I'm ready to go Donner Party on my cat

Today is Day 6 of the... what are we calling this? Snowpocalyse? Snowmageddon? I don't know what people are calling it, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting it to be over.

The snow, once fluffy and pristine, has melted and been packed down multiple times, every day and every night as the temperature hovers between 20° and 35°F. The mush in the road is a grimy, rutted, whipped-up mess of snow, ice, gravel, and de-icing chemicals (which as far as I can tell, didn't work). I want out of here, but not into that.

Weak sunshine looks festive from my window, but the air outside is dry, brittle, and frigid. The roads are too slick for my little tin can Ford Focus—I fear gravity would take over if I tried to get down off this hill. It's too cold and slippery to walk down, a recipe for a broken hip. The good news: buses are running, albeit infrequently, because today is a holiday. But they are running. And that's a relief, because I am running out of food.

I wasn't built for this weather. I was made for warm, dry, sunny climes. I was made for California chaparral, Arizona cacti, dusty yards made of decorative rocks and desert flowers, blue skies and sunshine. My bones are rotting as I sit here with my feet buried inside a homemade foot warmer made of uncooked rice packed inside runnels sewed into an old pillowcase. After being microwaved umpteen times, the cotton is scorched. Today one of those scorched areas sprung a leak and a shower of tiny broken pieces of rice scattered across my desk and floor. I guess four minutes on high, every hour, is too much. I'll sew up the hole and try three and a half minutes, see how that goes.

I visited my car a couple days ago, just to make sure it was still there. It was, buried under a foot of snow, a car Popsicle. My brother warned me I should try to get the door open and start up the engine. Apparently batteries don't like cold weather any more than I do.

People in other parts of the country think we Portlanders are wimps and whiners. They are not wrong. Winter here rarely consists of more than rain, rain, and more rain. This big Arctic air bubble sitting over us happens from time to time, but it is rarely accompanied by a firehose of moisture. The last time I remember this much snow was almost ten years ago. I bought snowboots after that horrific experience. I dug them out of the back of the closet. That is how I blazed a path to my car.

I thought the weather would shift during the early morning hours tonight, but the NWS forecasters are now predicting freezing rain tonight and all day tomorrow. That means if I want to go get food, I will have to hike out or take the bus today, because once the freezing rain starts, the buses will stop running up here on the hill. My refrigerator is looking a bit bare, and my cat is starting to look oddly tasty.

When it starts raining, it is not expected to stop. In fact, temperatures may rise into the mid 40s on Wednesday. You know what that means, right? Oh, you don't? Well, it means that some of that snowpack in the mountains will start to melt, filling our local rivers and streams with a whole lot of water. Add to that the snow on the ground in Portland, clogged sewer grates, and saturated thawing ground and you get flooding and mudslides. The NWS has issued a flood watch. Luckily, I live on the shoulder of a hill. I am sure I won't get flooded. I am less sure that the road down the hill won't be subject to a small landslide or two. Unlikely. The trees that might have slid are mostly still lying in pieces in the parking strip after the previous ice storm.

I'm resenting weather today. I was hoping I would get out of here today (meaning, get my car out, drive to the store, see what is happening in the neighborhood), but it looks like that might not happen until Wednesday. I rarely am called to interact with this much weather. In an attempt to be grateful for my first-world problems, I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to be snowbound under nine feet of snow in Donner Pass. I'm sure I would not have survived. My ancestors who came from South Dakota and Wisconsin weren't wimps, but somehow over the generations, my ancestors' genes produced me, a hothouse flower with a built-in resentment against inclement weather. I'm so over winter.

Happy apocalypse from the Hellish Handbasket

I'm feeling anxious. It's pouring cold rain outside. At 4:00 pm, it's already dark. When winter solstice arrived, I got happy, sure that the days were finally lengthening, until a self-righteous friend pointed out to me the days don't actually start lengthening until about January 6. After that news, I sunk into a pit of seasonal affective disorder. When I get S.A.D., I worry about the failure of important forces like gravity. Suddenly I'm aware of how tenuous is my connection to the surface of the earth.

Everything gets under my skin. The holiday TV season is a desert wasteland. (How many times can you watch It's a Wonderful Life before you puke?) My inbox is overrun with emails begging my help for refugees, bees, and the rights of women to keep control of their uteruses. I'm worried about global warming and nuclear war. I keep thinking more chocolate is the solution, but my cupboards are bare.

I'd like to help every refugee, bee, and uterus, really, I would. If I could be sure my donated dollars would prevent Armageddon, I'd be happy to contribute. But everything will have to wait until spring. I'm mired in the dog days of winter blues.

I've washed the breakfast dishes. I've folded a pile of laundry I did days ago and lost an hour I'll never get back surfing Facebook. I guess there's nothing left to do but binge-watch episodes of TrueBlood.

This month has been a bad ending to a year that started out looking pretty good, for some of us, anyway. I miss the good old days of last spring... Apart from the election madness, the closing of this year seems especially sad. Some of my favorite musicians and actors have exited the stage for good. I still can't believe Bowie and Prince are gone. And Emerson and Lake. And now George Michael and Carrie Fisher. It's like everyone decided to opt out of 2017. Like rats from a sinking ship.

I don't feel much joy contemplating the mayhem that I fear is coming. Of course, I don't know what the future holds, nobody does. But do you get the feeling we are all sitting in a kettle of rapidly heating water? Will we be able to jump before we end up on China's dinner plate?

When I started this blog, my conception of “going to hell in a handbasket” was personal. I was slogging through dissertation hell and I wanted to share my misery with anyone who might listen. In my postdoc life, my idea of a dystopian nightmare future is no longer just my personal hell—I fear I'm not alone in this apocalyptic journey. Welcome to the Hellish Handbasket. To avoid serious injury or death, keep your arms and head inside the basket at all times.

Don't pretend like you know what is coming

We are barreling into a new year. This year, I'd really like to put the brakes on. Can we just freeze time before we get to January 21? Then I could pretend I've been watching a particularly gruesome and disgusting reality show. I would like to change the channel and return to sanity. Where's the BACK button on this thing?

