Marching on something, not sure what

It's the dog days of winter around grimy Stumptown. Well, if our weekly average high temperature of 50° can be considered dog days. Perhaps not. Really, there's not a lot to complain about. It's 37° now, but not wet, the President is talking to the nation, and I've been indoors all day editing a paper on whether humanoids are motivated to exercise by their Fitbits. What the hell is a Fitbit?

My back is killing me from sitting in the same position for seven hours. My cat is wanting to kill me for sitting in the same position for seven hours. I can tell by the annoying sound he makes, sort of a cross between a growl and whine, with an annoying question mark at the end. He's saying, why don't you get off your ass and play with me, you slacker, you. To prove his point, he upchucked an impressive hairball on the newly washed bathroom rug. Way to communicate, dude.

Time marches on. My sister is wrapping up her five-month sojourn to Europe. I'm not positive, but she might be the reason the Pope is feeling so feisty and progressive. She's hard to resist, that girl. My friend Bravadita has been subsumed by the burbs and mass transit. If I'm lucky, she'll crawl out of the whirlpool for the Willamette Writers meeting next month, and I'll have the privilege of meeting her for tea and driving her back to the burbs.

Yes, time marches on, but some things seem stuck in amber. Me, for instance. I just want to spend a month in the tub drinking coffee and reading science fiction and smutty paranormal romances. But the body demands food, and acquiring food requires earning money, and thus, when I should be tubbing, I'm editing. The research job I completed in December has yet to generate a check in my mailbox, so I'm editing.

I'm glad to have the work, don't get me wrong, but I might as well be paying my employer, the editing agency. I'm donating far more value than the client is paying for. I blame myself, of course, although I would anyway, blame myself, that is, even if it weren't my fault, which it definitely is. Yes, this one is definitely mine.

The good news, besides the relatively balmy weather, is that I have a niche. Yes, a niche. No, it's not a disease or some special kind of spider that bites you on the belly and in the armpit while you are sleeping (if you know what that spider is called, besides dead, I'd be interested to hear). No, a niche is a slice of the customer pie. The best niche is deep, narrow, juicy, and easy to poke with your marketing fork. It remains to be seen if my niche will be juicy and easy to pork. Poke. Whatever. But at least I know who they are now, my niche. That's progress.

My scrawny mother came over this morning, ostensibly to rub my cat's tummy, but really to bestow some cash on me. She's such a mess of mixed messages, it's hard to know how to respond. She tossed a beat up envelope at me, while at the same time telling me that she's still waiting to find out how much the electrician's bill will be from her recent furnace replacement.

“You've been such a big help to me,” she said as she carefully folded herself to the floor to pet my cat. I opened the envelope, wondering how much my big help was worth to her. $200? $1,000? I saw two twenties and a ten. That's what my help is worth, $50.

“I gave your brother some money for replacing my outdoor service light,” she said, forestalling my protests.

She can't really afford to give her kids money, but she feels guilty and gives what she can as payment for our help. Maybe she doesn't fully believe that we would gladly help her for nothing. Oh, maybe we'd grumble a bit now and then, or roll our eyes at her more outlandish requests, but certainly we are willing to help with no expectation of any reward. We know she won't be around forever. Maybe not much longer. Any day could be the day that things change.

I thanked her and stashed the cash in case she needs it back later. She managed to get herself up off the floor. Victory! I walked her out to her old green Toyota, which has probably accumulated a total of about 150 miles in all of 2014, that's how little she drives. The air was crisp. The sun was valiantly trying to burn through the fog. She got in and proudly held up both hands to show me her driving gloves, one of which had a rubberized palm so she could firmly grip the steering wheel. I tried to look interested. We both know her driving days are numbered.

But everything is numbered, isn't it. There's no escaping time, marching on.

Celebrate! You fail at life.

Finally, there is an official Meetup in Portland for failures. It's called FailPDX, and last night was its kickoff meeting. I heard about it through a random Meetup promo email. The name made me curious. Within a few days, 50 people had signed up. I checked again before it was time to leave: 96 people were planning on attending. Wow.

I left a little early and avoided the freeway, anxious that I wouldn't be able to find the place, afraid I wouldn't find close parking on the dark streets of Old Town Portland. The Meetup was inside a multistory building that stood out in the close-in downtown neighborhood for not being a renovation of a 19th-century monstrosity. The entry lobby was wide, lined in marble and mirror, and behind the security desk was a 30-foot wide, 15-foot tall backdrop of bright green living plants, somehow adhered to the wall from floor to ceiling, glowing under grow lights. It was lovely for its greenness and for the intense artificial sunlight. I was thinking that a security job in front of that backdrop might actually not be that bad. (Remind me of that later, would you?)

On the fifth floor of this building was a series of unfinished offices and open spaces. In the widest open space were easily 60 black padded chairs arranged in rows facing a big screen, which showed the Oregon State versus Ohio State football game in luscious detail. To the right, cafeteria style tables and chairs took up much of the rest of the space. Another huge screen also showed the football game. Smaller flat panel television screens hung from the ceiling, all showing the game. The place reminded me of a gym: The only thing missing were the rows of treadmills and perky people in spandex.

The space was vast. Black windows on the left looked down into the atrium of the lobby. Windows on two other sides looked out on the lights of Portland's downtown freeways and bridges. I imagine the view is spectacular during the day. At night it was just a dark blur of lights. Or maybe it was my eyes.

A couple guys greeted me in a friendly fashion and rushed away to fiddle with the microphones at the lectern. “Food is on the way!” Sure enough, food arrived shortly. I parked myself in an out of the way place and tried to figure out which screen to watch.

A young woman came up to me and greeted me as if she knew me.

“How are you!” she exclaimed.

“Good, good, and you?” I replied, frantically going through my mental Rolodex, which is as slow as a real-life Rolodex.

“Who are you with now?” she asked.

I assumed she meant who was I working for, not if I was in a relationship. “I'm not sure you know me. I'm a freelance researcher.”

She looked flustered so I continued on, “What do you do?”

“I'm in data science,” she said belligerently. “I own my own company.” I wondered if she was belligerent because she was short.

“Oh, how nice,” I said. “What does your company do?”

“We help companies bla bla bla with their bla bla bla and then bla bla bla.”

I'm pretty sure it only seemed like she was saying gibberish. “Isn't that something,” I said.

“We just opened last year,” she said defensively.

“Oh, where are you located?”

“We are working from home right now,” she said though tight lips.

“No worries,” I reassured her.

“There are only three of us,” she admitted reluctantly.

“You gotta start somewhere,” I said encouragingly as she pretended to see someone she knew and rushed away. Whoa. Did I just meet a failure? It's hard to know sometimes. I turned back to the screens in front of me, examining each in turn in a futile hope that one might be showing something other than young athletes in helmets and tight pants running up and down a green field, then attacking each other and falling over in writhing clumps.

A little further along the wall where I was leaning tensely, I realized there was an actual built-in bar where people could get free wine and craft-brew. A crowd of people were milling there, talking and watching the game. Of course, I avoided it all.

An older guy with long gray hair and a gray beard walked past from the direction of the elevators, nodding to me as he went past. A few minutes later, he was back, carrying a glass of what looked like water. No color, no bubbles. He was thin and wore Levis and glasses, like me. I stood up straighter.

“You look smart,” he said as he approached me without quite looking me in the eye.

“Looks can be deceiving,” I said inanely, thinking to myself, Why did I say that? Major fail!

“Looks are only deceiving to the easily deceived,” he said and then nodded at the television screen hanging above us. “Do you pay attention to this stuff?”

“What, the game?” I gaped, still trying to figure out if I had been insulted.

“Stupid past time,” he muttered, although I wasn't sure he meant the football game or the networking.

I stared at him in confusion. He still wasn't looking at me.

“What's your name?” he demanded.

“Carol.”

“Martin.” No handshakes. No nods, but I guess it was an exchange of sorts.

One of the organizers ran past and waved at us.

“Winds of change,” Martin mumbled.

“What change?” I asked.

“Every moment is new,” he said. A moment later he drifted away.

I moved in the opposite direction and found a spot at a table with an unimpeded view of the game. I pulled out my journal and jotted down a few notes, because I knew that later I would be updating my blog, and I would forget these special, surreal moments as they blended into a bizarre timeout from reality.

People are always interesting when you get them talking. Besides the belligerent spitfire shortstuff startup and the hippie throwback, I met a lovely young woman who recruits for the software industry and a fascinating woman who, as a local representative of the National Transportation Safety Board, investigates local aviation accidents. Wow! How cool is that?

