Stoics don't cry

Last week I left you with a cliffhanger—would I survive the dental debacle or would I run screaming like a crybaby into oncoming traffic? Were you worried? I wasn't. But I should have been. I arrived to the emergency dental appointment on Tuesday, sure I was going to get a round of antibiotics and be feeling better in no time. That is not what happened.

The dentist took off the temporary crown and peered into the abyss. "I'm going to put some cold stuff on that back tooth and you tell me if it hurts," he said. 

He sprayed something on a q-tip and poked the tooth.

"Yow!" I said, just about levitating out of the chair.

"It's not infected," he said. "And you don't need a root canal. If the nerves were dead, you wouldn't feel a thing. Let's try putting some desensitizing liquid on it and put the temporary back on. See what happens. Sound good? Okay. Maybe we can numb it up a little bit," he said. 

What do you mean, a little bit? I didn't find the uncertainty in his voice reassuring. I laid there with some misgivings as he prepared the giant silver needle ray gun. He came at me from below, thinking he could fool me, but this was not my first rodeo in a dental chair. However, I welcomed the pinch and pull and stabbing pain with my trademark stoicism because I was pretty sure sweet oblivion would soon be happening.

"I'm going to go check on my other patient," the dentist said, stripping off his gloves. I sat in the chair and stared out the window at the cloudy sky, hoping to soon be able to rest my tense shoulders and relax my furrowed brow. I patted my face a few times. Was it getting numb? Not fast enough for me. 

All too soon, the dentist returned.

"It's not numb," I said.

"I think the desensitizing agent will help," he said. "But it is going to be very cold at first. And I have to paint all four nerves."

Four nerves! I was definitely on my last one. However, I dutifully winched open my mouth. He dipped a giant q-tip in something and painted my tooth. Instantly, pain shot down through my jaw into my spine, shattering my vertebrae as it went. I whimpered a tiny bit until the pain receded. 

"Hang on," he said and painted another part of the tooth. 

I groaned. I'd never experienced pain like this in my life. Worse than being socked in the jaw by my older brother. Worse than falling nose first onto concrete (also courtesy of my older brother). I realize now how fortunate I have been to have escaped serious pain until age 67. My luck had just run out. 

He painted another part of the tooth. I gripped my own hand and dug in. I would have drawn blood if I'd had any fingernails. The pain was excruciating. I could not help moaning. One of my moans turned into a despairing chuckle.

"People don't usually laugh when I do this," he said. Then he painted another side of the tooth. At that point, I wasn't sure if I was going to pass out, choke on my own spit, or have a heart attack. Any of those would have been fine with me if they would just lead to a cessation of pain.

"Almost done," he said and came at me again. The word torture crossed my mind several times. 

Finally, the tooth painting was over. He slapped the temporary back on and let his assistant deal with my trauma while he went to take care of his next patient. My woes had put a serious dent in their schedule. I successfully resisted the urge to apologize. 

I staggered out the door. The taste in my mouth, the smell in my head, the pounding in my jaw . . . I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to my car. I gagged a couple times, and prepared myself to hurl into the dirt beyond the curb. Gradually, the pain settled to a one-mule kick in the jaw instead of a twenty-mule team kick. I got into my car and thought maybe, just maybe, I might make it. 

Within five minutes, I was feeling great. Well, great in comparison to what I'd just experienced. Being relatively pain free compared to enduring the most horrendous pain I'd ever felt in my life is the most amazing kind of freedom. Going through such exquisite gut-wrenching pain and emerging victorious made me feel like I could do just about anything.

Which is a good thing, because on Friday, I was back in the hot seat for the permanent crowns. I was apprehensive but the prospect of finally having two crowns and a lovely bridge in between was a siren call lulling me into believing everything would be okay. Call it vanity if you must. I just really wanted a tooth back in that gap. 

"Do you want novocaine?" the assistant asked me. 

I felt my body clench from jaw to pelvis. "Do you think I should?"

"It shouldn't hurt much," she said. "Most people don't need it."

I grimaced, not wanting her to think me a wimp. "Okay, let's try it." 

It took over an hour for the dentist to grind the new appliance into shape so I could bite without breaking my jaw. In and out, in and out, pressing hard, youch, bite now, bite and chew, bite, bite, bite, okay. Check the little paper. Grinding, polishing, grind some more, bite bite bite. 

"This a strange form of sculpture, isn't it?" I mused during one short grinding break. It occurred to me, I probably would have made a good cosmetic dentist, back in my younger days when my eyes and hands were cooperating. 

"You have a deep overbite," he said. 

"You make it sound like that's a bad thing," I said. 

"If you don't mind . . . " he said and proceeded to grind some of the enamel off the upper teeth on that side. Whatever, I thought. It's on the inside, nobody will see. 

After an hour and a half, we agreed the bite was satisfactory. 

"The cement will be cold," he warned. He loaded up the glue and jammed the new bridge home. 

"Yow!" I grunted incoherently as he held the thing in place and zapped it with a blue light to cure the glue. Irradiated and in misery, all I could do was lie there and hope I would not choke on my own saliva. Breathe, I told myself, just breathe.

This back and forth had taken longer than expected. He was running way late. Once again I resisted the urge to apologize. Finally he unclipped my bib. As I wobbled to my feet, he told me I needed to get a special kind of floss to clean under the bridge so I wouldn't get tooth decay there, causing the whole thing to fail. 

And then he was gone to the room next door. I heard him welcome his patient with a jovial tone, as if he hadn't just spent a tedious hour installing an edifice over the chasm in my jaw. I thought, maybe he just really likes his job. Later I found out he was starting a week's vacation the next day. 

Since then, pain comes and goes. It moves around. The brutalized tooth seems quiescent. However, my jaw hinge throbs sometimes, and the nerves that he shot with his nasty silver needle ray gun sometimes quiver with rage. My neck has knots like the bumps on an alligator. I wonder if I will ever be the same.

Good news: ibuprofen. Other good news: lousy memory. By the time the next dental crisis rolls around, I will probably have forgotten how it felt to experience the worst pain of my life.  Someday soon, I predict I will be chomping apples on that fake tooth without a care. Even if I reread this blog, I won't remember the depth of my misery. It will all blend into one traumatic experience that I survived. The silver lining in the ongoing old age slow-motion catastrophe that is me.   

Planning my getaway

I remember a moment several months ago, sitting outside the care home with Mom in the dark. Even masked-up and six feet apart, we did a pretty good job of communicating. Mom asked me how things were going. I said, "Situation normal," and rolled my eyes. She didn't know what that meant. I explained. I'm sure she used to know, because she was married to a former Marine for over fifty years. However, dementia has a way of dispersing brain cells, and most likely some of the ones that evaporated from her head were the few that would have provided a definition of SNAFU. 

All that to say, situation normal. Mom may be gone, but I'm not, and life continues. I am not the boss of circumstances, no matter how I try to pretend I can predict or control what occurs. I don't fret a lot about it anymore. I have my multiple branching contingency plans (if this happens, then that; if that happens, then this!). I brush my teeth, scrub my skivvies in the tub, shop on Mondays, and continue to dismantle the detritus of my life so I can resurrect it somewhere in Arizona.

It's hard to plan for some things, though. Toothaches. Car problems. We all know teeth and cars go gunnysack sometimes, and we all know they don't heal themselves, although in the specific case of strange noises in cars, it helps to have a working radio.

Twenty-four years ago, shortly after I moved back to Portland from Los Angeles, one of my lower molars began to ache. I'd had a crown put on the tooth before I moved and figured the job was done. But teeth choose their moments to wake up and sing. I got a referral from a friend to a dentist, who admired the crown and then proceeded to break it when he drilled through it to give me a root canal. So, a root canal and two crowns later, you'd think the job would be done. Over the years, however, that tooth never gave up. The first dentist retired and died and a new dentist took over the practice. Every six months as I lay captive in the comfy chair, the new dentist would say, "Any teeth giving you trouble?" I would reply, "Well, just that one that refuses to die." Ha, ha, the dentist would laugh (her teeth were perfect). "The x-rays don't show anything," she would say, shaking her head.