Clearly I'm still in shock. I'm not ashamed to say it, I feel like I've been bludgeoned by stupidity. My own stupidity. All my yammering about empathy and listening, yada yada, and still I'm shocked when unhappy people express their needs in unskillful ways. When will I learn? I'm just as unskillful as the rest of us. I include you, sorry, readers. We are all in this hand-basket together, and you know where we are going.

Guilty, again! I make cynical pronouncements (like that one I just made) as if I know what is coming. I spout nonsense as if I have the inside track on knowledge about the future. It gets me every time. I act like if I just say something enough times, and loudly enough, that by itself will make it true! We're all going to hell in a hand-basket! There I go, wallowing in the wreckage of the future! I'm masquerading as a person who knows what the future holds, when in fact, I have no clue what's coming! Argh. I hate not knowing. (Not to mention the small detail about defining my terms... is there a hell? And what is a hand-basket, anyway? Whatever it is, how will we all fit into it? I have no idea.)

I hate not knowing even more than I hate my fear that good things could actually come from stupid decisions, and then I won't have the perverse pleasure of saying, see, I knew it! I told you so. Sometimes it happens that "bad" outcomes ensue from "good" intentions, and "good" outcomes manifest from "bad" actions. Despite all the stuff written to the contrary, we humans don't have a Magic 8 Ball that allows us to peer into the future, except by using past outcomes as a predictor. And if you have ever lost money in the stock market, you know that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

I get lassoed by my fear of uncertainty into believing I know what is coming. Besides the certainty of death (and taxes), does anyone know what is coming? No. That doesn't stop us from prognosticating about the future as if we have a hotline to fate. As if we are inside the mind of Secret Santa. As if we know what is in our stockings. Let me guess: a toothbrush and a Hershey's chocolate bar. Whoops, that was 45 years ago. (Good news: at least I still have teeth).

We are having a little snow day in Portland. One inch of snow and a half inch of ice and the city shuts down. The electric trains can't run with ice on the wires. The buses can't get up and down the hills. I can't get my car out of the parking lot, and walking on this ice is likely to result in a trip to the ER with a broken hip (I'm not certain, I'm only guessing, based on past experience). So here I am, hunkered down in the Love Shack, waiting for the ice to melt, bored and trying to avoid the tedious task of turning my print book into a Kindle book.

I guess it's good I don't know the future. If I knew that writing this book would be a waste of time I probably wouldn't have spent two years writing it. Even now, I can hold out hope that soon people will find it, buy it, like it, talk about it. Hey, it could happen, right? Nobody knows the future.

Coming soon: A future without facts or truth

I don't know what is real anymore, with all the falsehoods flying around the zeitgeist. Americans can't seem to agree on the facts. Can I trust the calendar posted on the Internet? Is it really almost the end of 2016? Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure if I forced enough fake news on Facebook, I could convince some people that it's still October. Or that we have a new month now, the month of Terrorary. The month of Muck. The month of Run Them Down. We all know who "them" is.

It's not a great time to be anything but rich, white, and male. I want to lament, but what good does that do. It just makes me one of the whiners. And we all know, nobody likes a whiner.

The next four years will be good practice for weathering the apocalyptic effects of the many impending disasters looming on the time horizon (earthquake, solar flare, cyber hack of the electrical grid, sea level rise, volcanic eruption, tsunami). I need to learn to suck it up. It would help to have a tent, camp stove, and sleeping bag, I suppose. And some MREs stashed in a tote bin. What can I say. I'm not ready. I've never been a prepper. I worry a lot, like a prepper, but my fear paralyzes me, so I'm unable to take action. I sit in paralysis like the proverbial frog in hot water, too scared to leap out before I'm parboiled. I won't be a survivor. I can't say I'm too sad about it.

But I'm not ready to go quite yet. I need to survive just long enough to see my mother exit the world stage. I wouldn't abandon her, not by choice. Fear of the future makes me gag sometimes, but we all know what is coming. She's going to die, someday. I don't know how or when, but I know it's coming.

After she's gone, I don't really care much what happens to me. Depending on how much money I have left (if the banks aren't belly-up by then), I'll probably move somewhere where it's warmer, just in case I end up sleeping outdoors. I don't expect to see 80, but who knows.

Maybe when the Chinese-Russian alliance takes over America, we will all finally relax. Let someone else be in charge for a while. The nursinghomes will be full of old white American prisoners of war clamoring for organic gluten-free dinners and internet access, even though we won't remember in five minutes what we've eaten or how to access the future equivalent of Facebook. Torturing us will be useless: What can you learn from people who think they deserve to have whatever they want without paying for it?

You can't reason with Americans. Most of us don't care that our activities for the last 50 years have destroyed a good portion of the planet. Have I stopped driving my fossil-fuel burning Focus? No. We don't learn. Don't bother picking our brain, Russia. There are no state secrets among us except how to get the best deals on Black Friday.

Whole lotta raging goin' on

Each night since the election, Portland's young (mostly white) people have marched in the streets, stopping traffic, blocking bridges, annoying tourists, and generally wreaking havoc as they bemoan the sad fact that democracy failed to meet their demands. Emotions are high after the unexpected election outcome. Before the election, half the population was bursting with rage. After the election, the other half is now bursting with rage. Some of that rage is being expressed as violence.

Violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need. (Credit Marshall Rosenberg with that pithy observation). Unmet needs create some powerful emotions. It's clear the protesters are scared. Fear makes them angry. I get it. Nobody likes to feel scared. We would much rather feel rage than fear. These negative emotions are visible on the surface, but it helps to remember that negative emotions are always driven by unmet needs.

Last week, geographically speaking, a large swath of the country's voters gave the Democrats the finger. Clearly the voters were expressing anger, hope, maybe some payback? What were their unmet needs? I'm going to guess recognition, respect, and consideration. Safety and security, maybe. Control and autonomy.

In the American heartland, they've seen the "browning" of America. They've seen the loss of their ethnic and cultural supremacy. In their grocery store checkout lines, weird people who don't look like them are buying weird things that don't even resemble food. In their children's schools, their kids are getting into fights with kids who don't speak English. On the streets of their neighborhoods, they see "hordes" of women "hiding" behind robes and headscarves as they "take over" the sidewalks. They see change and understandably get scared. Change is scary. Who can blame them if in the privacy of the voting booth, they voted for the person who looked like them?