Unfortunately, the show started before I got a chance to ask her more questions. An hour and a half later, I slunk out before the thing was over, bludgeoned by bad PowerPoints and worse speakers, and went home to find out the Ducks were toast. Welcome to FailPDX!

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.

Living life takes courage

As I sit at my computer with my feet encased in a rice-filled, microwaved (four minutes) sack of my own design, I peruse the temperature gadgets on my desktop and reflect for the umpteenth time that making my happiness contingent upon weather only leads to disappointment. The temperature in grayish PDX is a normal 42°. If I had stayed in Los Angeles, I would be basking in 80° heat. On the other hand, my friends in Minneapolis are stoically enduring 8°, which is better, I must say, than the minus temps they were experiencing a few days ago. News flash, Carol: Weather is relative and changeable. Duh. And there I go again, pinning my mental well-being on a flimsy hope of catching a glimpse of the sun.

The recycling truck is grinding along the street in front of the Love Shack. I know it's the recycling truck because I hear roaring sounds followed by clinking sounds. I'm distracted by everything, which means I am avoiding something. I keep looking out the window, but I don't know what I'm looking for. Right livelihood, I think. I'm looking for the Right Livelihood boutique, but all I see is the trash truck.

I'm blogging because I'm stymied. Each time I start running for the garden of right livelihood I'm sure is just around the next bend in the path, I find myself walking away from the garden, back to the weed patch. I'd say argh, but that doesn't really sum up my frustration at finding myself once again poking around this wretched weed patch. I was picturing something a little different, maybe something...I don't know...a bit more picturesque and a little less weedy.

If I could just be someone else for long enough, I'm sure I could figure this out. I blame my own brain for this disappointment, but perhaps that's not fair. It is doing the best it can. Unfortunately, my brain seems to be hard at work designing my demise in a perverted attempt to protect me from the ravages of living. Death by brain is slow and tedious, but less risky than death by living life. Living life takes courage.

I suspect the words I'm using to frame my complaint are part of my problem. Contrasting garden with weed patch, while visually satisfying, gives me only two choices, two ends of the spectrum of possibility. Desirable versus undesirable, good versus bad. Of course I want the garden, who wouldn't? But what if there were other places along the continuum, like treehouse, or life raft, or sunny beach? And what if among the weeds are herbs and flowers? I didn't really stop long enough to check. Good or bad, who knows anymore? Not me. Just two overused words that mean nothing.

Warm is good, cold is bad? I feel compelled to mention that yesterday the temperature in Portland was 57°, one degree short of a January record.

Always buy used and never fall in love

Christmas came and went with barely a burp. Nondescript weather, the usual array of cookies and relatives...nothing memorable to mark the passing of another holiday. No family feuds this year, no dueling duplexes. In the spirit of giving, I left my camera at home and did my best to be present. I survived. As usual, that is the best I can say. Now I hunker in the cave between Christmas and New Year's, waiting for the chocolate, sugar, fat, and salt toxins to exit my system, thinking about things like year-end bookkeeping, and wondering how I can somehow manage to wrangle an exemption from life. Oh, wait... maybe I should move back to Communist Russia.

It's the time of year when I expect things to go gunnysack. Mom's furnace. My life. My car. Yep. My Focus. My mechanic, Ping, told me my Focus is terminally ill. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, or how long I have. Will the thing blow up while I'm cruising down the freeway? Or will it simply sputter to a stop somewhere along Yamhill, leaving me to hoof it home? If I'm really lucky, it will take its last gasp as I pull it into its parking space. Hey, it could happen.

I knew that eventually my car would reach the end of its useful life, as do we all. No longer First On Race Day; now it's Found On Road Dead. Sigh. I would make a disparaging remark about Fords, but I have to admit, this car has been a really great car. It's lasted a lot longer than I expected, and not because of anything I've done. With all my cars, my plan is to drive them until they drop. So far that has worked out pretty well for me.

My dad's philosophy on cars was simple: always buy used and never fall in love. With cars, that is. The first part was easy. The second part was harder.

My first car was a 1966 Dodge Dart. Dingy white, of course, and shaped like a stocky rocket. Vroom. Bought it for $500 from a friend, sold it for $300 to a young kid who thought he could fix it up. I drove that thing all over Westwood, Santa Monica, and Bel Air, trying to find the homes of my wealthy custom clothing design customers. I wonder what they thought when they saw me puttering up to their fancy mansions and high-rise condos in a decrepit Dodge Dart. Oh, here's the help, is probably what they thought.

My second car was a poop-brown 1974 Toyota Corolla four-cylinder wagon. Bought it for $400, sold it for $400. I guess if you buy cars really cheap, you can sell them for about the same amount, that is, if they are still running on at least three cylinders, which the Toyota was. That car was intrepid. I drove it to Enseñada, Mexico, with three naked mannequins stretched out in the back. Long story. It's a wonder we weren't busted for drug-running.

My next car was a silver 1985 Ford Escort, a blunt little thing that was fun to drive when it wasn't having computer brain problems. Luckily my boyfriend at the time was handy with cars; he managed to keep the thing running long past its expiration date. I sold it to a guy from Ukraine and sometimes saw it tootling around Beverly Hills, spewing billowing clouds of exhaust in its wake.

My next car was a 2003 Honda CRX (formerly silver, now gray, probably repainted after an accident), the most fun car to drive ever made, except for possibly Minis and go-carts. That thing was a wild little demon. Or maybe I was the demon. It got me up and down the coast, from L.A. to Portland and back a couple times, and out into the wild deserts of Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Tucson. I moved back to Portland in that car. Driving the CRX was like skidding down the road on your butt, but without the skidmarks or road rash. That was the car I fell in love with. That was the car that inspired my father to advise me to never fall in love with a car.

The CRX, engine blown, died a sad little weepy death on the grass parking strip next to my parents' house and was later towed away by some charity, an event I watched, brokenhearted, from their living room window. My consolation prize was my mother's 1984 white Chrysler minivan, which was like driving a school bus after the CRX. Ironically, that was the year I was driving a school bus out in Gresham. I was grateful to have the van to get to work, and since Gresham was too far to drive home in the middle of the day for the long lunch period, I was grateful there was enough room in the van to sleep. I slept a lot in that van. I came to appreciate minivans as little four-wheeled houses. In my frustration at finding myself driving a school bus in Gresham for a living, I often thought about packing up my stuff in that van and heading south. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that the van was leaking transmission fluid.

True to my mission to drive cars until they drop, I traded the dying minivan for the shiny black 2001 Ford Focus hatchback (plus a lot of cash). I drove the minivan to Milwaukie, dripping red drops that looked disturbingly like blood (I only pulled over to refill the transmission twice), where I handed over a cashier's check and the keys to the minivan and drove off in my sporty four-year-old Ford Focus. That was almost ten years ago.

I used to be able to name all the makes and models of my father's cars. Now I only remember the few that I learned to drive on: the 1960 Oldsmobile Delta 88 whose speedometer was a strip of color that turned from green to orange to red (go faster, Dad, faster!), the sparkling turquoise 1961 Cadillac with the pointed tail fins, and a dark green Pontiac that was memorable only for stalling during my driver's exam... that's about all I remember now of the dozens of cars my father bought and sold in his lifetime.

I guess there is no point to remembering a list of cars, any more than there is a point to remembering the names of all my cousins kids and grandkids. Next year we will all be a year older and maybe a foot taller or a half-foot wider (hope not). Another used car, another happy new year.

Merry ho ho ho from the Hellish Hand-basket

It's the end of the year again, time to get maudlin over mistakes made and opportunities missed. All those wasted moments spent networking with people whose names I've forgotten ten seconds after they hand me their business cards. (Even the ones I sort of liked.) All those frustrating minutes spent writing and posting content to the white meat version of social media to support a business strategy I never really believed in but adopted on the pompous recommendation of some so-called experts. All those long tedious hours spent editing other people's lousy essays instead of writing my own lousy essays. Woe. Woe is me.

Time to regret the past as it muscles its way around me into 2015. I'd shut the door on it if I could. Or at least, on 2014. I'd shove it out on the porch and slam the door on it so fast. Take that, you stupid past, you.... go fight over the birdseed with the squirrels and rats! I guess I could say it's been a tough year. But that would just make me sound whiny, self-centered, and chronically malcontented.

Is this a happy time of year for you? Do you get all amped up with the high-voltage season? Do you like all those smells you mostly only get in December? You know the smells I mean: recently cut and soon-to-be-dead fir trees? Egg nog lattes? Nutmeg and cinnamon? Bayberry candles?