The zombie tooth came to sluggish life a couple weeks ago, providentially coinciding with my six-month cleaning. I reclined in the chair, feeling awkward and wrong at being so close to other humans without a mask on my face. When the dentist arrived, I said, "This tooth! It's alive, I tell you, alive!"

She poked and prodded, gave me some things to bite on. The tooth didn't hurt much but I had this persistent belief that it shouldn't hurt at all, seeing as how it was supposed to be dead. 

"Well, root canals don't last forever, you know," she said. What? That is the first time I'd ever heard that. A dead tooth should remain dead, they should not be able to come back to life. This is not the dental equivalent of The Walking Dead. "I'll give you a referral to an endodontist," she said. Apparently she doesn't do root canals. 

As soon as I got my stimmy, I made the appointment with the endodontist. Her office was in a half-vacant building in SE Portland, not far from an area rife with shootings, conveniently located near the freeway for quick getaways. I was the only patient in the place, probably by design. The office looked like a 1990s hotel, all gray tile, gray carpet, and recessed strip lighting, very moody and mod. 

The endodontist was a tiny woman, much younger than me. She peered at a monitor nearby showing the CT scan of my jaw. I took a quick glance from the chair. I'd never seen teeth in such fine resolution. Those dental x-rays you see on your dentist's screen? Amateur hour. It's like the difference between microfiche and Blu-Ray Hi-Def plasma TV. 

"Wow, is that my tooth?"  

"Lay back. Let's see this thing." She put a light on her head and a microscope over my mouth and came at me with something shiny and sharp. "You have a rather small mouth."

"Yow!" I yelped around her fingers. 

"Nine millimeters," she said, oblivious to the tear edging out of my left eye. She jammed the probe in again. "Yep, nine millimeters. It looks like when they did the original root canal, they missed a little spot here in the back. And now the tooth has grown away from the jaw, leaving this large pocket, which has been infected, probably for a while."

I hoisted myself out of the chair and followed her into the room with the CT scanning machine. The room was set up like a movie theater, with several rows of folding chairs facing toward a large computer monitor, on which I recognized my CT scan. I imagined the endodontist and her staff unwinding after a long day by watching movies of suffering patients enduring remedial root canals.

She took a blank CD from a stack and inserted it into the computer. As the file transferred, we sat shoulder-to-shoulder on folding chairs in front of the screen. "See that dark gap there? That is where the tooth has detached. It's empty space, nothing there."

I gazed resentfully at my delinquent tooth.

"We could try to save it, but it probably wouldn't work." I turned and looked at her eyes because that is all you can see when a person has a mask on. She turned and looked at my eyes for the same reason. So there we were staring deeply into each other's eyes. I'm thinking a succession of thoughts: she has nice eyes, what the hell, Dr. Jim!, and why am I not more upset, I'm going to lose a tooth. 

"I'll send my report to your dentist," she said. "Here's a copy for you to take to Arizona."

The receptionist graciously gave me copies of the many forms I had filled out and signed in the waiting room promising not to sue if the remedial root canal went sideways. (Ha, ha, all moot, but I still wanted those copies.) She took my check for $330, and I took my throbbing jaw home, dismayed at the pain. No more half-dead zombie tooth. It's simmered down a little but I'm not back to baseline. Almost a week later, I'm still cutting my food into tiny pieces, cooking it to smithereens, and swallowing it whole. Even sneezing is dangerous—do you mash your teeth together when you sneeze? Right. I didn't think I did, either. 

This tooth wakes up and salutes every four hours. Tylenol and Advil are tiding me over until my dental consult on Tuesday. I think I know what will happen then. My lovely dentist (who specializes in cosmetic surgery, not root canals) will cluck her perfect teeth and express her sorrow that I'm leaving town before I can buy an implant. If all goes well, I expect I'll be taking antibiotics soon and by the end of April I will be driving out of town with a new hole in my head. I'm not afraid. I've had braces. 

On the bright side, today I took my Focus through the drive-through car wash for its annual scrub. I always clench up at first, afraid to take my foot off the brake and surrender to the giant maw. Once I relaxed and let go, the giant felt fingers and rivers of white suds worked their magic. I felt calmer and my car came out minus one layer of dirt and moss. Next task is to vacuum the interior. I want the old thing to look its best when I trade it in for my getaway car. 

The chronic malcontent reads a book

I would prefer to exist in the realm of the intellect, eschewing all things physical. I don't like remembering I have a body to inhabit and tend. My response to the dilemma of being a biological creature on the physical plane is to either ignore it by sleeping or overeating, or by running at my physicality with a sharp stick—in other words, revel in it by scratching, picking, poking, farting, and belching. To name a few. I won't say my response is logical, except that I can be counted on to ignore the happy moderate medium in favor of the two extremes. In other words, I'm either fully present or fully absent.

I video chat with my sister once a week. She's in France. Her evening is my morning. The Internet connection usually isn't great, but it's good enough that she can see me scratching and picking. Living alone, I'm generally unaware of my fidgeting, but my sister kindly brings it to my attention in order to reform my behavior. I assume it is because she knows someday we will be roommates. I imagine she's hoping by the time we are in our eighties, she will have trained me to sit still.

My sister would be at home at Downton Abbey. I am pretty sure she doesn't wear a corset, but I must say, she's got the posture and demeanor down pat. She's naturally poised. Maybe that comes from being born a blonde with perfect teeth. She's probably never had a dandruff flake in her life.

I on the other hand, would be at home in a cave. Maybe I would have a plank floor, but I probably wouldn't worry too much about housekeeping or hygiene. I mean, I do the basics. I do bathe and brush my teeth. Occasionally I look in a mirror. I don't do a lot of grooming, though, about on the order of how often I vacuum my rugs, which is to say, not often.

Yesterday I took our maternal parental unit to the dermatologist to get some cancer scraped off her forehead. Having learned from our previous visit, I came prepared with the hazmat bag of gloves, wipes, pull-ups, extra pants and socks, toilet paper, and paper towels. This time I brought my own plastic bags so I wouldn't leave a toxic mess in their restroom trash can. (I still feel chagrined at that.)

Luck favors the prepared. We only had to make one trip to the restroom. Everything got wiped up and neatly bagged. Mom endured the restroom operation and the skin cancer operation with good cheer. The dermatologist told jokes as he sewed up her forehead. We were on our way in an hour. I couldn't  have asked for a better outcome. And luckily for my sister, I've nothing gross and messy to report. She hates blog posts with certain words (e.g., poop, diarrhea, bwa-ha-ha).

The best part of the long afternoon for me was reading to my mother while we waited for the doctor. Anticipating boredom, I brought a paperback version of Bunchy, a book we both knew from our childhoods. Joyce Lankester Brisley wrote Bunchy in 1937. As a small child, I enhanced Mom's original copy with crayons. Some years ago, I bought a 2005 paperback edition and saved it from the many Love Shack book purges of the past ten years. It's a book about my three favorite things: imagination, creativity, and magic.

“You want to hear some of Bunchy?” I asked, holding up the book. Her eyes lit up.

“Might as well,” she replied, which I know means “yes.”

In my screensaver rotation, I have a black and white photo of us kids clustered around Mom on the couch as she reads Clare Turlay Newberry's April's Kittens. It was October 1961. Mom wears cat eye glasses. My older brother, my sister, and I, all in pajamas, lean in close. My little brother is not pictured. I imagine he's in a bassinet off camera. I assume Dad took the picture, although it could have been Grandma. Mom is reading with a serious expression. Only my sister looks at the camera.

Mom can't read much anymore, but she loved books, and she transferred her love of books to her two daughters. My sister studies medieval manuscripts and books—she's an expert in the field. Me, I love making marks on paper. Even though I do most of my writing on the computer, writing and drawing on paper is my idea of heaven.