Some voters may be uneducated, but they aren't stupid. They know their high-paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. They voted for the promise, but more than that, they voted as an expression of their rage at being forgotten. They are angry because their needs for respect, recognition, safety, security, control, and autonomy weren't being met. When we aren't skilled at expressing our rage, we get expressions of violence. Smashing windows or voting Trump into the White House are both tragic expressions of unmet needs.

Some of the "winners" heard the promises and bought the dream. Others just wanted to express their rage and frustration at being ignored. Some probably hope that the "good old days" will return (i.e., when white men were in charge, women knew their place, and minorities could be exploited, disenfranchised, or killed). Time is not on their side. Sadly, time is not on anyone's side, considering the ongoing demise of the planet.

Two steps forward, one step backward. I hope for the best, because I have no idea how to prepare for the worst. I am not strong enough to be a survivor, not mentally, physically, or emotionally. I want to see what happens, but I have to accept that no one knows the future. We can predict, but we've seen how good our predictions are. We do pretty good at weather, not so good at election outcomes. It's funny, though—all these emotions were there to be seen. The Democrats didn't identify and address the unmet needs of the forgotten voters in the Midwest and Rust Belt and paid the price.

Here's to creativity at the end of the world

Almost two years ago I started writing a book about helping dissertators get their dissertations approved. Dissertators face many challenges in the process of earning their doctorates. I ought to know. I have blogged extensively about my own sordid and gruesome doctoral journey—in fact, that is how this blog came to be. If you have read my blog, you know I often have a lot to say, and this new book was no different. Within a few months, the chapter about getting the dissertation proposal approved ballooned into a mushy amorphous monster. To keep from losing my mind, I whittled the project down to focusing just on helping dissertators get their proposals approved. And now, almost two years later, I'm pleased to say, I've published that book.

Sorry, I can't report that it was published by one of those snappy academic publishers like SAGE or Taylor & Francis. No, because I'm a DIY kind of gal (control freak), I decided to self-publish through Amazon's Createspace. Wow. Am I glad I lived to see the day when artists, writers, and musicians can send their work out into the world without the interference of those pesky intermediaries (galleries, publishers, record labels). Anyone can publish, and they do! The Internet is clogged with creativity. It's so exciting.

Because I am a Word expert (more or less), I can format the heck out of a document and make it look like something someone might actually want to buy. I hope. And through the magic of the digital on-demand printing revolution, Amazon can print my book for anyone who might want a copy.

I sent away for a proof copy so I could see how it looked and felt, expecting to be disappointed. I opened the cardboard box, feeling a little sick. Inside was a miracle. It's so thick! (Did I write all that?) I paged through to find the screenshots I had inserted to show dissertators how to use Word. Oh joy, the screenshots (low resolution images, red flag!) were perfectly acceptable. The color cover (low resolution, uh oh, look out) was shiny and bright. The book (500+) pages felt hefty and substantial in my hands, definitely something I would have bought back when I was struggling to get my proposal approved. I can only hope others will feel the same.

So, with one project off my plate, it seems appropriate to tackle another seemingly impossible task: NaNoWriMo. That's where people commit to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. Starting exactly five days ago. I'm a little behind. So far I've got 600 words.

I committed to it to support my good friend Bravadita, who has a lot to write about it, if only she would start. I wasn't sure how far I would get, to tell you the truth. I'm expecting an editing job tomorrow with a short turnaround, not much time to do anything else but eat, sleep, and watch TV.

I told my sister about my writing commitment, and she brilliantly suggested I take portions of this blog and write a book about our mother. Is that not brilliant!? I think it is. Thanks, Sis.

Last night I downloaded all the content I've written for the past two years. In Microsoft Word, I can search on keywords, so I highlighted all the instances of Mom, mother, and maternal. Next, I'll cull through the posts and see if I can make some sense, maybe glean some structure. I'll put on my editing hat and look for the bones. Maybe I'll actually be able to finish a first draft by November 30. Maybe not, but at least I can say I tried.

It feels a little odd to be focusing on my creative endeavors when democracy could be on the verge of falling apart. People are apparently prepping for the end of the world. Whether it's a bizarro nutjob in power or an earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, I have resigned myself to be one of the casualties. I just don't have the energy or gumption to go out and prep for disaster. Prepping would mean, what, buying a tent, a sleeping bag, a propane stove? A year's supply of ready-to-eat meals that are full of chemicals, sugar, fat, and salt? Is survival really so important that I would eat garbanzo beans straight out of a can?

I suppose I'd eat just about anything if I got hungry enough. That's one of the perks of living white pseudo-middle class in America—At least until my savings run out, I can pretend I have nothing but luxury problems. My fridge is full of fresh food, because I try hard to eat healthy. When all that fresh food is gone, though, my cupboards are bare. If the earthquake (or the coup) happen to occur on the day before I go shopping, well, I guess I'll be eating squirrels. Lucky for me, they are used to eating at my bird feeder so they might be easy to catch. Some of them look very plump and juicy. And there's a big gray rat out back, too, if I get really desperate. But he might be harder to catch ... he's a loner, like me.

The chronic malcontent comes clean

Tonight, I'm listening to old Monkee songs, feeling old, decrepit, and irrelevant (pirouette down palsied paths with pennies for the vendor ... really? Sounds like something my nine-year-old self wrote in secret journals.) I admit, silly as they are, the old songs are comforting to me. I turned 60 this week. I knew I was old, but now it's official. I just don't understand how on the inside I feel like I'm still twelve.

I guess there's a presidential election going on? What's that all about. I feel like I'm living in some weird parallel universe, where up is down, and mean is nice ... all I can say is, I hope my missing socks are around here somewhere. All these weird looking-glass people have some 'splainin' to do. I'd complain, but I'm afraid to open my mouth and let people know I'm a bleeding heart liberal, for fear I'll be run over by a gun-slinging, mud-throwing, SUV-driving maniac. Oh, hey, no offense to SUV drivers, jeez, what am I thinking. It's so hard to figure out what to say and what not to say these days, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

I'm glad I'm not a politician in today's political minefield. Imagine trying to thread the needles that seem to keep popping up out of the haystack of complaints, hacks, innuendos, and lies. I'm glad I'm not a politician, but in a weird way, I confess I'm glad I lived to see this circus, just to say I did. Kind of like experiencing other 100-year events like the Columbus Day storm and the Northridge earthquake. I can say with some awe, I was there.