Do your eyes bug out of your head with all the twinkling lights? Are your neighbors trying to outdo each other with their yards full of tasteless glowing Santas and radioactive snowmen? Oh, sorry, I mean snowpeople. And the sounds! Zounds! The endless loops of insipid music playing from staticky speakers in the grocery store an orchestral rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, pounding holes in your head?

Oh, sorry. There I go, projecting my stuff onto you. Maybe you like The Little Drummer Boy on an endless loop while you are grousing over the price of zucchini. And what's not to like, really. Drums and boys, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I finished a particularly tedious editing job last night about 11:00 and uploaded it into the magical cloud, whoosh! Off it went into cyberland where I assume some cranky elves are parceling each massive wretched tome back to its author, who will open up his or her nicely wrapped file in the morning and exclaim in horror at the red ink bloodbath. (Well, red, blue, and green, if I turn on all the Track Changes options.) Super festive editing for a super festive season. The author of yesterday's debacle will probably feel a little sick when he sees my hatchet job and my terse warning about the consequences of plagiarism, but it won't be anything that a little eggnog and a shot of rum won't cure.

There was nothing new in my inbox this morning, so I decided I would spend the day cleaning up around the Love Shack. If you have followed my blog over the past year, you will know that the number of times I talk about cleaning up the apartment corresponds to exactly the number of times I have cleaned up the apartment. That is to say, twice. Maybe three times at the most. So you can understand, it is a momentous occasion when I pull out the vacuum cleaner. My cat opts out, slinking under the couch until my conniption fit is over. I guess if I revved up the vacuum cleaner more often, he might not find it so frightening. Oh well. Three times a year, dude... that hardly qualifies as torture.

I changed the sheets on the bed and fed all my quarters into the greedy machines in the basement to do two loads of laundry, one of cotton stuff and one of fleece stuff. I folded all the warm undies, t-shirts, and towels and put everything away out of sight. Next, I figured out that I could use a small fine-toothed comb to remove the clingy cat hair furballs that dot my fleece jackets, pants, and blankets. That took a while and made quite a pile of cat hair. Finally, I vacuumed the bedroom rug. I even swapped out the bulging cleaner bag. By that time, my nose was in full protest, and it hasn't stopped protesting since...achoooo!...three hours later. Maybe that is why I'm a grinch tonight. It's hard to feel the joy of the season when one's nose is constantly dripping.

Well, happy holidays from the Hellish Hand-basket. Thanks for reading. (Or visiting and clicking away with an annoyed curse, which is what I suspect most visitors do.) I hope your holiday season is happy and filled with just enough joyful surprise to remind you that life is worth living, even if the future is bleary and the past is a bully. Somewhere in the now is where we'll find that old holiday spirit, kicked back in an easy chair with a glass of potent eggnog in one hand and a cigar in the other, watching reruns of Gilligan's Island. Enjoy the season, Pop, wherever you are.

Bah humbug. No wait, I didn't mean it, really...

I generally don't post in forums or in the comments sections of articles or blogs, although I get a lurid thrill out of lurking on the periphery, reading other peoples' snarky comments and wondering how they have the guts to write their nasty trollish responses to other commenters they've never even met but apparently hate on principle. It's entertaining, shocking, occasionally disgusting, and somewhat addictive. Today I must report that I stopped being a lurker. And thus, today I had my first interaction with a troll.

My grocery store invited me to post a comment in their online forum, describing my shopping behavior on Black Friday. No doubt their many research snoids will comb through the massive database of comments to find the behavior patterns and keywords that will direct next year's holiday marketing campaigns. Hey, I'm a market researcher; I know how this stuff works. More or less. I always fill out the store's online surveys, but this is the first time I was invited to comment in a forum. Out of a desire to be helpful and interest in the research method, I registered my user name and entered the forum, where I posted a short comment:

I dislike the holiday season. I avoid shopping if at all possible. I don't buy gifts. If I could sleep through the entire season, I would. I don't participate in the obligation or the rituals. The religious connotations are uninteresting and the commercial aspects of the season make me despair. (Where do all the dead ornaments and foil wrapping paper go? Does anybody care?)

Now, I admit, true to my chronic malcontented nature, I was using the forum to express a contrary view, more out of a desire to poke the frog than anything else. After all, I have this blog through which to express my whining, so I don't feel a strong urge to post my frothy resentments in other online venues. It was an experiment, you know? Research?

Frogs, when poked, jump. Not long after I posted my admittedly dark, somewhat snarky comment, I received an email in my inbox, notifying me that someone had commented on my post. I clicked on through and read:

Get a life......and move back to Communist Russia.

Huh. Clearly another troubled soul. I thought about the wide range of actions I could take in response to the comment. I could retort, I have a life, thank you very much, and what's wrong with Communist Russia, anyway!? (Is there any part of Russia that is not Communist, I wonder?) I could claim that my birthright as an American gives me the right to say stupid things, just like it does them. I could try to explain more fully my feelings about the commercialized holiday grind. I could apologize for pissing them off. I could give them some empathy and address their fears. I could ignore them. Which is probably the wisest response, considering what I've seen of vitriolic exchanges on other forums. Within six volleys, I bet we'd be fighting over Obamacare. Keep in mind all this would be taking place in the online forum of a grocery store, in response to the question, How do you shop during the holidays?

After I stopped laughing, I thought for a moment and responded as follows:

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like I struck a nerve. Sorry. Next time I won't be so open about sharing my feelings. My intention was not to create strife. I'm glad you felt safe enough to share your feelings, though. All the best to you.

It sounded pretty good at face value. But I am a liar. First, I didn't actually care if I created strife, clearly, or I wouldn't have posted such a overtly provocative comment in the first place. Poking the frog, stirring the pot, call it what you will. I can't help myself. The contrary view draws me like ants to dirty dishes. 

And second, reading the message between the lines isn't hard for anyone who has spent time in counseling for relationships: the words you stupid dick were invisible, perhaps, but clearly implied. I learned my passive aggressiveness at the foot of the master. Or mistress, I guess. 

I was curious what type of person would tell someone who was struggling during a stressful season to get a life and move back to Communist Russia. I can't tell from the user name if the person is male or female, old or young. I wonder, who responds to a cry for help—unskillful as it was—by smacking them down with an admonition to go away? Like, far away. 

Someone who is hurting themselves, no doubt. Someone who has probably maxed out her credit lines in a vain attempt to buy the perfect gifts for her many grandchildren before the looming deadline crushes her beneath the wheel of failure. Someone who is terrified that if she doesn't uphold the all-important religious traditions of the season, she will surely be condemned to the bitter hell reserved for failed evangelists. Someone who secretly wishes she could keep the festive decorations but toss the obligations and enjoy a long nap before tax time. That kind of sorry-ass soul, probably.

When I got home from a meeting tonight, I found another note in my inbox. I clicked through and read:

What a gracious response to such a ridiculous comment. Good for you, Carol!

Ha. Don't you just love it? Chickaboom!

Mom dodges the slammer

I honored one of my relatively recent holiday traditions last week: I celebrated Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday. I'm happy to let the happy holidays pass me by. I'd be a lot happier if the places I hunt, forage, and gather my food could be separated from the places where maniacal holiday shoppers congregate en masse in pursuit of deals. Alas, the world of retail commerce is not organized to suit introverted outliers like me. As my friend Sheryl would say, suck it up.

It's always something, especially during the holiday season. This week my mother's heat pump went out. She found out things weren't working properly when she got an inordinately high heating bill.

“The fan is running all the time” she complained. “I've set the thermostat to 55° to get the fan to shut off. Your brother brought over a space heater.” Great. My 85-year old mother is hunkered down in her dark freezing condo, huddled next to a space heater. This situation could be described as a disaster waiting to happen. I can picture my mother going out to the garage for a smoke, leaving the heater on full blast next to her lap blanket.

“Did you call the furnace guy?” I asked.

“I'm on the list, I think,” she replied. I wondered if it was finally time for me to step in and take control. Should I be calling repair people on her behalf? Should I be paying her bills? Isn't that one step away from moving in with her? I feel like a rabbit frozen in oncoming headlights. There will be no coming back from that move, I fear.

“You won't believe what else happened,” she went on.

“What?”

“I was driving on Hassalo, you know, where the road is gravel off to both sides? There was a car coming, so I moved over to the right.”

“Oh, no,” I said before I could stop myself, picturing the worst: parked car, cat, kid? Insurance bills, legal problems, jail time? I can't imagine my 85-year-old mother in prison orange. She's more of a winter.