I sat in the visitor chair in the dermatologist's exam room with the bag of gear close to hand. Mom perched on the exam table with her feet propped up a bit on a part of the table that could be raised and lowered. I began reading about Bunchy's adventure with the pastry-dough people, holding up the book occasionally to show her the illustrations. Outside the sky was blue with the promise of spring.

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.

Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-Basket

I'm relieved to have survived 2019. As I wait for 2020 to blow us all to smithereens, I am reflecting on some accomplishments, challenges, and surprises from the past year. I mean mine, of course. I'm not qualified to judge anyone else's, although that never stops me. I wonder, should I be looking forward rather than backward? Good question. I'll look forward some other time. The wreckage of the future always beckons. Tonight, I'm reflecting backward.

First, I've been a writing machine this year. I'm like the meat grinder of writers. Ideas in, content out. Of course, like any meat grinder, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. Luckily for us all, I never let a little thing like concern for quality stop me from grinding out words. Sometimes I string words together into actual sentences. I know. I'm amazing.

Second, I'm getting things done around the Love Shack. It is good to be proactive when one is preparing for homelessness. To that end, I'm ticking things off that have been on my list for twenty years. For example, this week I have been transferring my music audiotapes to digital format. I know! I'm a dynamo.

It was really easy once I figured out where to plug the cable. Thank you to all the wonderful people who post tutorials on the Web for idiots like me. So now I can throw away all these hissing compilation tapes of songs captured off scratchy albums I dragged to Portland from Los Angeles and then donated to thrift stores. As if Portland needed an infusion of Monkee albums. Downsizing is an incremental process—first the albums, then the tapes, then the computer. After North Korea's bomb destroys the power grid, I'll be completely free.

Third, I've learned some new words this year:  Shingrix. Costochondritis. Ganglion. Retinal artery occlusion. It's good to expand my vocabulary after many years of shrinkage. Where did all my words go, I wonder? Probably the same place my socks go. Inside my duvet covers.

I've learned some new skills this year, too. Taking my own blood pressure! How cool is that! It's so fun to wrap my arm in Velcro, one of the great human inventions, and then grimace as my arm is all but severed.

A few weeks ago, I made my every-other-year visit to my doctor for a wellness exam. I brought her a drawing I made of my naked body labeled with all the things I thought might be failing, head to toe. Cysts, warts, hiatal hernia, bladder, high cholesterol, arthritis, yep, the works. In moments like these, all those years of art school really pay off. She was surprised, perhaps nonplussed. Perplexed, confused, astounded . . . all words that might apply.

“Can I keep this?” she said, holding the drawing carefully between two fingers. I magnanimously said, “Of course, I made it for you.”

Finally, my major achievement for the year is showing up for my mother. Almost every evening, I drive over to her retirement facility, park my car, hike through weather, and enter the code on the back door. I stride down the hallway, noting which door name plates have come and gone. As I walk by the dining room, I dodge white-haired people heading back to their rooms, most assisted by aides, who smile at me and greet me by name. I look to see if Mom is still eating. Almost every evening, one old lady waves at me. Another one points at me and says, “Who is that guy?”

In Mom's room, if the lamp and TV are on, she's sitting up watching the Flintstones. If the lamp and TV are off, she's snoozing on the couch.

A few nights ago, the room was dark. She was lying on the couch under her blue plaid wool blanket. I entered with my usual greeting: “Howdy, Slacker.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn't say anything, which is not normal. I sat on the couch by her feet.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You're my daughter, Carol.”

I guess some days are better than others. Tonight, she was sitting up, laughing at Fred and Barney, as alert as ever. We enjoyed the rest of the Flintstones, followed by the last thirty minutes of Love it or List it, and then M.A.S.H. came on, my cue to leave. I drove home in pouring rain, wishing I wish I could freeze time.

Let me just stay here in this moment. This moment in which my email inbox remains blessedly empty. This moment in which my phone is silent. This moment in which my mother knows me and loves me. This moment in which I can let my mind wander among the dwindling choices in the word boutique. Tonight, in my quest to be prolific at the expense of quality, I will choose a few overused words and spatter them at this blog. Happy new year, everyone. You go on ahead. Let me just stay here in 2019, in this moment, before everything goes to hell.

The world keeps turning

When times get tough, I queue up the songs that keep me going as I slog through my ongoing pity party. This week my soundtrack is mostly New Order, punctuated by Rod Stewart's Mandolin Wind and Helen Stellar's Io (from the movie Elizabethtown). Maybe engaging in some new compulsive activities will help me get my mind off reality for a while. Tonight I'm thinking about taking up the mandolin. And maybe learning Chinese and Russian (just in case America is invaded while we are distracted by the shit show happening in Washington).

Every evening I come back to earth by visiting my mother and her smoking buddy, Jane. Some evenings Jane doesn't talk much, and Mom doesn't talk at all, so we have a pleasant ten-minute interlude staring into the distance. Well, they stare into the distance. They have a view of tall fir trees and sky beyond the roof of the facility. I have a view of two old ladies sitting in front of a wall of rhododendrons. It's hard to know what to stare at. I often don't know what to say. I do a lot of fidgeting.

The other night I made the mistake of describing the hearings I'd witnessed of the Supreme Court nominee. Of course, neither old woman had any idea what I was talking about. I worked myself into quite a lather before I finally managed to zip it. Darn it. I need to unload my anxieties someplace else.

Mom and Jane could not care less what is going on in politics. They no longer vote. Their attention is riveted on what is happening in their own small world, the world of the retirement facility.

“Tonight is Amy's last day,” Jane reminded Mom tonight. Mom nodded. Amy was the nice part-time cook. I was sad to hear that Amy was leaving. She baked gluten-free cookies for Mom.

“I wonder if she is getting another job,” Jane mused. Mom shrugged her narrow shoulders. I looked at the front of her red fleece jacket, wondering if it ever got laundered. She loves the jacket for its deep pockets, plenty of room for her cigarette case. The front of the jacket is a minefield of pock marks, some just black circles and others outright holes, burned clear through the fleece. I wondered what I would do if one evening she dropped her cigarette and spontaneously combusted.

“Someone died two nights ago,” Jane said. She looked at me and mouthed, “Stroke.” Mom nodded. She had told me about it yesterday. We didn't know the woman who died. Neither one of us was terribly concerned about the dead person. After all, people go to retirement facilities to die. We both expressed sadness for the staff.

“The same night, another woman fell,” Jane said. “Blood everywhere.” My mother's eyes widened. She glanced at her cigarette and then at Jane's cigarette, comparing their smoking progress.

“They could get some serious rain this week in Arizona,” I said, thinking, what is the mildest topic possible? Right, the weather. 

Both ladies looked at me in surprise. “Arizona!” Mom said.

“We can't get flooded here, can we?” Jane asked.

“No, we are on a hill,” I reassured her.

The glowing ember at the tip of Mom's cigarette fell onto the ground. She held out the now dead stub. Sometimes I take it, sometimes Jane takes it. Tonight I took it and chucked it into the big gourd-shaped receptacle for cigarette butts that must look absolutely gross inside. Mom got up and grabbed her walker. Time to head for the door. I trailed behind to pick up the pieces, if anything (or anyone) should happen to fall.

Amy met us at the front door and let us in. Behind us the sky was almost dark. No rain, but I could smell it on the air. I stood by as Amy hugged first Jane and then my mother. Amy towered over both shrunken women. Up close, she looked younger than I first thought.

“Come back and visit,” Jane said.

“Don't forget us,” I said to Amy as Mom turned away down the hall. Amy did not look sad to be leaving. I worked at a nursing home once. That was probably the hardest job in my life. (So far. I have a feeling Home Depot might be in my future.)

Back in her room, Mom parked her jacket on the visitor's chair. She stood by the bed, staring at the bed covers, which were pulled open, ready for her to go to bed later. Her blue fleece pajama bottoms lay on top. She pointed at her head.

“What do I do with this?” I wasn't sure if she meant the pajamas and bed covers or her head. I took a chance she meant the bed.