I voted, just so you know. I always vote. It's so easy to vote by mail in Oregon, there's really no excuse for not voting. The voter's guide appears in my mailbox, and a few days, my ballot follows. I fill it out enthusiastically with a bold black ballpoint pen, because there are no wrong answers on this test, there are just my answers. I love vote-by-mail, but even if I had to stand in line at a polling place and wait my turn to punch dinky holes in a piece of paper with a stylus, I would still do it. It's all part of my American experience.

Now I'm listening to old Bowie songs from Heathen (2002). Funny, I'm starting to feel more grown-up and sophisticated. Hmmm.

I don't discuss politics with many people. I carefully tiptoe around the topic until I'm pretty sure we are on the same page. I don't want to make anyone feel bad. But if I'm feeling particularly frisky, I might say something like, yeah, I can't wait until we have truly open borders, one global nation! Come on down, all you tired and poor! and then cackle as my lunch partner's eyes bug out of her head. I don't get invited out much.

I don't understand why people dislike Secretary Clinton. Maybe they really like her but are too shy to admit it. Maybe they just say they dislike her because that seems to be the popular position, the way a horde of third-graders coalesce in a mob to bully the hapless nerd of the day. I don't care what they say, I like HRC. All that lack of transparency, all that sneakiness, in a man would be considered an asset. Am I right? If she were a man, they would call it strategic thinking. Talk about threading an impossible needle. Well, I am pretty sure that Mrs. Clinton will put her strategic skills to good use on behalf of the nation. She may not always explain what she's doing, but that's okay with me ... sort of like when my mother didn't always explain to us kids why she was so pissed off all the time, but I had no doubt that behind the scenes, some serious stuff was going on that the grownups were handling. Go back to bed, scram!

Speaking of my mother, she's still slowly circling the drain in la la land, muddling through from day to day, propped up by cigarettes, TV dinners, and frozen cherry pie. I know this because I'm the one who fetches and carries. Every few days, I buy an odd assortment of groceries. One banana, a round of red jello, two cartons of vanilla flavored rice milk, a bagful of generic cheerios, two mushrooms, four chocolate muffins, and a carton of the cheapest cigarettes on the market. I am looking forward to the day I turn 85; mark my words, on that day, I'm throwing out the food plan. I don't care if it cuts five years off my life span, I don't care if I get fat as a brick house. I'm going to plunge my face into a gallon of ice cream and slurp until I put myself into a coma.

Meanwhile, to all twelve of you die-hard fans, thanks for sticking by me, even though I hardly blog anymore. I'm hanging on by a thin thread (but aren't we all, really). The good news (I hope it's good news): I finally finished my first book. Next week I'll be entering the brave new world of print-on-demand (can we say vanity press?). I won't disclose the particulars because you probably aren't in my target market, but I hope you'll cross your fingers once or twice on my behalf. Maybe that ship that has been hanging offshore for 60 years will finally mosey up to the dock.

How to wash your mom's mini-blinds

A few weeks ago, Mom told me she wanted her mini-blinds cleaned. In her 3-bedroom condo, she has three medium-sized blinds (like 4 to 5 feet wide), four dinky blinds about a foot and a half wide, and one monster blind about 7 feet wide on the living room window. I called around and found out to have someone fetch, clean, and deliver would cost $3.50 a foot plus a $60 delivery charge. If I took them down and brought them to the blind place myself, the cost would be $2.50 a foot. I thought, maybe I can clean the blinds myself. How hard can it be to clean mini-blinds?

I had a one-day window: no papers to edit and good weather. I assembled my gear: pretty much the same stuff I would use to wash my car, were I so inclined, which I'm not. Bucket, ragmop glove thingie, and an old piece of chamois to soak up the water. I used a cleaning solution consisting of a dollop of rubbing alcohol, a dollop of ammonia, a bit of dish soap, mixed into water. The only other tool I needed was a hose with a sprayer device on the end. I was set.

Mom abandoned her cereal bowl to watch.

I started with two small blinds to see if this was actually something I could do. The condo has two narrow windows on either side of the fireplace. I chose the blind on the left, figuring I'd work my way from left to right. On a previous visit, I had figured out how to release the blinds from the wall: lift the metal tabs at each end that hold the blind in place. I pulled the strings to shorten the blind as much as possible, pulled the blind out of the sockets, and carried it outside to the patio. I awkwardly used my right hand to let the cord loose to stretch the blind to its full length. Then I turned the stick gizmo to get the slats to lay down flat and spread the blind on the patio, trying not to step on it.

“Go finish your breakfast,” I told Mom, who was hovering in the doorway. I could tell I was a huge disruption in her routine. She disappeared.

Next, I sprayed the blind with the hose. So far, so good. I soaked my ragmop mitt with soapy water and rubbed the slats. When I finished mopping the blind, I sprayed it down with the hose. I was getting pretty wet by this point, but the sunshine was warm and bright. I tucked my baggy plaid pants into my socks to keep them from dragging on the wet patio and turned the blind over. I soaped up the other side, sprayed it down. I lifted the blind in my left hand and sprayed it down with my right. Then I stood there wondering what to do next.

My mother's patio is enclosed in a six-foot tall wooden fence. I thought, hey, maybe I can hang the blinds on the top of the fence. That actually worked, sort of. I balanced the top of the blind precariously on the top rail of the fence and attempted to squeegee the excess water off with the chamois. That worked not at all, so I left the blind to air dry, hanging atop the fence. I started in on the next blind. When two blinds were hanging drying in the sun, I went inside and washed the windows.

When I went inside, my mother was nowhere to be seen. I went along the hall, thinking I'd better get the blind out of the bedroom before she took her afternoon nap. I found her in her little office, playing Castle Camelot.