“Some dumb homeowner didn't pull their garbage can back far enough and I hit it with my right side mirror,” she said in disgust. Then she burst into hearty laughter.

It's a good thing we were talking on the phone so she couldn't see my terrified face.

“The mirror popped out of its socket,” she said. “I went back and found it. I can get your brother to glue it back in.”

Luckily sounds like the garbage can survived. (Of course, the whole thing was the homeowner's fault.) Did we dodge a bullet? Not sure. Maybe. I'll take the gift, in honor of the season.

Another Thanksgiving adventure

My scrawny 85-year-old mother called me a few minutes ago. “Have you ever had a worse Thanksgiving meal?” she asked. I had just finished admiring my friend Bravadita's colorful repast, described on her blog, complete with mouthwatering photographs. Roasted brussel sprouts. Mmmmm. I was inclined to say, no, probably not. But that would have been an untruth. Yes, I admit, it probably wasn't the greatest Thanksgiving meal I've had, but it wasn't the worst, by far.

Here's what happened. Yesterday I picked my mother up about 10:45; we rumbled through the rain to a local crappy chain diner (where my mother often eats with her cronies), where we met my younger brother. I'll call him Spike. We strolled into the place behind an older couple, who stood staring at the glass case full of pies.

“We are here to get a pie to go,” said the old man. We quickly sidestepped our way to the counter and were seated forthwith in a booth with a nice view of a gray wet boulevard. Mom ordered a turkey sandwich (which she told me today was chicken. I'm not sure if it was chicken when it was supposed to have been turkey, or if it was chicken from the get go, or if I simply misheard her when she ordered, assuming that because it was Thanksgiving, she would get a turkey sandwich.... am I making sense?)

My brother ordered a Denver omelette, which prompted some discussion about why an omelette might be named after a city in Colorado. I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes. We all had coffee, which led to a discussion about how the coffee was better than expected, and how the best coffee comes from Astoria, but we couldn't remember the name of the company that roasted it, only that the best stuff is called Thundermuck.

The food came fast as the place filled up with families. The servers were speeding around, looking harried. I mentioned to Spike and my mother that my eggs were cold, but I didn't really care. I often eat cold eggs. They tasted fine to me. The bacon was good, too, but I really just wanted the pancakes (syrup and butter, mmmm). Sadly, they were somewhat disappointing, being simultaneously doughy and hard (is such a thing scientifically possible?). Still, I was enjoying myself, sitting across from what is left of my local family. I took Spike's picture, and he took mine. We teased each other gently; our teasing is a pale version of what it used to be: we are old now, and tired.

The whole dining adventure was over in an hour. Spike declared his intention to go home and take a nap. Mom and I agreed it was too early to take a nap. “I'll probably play some computer games,” she said with a resigned sigh. I had a paper to finish editing. Every day is a work day for me. My brother and I split the bill while my mother was making a pitstop in the restroom, which prompted a discussion on the way home about the importance of learning to gracefully receive a gift, because to repudiate a gift diminishes the giver. That shut her up for a while.

I left her standing in the rain in her driveway, waving her little wizened hand at me. I trundled my moss-covered Ford Focus home, thinking I need to replace my wipers, and had some more coffee before I started editing the paper (a dissertation on probabilities and real options... I know, what?). When my eyes were properly crossed, I watched an episode of True Blood and then went to bed. As Thanksgivings go, it was one of the better ones.

The worst Thanksgivings were the ones from my preteen childhood, in which my grandmother invaded my mother's kitchen, my father and grandfather watched football, my older brother read a book in a quiet corner, and my sister and Spike duked it out in silent fury. Where was I? No recollection. I'm pretty sure I was there, but I might not have been completely there, if you know what I mean.

The second worst Thanksgivings were the ones I attended at the homes of various boyfriends. For example, I visited the surfer dude's bronzed parents, who lived in a ranch house in Newbury Park, California. I was an overdressed new wave mannequin in turkey-sized shoulder pads: it was 1980, after all. (But I was in the garment industry: it was my job to look edgy.) The surfer dude's two-packs-a-day mother and her bizarre onion casserole was mitigated by the desert heat.

A few years later, the surfer dude was gone, displaced by the Jewish dude. The Jewish dude's mother made chicken soup without salt or seasoning. His siblings tolerated me, but I think his father was secretly fascinated by the wild fashionista goy toy with spiked hair. (That would be me.)

Finally, I figured out how to say no and stay home.

The best Thanksgiving ever was the year when my sister came to Los Angeles to work for the Getty on a museum grant. While the Jewish dude went off to do the family thing, she and I stayed home and watched movies and ate popcorn for dinner. Despite that being the year of the Malibu fires, floods, and the Northridge Earthquake, it was one of my best years in LA, because she was there.

“Didn't you want to send the eggs back?” my mother asked me on the phone.

“No,” I said. I thought about trying to tell her how much I am thankful we aren't doing the whole cooking and cleaning insanity anymore. And I wanted to tell her, too, how much I enjoy going out to eat with her once in a while, and how much I will miss her when she is gone. But that's probably best left for another day. All I said was, “No, I don't mind cold eggs once in a while. It's all part of the adventure.”

I'll have some fries, with a side of righteous indignation, please

No complaints from rainbow city. I'll take our unsettled rain squalls and sun breaks over 6-foot snow drifts any day. On the hierarchy of things to complain about, cold comes first, way above wet. Pretty much the worst thing here in the Northwest is cold AND wet, which happens predictably often for nine months of the year. But yesterday the temp hit 56°! After the arctic polar Canadian chill blast thingie, it felt downright balmy. What's a little moisture when it's practically tropical!

How did I celebrate? Thanks for asking. In anticipation of my upcoming personal health insurance nightmare, in which I throw myself upon the mercy of the open market, I showed up for my 50,000-mile checkup with my soon-to-be former doctor at Kaiser. She's wonderful. Even when she's probing my lady parts, I know I'm in capable hands. Nobody is allowed to visit the private terrain down there except my wonderful doctor.

The assistant, on the other hand, was... well, I could say her behavior was disappointing, but I think I'll describe her as a king hell bummer hot mess. I can only assume she trained at the career college for which I used to work. I didn't ask, I assumed. Not nice of me, I know.

First, she was brusque and breezy. Normally, I don't mind brusque and breezy. You can be brusque and breezy, and still be personable. Just quickly personable, as you rush away to do something no doubt more important. I could accept that. But she didn't seem inclined to slow down and look me in the eye.

“You were just here in July,” she said accusingly, looking at the computer screen which is now de rigeur for every doctor's office.

“I know,” I sighed. “It wasn't my idea.”

“What do you mean?” she frowned.

“I got a robocall,” I tried to explain, and even as I spoke, I realized I had failed to put the right amount of righteous indignation in my voice. If I had just sounded like a customer, I'm sure she would have backed off. In my defense, it was barely 8:30 in the morning (crack of dawn for this puppy), and I hadn't had anything to eat. I didn't have much enthusiasm for churning up some frothy indignation. Wishing that pap smear services came with a coffee bar, I went on, “The voice said to call, and so I called. The girl who answered said I should make an appointment, so here I am.”

“Huh. Do you want a flu shot while you are here?”

“Sure, why not,” I sighed.

“Here. Opening goes in the back.” She handed me a white sheet and a paisley gown and sped out the door. Chanting to myself opening goes in the back, opening goes in the back, I shucked my layers and proceeded to drape myself in the one-size-fits-most cotton gown. I sat on the end of the table, scritching my butt on the paper cover and waited.

After about five minutes, the aide knocked on the door and came in, carrying something I didn't want to look at too closely.

She grabbed my left arm, flipped the cover off the syringe, and jammed the needle into my muscle. With one hand, she slapped a little blue-patterned band-aid over the hole she'd made in my arm. It happened so fast, I had a mere moment to be simultaneously appalled and impressed. Clearly, she did this often. Clearly, I did not.

The actual exam took an anti-climactic ten minutes, tops. After being poked and prodded, reamed, steamed, and drycleaned, and after wishing my doctor happy holidays, silently hoping I would see her next year, I dragged my clothes back on and shuffled down to the lab to get some blood drawn for a cholesterol check. As I sat there, a little damp and used, waiting my turn, I began to feel a little wan. I chalked it up to lack of food, rain, and pelvic exam.

Later, back at home, I fixed eggs and a pile of broccoli and zucchini and scarfed it down. Pretty soon I felt even worse. My left shoulder hurt: I could barely raise my arm without groaning. In fact, all my joints hurt. I felt achy all over. Hey! I think I have the flu. What the—!