“Your bed is ready for you, when you are ready to go to sleep,” I said. “See the picture on the wall?” Last week I drew a series of cartoons showing her how to get ready for bed. First, brush your teeth. Take out hearing aids. Take off shoes and pants. Put on PJs. Sit on the bed. Put feet under covers. Pull covers up to chin. Sweet dreams. Layers are the problem. The quilt is covered by the wool blanket, which is covered by a sheet. Three layers! With the pajama bottoms on top. Too much for her brain.

“Ring your buzzer if you need help,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied.

The unicorn head is somewhat worse for wear but still grinning

Yesterday I braved impending wind and rain to slog around the reservoir. It wasn't terribly cold; I had no good excuse to stay home except the gray clouds piling up in the sky. As I scurried around the half-mile track, I noticed the north cell of Reservoir No. 6 had been drained for cleaning. A layer of mud coated the bottom, and crows and ducks were digging for tasty tidbits in the muck. In my typical oblivious fashion, though, I failed to notice the item lying on the mud in one far corner of the reservoir. Yep, it was my old friend, the severed unicorn head.

I wrote about this remarkable object last January. Back then, I posted a photo of the creepy thing on my Facebook page. The next time I walked around the reservoir, the plastic head was gone; I assumed some vigilant park ranger had managed to snag the head and drag it out of the water. Apparently that is giving too much credit to our over-burdened park budget. Now it is clear the head filled with water and sank, bobbed along the bottom over the ensuing months, and fetched up in the mud, still grinning. I posted another photo of it to document the event, more evidence that plastic does not decay, even when shaped like a unicorn head.

I relate to that unicorn head in the sense that I am feeling somewhat worse for wear but still grinning. Despite the cold wet spring, despite the lack of editing jobs, despite my mother's continued decline into dementia, I continue to show up for my life. I won't say I do it skillfully and some parts aren't pretty, but I haven't given up, even though sometimes I feel buried in mud to my chin.

I've started visiting the maternal parental unit every evening. I never know what I will find. Last week she was sitting outside when I arrived. She knew me, but not how she planned to get back into the building, considering the door gets locked at 5 pm. This week I found her in the hall. Some of her less demented peers were trying to help her figure out something. Mom was missing her upper dentures. Have you seen a loved one with no teeth? She certainly looked different. I found myself thinking of Granny Clampett and later realized I was humming the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.

Mom has lost seven pounds in five months. Now she weighs the same she weighed when she moved to the place one year ago: 96 pounds. Apparently weight loss can change the fit of a person's dentures. I made an appointment to take her to the dentist.

Mom had a successful trip to the dentist to get the upper plate realigned. By successful I mean she had no accidents and didn't die in the chair. The dentist prescribed a saline rinse twice a day. When I visited Mom the next day, I found a cup of salt on her counter. She pointed to it. “Someone left that here,” she said. I looked at it and figured out it was salt. It seemed clear to me at that point that the staff at the care center assumed Mom was capable of measuring half a teaspoon of salt into warm water, taking out her upper dentures, rinsing her mouth several times, and spitting out the salty water in the sink. Well, you know what happens when we assume.

We managed a partial rinse, and another one last night, before I called it good on the saline rinse. When I asked her, “Does your mouth hurt now?” she said no. I left the salt on the counter, though. Argh. I should not have done that.

Last night we sat outside, her smoking and me trying to dodge the smoke. I noticed she wasn't wearing socks. She didn't seem to care. She was more concerned that her cigarette holder was almost empty. When she was done smoking, I called for someone to let us back into the building. We made it back to her room. I got her some socks, which she managed to put on successfully. She couldn't figure out how to refill her cigarette holder. For the first time in my life, I opened a pack of cigarettes.  I was surprised to see those packs hold a lot of cigarettes.

As we were sitting on the couch, Mom pointed to the little box on the coffee table that her hearing aids came in. “What about that?” she said. The box was empty. I looked at her ears. No hearing aids. Yipes. I went over to her bedside table. Yep, there they were. Whew. $4,600 worth of electronics. I helped her put them in, silently berating myself for not noticing their absence.

I walked her through the process of sitting on the couch, taking off her shoes, putting her feet up, and covering herself with blanket. “What do I do now?” she said, looking up at me.

For a moment I was at a loss. Then I thought, what would I tell a two-year-old?

“Watch TV. Sleep if you can. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Last night I took a bath to relax before bed. Suddenly my right ear began to ring with a shrill tone. It didn't stop. My head felt lopsided. I was half-deaf in my right ear. With visions of urgent care in my mind, I squirted some nasal spray up my nose and went to bed, hoping for the best. Sometime during the night my ear cleared. I woke grateful to feel my old friend vertigo (three year anniversary this month) rush in to challenge my morning balance. Here's me, still grinning.

The Chronic Malcontent jumps a little

My sister has been challenging me since she first appeared on the scene as a rival to my position as the only girl in the family hierarchy. I was not quite two when she showed up, this blonde squalling red-faced thing, so I hadn't had a lot of time to consolidate my power. I've been struggling to keep up with her ever since. This week my sister challenged me to do the 7-minute exercise regimen she found on the internet. Well, she didn't come right out and say, hey, you fat slob, you should do this. She coyly remarked that she had tried it twice. That was all I needed to galvanize my shaky legs into action.

In this routine, you do 30 seconds of about 10 exercises—pushups, curlups, planks, jumping jacks, and some other stuff—all in seven minutes. First, jumping jacks to warm up. I managed 30 jumping jacks successfully without falling over or crashing into anything. The second exercise was the "wall sit," where you put your back against the wall and "sit" against it. I held it for about five seconds before my legs gave out and I ended up on the floor. After it took me 30 more seconds to get up, I realized I might not be ready for this particular exercise routine.

Exercise is not my favorite pastime. I'm not naturally thin. Food is my drug of choice. To my perplexity, my sister has always been slender and feminine. While I played softball and volleyball, she learned ballet and figure skating. As I got my hands and clothes dirty with paint, she studied painters and paintings and learned how to handle artifacts with fastidious care. I have photos of her wearing white cotton gloves while holding a framed painting of some saint or monk or duke. I was the dirty, mud-covered female in the family. She was the refined child—who (I'm gleeful to report) still cringes when I swear.

Our usual challenge involves writing. My sister is a prolific writer, although she might not agree. She just delivered her second book to her publisher, a year-long labor about something to do with medieval books. I helped her choose the cover design but I can't remember the title. Her audience is small—maybe a handful of libraries and world-class scholars. Not surprising, she will make little to no money for her efforts. But did I mention, published!?

My writing projects are all over the map. I need multiple pen names to encompass my diverse interests, few of which ever reach daylight. It's safer to keep them hidden in the dark.

Speaking of writing, I rarely blog anymore. I can't find my words. Interesting events happen, interesting people cross my path, but I don't write down the stories, and they fall away into the past. My memories are mostly dust. Yesterday's memories are already crumbling. As I wait for the next phase of my life to begin, my brain is processing my experience in a new way, the way an engine processes gasoline that has some water in it. That is to say, not well. Stuttering, stumbling, confused, apprehensive. Day by day, I resemble my mother, in thought and in appearance. Except I'm three times her size and still allowed to drive.

Recently I spent a few hours scanning some family photos and negatives. Pictures of relatives, far away in space and time. Lots of photos of my mother as a child, a teen, a young adult. She looked like a happy child, a contented teenager. She went on outings with her friends, to the beach, to the mountain. She went camping with her family, slept in a canvas tent, rode horses, caught fish. I suspect she would have been happier not to have been burdened with four children in six years. I have tried to compile a book of blogposts about her, but I was stymied when I got to the ending. I mean, I know what the ending will be but I'm not ready to write it.

Speaking of endings, Mom just received a clean bill of health from the nurse practitioner who comes out from the insurance company for an annual house call visit. For an 88-year-old smoker with moderate dementia, Mom is in great shape. Her heart is strong, her kidneys are pumping. She coughs like a demon but her lungs are clear. She could live a long time. At this rate, it is likely she will outlast me. Especially if I don't exercise once in a while. Guess I'd better get back to jumping jacks. Some action is better than no action.