“I want to get the blind out of your bedroom,” I said. She continued to stare intently at the screen, which was making bleeping blooping noises as she clicked on cards. The soldiers on the castle wall raised their swords and shouted, Hey! I could tell she hadn't heard me. I repeated myself, a bit more loudly. She jerked up out of her chair in surprise, as if she had forgotten I was in her house.

I got the bedroom blind down and went back outside to continue with the narrow blinds. Pretty soon, the first set of two seemed marginally dry, at least, they were no longer dripping, so I brought them into the living room and hung them back up. Not bad.

I headed down the hall to her office. It was empty and her bedroom door was closed. Naptime. I brought the 4-foot blinds from the office and the spare bedroom out to the patio. They were heavier, harder to manage, harder to avoid stepping on. The office blind was filthy with 10 years of cigarette smoke, permanently stained yellow. Some of it came off, not all, leaving the slats tinted a pale grimy yellow.

Finally, I was ready to do the living room blind. I should have gone for the step ladder, but I thought, hey, her couch is right here, surely I can use that to reach the ends of the blinds? I stepped onto a cushion and almost fell over the end onto a side table. The cushions were so soft my foot went all the way down to the frame of the couch. I had to stand on the hard back of her 1980s flowered sofa to reach the two ends of the blind, leaning against the window for support. Seven feet of aluminum blind is heavy and awkward. What could possibly go wrong?

Luckily, I succeeded in getting the monster blind down and out the back door without breaking anything. The huge blind took up most of the patio. I sprayed it with the hose and scrubbed it down as best I could, hoping that there wouldn't be knee marks to show where I knelt on the blind to reach all the parts.

I won't bore you with the details of how long it took me to re-hang that 7-foot blind or how I almost fell through the plate glass window I had just finished cleaning. I eventually triumphed, I didn't fall and cut myself into shreds, and now my mother's blinds are as clean as they will likely ever be, and her windows are spotless (on the inside, at least). I accomplished my task.

I cleaned everything up and left her napping.

A few days later she said, “We should get your brother to take down that living room blind and clean it.” She didn't realize I'd managed to clean that big blind. When I modestly claimed victory, she was suitably impressed. My reward was a little bit of cash (“for gas money”) and a grocery list for things to buy at Winco. There you go. The reward for doing service is the opportunity to do more service.

I'm trying to enjoy these days, because I know they are limited. I think I will look back on this time as the golden months (hopefully maybe years) when my mother was still mostly managing to live her own life, her own way, with a little help from her kids and friends. I'd want the same for me, when my turn comes. Wouldn't you?

Put a frame on it and call it art

In honor of the end of summer, I took an extra long walk tonight, hiking around the north and south reservoirs four times. That equals 2.24 miles, but who is counting. As I walked along, I felt my left cheek twitching. My face cheek that is, although other cheeks have been known to twitch from time to time. My left cheek has been twitching for a month or two now. I'm pretty sure it's a sign of stress, but then I didn't need an extra sign to know I'm ready to spontaneously combust.


The sun was descending over the west hills as I strode along the path, being passed by old men on bikes, old ladies walking, and mothers walking with little kids. A snappy breeze gave my baseball cap a bit of a lift. I noticed the paddling of eight ducks had moved from Mt. Tabor Park's south reservoir to the north reservoir, not sure why. Uptown water, I guess. These are your historic reservoirs! No longer Portland's drinking water, thanks to the EPA.

I brought my digital camera with me tonight. It's an old dinosaur of a silver box, sluggish shutter, feeble focus... it seems to prefer three dimensional objects. Old posts, rocks, sewer gratings. Those are the photos that look the most interesting when I get them downloaded to my computer. The images of faraway downtown Portland are hazy, gray, and flat. I don't know much about photography, but I'm pretty sure if I had a better camera, I could take really good pictures.

It doesn't matter, though. Because I know the secret to making art. Whatever you have—photo, crayon drawing, pen-and-ink sketch, finger painting—whatever it is, all you have to do is put a frame around it. Whatever it is, if you are wondering if it could possibly be art, but you aren't quite sure, I tell you, just frame it! Framing any two-dimensional object automatically elevates it to the status of art. Take it from me. I used to be an artist. I know what I'm talking about.

Hey, ask anybody, if you don't want to take my word for it. I know, you don't even know me. Talk to one of your artistic friends, I'm sure you have a few lurking in nearby lofts and basements. If you can get them to take a break from making art, show them two pictures, one framed and one unframed. Ask them to point to the one that is art. I'm sure they will pick the one in the frame every time.

The nice thing is, it doesn't even have to be a fancy frame. Any crappy frame will do, even one that your niece made out of cardboard and dry macaroni. Even a frame of seashells. Hey, I once made a frame of red hot tamale candies! I kid you not. I glued the hot tamales on a box frame, painted them glorious jewel colors, and sprayed the thing with clear lacquer. What a shining thing of beauty. I actually forget what was surrounded by this wondrous frame, but it was art, let me assure you. The frame hung on my wall near the ceiling for years. I would show you a picture of the frame but last year the ants found the red tamales and started hauling bits of candy into the molding around the ceiling. That was the end of that frame. The ant trail remains, embedded in the off-white paint. If I could figure out how to put a frame on that ant trail, I bet I could call it art.

The world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, as usual. Maybe we are falling toward hell a little faster these days, it's hard to tell. It might just be the stinky election season making me feel like life is spinning out of control faster than usual. Probably not. It's hard to have perspective sometimes. I try to imagine what the 2010s would look like from the 1940s and I think, well, probably it's about the same in some ways, better in others. Don't let me complain about never winning anything! I breathe a sigh of relief every day when I realize I won the white American lottery.

Up close, my mother continues to disintegrate in slow motion, one molecule, one day at a time. I haven't quite figured out yet that I can't stop it, hence the cheek twitch and the persistent vertigo. I'm taking time out from editing a boring dissertation to write this blog post. From 30,000 meters up, it's all good, right? And then we die. From an altitude of 30 centimeters, it's an endless grind of pushing pebbles up a tiny hill. I'm trying to put a frame on my experience, thinking I can elevate the status of my life to art. Is it working? Hmmm. I don't think so. Wait, let me get out my glue and pasta shells! Where's my glitter?

