.
• If you have a cat, put your nose in its fur and be here now.
• If you don't have a cat, borrow one. Seriously. It may be the thing that gets you through.

Ants

One of the consequences of embarking upon the journey toward an advanced degree is that some parts of life must inevitably receive less attention. The chore of writing coherent sentences is all consuming. There is little time left for things like personal hygiene, housekeeping, or car maintenance. You already know I live in squalor. I've written about the dust balls and cat hair before. But I don't think I've mentioned the ants. Have I mentioned the ants?

I'm beginning to suspect my sole purpose in life is to transport ants from one location to another. I'm really good at it, mostly (although I will say that not all of them survive the trip, most notably the ones that inadvertently trod upon my neck). They load up the gangway to my shirt while I'm washing dishes at the kitchen sink. Then they sample the various activities of my scarf, hat, and pants. At their own risk, of course. Then I walk into another room, where they disembark on my computer keyboard or my television remote control. They are thrill-seeking tourists, looking for that next adventure. And I'm just the human who can give it to them.

I've spread a concoction made of mineral oil and cayenne pepper along my kitchen counter, but I always miss some spots. These become ports of entry for intrepid scouts, who navigate between reeking hot puddles of pepper, like humans traverse Yellowstone. It's comical to watch them stop, back up, turn, start up again, stop, like little matchbox toys. Sometimes they are boxed in. Then they just have to sit there. I don't usually save them. But when I return to the kitchen the next day, they are gone. Who rescued them? Maybe there is a superhero for ants trapped on kitchen counters. Save us from the evil human!

Sometimes they organize a coup. They try to take over the kitchen. The little buggers have almost succeeded a couple times, especially when their spies locate the cat food. The supply lines are long and thick as your finger, little workers trundling back and forth. Must bring home the bacon! Feed the children! I would invite them in as guests, but my cat is less hospitable. He won't fight them, or eat them (I assume they aren't that tasty, although I'm sure I've accidentally cooked them into my scrambled eggs a few times). The cat gives me the evil eye when his food dishes are overrun. I can't live long with the evil eye.

I don't like killing anything, even ants. I also hate eating meat, but that is another story. In the flora and fauna of the Love Shack, I let spiders live, as long as they aren't in my bed. I save bees, hornets, wasps, and yellow jackets. I even save flies, if I can catch them. Any one critter, I will attempt to rescue and put outside. But when critters attack in hordes, I can't save them all. Moths and ants overwhelm me with sheer numbers. I'll tolerate a few, but eventually the tolerant giant is moved to retaliate.

Out come the big guns. No, I'm not talking about pesticide sprays or ant motels. I'm talking about the oldest remedy for what ails you: alcohol! Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle sends them to ant heaven. I mop up their sopping carcasses with a paper towel and toss them to their final resting place in the trash. Then I spray bleach on the battlefield. And finally I salt the earth (all entry points I can locate) with the hot pepper oil concoction. That buys me a few weeks of peace and ant-free scrambled eggs. Such is the life of a (slightly crazy) doctoral student.

And now a encrypted message from my cat

I should let my cat write my paper. That is the conclusion I reached tonight, as I sweated over grammar and fretted over punctuation. As I was stewing, my cat jumped onto the desk, sat on the keyboard, and typed a series of numbers with his butt. It looked like it could have been a sequence of data from the latest Mars rover, which landed successfully over the weekend. For all I know, he works for NASA. It is possible my cat could be a lot smarter than he looks. Then again, probably not.

Still, I wonder if my butt could do any better. I've never actually tried typing with my butt. I'm not sure I would have much control. In the way of all geniuses and Olympic athletes, my cat made it look so easy. He wasn't even watching what he was typing—talk about touch-typing. More like blind, fingerless touch-typing. Typing by instinct. Writing elevated to the level of I don't care what I am writing, talk to the butt.

I doubt I could do any better, really. My butt is a double-wide trailer compared to his petite derriere. Plus his butt is so... furry. (I guess if I live long enough my butt might grow furry too, sort of like my upper lip is doing.) I'm not sure if furriness has an effect on typing ability. I'll let you know if I ever find out.

Oh, oh, here he comes again. I think he might have something to add to this blog. I will leave it to your superior intelligence to interpret the following syntactical string:

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm0.00000012222222222222112111