Don't jump

Howdy, blogbots. I'm taking time out of stressing about my mother's impending move to assisted living to reflect on my morning adventure. Today I took a bus downtown for a SCORE workshop on social media marketing. I signed up over a month ago, not realizing it would happen in the middle of one of the more hectic weeks in my life. But I have trained myself to show up to the tasks on my calendar. So off to town I went.

I think the bus driver was new. He meandered sedately from stop to stop, easing the bus to the curb with care. He greeted every passenger with a bright Good morning! Traffic was bottlenecked at a construction mess around SE 33rd. The driver inched the bus between parked cars and oncoming trucks. At any moment, I expected to hear the side of the bus take off a parked car's left-side mirror. I held my breath until we came out the other side. At 12th, the bus driver traded places with a new driver, who adjusted his seat and mirrors and took off in a roaring cloud of dust. I guess we might have been running a few minutes late.

The bus filled up as we headed toward town. I enjoyed the view from my window seat. No rain today, yay, but not much sun either. Just a sky of hazy white clouds, the kind with the capacity to surprise: burn off to clear blue sky or sprinkle rain all day. Traffic slowed as we neared the Hawthorne Bridge. Trucks and buses haven't been able to cross the Morrison Bridge for a few years because the deck is crumbling. This summer, our city plans to fix the mess, so as of April 1, most car traffic is now diverted to the Hawthorne Bridge until next fall. As you can imagine, there was quite a traffic jam.

The bus crept across the bridge. I had a great view of the boats moored along the river's edge. I wondered what kind of people could afford the condos built along the river. I wondered how many people have been living on their boats since the housing crash in 2008. The river was calm but murky. March was the fourth wettest month on record, so the rivers are all running high.

Suddenly I heard several passengers' crying, "No, oh no, oh no, no, no!" People along the right side of the bus began energetically popping up in their seats. I was on the left side of the bus. I thought, is a bicyclist trapped? A pedestrian fallen in the road? What is happening?

The bus driver stopped the bus. "Open the door!" Some passengers pounded on the back door. They burst out the door and then I watched through the window as they grabbed a man who was attempting to climb over the railing of the bridge. One rescuer grabbed the man in a bear hug, and I caught a glimpse of a face—red cheeks, grizzled chin. I thought I saw shame and chagrin. The man twisted away from the men who were attempting to restrain him and marched unsteadily along the bridge sidewalk toward the pedestrian off ramp.

Meanwhile, multiple people were calling 911 on their cellphones to report a suicidal man on the Hawthorne Bridge.

Eventually the bus continued into downtown. I got off at the next stop and hiked up to the Courthouse at SW 6th and Main for the workshop, which was pretty much a dud for me personally. I will probably forget to blog about it, so in case you are curious, here are the highlights: no breakfast, no coffee, memorable bus ride, old courthouse, three attendees, no refreshments, obese presenter obsessed with food, mediocre PowerPoint, sales pitch for Constant Contact, ended ten minutes early, caught bus, home by noon.

The real story (besides the suicidal man) is how I could take a morning off from the job of orchestrating my mother's move to assisted living. Like I said, I do what is on my calendar. I signed up for this workshop over a month ago, long before we found the facility and started preparations to move.

Last night Mom's brain was mush. She'd stayed up to 3 am going through stuff to keep and sell in a yard sale. She was barely coherent when I brought her six more empty boxes. I was worried. Taking a morning off seemed a bit irresponsible, but hell. I can't manage my mother's brain. This morning I called her and she sounded much better. I guess she got some sleep and ate some food. I am hopeful that she'll survive this move and thrive in the new place. Stay tuned.

Where did this alternate reality come from, and how soon can it go away?

Today as I was holding a dinky flashlight over my landlord's shoulder so he could attempt to rewire the thermostat of my electric heater, I wondered what drives people to hate other people. All I can figure is, it's fear. A big burning hemorrhoid of fear, too horrible to even acknowledge, let alone deal with. Fear has plunged us into an alternate reality. I would like to wake up from this bizarre new world.

My landlord came over today to fix my thermostat, which went kapooey yesterday. I was on the phone last night, talking to a friend. I heard a hiss and a fizzle coming from the wall. I looked over at the thermostat and saw wisps of gray smoke floating away from the little box. I knew that probably wasn't good. I turned the heater knob all the way off and as I kept murmuring uh-huh and you don't say to my friend on the phone, I strolled into the kitchen and liberated my ancient fire extinguisher from its plastic holder on the wall by the back door.

No fire seemed imminent, but I took my important papers into the bedroom when I went to bed last night. I also took the fire extinguisher with me. I pictured myself putting my cat into a pillowcase and lowering him out the window to a neighbor below, before I jumped and brained myself on the concrete. I didn't sleep very well.

Today the landlord came over. He took the little box apart.

“Shouldn't we turn off the power?” I asked nervously.

“I'll turn it off at the breaker box,” he said and went to the basement. I heard some banging. He came back. We stood peering at the defunct thermostat. I wanted to tell him I knew he could get a lot more money if he evicted me and rented to someone else, but I kept my mouth shut. This didn't seem like the right time.

He pulled out a device and tapped the wires with it. Then he tapped a wire to a lamp plugged into another outlet. Nothing happened. He shook the device. Finally, a red light came on and the thing started beeping. He went back to the thermostat and tapped the wires. Nothing happened. We both heaved a sigh.

“Your wife would not forgive me if you turned into a crispy critter,” I said.

“I bet that box is older than you,” he said. I told him how old I was. “Well, darn near,” he added.

He fooled around with the wires for a bit. “Darn. I got the wrong thermostat,” he said. “I need one with four wires. I'll be back pretty soon.” He went out the door to his truck and drove away.

Three hours later, he came back.

“I had to go to six places to find the right one,” he said. He didn't sound angry.

I held the flashlight again while he worked some magic with a plier-like tool and some little yellow plastic cap-like thingies. He twisted the old wires with the new wires with the yellow caps. Then he shoved all the wires, old and new, back into the metal box in the wall and put the cover on.

“Okay, let's turn on the breaker,” he said. He went to the basement and came back. I was standing directly behind him as he turned the knob. A large bang ensued, followed by some sparks.

“Are you okay?” I said, imagining the worst.

“I'm okay.” He was clutching his hand to his chest, more out of shock than from injury. We looked at each other. I'm sure my eyes were as big as his.

“I'll call the electrician,” he said as he packed up his stuff.

So now I sit in a cold room with my feet ensconced in my dry-rice foot warmer, wondering why people are driven to hate. All I can figure is, it's our old friend, fear. We get so wrapped up in fear we can't even stop to ask what we are afraid of. Right now, I guess we're afraid of people who don't look like us, coming to kill us. It's irrational fear. We should fear our cars or our bathtubs—those are the real killers.

Sadly, you can't reason with someone who is afraid. Facts don't matter. You can't tell them, shut up, quit whining. You can't say, what's your problem, get over it. It does no good to say, your fear is irrational and you are behaving like idiots. People can't hear logic when they are mired in fear. I don't care what side you are on. Scared people are deaf people.

Of course, nobody wants to admit they are afraid, so they mask their fear with anger. That's what I do. I'm sure I'm not alone, judging by the number of angry people that seem to be out on the streets. I handle my anger and fear by hiding in my apartment and compulsively checking the news. Other people handle their fear and anger by yelling loud, nasty things about and at the people they don't like.

I'd like to say I'm on the side of the righteous, but I'm beginning to wonder what side that might be. Both sides seem to use similar tactics to express their fear and anger. We've lost our American mojo, that glue that held us together. Maybe unity was an illusion, like prosperity. Like a mirage. Now we're just tribes of monkeys, throwing rocks at each other because we've lost something we had or we didn't get something we wanted. And thus the human species regresses back to the mean. Thanks, Mr. Obama. I miss you terribly. It was great while it lasted.

