The deadly season is approaching

After an interminable week of debilitating pain, it seems my clenched jaw has finally relaxed. What a relief. There's a thing called TMJ, who knew. Like TMI, but a lot more painful. My cheekbones are dented from my desperate attempts to grind my fingers into the pressure points (I learned that on Dr. YouTube). Pressing on the jaw hinge was a bad idea, I discovered. However, kneading my cheekbones as if my face was made of bread dough really helped relieve the tension. A twice-daily ibuprofen also helped. I'm happy to say, last night was my first night sleeping without a pill. 

In other news, last night was also my first night sleeping on my new camping mattress. I think I described my trip to the Phoenix foam store, how I asked for the firmest foam they had. Well, I got firm, all right. Maybe too firm. It's just one level softer than concrete, far as I can tell. On the upside, the 4-inch slab is good for sitting. On the downside, as a sleeping mattress, it is unforgiving to my arthritic hip. Today I caved and bought a foam topper at Walmart. I may be a stoic but I'm not a masochist. 

Speaking of masochists, I continue my headlong hurdle toward the edge of my personal housing cliff. In anticipation of my impending free fall, my friends and family are sending me Wikipedia links to Arizona towns they think might suit me. I dutifully check them out. Safford, Globe, Payson, Coolidge, Eloy. Lot of cool names. Like any place, each town has pros and cons. Too small, too hot, too cold, too near fire danger, too near a federal prison . . . But lots of interesting history, if you like mining. 

The thing about parking yourself in one place is you are stuck there. I don't know how you live, maybe you go out all the time, but me, I'm prone to hunkering in my burrow, immersed in my isolation. Being alone is my happy place. However, if the burrow I have rented is too hot, too cold, too noisy, too expensive, or otherwise not suitable, then picking up and moving to another burrow is not easy. I know this from experience.

Not so when your burrow is your car.

My generous friends in Scottsdale, the ones with the little dog, apparently feel bad that I might be living in my car for a while. This summer they have trips planned to exotic places. Would I like to take care of the small furry creature while they are gone? Of course, I said yes. I love that little dog, and the house has all the mod cons (plus, the pool got fixed). Lots of reasons to say yes. 

However, when I'm living in someone else's space, I am not inhabiting my own. You might think, oh, vacation, how nice. That is not how I see it. I see myself as neither guest nor employee, but some third thing. Friend, maybe, but a friend who is willing to leave half her life in her car in order to be at the beck and call of a dog and so my friends can enjoy their trips knowing the dog will be well loved. How they can leave their dog for so long is beyond my comprehension, but that's just me. I miss my cat daily.

Another drawback to saying yes to dogsitting is the season. Summer in Phoenix is brutal. In fact, summer is life threatening. It is not possible to live in a car during the summer in Phoenix. Activities are constrained to early morning. The rest of the time, except for brief excursions to the back yard to make sure the dog pees, I have to stay indoors. I tell myself, I will get a lot of writing done. I will get a lot of dog love (and we all know that will be good for a person with early stage heart failure). But I will be stuck in Phoenix at a time when anyone with the means to leave does.

Where would I be if I weren't in Scottsdale? Camping in the national forest outside of Flagstaff with all the other van life nomads, finding sunny places to set out my solar panels and listening to the wind riffle the tall pines.

Dog love or tall shady trees? 

Taking life at thinking speed

Today as I walked at thinking speed on the Huckelberry Loop, baking under 77°F sunshine, I reflected on the almost two years since I moved from Portland to Tucson. I realize now I had some expectations about what life would be like when I got here. For example, I thought I'd finally have time to write and publish. I thought I would be enjoying endless summer. I thought I'd have a cute little apartment somewhere, where my creativity could flourish, and I'd finally lose ten pounds and get into the best shape of my over-55 life.

Well. Some of those expectations did come true, but not in the way I'd hoped. For instance, I found that cute little apartment, but it turned out to be infested with roaches and located in a neighborhood prone to homicides. That nearly endless summer turned out to be a brutal phenomenon that could kill me. Nevertheless, my creativity did flourish. In spite of roaches, bullets, blazing hot sun, and drenching monsoon rains, I managed to crank out two books. It hasn't been all bad.

Thinking speed is the speed at which I don't have to pay attention to my swollen ankles and laboring lungs. Today I was thinking in particular about this past year, my first Medicare year. Before Medicare started, I remember being cranky that Medicare would start docking my tiny social security income, like, come on, Medicare, how did you expect me to live? I didn't think living itself might be in question. I mean, I knew I had high cholesterol, but I didn't know all the other things that turned out to be wrong with me. If I'd had a choice, would I rather have kept the money and eschewed Medicare? Would I rather not have known about the osteoporosis, the aortic stenosis, and the undiagnosed blood disorder? Possibly. 

In the space of one year, I went from being a healthy person to a person who could drop dead of a heart attack or stroke at any moment. Probably the only thing saving me from a real chest-clutcher is the fact that I haven't eaten red meat in twenty years. I thought I'd be able to gloat a little—look at me, the amazing vegetarian! Instead, I have earned a big fat fail. My so-called exemplary lifestyle (i.e., no meat, no processed food, no sugar, no alcohol, no cigarettes) has not earned me the coveted gold star of perfect health. It is starting to look like I missed out on some of the finer things in life, and I'm thinking specifically of the food groups I have avoided, mainly ice cream and potato chips. Mmm. Ice cream. Now I wish I'd pounded down a few more cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes. Well, it's not over til this fat lady drops dead. 

I don't feel like myself. I used to feel invincible, or as invincible as a slightly overweight, out-of-shape older gal can feel. If you subtract the vertigo, I was doing really well. So I thought. That is why this year has been such a shock. I used to be strong, and now I'm not. 

Realizing I am running out of road has changed the way I see myself. I'm not confident of my ability to do simple things, like climb a ladder, reach a high cupboard, or walk in a straight line without falling over. I can't trust my body anymore. 

Of course, I know everyone is one breath away from death, but it doesn't feel real when your heart is ticking along at an even pace, or when you don't worry about what will happen if you fall off the curb. It's some abstract unhappy fate that will happen sometime far in the future. 

Thanks for listening, Dr. Blog. I feel ashamed for whining about my tiny parched life. Many people have it much worse than I do. I'm just taking a long while to come to terms with my own mortality. 

I think my next road trip is going to help me with that. Instead of planning everything, I'm going to intentionally be a "pantser," that is, I'm going to travel by the seat of my pants. Instead of choosing my destination, I'm going to let the destination choose me. Over and over. I don't know if I can do it without panicking. I'm not used to the rock star roadie lifestyle, where you park in a different city every night. This is either going to kill me, or it's going to make me sick, and then it's going to kill me. 

The only interesting question is, how long before life kills me, and what will I do with that time?

You face the same question, too.