Nothing tedious or boring about this election cycle

Best election season ever, don't you think? Who would have imagined a year ago that we would be astounded by entertainment election television? I'm glad I lived to see this. And I hope I survive to see the next cycle.

In the context of bizarro election news, my life seems tedious, boring, and parched. Nothing new to report: things are still precariously perched on the cliff edge of disaster. I labor daily under the delusion that I have some sort of control over life and death, which means I spend a lot of time and energy trying to scheme, manipulate, manage, and strategize my mother into better health. I know in my head it can't be done, but my heart compels me to try.

Last week I took her to the doctor to follow up on the recommendations of the nurse practitioner who visits once a year from the health insurer. I'm sure they check in once a year to observe her physical health and setting so they can see if it's time to send her to a higher (more expensive) level of care. That's the cynical chronic malcontent talking. Actually, I liked the NP. In a brisk, no-nonsense fashion, she gave us some information about the drugs Mom is taking and suggested we see if we could cut back some and add the memory drug that goes by the brand name Aracept.

The doctor was skeptical, but willing to try. He seems infinitely patient with my mother, who is having a hard time explaining things to him, or to anyone. Her mental acuity is shredding before my eyes. He took her off the cholesterol drug, cut the blood pressure drug in half, and added the Aracept. We walked out of there with medium-high hopes. The day after she started taking the new drug, I called her to see how she was feeling.

“I took it with dinner,” she said. “Then I laid on the couch for about four hours without a thought in my head.”

I was impressed and wondered if Aracept could do the same for me. I didn't say that.

“Maybe take it before bed next time,” I said. “Maybe it will help you sleep.”

A few days later I took her to her 6-month dental checkup. She has about five teeth left in her head, and apparently, she's pretty much abandoned them to care for themselves.

Minnie, the dental hygienist came out to get me in the waiting room. I followed her back to the exam room where my dinky mother was stretched out in the chair with a green fleece blanket pulled up to her chin. It was shocking to see her without her dentures. Who was this person? I tried not to look away. Luckily, without her glasses, she couldn't see my queasiness.

I sat on a little stool set over the air conditioning floor vent at the foot of the chair. Blazing sun cooked my back through a huge picture window while frigid air froze my back and thighs. While we waited for the dentist to arrive, Minnie chastised my mother for not brushing her few remaining teeth. Then she looked at me like I was responsible.

“Make a checklist,” Minnie recommended. “Brush teeth...”

“Good idea,” I said. Of course, I haven't done it. I keep forgetting. I get caught up in election news. What can I say? My mother's health and the presidential election are similar in the sense that they are both like slow-motion train wrecks. Nuts and bolts, rivets and sprockets, blood and bones and brain are all disintegrating molecule by molecule, frame by frame. I can't do anything but stand and stare and hope it's over soon.

Last night I called Mom to see how she was doing.

“I can't get my TV to come on,” she said.

“Okay. I'll call Mitch.” (Mitch [not his real name] is my brother). I called my brother and reported the problem. He said he would walk over there and fix it.  A couple hours later, he called me.

“The battery was dead in the remote. Then I had to do a whole setup thing. I have no idea what I did. Somehow I fixed it.” This is the theme. Somehow we fix it. But life doesn't stay fixed. Oh well. At least she has TV.

This morning Mom called me, sounding relatively chipper.

“I need coffee and cigarettes,” she said. She's learned to place her order by phone. Rarely does she feel like braving Winco herself. I'm good with that. Shopping with Mom is not the treat it used to be. I don't know why. She still leads the way, and she still pays for everything. Maybe because she's like a two-year old who smokes? Maybe because the things we buy are not for me. Ha.

“Okay, I'll bring it over right after I finish eating breakfast,” I promised.

The temperature is heading toward 100° today. I went to Winco, hoping to beat the heat. Using Mom's debit card, I bought a 5-pound can of coffee, three containers of vanilla-flavored rice milk, and two plastic bags bulging with bulk cheerios and bulk rice krispies. And a TV dinner. Turkey seemed like a safe bet; she's stopped cooking entirely, it seems, except for toast. TV dinners is the new menu.

I drove through the heat to Mom's condo. When I unlocked the door, the place was dark. I unloaded the groceries and tip-toed down the hall toward the bedroom. In the dim light, I could barely see her form, lying under covers on the bed. I thought, uh-oh.

“Are you sleeping?” I whispered.

“Uh, wha, what? Yeah,” she mumbled. “I didn't feel like eating today.”

I said okay and left her in bed. What was I going to do? Force her to get up and eat cheerios? She's got a right to take a nap anytime she wants. At least she can wake up to abundant coffee and cigarettes. Assuming she wakes up. There's that uncertainty again. It's funny how I refuse to see the humor in it, when I know it's all around me.

Mid-summer cuisine: don't try this at home

It's hard to type with a fur factory laying across half my keyboard, but I haven't blogged in so long, I thought I'd better try anyway. I don't want my ten readers to forget me. Fur floats through the air above my computer, glowing in the light of my desk lamp. The fur factory purrs. It's still warm in the Love Shack from a lovely mid-summer day. Clouds are forecast for later, maybe even a little bit of rain, but right now, it's perfect.

Earlier, I went for a walk in the park as the sun was setting. I've been hiking around the big reservoir (.56 miles) at least two time several times a week. Well, a few times a week. Okay, maybe twice. Well, last week I didn't make it, but this week, I'm doing better. I've been once. What can I say. Life intervened.

I've been spending a lot of time with the maternal parental unit the past few weeks. Since the trip to the ER after she fainted (and scraped her elbow and ankle and broke a rib), we've seen the regular doctor twice and met a cardiologist and an ultrasound technician. Now I know what my mother's heart looks like on the ultrasound screen: like a badger humping a chipmunk to the tune of "Working at the Car Wash." Plus, we had the annual visit from her insurance company's traveling nurse practitioner. She gave us a long list of things to bring up when we see her regular doctor next week. I am sure Mom is tired of visiting doctors. I know I am.

"I think I should start eating TV dinners," Mom told me a couple days ago. I thought of the partitioned trays we ate as children, Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and some kind of orange dessert, all heated to steaming in the oven and served on a folding tray on spindly legs.