The chronic malcontent meets Jack and Jill

I'm not seeing anything funny to blog about these days. The world is in chaos, the helpless are suffering ... I'm starting to think it might be true: we really are all going to hell in a hand-basket. My brain keeps searching around for something ironic and witty to say, like a squirrel sifting gravel for peanuts. I'm just not finding the nuggets. Somewhere beyond the rainbow, humor still exists, I am sure. I hope.

Bravadita is in London. My sister is in Boston. My mother is in la-la land, disintegrating before my eyes. To top it off, the clouds won't go away. Summer refuses to appear. We've been lucky to hit 70°. I guess some people like it.

Last week I was trotting around the reservoir at Mt. Tabor Park. I happened to spy a young man trying to push a rather large young woman in a wheelchair along a dusty dirt path. The chair was heading downhill. The slope was getting steeper and bumpier with clumpy grass and weeds. The young caregiver was about half the size of his charge, and I could predict impending disaster.

I trotted up the path to intercept them. “You need some help?” I asked. A modern day Jack and Jill, I thought to myself.

They didn't say no, so I helped the young man turn the wheelchair around so his body could block the chair from escaping down the hill. I lent my weight as backup, trying to find places to grab that didn't involve her purse, her lap, or her long hair. The skinny dude was pink with exertion, casting anxious glances over his shoulder at the terrain. I was breathing hard myself.

Soon we got the wheelchair down the slope onto a smoother path and turned her around so the chair was facing forward again. “Okay, take care!” I said cheerfully, stepping back.

As I walked on my way, I reflected on what had just happened. It was a slice of real life: We sweated together for a minute and then parted ways. I realized I hadn't actually looked either of them in the face. Is that odd? I wouldn't recognize them again if they weren't in the same configuration, perched precariously on a steep dirt path.

I was glad I had arrived before she went barreling down the hill. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after ... rolling over Jack and breaking the rest of his skinny bones.

Offroading in a wheelchair seems a risky thing to do. But what do I know, I'm not in a wheelchair. Breaking free and speeding downhill might be perfectly sensible to someone who feels trapped in a seated position all the time.

The chronic malcontent is starting to drool

This evening I was sitting in a meeting, reading out loud to a small group from a list on a piece of paper, and I found myself slurring some words. As I was reading, my mind was galloping along a well-worn path: Am I having a stroke? Are my teeth falling out? Is my hind-brain dragging? Have I gotten so lazy I can't be bothered to enunciate anymore?

My mouth suddenly felt uncommonly soupy. My dental hygienist, Debbie, often praises me on the amount of saliva I manage to generate, so it could be I was feeling overly energetic in the saliva department. Should I surreptitiously attempt to wipe the spit off my lip with my mittened hand? No, that would be gross. Like anyone is watching... is anyone watching?

In a split second, my brain had split in three: one part was reading, one part was observing me reading, and the third part was wondering if I was going to burst into hysterical laughter at any moment. I managed to make it through the reading with a semblance of a Mona Lisa smile. Finally, it was someone else's turn to read. I settled back in my chair and bent my head to my notebook. I started sketching furiously. A face, a drooping mouth...What the heck was going on?

Sometimes I stammer when I get self-conscious. It sometimes occurs when I listen to myself reading out loud. My level of self-awareness rises to such a pitch, I begin to pay excruciatingly close attention to my voice. The usual ticker tape of self-judgment begins to roll through the screen at the bottom of my mind: Do I sound like an idiot? I hate my voice. Am I mumbling? My lips are falling off! I can't breathe! Invariably, when I get to that point, I fumble the reading because I'm turning blue from lack of oxygen.

This rant reminds me of the time I entered a Toastmaster's contest during finals week in college. In front of 100 people, I bungled my speech. It was without a doubt the most humiliating moment of my life, still guaranteed to break me out in a cold sweat if I think too deeply about it.

I'm beginning to see a common thread here. It's my old enemy, self. Not the good guy self, as in self-care and self-realization, but the bad guy self, as in self-obsession, self-recrimination, and self-centeredness. Oh, those pesky selves. Wherever you go, there they are. There's no escaping them! I picture them as fleabitten little monkeys, wearing ratty red vests and fezzes, bashing cymbals in my eardrums at all hours. Hey, maybe that's where this vertigo is coming from. (I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary of the first time I felt the vertigo, in case you are tracking. Which I'm not.)

Speaking of things there is no escaping: The ants are back. After a relatively ant-free winter, the hordes have returned. Luckily, I am not unprepared, thanks to the advice of my good friend, Carlita. I laid down my defenses some weeks ago (anti-ant spray). The desiccated carcasses of dead ant soldiers litter the counter under the window. Ha ha. But the scouts are somehow finding a way through my defenses and onto my shirt, where they make a run for the top of the hill (my head). They rarely get further than the back of my neck. Although last night one spent a few minutes speeding round the rim of my eyeglasses before I caught him and flung him in the brig.

Hey, I wonder if there is a spray to eliminate the overwhelming sense of self I'm sometimes feeling? Some kind of anti-self spray. Guaranteed to relieve you of the bondage of self. Wow, if I could bottle that, I bet I could make a fortune. Hey, you heard it here first!

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.

The chronic malcontent leans in... and out

As I shake the cat hair and fingernail clippings out of my keyboard, I reflect on the possibility that sometimes vertigo is just vertigo. It doesn't have to be metaphor for anything else in my life. Right? Like, oh, I don't know...balance, maybe?

Yesterday in a fit of frustration, I put on my jogging duds and staggered up the main staircase to the top of Mt. Tabor. From the summit, I trotted down and around the road, marveling at how level-headed I felt but on the lookout in case the ground suddenly turned into an asphalt trampoline. The sun was warm. The park was crowded with Sunday pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, and dogs. I felt happy to be outside, trudging my trails at half-speed while joggers blazed by me on both sides. Balance, I thought smugly. Take that.

A half hour after I got home, wham, the floor suddenly became jello and I was back on the open seas in a tiny boat. Ho hum, said I. I am quite familiar with the nuances of fluid in my head now. I picture my brain awash in a viscous murky muddy sea, but I know that isn't what is really happening. Dinky little ear rocks are meandering around, sightseeing where they shouldn't be, shredding my balance and creating the loudest, most cringe-inducing silent roar I've ever not heard.

I'm becoming a quasi-expert on performing the Epley on myself. Not expert yet, because if I were an expert, I would have effected my own cure, right? No, I'm still practicing. I love YouTube—every ENT in the world has posted a demonstration of how to do the Epley. It's great. They all do it differently, too, which is somewhat perplexing for the novice, but hey, I'm all for creativity, as long as it doesn't break my neck. So far my neck is still intact, although it is somewhat stiff from trying to hold my head level all the time. (No, I don't think it is meningitis, but thanks for asking).

What is the Epley, you ask? It's a maneuver you can perform to make use of gravity to get the ear rocks to float back along the tube into the hole. Yeah, I know those aren't the technical terms, but hey, I'm not an ENT. You can look up the anatomical terms if you really care. Rocks, tube, hole, that's all you really need to know. It's a bit like miniature putt-putt golf, but inside your inner ear, where it's dark so you have to maneuver by feel. Like, how close to barfing am I right now, scale of 1 to 10?

Actually, I haven't barfed yet, I am proud to say. I know pride goeth, etc. etc., but I'm hopeful that as long as I have to put up with this vertigo crap, that it will remain the subjective type rather than morph into the objective type. Subjective vertigo is where I feel like I'm moving. Objective vertigo is where the world seems like it is spinning around me. Like how you feel when the Roundup starts twirling and you realize you've made a terrible mistake by eating your corndog before the ride rather than after.

The Epley is like a slow motion head waggle followed by a half-pirouette, performed horizontally. You can't picture it? Well, like I said, there are multiple methods to execute an Epley, but the one I am finding easiest goes like this: (while lying on your back with your head hanging over a pillow), BAD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then GOOD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then roll on the good shoulder, look down, and SPIT. Hold until the boat stops rocking or you are thoroughly disgusted.