I took a nap, but that didn't help. I met a friend for dinner. She told me that the aide didn't know how to give a proper shot. That helped briefly, as did the french fries, but by TV time, I was moaning on the couch. My cat looked askance at me as I kicked the blankets in frustration. I couldn't find a position that didn't hurt, and my shoulder felt like I had been shot. Or how I imagined it might feel had I actually been shot. Finally, I gave up. I took an ibuprofen and went to bed. Exit, stage right, dragging a case of righteous indignation like a full diaper behind me.

The next day, I felt fine, and thus was able to appreciate the magnificent sight of a double rainbow glowing against the massive gray clouds piled up before me. It was gone quickly, as the rain clouds scudded off to the east to dump snow on Mt. Hood. I reveled in a fleeting glimpse of blue sky, enjoying a delicious 5-minute respite before the next deluge.

Ass kickers and dream killers, oh my

My friend Bravadita dragged up on Portland and moved to Gladstone, my sister is gallivanting around Vatican City, my friends in Minneapolis are snowed in, the kitchen windows in Love Shack are shuddering with a relentless east wind, and humans landed a washing machine-sized spacecraft on a moving comet! What does it all mean? I can't figure it out.

Luckily, the electricity has stayed on today. Yesterday, not so lucky. But we survived. We, meaning the cat and me. There's not a lot to complain about, in relative terms. I'm alive. I have food and clean water. It could be worse. Of course, if the internet goes down again, you'll hear my screams of rage in Pacoima.

Last night I ventured out of the Love Shack into the frigid (40°, feels like 25°) windy night to go to a networking Meetup across town. I thought everyone would be hunkered down in their snuggies, braving the onslaught of what passes for winter weather in Portland, but no. Everyone was actually out driving around in their lumbering SUVs. I guess when you drive a Hummer, you aren't afraid of anything, certainly not a measly 50 mph wind gust or two. That's nothing when you weigh four tons. I just hoped no errant wind gust would pick up my tin can Ford Focus and toss me into said Hummer. Yikes.

So I was in, if not good company, certainly lots of company, driving at a snail's pace on I-84 toward Lloyd Center, trying to get to a funky Chinese restaurant by 6:00 p.m. When it's dark so early, all the red taillights flashing on and off remind me that it's my most-dreaded time of year: Christmas. That's a rant for another day.

I arrived at the restaurant at few minutes before the hour, and found no place to park in the tiny lot, so I drove along the street and around the first corner. Plenty of room under some wildly waving trees. Hmmm. I parked and hoped my car would be intact when I returned. Intact, meaning not buried under a toppled tree. I battled the wind to the restaurant, fought the glass door open, and whooshed inside with a pile of dead orange leaves. Festive.

I scooted past a gauntlet of empty red leather booths into the back room. I greeted the Meetup hostess and filled out a name tag, which I placed on my hat. After milling around aimlessly for a minute, hoping to connect with someone and failing, I took a place at a long plastic-topped table and plastered a fake smile on my face. More people arrived. The patient waitress was a welcome diversion. No one else seemed perturbed by the wind. I kept thinking of my dark dead appliances and hoped the power would be restored by the time I returned home.

There is a moment at every networking event when I feel like an alien from another solar system. It's usually when I'm seated and others are standing, talking over my head. I am forced to look up to see their faces, which hurts my neck and makes me feel like I'm invisible. I imagine that is how people in wheelchairs feel most of the time. It's painful on many levels. To push my chair back and stand up would be awkward, and knowing me, I'd probably lose my balance and fall either onto the table or onto my chair and thence onto the floor.

However, staying seated while trying to pretend I'm part of the conversation is also awkward. With my neck at an uncomfortable angle, I can sometimes see the standing participants cast quick glances in my direction. Mostly they see the top of my hat, where I've placed my name tag. Oh well, at least they will know my name if not my face.

In these situations, my solution is to turn my back on the standing networkers and address myself to my dinner as if to a long lost friend. Food doesn't argue. It's always been a reliable companion, at least until it's gone. But as long as there are a few crumbs of fried rice left, I can sink into the comfort of my own company and pretend I am too busy eating to be bothered with inane pursuits like communicating with other humans. Because, as I've mentioned before, I don't really like people, and I don't really care.

Well, that's not entirely true. I confess, I am fond of the woman who co-founded this Meetup group. I think she's swell. She was the only one, though, sadly. I recognized one other person. I'll call him Andy. At a previous Meetup, he described himself the “Ass Kicker” component of the “Dream Killer-Ass Kicker” coaching partnership. That is as frightening as it sounds.

Andy is a youngish man with a purposefully bald head and a plethora of facial jewelry. From our previous meetings, I had the impression that he was gay. Not that it matters. I don't always get it right (although I did accurately call it in The Crying Game, just saying, which surprised my then boyfriend, who was totally snookered). Last night I was the one who was snookered. Andy brought his female partner with him, a young Australian woman, introduced as Michelle, who was missing a tooth and wearing a mottled fur hat with ears and long tails hanging down her chest.

Of course, gender is a malleable thing. I've been mistaken for a young man before, when I was young and slim and everyone wore bell-bottom jeans, moccasins, gold wireframes, and long straight hair. (At the time I was mortified. Now I'm rather gleeful.) Because gender is amorphous, there is no telling the true nature of the relationship between Andy and Michelle. I don't spend much time thinking about it. But I did wonder about that weird fur hat, especially after she put her name tag on top of her head. I was perplexed, not because she appeared to be copying me, but because I thought, she just wrecked her fur hat by putting a name tag on it. Not my problem.

The evening's speaker was a young, overly enthusiastic pixie of a slip of a wisp of a girl, wearing a slim purple dress and demonstrating an annoying habit of saying, “If you're with me, say 'Hell, yes'!” After reading about Stanley Milgram's psychological study of teacher-student shenanigans, I never participate in obvious manipulations unless it's in support of someone I know and truly love, or unless I'm really drunk. I abstained from shouting “Hell, yes!” every three minutes and instead doodled in my notebook, drawing yawning faces, barely listening, and finally the sweet young thing wound down and squeaked out her call to action: “Only $39 for my four hour workshop, if you sign up tonight!” When the presentation was over, the real networking began.

But it turned out, it wasn't really networking. Four of us sat at one table. There was Andy, me, a massage therapist from Russia—I'll call her Tatiana—and an older gal named Rena, who described herself as sort of an astrologist, but with destiny cards, whatever those are. I didn't ask. We went around the table, sharing our notions of our ideal customer. It quickly became clear that Andy was in coaching mode, and Rena was worshiping at his altar, so to speak. Tatiana seemed content to support Rena, and I was content to carve heavier and heavier black lines into an image of a bleak stone face, which took up most of a page in my journal. I labeled the face Dream Killer, in honor of the absent partner. Andy didn't notice, being too caught up in playing the coach.

I spoke up every now and then, and I took my turn and exposed my quirks and foibles without much reluctance in a game attempt at authenticity. I really have nothing to lose. I'm pretty sure massage therapists and wannabe-astrologists will never see market research as a solution to any problem they may encounter in life. Why should I bother trying to convince them they have a problem that only research can solve? Andy, the ass-kicking coach, on the other hand, is a business man. He understands the relevance of and need for marketing research. But I wouldn't work with anyone who self-proclaims as an ass-kicker. Or a dream killer, for that matter.

Enough about networking! All of this just affirms what I've come to realize over the past year: I work best alone. As the wind moans under the eaves of the Love Shack, my cat snores in the chair next to me. What more does a person need to be happy, really? Electricity, a cozy cave, and a snoring cat. I've got it made.

Death by bug

This week I took time out between rainstorms to go for a jog. I slogged along in my running gear, following my usual path through the park. First, I climbed the main staircase to warm up. I went at a pretty good clip, considering I'm an aging slacker couch potato. I tried to keep my chin ahead of my hips...that seems to propel me forward somehow, as long as my feet catch up in time. I breathed through my nose as well as I could, considering my sinuses are chronically clogged. (Breathing through my mouth makes me look desperate: older gal, trying too hard.)

Every week, no matter how I push myself, young things of various genders leap up the steps past me like gazelles. They make it look effortless. I feel the wind of their passing, and I breathe in the fumes of their coconut body wash, but I keep my head down, watching where I place my feet. Eventually, I get to the top, the summit of the hill, formerly a volcano, now a flat tree-lined avenue of grass where children chase dogs chasing Frisbees. The sweeping evergreens were a lot smaller 40 years ago when my boyfriend used to park his Buick Special overlooking the city so we could smoke weed and do other fun stuff.