"Okay," I said, "but you know you have to watch TV while you eat them," I said to make her laugh. She snickered.

After the ultrasound, we went across the street (driving, not walking) to the grocery store, chatting about the weather. As we entered the store, she forged ahead. I have learned to follow behind, to pick up the things she drops. Although, sometimes I run interference, constantly tilting my head at an angle to keep her in my left-eye peripheral vision. I confess, I have idly contemplated a leash.

The store was crowded with old people riding scooters and pushing wheeled walkers. They must have come on a bus from nearby Russellville. My mother fit right in, with her peppy blue jeans and knit polo shirt. She wears those huge bug-eye dark shades that fit over her regular glasses. I try to stay conscious of those shades at all times: we've already lost one pair on my watch, and I'm determined it won't happen again.

"Heat and serve," we said at the same time, pointing to the sign above the aisle. I followed along after her as we peered into the hazy windows of the frozen food cases, reading the labels.

"Turkey breast and mashed potatoes," I said.

"Okay, let's try one of those," she replied optimistically. I opened the case and snagged a colorful box presumably containing food.

"Tacos and enchiladas?" I asked, moving along.

"Ugh, I hate Mexican food," she said, wrinkling her nose. I wondered if she had ever actually had any, being from Oregon and white and all, but I didn't ask. At 87, she's earned the right to eat what she wants. Me, I love Mexican food. Having lived in LA for twenty years and all. But I digress.

"Oh, hey, Salisbury steak," I said. "They still make it."

"I'll try one of those." The picture didn't look that appetizing, but maybe the stuff in the box will be better. I added it to the stack in the basket.

"Look at that, chicken and pineapple," I said.

"Chicken and pineapple what?" she asked.

"I don't know, just chicken and pineapple."

"I'll try it." Wow, way to live on the edge Mom, I was thinking, but didn't say it. I grabbed the box. Soon we had about half a dozen various types of frozen dinners.

"Okay, that's enough," she announced. "Let's go." When she's done, she's done.

Today I called her and asked if she had tried any of the TV dinners.

"Yeah, I ate the turkey breast, the whole thing! But the other one wasn't a winner."

"Which one was that?" I asked.

"The chicken and pineapple thing," she said. "No more of those next time you go shopping for me."

"Okay, good to know."

Unspoken is the question of how many "next times" there might be. Last week my mother's brother's wife fell, hit her head, and was taken to the hospital. She was old and frail—even without a bad fall, her days were numbered, but falling severely shortened her calendar. She never woke up. Within a few days, she was dead. Falling is bad for just about anybody, but it's definitely life threatening for an old person. Every time I drive away from my mother's place, waving at the scrawny little old lady I barely recognize, I think, will this be the last time I see her alive? Every goodbye is the last until I see her again. But it's always been that way, hasn't it? I just never realized it until now.

The chronic malcontent meets Jack and Jill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Independence Day from the Hellish Handbasket

I'm hunkered in the Love Shack cringing every time a loud boom shatters the neighborhood calm, which is more and more frequently now that the sun has gone down. It's the Fourth of July on Mt. Tabor, which means about a billion people have headed to the park with their fireworks and lawn chairs, intending to blow up stuff and then kick back to watch the fireworks over the city.

I'd say it's a war zone, but considering how many cities around the world really are war zones, I think it would be appallingly ethnocentric, so I won't say it. In some tiny way, the earth-shaking booms might resemble bombs falling nearby. The thought makes me sick.

My cat is hunkered under the “safe” chair in the bedroom. I've closed all the windows, but no place is safe from the noise. It's hard to explain to a cat why Americans feel the need to blow up stuff to celebrate an anniversary most of the world couldn't care less about.

I called my mother earlier to see how she was doing. She seemed okay, although she said she had misplaced her hummingbird feeder.

“Is it in the sink?” I asked.

“No, I don't see it,” she replied.

“Is it in the garage?” I asked next. I pictured her shuffling out to the garage with the cordless phone.

“No, it's not in the garage,” she reported. “Those birds will be mad if they don't get their sugar.”

“Is it in the refrigerator?” I asked, thinking, well, hell, who knows? If she's off her rocker, that bird feeder could be anywhere.

“I don't see it,” she said. I heard the refrigerator door thump.

“Well, I'm sure it will turn up. We can always get another one.”

“Oh, here it is!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “It was in the sink!”

Last week Mom had what she called “an episode.” She passed out on her patio and came to flat on her face with a bruised elbow and side. She crawled into her house and didn't bother to call anyone. When I called the next day to see if she needed anything from the store, she reluctantly told me what had happened.

I called the doctor's office for advice. The nurse said, “Take her to Urgent Care.” I picked her up and drove her to the urgent care clinic. The nurse there said, “We don't have the equipment to find out what happened. You need to take her to Emergency.”

Just about seven hours later, starving, exhausted, and beyond cranky, we walked out of the ER. Mom lit up a cigarette while I hiked across the parking structure to find my car.

For two days, she sported a portable heart monitor in a little gizmo wrapped around her chest and a velcro girdle fit for a Southern belle to support her broken rib. And I have a new word in my vocabulary: syncope.

The next time I saw her, she said, “I think it's time.”

“Time for what?”

“For me to move.”

Last summer Mom moved into independent living and it almost killed her. For sure, it destroyed her ability to think clearly. It's unlikely another move will restore what was lost. If she says it is time to move, I'm guessing that means the maternal parental unit is getting ready to call it quits.

“Okay, Mom. I'll start setting up the tours,” I said, looking at the scrawny stranger sitting across the table. I don't know this person, but that doesn't mean I won't miss her when she's gone.

If you can help it, don't get old

It's spring in Portland, which means it is sunny one moment and pouring the next. As I drove across town today, I felt like I had my own dark cloud following me, dumping huge gloppy raindrops on my windshield. Off to the south the sun was shining, same to the north...that sloppy gray cloud dogged me all the way home.

I know it's spring because I have brain fog. This is my typical SAD time, don't ask me why. We've had some sunny, even hot, stretches of weather, and I felt okay. But now, three days of clouds and I'm in my own private fog bank. I'd shake my head in disgust but that sets off the ear rocks. Don't want that.