Well, actually the spitting part is optional, I just added that because usually I've found that I'm not miraculously cured when I roll over and that makes me so angry I feel like I could spit. But at that point, my nose is all but buried in my lime green shag rug and I'm thinking as I'm counting the seconds in my head: ants, cat barf, dust mites. I feel obligated to refrain from adding my spit to the mix, mostly because who knows what will rush in if I open my mouth. Besides, according to my older brother, when I was about five, I proclaimed in my sleep, if you turn over and spit, you'll die, and even though that was 50-some years ago, I'm not willing to press my luck.

The thing about the Epley is this: It's not an instantaneous cure. It takes time for the ear rocks to settle in properly, and some of them still seem inclined to go gallivanting. So if you are going to try this at home, you may have to do it more than once. I also read that you should sleep sitting up for two nights afterward, but I haven't been able to accomplish that feat. Maybe that is why I'm still whining about vertigo. Well, hell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. Like, ants on my desk? WTF!?

Going to the hardware store for bread

Events conspire to reinforce my belief that everything is going to hell in a stinky hand-basket. Planes. Mountains. Smithereens. Blown head gaskets. Dripping green stuff. Decrepit mothers. Rising rents. The cafe across the street that I've loved to complain about for the past year closed for good last week. Everywhere I look, I see the fabric of the world (or the world as I know it) falling apart. I know my perception is an illusion, a curious artifact of my puny hiccuping brain.

Here's the deal. If I look for trouble, I shouldn't be shocked or dismayed if find it. When I watch a TV show that is set in a hospital, I shouldn't be too surprised or grossed out if every scene is about someone puking up blood. Ditto a cop show about cops chasing bad guys, week after week, nothing but bad guys. When I watch the news, I should expect to see mostly tragedies, not because the world is mostly full of tragedies, but because most of what happens in the world is not newsworthy. Life happens. Move on.

Like a baby planet nucleus, I can make every bad thing about me. Me, the center of the universe. As if I have any control or influence on events that happen halfway across the globe. My sister arrived safely in Berlin. As I trotted along the paths in the park today, I thought to myself, whew, we dodged a bullet. But no, not true. Bullets are flying constantly. There's no dodging the bullets life continuously shoots at us. No, wait. Not at us, that's not true, either. Life isn't out to get us. Life shoots bullets at everything. Some bullets are called bee stings, some are called asteroids. Some miss, some hit something. Sooner or later, we all get hit.

We never hear stories about planes that don't crash, or cars that don't mow people down, or people who aren't bombing or being bombed. We don't hear about rivers that aren't flooding or cats that are peacefully sleeping on keyboards. We could write about that stuff. We could make shows about that stuff. Then what would we have? Something like My Dinner With Andre, maybe, something truer to life yet excruciatingly, mind-numbingly dull. Anybody who likes stories knows that there's no story without conflict. I mean, I could tell you about my terribly tedious boring yawn of a day, but where would be the fun in that, for you or for me?

My last editing project was a thesis about antitrust law in Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and the United States. Ninety pages of mediocre maundering on mergers, markets, price fixing, and dominant position... I kept waiting for the juicy stuff. Come on, kid, where are the corporations that broke antitrust law and were taken down by the Justice Department in a hail of badges and bullets? Where are the stories of the sad-sack CEOs who shed crocodile tears for the juries to avoid going to federal prison? Where are the stories about the consumers who lost their life savings to crooks and creeps and cretins in the crazy world of commerce? What about the hapless foreign businessmen who are rotting in Saudi jails for collusion?

Nope. Not there. Ninety pages of ho-hum, Bluebook legal citation style. Three days of yawn torture. $20.00 in my pocket in exchange for each hour of my life energy. Worth it? I don't know. What is my life energy worth? Try plugging a toaster into me. I'm pretty sure you will be disappointed. If you were expecting toast, that is.

And to prove we are all in the hellish hand-basket together, whats-his-name Malik pulled a Mike Nesmith and left One Direction. The wailing and suffering and angst made the 11:00 news last night. The new announcer read the story in a bemused voice to an audience that was possibly equally bemused. I know I was. Bemused. Perplexed. Confounded. There's no making sense of life, but I feel compelled to keep trying.

Wearing our blue collars on our sleeves

While I wait for my hemorrhoidal printhead to dry from a deeper cleaning than recommended by the manufacturer (a sitz bath in warm water), I have some time to reflect on the latest reconnaissance into the world of retirement community living. Hooboy. I got a few words for you people: Don't get old.

Today the scrawny maternal parental unit (my mother) and I wended our way to the surprisingly charming suburb of Milwaukie, where we had an appointment with a marketing person at a sprawling complex overlooking the Willamette River. We waited in the comfortable waiting area/library. I enjoyed the view out the huge windows: green grass, resting Canadian geese, and blue sky. My mother circled impatiently back and forth between me and the front desk, eye on the clock, until suddenly we heard a voice calling her name. A former neighbor from the condo, whom I had never met, was shuffling toward us from the elevator.

Mom was thrilled to be recognized by a resident of the establishment. They embraced like old chums. “Keeta, this is my daughter,” Mom said, and added as an afterthought, “and my caregiver,” which evoked a sideways look at me from Keeta and conjured up images of me emptying bedpans and fixing toasted cheese sandwiches. (Not going to happen.)

Keeta had moved to the retirement place a couple months previously and claimed to be ecstatic about her new digs. I could see Mom looking hopeful. A moment later, the marketing gal arrived: Meg. Tall, long brown hair, tight skirt, long beige cardigan, big feet in mid-height heels. Big smile. She told us she was a replacement for the usual marketing person, who was on a well-deserved vacation. I don't know what she did before, but I'm guessing it wasn't sales: Immediately, she goofed. She led us to her air conditioned office, invited us to sit at a round conference table, and showed us the price list.

“Coming to live here is like buying into membership at a country club,” she said. My mother stared at her, waiting, for what, I don't know—a sudden laugh to indicate the woman was joking? Even though the numbers were on a nicely designed sheet right in front of us, it took us a moment to catch our breath. Country club living is not really on our radar. We've been to some weddings at country clubs, that's the extent of our interaction with the golfing/country club jet set.

“The smallest studio unit will cost about $58,000 to buy in, plus about $1,600 per month,” Meg said with the air of a person who has no idea that what she just said indicates she comes from a completely different planet in the solar system. Maybe you could call it the White Collar Planetary System. “A one-bedroom in the main building will start at about $120,000,” she went on. My mother sat silent, staring at the prices, which only went up from there. I was thinking, where are the places for the failed losers from the Blue Collar Outcast Asteroid Belt?

“What do my friends in the Plaza pay? They have a patio,” my mother whined.

“We don't have any units available in the Plaza,” Meg said chattily. “But if one came open, it would be about $220,000 to buy in, plus about...” At that point, I zoned out, boggled by the zeros.

During the ensuing lull, I asked, “Can we look at some units?” in a slightly squeaky voice. Might as well see what we will be missing, I thought. Before we slink out the door tripping on our own tails.

Meg willingly took us on a tour of three different units, all in the main building. She strode ahead of us, not talking, long legs swishing in her tight brown skirt. I wondered what she did when she wasn't filling in for the marketing guy. She was dressed like a salesperson, but acted like anything but. Oddly, though, she wasn't apologetic. Nor did she seem to begrudge us the time. I got my clue when she asked, “Do you have time for lunch today?” I wondered if all she wanted was the free food. Crass of me, I know.

The first unit we looked at was a mess, recently vacated, a meandering layout consisting of a living room with attached kitchen, a den, two bathrooms, and a long hallway leading to a bedroom. It was nice enough, but way too much space for one scrawny little old lady intent on not cooking. No patio. I could tell my mother really wanted her tiny patio, and I know why: She's trapped by her addiction to cigarettes. Even though smoking is not permitted anywhere on the grounds, I could tell by the way she didn't look at me that she thought she could sneak a smoke if she just had her own little patio.