The gazelles were long gone by the time I gained the summit. I walked to catch my breath and looked at the city through gaps in the trees. Then I started jogging again, going back down the hill, but the long way this time, down and around, along the gently sloping road, which led me eventually to the reservoirs we hope to save from the EPA, the agency I usually like but currently wish would let our city water be. Whatever. The jog down the hill always feels like a cop-out, especially when some runners pass me going uphill in the opposite direction. My excuse is that I'm old.

At the reservoir road, I stopped and stretched and looked at the sky to see if I should linger or keep moving to avoid oncoming rain clouds. Sometimes you can see it coming right at you and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes, though, you can stay ahead if you hurry.

This week, I thought, I need to up my game. Thinking of my still-too-tight Levis and the ass that I drag around behind me, I decided to run back uphill the way I had come down, vowing to keep going as long as my various body parts held together. Things were going good. I was feeling strong, watching my feet as I plodded steadily along the edge of the road, one eye out for bicycles. Pretty soon, my heart rate began to rise, and then to soar. My left ankle began to twinge, followed by my left knee, not enough to make me stop, but enough to make me reflect on old joints and tired ligaments.

Finally, my congested sinuses couldn't siphon enough oxygen out of the air to keep my tired muscles firing, and I began to breathe through my mouth, although I shut it every time I met someone coming in the opposite direction, to preserve my illusion of youthful vigor. I wasn't gulping air, really, just scooping air, kind of like a whale scoops plankton as it moves through the ocean depths. And that's when I scooped up the bug.

I should have scooped through my teeth. If I had, I would have caught the sucker before it made it halfway down my throat toward my laboring lungs. As it was, my throat closed in the nick of time, and left the bug stuck, halfway down, too far down to come back up, except by the most drastic and messy of measures. Contemplating a finger-jam-induced upchuck in the park with dogs and kids and runners and Frisbees nearby didn't last long, so I did the logical thing and swallowed.

After a few convulsive swallows and some loud hacking-style coughs, with me bent over, hands on knees, tongue hanging out, the bug slid the rest of the way down my gullet. Protein, I reassured myself. Everyone needs more protein. I tried not to imagine the bug was kicking out its last moments while it paddled around in my stomach acid.

As I walked the rest of the way up the hill, I wondered what would have happened if my throat hadn't closed in time, if that bug had stuck there, blocking my airway, and no one had happened by to find out why the old lady was laying in the road turning blue? Would the coroner find the bug during the autopsy? Would the ruling be death by bug? Or would it be ruled accidental death due to a foolish old person's illusion that just because she once finished a marathon twenty years ago that she can trot up a long hill with impunity?

Obviously, I lived to tell the tale. I didn't get an upset tummy or have projectile diarrhea. The bug did not crawl out of my throat (or any other orifice) later while I was sleeping, at least, not that I know of. (Eeewww.) I once read that the average person inadvertently eats several spiders a year. So, what's one more bug? Maybe I should be saying yum.

Stop twiddling and get a life!

I launched the Hellish Handbasket Blog in January of 2012 as I was headed into one of my many recurring dark nights of my soul: my interminable pursuit of a terminal degree. I wanted a place to lighten my load by dumping my emotional ballast, as it were. And I must say, this blog has served me well as a listening post, absorbing my chronic whining and transmitting my frothy yearnings into the blogosphere.

And lo, the blogosphere has responded. Over time, I have built a modest following consisting of a handful of friends and relatives and a few strangers from Latvia and China who cruise through for a minute or two, probably looking for a hole in the cyber dike. Well, that's Google's problem, not mine. In any case, I was getting a few dozens of page views (including maybe a few bonafide readers) per month and, considering this is an anonymous blog, I thought I was doing okay. And then I innocently posted a post about twiddling and everything changed.

When I was young, the word twiddling referred to an activity one did with one's thumbs. I hesitate to Google the term now, for fear of luring drooling hackers and sneaky viruses to my cyber door, but I'm pretty sure twiddling no longer means what it used to mean. If you look at all my posts from the last three years as bars in a vertical column chart, every post is as flat as lettuce in a vegetable garden except that one post, which is the One World Trade Center Tower of my blog. There is only one thing that could attract that kind of attention: sex.

Now, you could say I'm trying to capitalize on that one post's popularity by attempting to duplicate its energetic verve with this post. You could say that. But you would be wrong. Because I am not interested in attracting wackjobs and knuckleheads seeking to read about twiddling anything but the traditional thumbs. Whoa, I can see I'm going to get in trouble here. Honestly, I shudder to imagine all the things one can do with thumbs that I have never considered. But I'm not going there here, not today.

I just want to say, good grief, stop twiddling, whatever the hell that is, and get a life! I'm happy being an obscure anonymous blogger. I don't sell ad space on my site, so all your cavorting through my twiddling post is not netting me anything but a totally lopsided out of whack stats page! My other posts are infinitesimal specks compared to that one damn post. What the hell, you guys?

I suspect there is a mountain of spam aimed directly at my tiny anonymous blog being barely held back by a small army of Google minions somewhere in a data warehouse in Cupertino. I hope the cyber dike holds. Don't let go, cyber minions.

Meanwhile, I will continue blogging about the inconsequential minutiae of my days as I drift in and out of earning, writing, and networking. Boring stuff, I know, compared to sex. Maybe it would help to think of it as an invitation to use your imagination. Okay, I've said my part. Do with it what you will. I'm off to do some twiddling of my own. At last! The Walking Dead is in reruns.

My healthcare plan: don't get sick; my retirement plan: die

Last night as I set my collection of six clocks back one hour, I reflected that if I could hibernate until next spring, I would. Dream the winter away and wake up to... well, hell, now that I think about it, fall and spring in Portland look and feel very much the same. Rain. Wind. Rain. Showers. Then drizzle, followed by rain. The forecast for the next eight months is... you guessed it: rain. I wrung every last Z out of that extra hour of sleep last night. I'd have taken more if my cat had let me keep snoozing, just to postpone the depressing moment when I peered out the curtains and didn't see sun.

Speaking of depressing moments, my mother and I took our first retirement home tour on Friday. The place was a giant bunker built on top of retail: Safeway, some miscellaneous shops, and a now-empty former Target store. Not exactly a thriving community below. I was curious to see the community in the monstrous castle above.

We came in through the back parking lot, which apparently was not the main floor. An old man and an even older woman, both in wheelchairs, flanked the elevators, staring morosely at the indoor-outdoor carpet. My mother said in her loud smoker's voice, “Here's the welcome committee!” What happened next was bizarre: It was like someone put a quarter in those old folks and turned the key: The old man sat up straight and grinned right at my mother. Nice dentures, I thought. The old lady perked up, too, and I wondered if they got paid to sit there at the elevator and welcome hapless newcomers in the door.

We rode up the elevator and met the marketing manager, Tom, who had only been there four weeks and was still finding his way around.

“First you can have lunch,” he said, “and then I'll give you the tour!”

Lunch just happened to be a buffet, in honor of Halloween. Aides dressed as goblins and vampires ushered us toward the buffet table along with a horde of smiling old people pushing wheeled walkers. Once you get on the buffet line ride, you can't get off until it's over. I handed my mother a Halloween themed plate and served her up some beige rice. “You want meatballs with that?” I asked, searching in vain for the salad bar.

“What else is there?” asked my mother.

“Teriyaki chicken. Cole slaw. Celery sticks. Hotdog on a bun.”

I served her up the chicken and put a little of (almost) everything on my plate. After I watched the old people load their plates with a teaspoon of cole slaw, a dab of rice, one meatball, I tried to restrain myself, even though I was starving. Clearly, by octogenarian standards, I ate like a lumberjack.

My mom and I found an empty table in the cavernous dining room, hoping we weren't inadvertently sitting in someone's assigned seat. I sipped the odd green punch (carbonated) and watched the lively crowd mill around. Even though they all left their walkers parked in the dining room lobby, for a bunch of old folks, they seemed pretty energetic. Not fast moving, but peppy nonetheless.

“I want some pie,” declared my mother. She got up and went in search of dessert. I thought, should I be fetching and carrying for her? Is that my new job now, to wait on my mother? I watched her walk away, noticing how tiny her flat little butt was in her baggy faded jeans. I slipped gently into a sugar coma. Pretty soon she came marching back with a sliver of pumpkin pie topped with a quarter-sized dab of whipped cream.

“She's bringing you some low-fat ice cream,” my mother said triumphantly. A young woman dressed in a brilliant lime green, air-filled balloon came wallowing across the room toward us, holding a tiny dish in green spandex gloves. Her face was covered with a green spandex hood.