The next unit we looked at was a one-bedroom with a great view of green grass, swirling water, and the big houses on the other side of the river. The room was “styled” with upscale decorations completely unlike anything my mother owns. Pleather couch, glass coffee table, glazed dish of rocks. So not like my mother's 1980s floral couch, worn watermelon-colored velour chairs, and Home Depot area rug.

“Can we see something smaller?” I asked. We hiked the hallways to look at a studio. It was cozy, but better than many places I've lived. A huge black wood entertainment center filled one wall.

“This comes furnished,” Meg said, and reached up to pull down what turned out to be a Murphy bed platform. My mother's eyes just about rolled up in her head. I could see the thought bubble hovering: Is this what it comes down to, pulling my bed down from a horrible black entertainment center?

Finally, we went in to lunch in the dining room, a lovely large space, light-filled, windows on three sides, and a spectacular view of the river. I took the seat facing the view. I could have stared out that window at green grass and blue sky all afternoon. A magnolia tree just outside was setting enormous purple blossoms. I could see why people wanted to live there.

Mom ordered half a turkey sandwich and ate about a third of it. The marketing gal ordered the turkey and arugula wraps. Feeling adventurous, I ordered the tofu sandwich, which I discovered to my chagrin was two tiny pieces of fried tofu with some shredded carrot and radishes on two over-sized pieces of sourdough bread. It was the strangest combination of food I have seen lately, apart from what I fix in my own kitchen, I mean. I quickly figured out it was best to eat the tofu and condiments separately from the bread. Four bites, I kid you not, and my plate was empty. I assume I'll eat like a bird when I get to my mid-80s, if I live that long, but meanwhile, I think anyone would agree, I am a healthy eater. Walking out of the dining room, I was feeling the worst of combinations: heart flutterings from wheat and sugar (in the sauce on the bread) ...and hunger.

Meg led us back to the front entrance and took her leave, saying in a half-hearted manner, “I really think this would be a good fit for you.” My mother and I politely thanked her for lunch and sped for the door. Even before we set foot outside, my mother said in her deep, smoker's voice, “Well!” and I knew we were in agreement. Not the right place for Mom.

My printer appears to still have hemorrhoids. Darn it. What fresh hell is this, first my old Ford Focus, now my old Canon printer? Argh. Plus yesterday my landlord raised my rent (don't tell Mom). Do I have a sign on my back that says Kick me, I can't get up, I'm a blue collar loser? Feels like it. Apples... trees... it's never enough, no matter how far I try to run.

All hail the limited nuclear option

I've had a problem with ants at the Love Shack since I moved here over ten years ago, but with these warmer winters, the little beggars have been relentlessly staking out territory in every room. The kitchen, of course, would be an ant's first target: That's where the cat and I consume and spill the most food. In the living room, trails of ants congregate around the couch (where I spill food) and around the occasional pile of cat barf that blends into the rug so I don't see it.

In the bedroom, as I believe I have previously mentioned, the ants found an art project I did some years ago, which consisted of large jellybeans glued to a frame. I forget what the frame was framing; it was the colorful jellybeans that I liked, especially when sprayed with clear lacquer so they were bright and shiny. Like brand new jellybeans! Apparently, the lacquer on one of the beans finally disintegrated, thus opening the door to a swarm of ants, who marched out of the crack between the ceiling and the wall to raid the sugar in the jellybeans. This plundering of my art must have been going on for years, judging by the trail the ants left behind. I never knew; it was all happening up near the ceiling, and really, who checks for ants up near the ceiling?

And then, the bathroom, which you would think would be uninteresting to an ant, but I've bemoaned the sad fact that ants have congregated on my toothbrush before. Lately, a few scouts can be found wandering in the empty tub, for what reason I do not know. Lousy beggars.

Anyway, all that was to say, I've had a few problems with ants. I've been using bait traps, and that worked for a time, but after a while, I think the ant nests developed an immunity, like Portlanders develop an immunity to rain. One day a few months ago after feeling particularly dejected at ants biting the back of my neck, in my typical malcontented fashion, I happened to mention the situation to my friend Carlita. She recommended a product to spray inside and outside the Love Shack. I got some of that product. I sprayed. Carlita, I can't thank you enough. All hail the limited nuclear option!

For a day or two after I sprayed the window by the cat food, the ants were wobbling around like the walking dead. Then they all keeled over, like they had been mowed down with an unseen fist. With glee I swept up their tiny desiccated carcasses into little piles. The next day I swept up more! Ants fell out of the sky into the cat's water and floated there in little clumps, stiff and lifeless. A few desperate ants crawled up my shirt to lodge a complaint on my head, to no avail, of course. Once you've killed, it gets easier to kill again, I've heard. (Did you know ants smell rather pungent when you shmush them?)

Hallelujah, is all I can say. Yeah, it's a bit toxic, especially if you spray into the wind, but it's worth giving up some brain cells to finally beat back the relentless hordes. I'm thinking of taking up a foreign language to offset the loss of neurons, hoping to stave off Alzheimer's a little longer. Russian, maybe, or Spanish. (And if that ploy doesn't work, at least it will be easier to communicate with the CNAs in the nursing home. Although, who will be left standing to send me to a nursing home, I wonder? I live alone, so odds are nobody will know if I descend into dementia. But while I sit around wondering what day it is, at least the Love Shack will be ant free!)

Lowering my standards

I surely should have my brain examined. Something funny is going on in there. I fear it's termites. I think if a curious surgeon happened to open up my cranium, she would probably find an army of hard-hatted termites working diligently to destroy whatever synapses are still firing. It's a sad and perhaps little known fact that working with Wordpress themes, menus, widgets, and html accelerates the process.

In typical style (launching the new to avoid finishing the old), I started a new... what shall I call it? A division? A department? A product? I don't know. It's a new direction aimed at taking advantage of my academic career. I'm thinking of helping doctoral students finish their dissertations. Based on what I've seen as an academic editor, they could seriously use some help.

My academic career is somewhat sparse, I admit. One doctorate and six months of editing doesn't really amount to much. Can I call it a career yet? (Nuts, she cried gaily. Career, schmareer! In this age of nanosecond attention spans, six months is a lifetime!) Notwithstanding the fact that I haven't had any editing jobs since before Christmas, I've got this wild hair poking me in an uncomfortable place, prodding me to adopt the delusion that it might be possible to develop some kind of online business around the knowledge I've gleaned so far from learning, teaching, and editing. I figure other people learn as they go. Well, that approach suits me fine.

So there you have it: I have a new “career,” and true to my typical style, I'm launching it on the proverbial wing and a prayer. I don't know what the wing is all about, but I do know something about prayer, namely that you can't petition the lord or anyone else with it. So I don't know how this new venture is going to go. If past performance is any indication of future results, the odds are not good. But, as my friend Carlita is wont to remind me, the nature of oddness is not always obvious. Is it odd or is it God? That is a question for brighter minds than mine. I am focused on earning.

But as I mentioned up top (and I'm trying to hurry because Season 5 of Downton Abbey starts tonight), my brain is full of buzzing termites, and they aren't helping. I tried on five Wordpress themes over the past couple days. Bzzzzzzzzz, said the angry termites, shaking their little fists at me. I guess my efforts to use my brain to think are getting in the way of their efforts to destroy it. Yipes.

I can tell this won't end well. The world is once again going to hell in the stinky old handbasket. But nothing lasts forever, so I might as well go for it. The alternative, besides being dead, is to go to work for Target. Wait, that's the same thing. I mean, it's time to lower my standards and keep moving in the direction of my dreams. Nobody will do it for me, and I don't want to spend the remainder of my short and brutish life wishing I tried, even if I failed. Not trying at all is the true failure.

Tomorrow I will figure out this wretched theme, or spend money to get one that I can edit myself. Whatever happens, I will carry on. I might do a little surreptitious petitioning as well, but don't tell anybody.