She handed me the tiny dish of ice cream. “What are you?” I blurted out in awe.

“I'm not sure,” she said and waddled away.

Pretty soon the marketing guy found us and herded us out of the dining room for the tour. We followed him like puppies as he backtracked from one side of the place to another, trying to find apartment 330. My mother was not impressed: The ceilings were too high, she said. (She's very short.) For the next hour we rode the elevators and trod the hallways, avoiding slow-moving walkers trundling little tubs of polyester blouses and flannel nightdresses to the laundry room. We looked at beige apartments with one bedroom, beige apartments with two bedrooms, ones with tubs, ones with no tubs, patios, no patios, until it all blended into a beige carpeted blur.

Finally, exhausted, my mother and I extricated ourselves from the castle, loaded with brochures, and exited into the cool afternoon air. Mom needed a cigarette. We both needed a nap.

Later she called me. “What did you think of the place?”

“The food was lousy,” I said, “but the people seemed happy enough.”

“Did you notice how many of them used walkers?” she said. “I don't think this is the place for me.”

One down, four more to go. At least. My advice to you: don't get old.

The chronic malcontent braces for change

The moon must be aligned with Uranus or something. Fruit basket upset! Everyone important to me seems to be on the move. My jet-set sister, after presenting at a conference in France, is traipsing off to Vatican City to scour some libraries for medieval treasure (aka old books). Bravadita is moving to Gladstone, of all the godforsaken burbs a person could go to, so far away: no more monthly Willamette Writers meetings, my convenient excuse to see her smiling face. And to top it all off, my 85-year-old mother has tossed a grenade into my tenuous tranquility by declaring her intent to move out of her condo into a retirement community. Argh. Change is coming!

My brain is a shattered mess. I'm trying to hold all the bits of lumpy gray matter together, but my natural pessimism tells me it's no use, what's the point. (Don't let anyone tell you chronic malcontentedness is not like a disease. Tell me, would you judge me if I had tuberculosis?)

When I can't breathe I call upon my secret rescue inhaler: I ask myself, what would my extroverted friends do right now? Would they let this excess of exuberant change pummel them into a puddle of goo? No. They would not. They would rush out the door to meet it for coffee, preferably with a horde of friends all driving Kia Souls and Mini Coopers. Re-frame! Re-boot the shattered brain!

Lucky me! Between editing dissertations about China's healthcare system, cosmopolitan-thinking in the world's education system, and culturally relevant pedagogy in American middle schools, I get to visit retirement homes.

And when I'm not doing that, I am earning some money by calling people in faraway places to interview them for a research study about fluid connectors. So far I've dragged my double-wide out of bed before dawn to dial people in Italy, Germany, and Minneapolis. Talk about exotic locales! And Shanghai, China, too, although that interview took place at a very civilized evening hour. I am really starting to get a sense of the size of the planet by calculating time zone differences. (Big place.) Although I have to use Excel to figure it out. Or my fingers. I have always had a precarious relationship with analog time. I have no pictures in my head to explain time. I dread the moment we shift from Standard time to Daylight Savings.

Part of my problem is I think making my mother's last years pleasant is my responsibility. I want her to be happy. She's not happy. Last week she had a doctor's appointment. I offered her a ride, and she accepted: Warning sign #1.

Her doctor was a tall, slender Asian man with a scraggly beard and a charming smile. He didn't hesitate to shake my hand (germs, dude! Really?). My mother and I sat on the two square stiffly cushioned blue chairs, the kind you've seen in waiting rooms everywhere. The doctor sat on the rolling stool, waiting calmly, looking at my mother. I waited, too. My mother scooted forward in her chair. Warning sign #2. I thought, she's getting ready to make a presentation. The audience is in place. Showtime.

“My digestive tract seems to be on the mend the past three days,” she began. Good news for my scrawny mother who eats like a sparrow and weighs barely 94 pounds.

“Great,” said the doctor.

“But I just don't seem to want to eat anything.”

The doctor and I both looked at her expectantly.

“I hate to cook, I always have,” she said. I could have said something, but I didn't. Memories of canned green(ish) beans and gray peas floated through my mind. “I just don't feel like cooking or eating much of anything,” she added, frowning. I felt guilty for not cooking for my mother. Even though I'm a worse cook than she is.

“Are you depressed?” asked the doctor.

My mother thought for a few seconds. “No,” she said flatly. “I'm bored.” Immediately, I felt guilty for not doing a better job of entertaining my mother.

“I'm tired all the time. I think I'm bored. All I do is play video games on my computer,” she said. It suddenly dawned on me that since my mother's co-treasurer position on the condo board ended last fall, she's got nobody to complain about. Oh, she always finds something, but without the monthly hassles and gossip of the condo meetings, she's bereft. My mother the pitchfork-wielding extraverted rabble-rouser. No wonder she's bored. She needs a cause!

“I've got too much stuff,” she complained. “I want to move.” No use uttering a squeak as my heart fell into my stomach: I've known this day was coming for a while. I just... I guess there's just no good time for change, is there?

“If you moved into a retirement community, you would have more social interaction,” the doctor observed. “You would probably eat more.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” she said. “I have friends in a place over by Mall 205.”

“That's all you need,” the doctor agreed. “More friends.”

And that is how I agreed to take my mother to a retirement place next week to eat a free lunch and take a tour. I can hardly wait. Next chore: get boxes, start sorting out the ten years of junk she collected since she moved into the condo and the sixty or so years of crap she's dragged with her from place to place along with a husband and four kids. I'm just really glad she doesn't collect Franklin Mint plates or Beanie Babies.

Wake me up next spring

Fall sucks. I'm officially declaring my intention to hibernate until spring, mentally, anyway, if not physically. Oh, I'll show up for my commitments because I'm a good soldier, but malcontentedness will mow down any little shred of enthusiasm that might linger from summer. No worries, I'll still get stuff done, but life will occur in short desperate bursts, between naps. For example, I'll still flog my body to the store for vittles, but I anticipate brain fog will follow me like the dirt cloud followed Pigpen. Be warned, if you ask me a question, I can't promise a snappy response.

The night before last, the power went out while I was dozing to late night TV. I woke to darkness. I fumbled for my fake camping lantern (a lime green plastic gizmo with an LED light) and managed to brush my teeth and fall into bed without stabbing myself with the toothbrush or stubbing my toe. I peered out my window and realized I haven't seen natural darkness in a long time. The neighborhood was dark, no street lights, no lamps glowing in curtained windows, just invisible pouring rain and the dim outline of my landlord's real estate office against a slightly lighter sky. Dark, is what I'm saying.

I didn't mind sleeping in darkness: I curse my radioactively bright blue alarm clock nightly. It was refreshing to not have a street light muscling through my drapes. I opened my window and listened to the rain and pretended I was camping (even though I hate camping). But I knew if the power was still off in the morning, that I might have some issues. And sure enough, when I woke up to a wet gray morning, no power. Which, of course, meant no coffee, no breakfast, no microwave, no music, no internet... no heat. Ahhhhhhhh!

I dug around in the dust for my authentic lavender-colored Trimline analog phone and dialed the automated response line for the power company. We are aware of a power outage in your area. We have received a total of nine. hundred. and. seventy. eight phone calls and two. thousand. forty. six households are currently without power. We estimate the power will be restored at eleven. o. clock. We don't know what caused the power outage. If you have any information that might help, please stay on the line. I quickly hung up, lest they think I had something to offer, thinking if the power company doesn't know what caused the power outage, then there's little hope for humankind.

I tried to go back to bed, but the cat was having none of that. Slacker! My plants seemed to lean accusingly at me when I stumbled into the kitchen: Where's our growlight, slacker? I looked at my coffee pot. I looked at my computer. I looked all around my dim cave of an apartment, missing all the little green lights that usual glow on various devices, proof that I'm safe in the loving arms of the higher power, the electrical grid of my city. I stood there, wondering if I should light some candles and hoping my neighbors wouldn't. Suddenly it occurred to me, ah-ha! Maybe there is some yesterday's coffee left in the coffee carafe. I scampered into the kitchen. Darn, hardly a mouthful. One swig of day-old cold coffee wasn't enough to stave off the fear of caffeine withdrawals.

At 10 o'clock I dialed my mother, thinking, surely she's up by now. Maybe she'll feel like going out to breakfast. She answered the phone groggily, her cigarette-voice gruff.

“Hey Mom, is your power out?” I demanded.

Long pause. I could practically hear her brain processing my question. “I don't know, let me check,” she replied. A moment later she returned. “I have power,” she said. I apologized for disturbing her so early, and hung up.

I ate a banana, feeling bereft, looking wistfully at my silent baseboard heater. Was it getting dangerously cold in the tender climate of the Love Shack? I bundled into my fleece bathrobe while my cat gazed at me bemusedly. I flopped down on my couch in my TV-watching position, staring bleakly at the shiny blank screen of my ancient analog-signal TV, willing the power to come back on. When that didn't work, I pulled the cat-hair infested fleece blanket over my legs and decided to meditate until the power was restored.

The meditation session lasted about 30 minutes and left me with a bad case of brain fog and heart burn. I was getting hungrier and crankier by the minute. Should I abandon my apartment, should I go out and drive around until I crossed the magical boundary dividing those who have power from those who have none? At least my car would be warm.

As I sat on my couch, contemplating my next move through the brain fog, suddenly I heard a rumbling sound in the kitchen. The refrigerator motor. Saved by electricity! Praise the gods of the grid. I'm restored to power, if not to sanity.

What did I learn from my bout with powerlessness? That life is precarious, that nothing should be taken for granted, especially not our invisible, silent miracle—electricity. That coffee is especially precious. That I was lucky the outage was confined to one neighborhood and not the entire city. That next time I might not be so lucky.

Un-join me

As I slide down the dark tunnel toward winter, I'm embracing my inner curmudgeon by de-connecting from social media. I started with LinkedIn groups, ruthlessly clicking the "Leave" button with a sense of relief and hope that there would soon be less in in my box. After un-joining half my LinkedIn groups—just the ones swamped by ubiquitous discussion posts from desperate small business owners who write pleading blog posts with titles like “The ten ways using LinkedIn will make you a content marketing star!”—I moved on to my modest roster of Meetups, wearily choosing "Leave this group," and then typing in the subsequent box exactly why I was un-joining: I'm tired. My feet hurt. I can't stand people. Your inane networking sessions at crappy Chinese restaurants are killing me.

I know it's not much, but it's a start. Next I'll take the hatchet to Facebook. Every time I get an email that says, Joe posted a new photo to their timeline, I cringe at the bad grammar and vow to de-friend everyone. Well, from experience I know it's as hard to leave Facebook as it is to rid your computer of AOL. The best I can do is un-follow everyone (except Carlita and members of my immediate family, of course. My sister is in Europe. Can't miss those photos of Paris and Lyon. Can't breathe, wish I was there).

Today, as my stomach roils with the remains of almost-raw onion eaten at a networking Meetup I went to last night, I find that indigestion and general dissatisfaction with life feel much the same. I fear I've learned to associate nausea with networking. (Have you noticed that Meetups seem to find hospitable homes in the backrooms of Chinese restaurants? Wonder why that is.)

My friend Bravadita is bravely downsizing in preparation for her impending move to Gladstone, a suburb of Portland about 20 minutes south on I-205. As she described her desire to have less stuff, I found myself yearning for something similar. Except for me, rather than unloading my books at Goodwill, it's more of a jettisoning of social baggage, a conscious uncoupling, as it were, from the faceless groups of rabid networkers swarming Meetups and after-work networking parties all over the city. Hey, networkers, back off. You met me, you didn't care to genuinely know me, so stop pretending. You can keep your tar-baby emails.

Argh. I confess, I'm as much to blame: Did I try to know anyone deeply? Not so much, especially not if the place was noisy and crowded. Did I wall myself off in my introvert suit of armor and exit at the first available moment? Yes, mostly, I guess I did. Is my current dissatisfaction evidence of my chronic malcontentedness, or is it just a special case of non-digesting onions? In fairness, I must say, not all networking events are the same; I'm learning to be discerning (no more Moxie mixers for me). And not all networkers are the same, either. I have met some smart, strong, interesting, and determined women in the past year, people I respect and admire. I fear the stinky truth: I'm just ashamed to admit I'm as desperate as the next hungry shark waving a business card at a crowd of fellow sharks. Rather than admit I can't compete in that pool, I'm disconnecting by choice. I'm following the artist's way: If you build it, they can come or not, as they please.

Random thoughts from a stinky cheese chronic malcontent

Bless me, Hellish Hand-basket readers. It's been over a week since my last blog post. My excuse is that I've been immersed once again in dissertation editing hell, editing someone else's massive, wretched, poorly written tome rather than my own. I've been diving deep into the quandary of social injustice in the State of Hawaii. The upside is that I know more than I ever knew about Hawaiian history, and have a whole new perspective into the world of social work (which consists of poorly paid people helping other poorly paid people perpetuate a nonprofit machine in which everyone is poorly paid while chasing charity dollars. I'm super glad I didn't pursue a career in counseling!) The downside is that, by the time I finished combing the wretched tome for extra spaces, misplaced periods, and renegade pronouns, I calculated I earned just over $16.00 per hour. Clearly something is wrong with my business model.

Today, with the wretched tome off my plate, I was able to hunt and gather at the local grocery store, put unleaded into my ancient, tired, dusty, fossil-fuel burning Focus, and put on a load of wash. I love multitasking, which to me means doing the laundry while cooking dinner while running a virus scan while talking on the phone. Look at me go!

The weather is weirdly awesome. It's currently 86° at PDX, which means some tropical pockets of Portland will probably hit 90° in the next few minutes before cooling back down to 60° overnight. While it's not unheard of, it is pretty unusual for the weather to be this warm in early October. I went for a trot in the park and soaked in the heat through my scrawny pale legs, wishing I could stop time before the leaves turn orange.

Yesterday I drove over to my mother's condo to help celebrate my little brother's birthday. He's turning... let me think, I guess he's turning 54. Yipes. My baby brother is over the hill. Guess that makes me over the hill and halfway into the graveyard. Well, no use complaining, especially where the really old folks can hear. Don't bother looking for sympathy from old people; that is like going to the garbage dump for bread.Two of the neighbors who came to the party, a couple in their mid-80s, sharp and caustic as ever, were not inclined to hear my brother whine about how his joints ache in the morning. I knew better; I kept my mouth shut.

Birthday parties never have amounted to much in my family. I'm not sure why. I have my theories. This party was relatively painless as birthday parties go—all of us were ready for a nap after barely an hour. I managed to leave all the cake and ice cream with my mother, although my digestive system paid the price today for what I ate yesterday. I think that if I'm going to get sick from eating cake and ice cream, the pain ought to be worth it. Like excellent tiramisu or German chocolate cake. Sadly, 'twas not the case.

It's hard to sum up life these days. From one angle, everything looks like crap. I'm barely earning, doing something I hate almost as much as I hated sewing and driving a school bus and teaching keyboarding, and I'm wondering why I seem to figure out what to do by doing everything I don't want to do first. I know I'm running out of time. The thought makes me want to give up and embrace my inner homeless person.

On the other hand, I'm not sewing, or driving a school bus, or teaching keyboard! Yay! On top of that, the weather is awesome, and while I don't have a steady job, well, I don't have to get up tomorrow and go to a steady job! No getting up early, no dressing up in a uniform, no worrying about my nose hairs and my blossoming sideburns. That's pretty great, don't you think? Actually, I think the longer I'm out of the workforce, the more unemployable I get, sort of like the opposite of a fine wine, more like a stinky cheese.

I would take all the blame for everything, but I think there might be something going on in the local economy. For example, the rental market is tighter than a frog's sphincter, and as a consequence, my friend Bravadita is dragging up on her cute apartment in downtown Portland in favor of shared housing in Gladstone. Her rent decreases in inverse proportion to her public transit commute, which extends an extra hour per day. I find it sad; I fear something similar will happen to me in the next year. My landshark and his wife could boot me out of the Love Shack, fix up the antiquated bathroom and kitchen, and easily lease it to some marketing wizkid for double the rent. I would find myself rooming with my mother, or possibly hunkering down in the Section 8 housing across the street from her condo, where police seem to be on standby.

It's an unsettling, unsettled, yet oddly fertile time. As I approach my 58th birthday, I don't have a whole lot of hope, but freefall is a surprisingly freeing state of mind. My life certainly doesn't look the way I thought it would. I aimed for Santa Barbara and ended up in Pacoima, figuratively speaking. Maybe more like, I aimed for Fiji and ended up in the armpit of Portland. Whatever. I'm trying to live fearlessly, and failing daily, but fearlessness is something to aim for, in the absence of job security and impending old age. The good thing is that since fearlessness is a state of mind, I don't have to leave home to find it.