Mom said she needed crackers. Yesterday I fetched graham crackers and soda crackers for my mother. I dropped them off around lunch time. She said, “I thought of two more things I need.”

This is what it is like in Old Person's Town. She can manage if everything goes along status quo, if nothing upsets her carefully orchestrated routine. But if something unusual happens, she can't process it. She can't figure out what to do next. It's like the logical sequence of events is no longer clear.

I got an email from her cell phone provider that the old 2G phone she's had for a few years will soon be nonfunctional. If we want a free 3G phone, all I have to do is ask for one. So I did, and a couple weeks later, it arrived in the mail, a cruddy little burner phone that looked almost exactly like her old cruddy little burner phone.

I spent some time on her landline phone with the cell phone provider getting the new phone activated with her old phone number. I set her ring tone to be some goofy country western song just to irritate her. Then I programmed my phone numbers and my brother's phone numbers into it. She can't access these phone numbers—she just types in a number if she wants to make a call. But if someone finds the phone (and her) and wants to know where she belongs, maybe they will give us a call. Found an old lady... is she yours?

I don't expect Mom to figure out the nuances of her cell phone. Half the time, she can't figure out how to answer it when it rings. It's good she has one, though. When she goes out walking, she carries it in a little black suitcase strapped to her wrist. It's her life alert system.

We had some trouble figuring out what to do with the old phone. Technically it still worked. But having two cell phones doubled her mental difficulty. I put the old phone in the box the new one came in, wrote what was inside on the cover, and gave it to her. “Put this someplace,” I said.

She hesitated, looking confused. She bent down and put it on the floor next to the cell phone charger. I guess that made sense to her. I realized I had an expectation that she could figure out a good place to store the box. I didn't expect it to be on the floor, but whatever. It's not my house.

The other day Mom and I were talking about the problem of homeless people in Portland. She has compassion, but only if prodded into realizing that most homeless people would prefer shelter if they could afford to pay for it. We discussed the rising rents. I didn't tell her my rent is going up $50 next month. I said if my landlord evicted me so he could jack up the rent, I would have to move in with her. “That would be okay with me,” she said.

“Could you stand to have a roommate?” I asked her. “I'm not sure I could.” She didn't answer.

Every time my phone rings, my first thought is, this is it. This is the call that changes my life. This is why I pay for caller ID on my landline. When I see her number in the little window, my heart stutters a bit. A few days ago, she ate something that didn't agree with her (hence the request for crackers). On the second day of the illness, she called me and said, “Well, I'm still alive,” sounding triumphantly relieved. That made me think the digestive trouble was worse than she let on.

When I get old, there won't be anyone around to bring me crackers after three days of hellish diarrhea. My final plan, if I live long enough and can still act (and drive), is to drive out into the desert with a bottle of pills and some tequila. Ah, sunshine at last. So long, brain fog!

The chronic malcontent is aging in place

I haven't been out of the Love Shack all day. It was 98° today, blue sky and blazing sunshine, our second day of record-breaking heat. It's great to be warm. I've got a wet washcloth on my head and I'm awash with iced green tea, edging toward heart burn. It doesn't get much better than this.

I've been working on my book. Yes, did I tell you? In between editing jobs, for the past couple years, I've been writing a book. I am happy to say it's almost done. I'm weary. What kind of book, you ask? Well, it's a bit too soon to say for sure, but odds are it's nothing you will be interested in, unless you are a frustrated wannabe dissertator who has repeatedly failed to get a dissertation proposal approved and can't figure out why. Yeah, it's kind of a niche topic.

Time out. I just checked the temperature. It's dropped to 88°. I opened the back door and tested the air. Woohoo, the outside air is cooler than the inside air. Time to open up the windows. The sun has dropped below the horizon. The air sluggishly enters the front window, along with the voices of the happy diners sitting on the sidewalk at the cafe across the street. The cat is sleeping awkwardly in the (empty) tub. I notified him that the windows are now open. He didn't budge.

Earlier today, my mother invited me over to enjoy her air conditioning. She forgets that I prefer the heat. Maybe she's lonely. Tomorrow I'm taking her to her fifth physical therapy appointment. She's been doing exercises twice a day to strengthen her gimpy leg and build up her scrawny butt. She says it is helping. Last week I remarked that her stride seemed to be a bit longer, and she beamed. She even sauntered a little bit when she thought I would notice.

Last week was a busy week, with the physical therapy appointment and a visit from my niece and her partner and kid. My brother and I met them at the zoo. Seeing the elephants was fun. No children fell into any cages. The next morning we met for breakfast and my mother came along. It was hot but not sweltering. She ate a turkey sandwich. I had a small margherita pizza (wheat crust, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil), for which I am still paying.

My niece is 25, her child is three. My mother was thrilled to meet her great-grandchild. The kid wasn't all that thrilled to meet her, this funny stick-like lady with the booming voice who smells of cigarettes and tic-tacs. I remember meeting old people when I was young; it wasn't pleasant then. I'm sure it's not pleasant now. Old people are scary.

My mother is aging in place. That's the phrase. You can use it if you want. I hope to someday find a place in which I can age in place. Meanwhile, I'm aging where I am, sweating in the Love Shack.

The chronic malcontent muses while jogging: Don't try this at home

Today for the first time this spring, I put on my jogging togs and headed for Mt. Tabor Park. As I marched up the hill, I tried not to notice how tight my running shorts were or how my belly bulged over the waistband. I plodded up the main staircase, admiring my black polyester (or are they nylon) pants with the modest belled bottoms and racy white stripes, thinking these pants will be around until the apocalypse. I made it to the top of the staircase. I only had to pull the band of my sports bra out to give my lungs some room to expand twice on the way. Progress!

The cloud-filtered early afternoon sunlight was warm, and I was overdressed: long t-shirt, short jacket, long pants, baseball cap. Ready to start trotting. Any moment now.

Finally, I urged my legs to a trot, first trot of the season. Argh. I was aghast at how creaky my ankles and knees felt. The pain reminded me of my vegan debacle, from which I thought I had recovered. Mentally I reviewed my diet. Have I been eating enough protein? I've been doing protein smoothies almost every day, plus my usual eggs... hmmm. I heard Bravadita's voice in my head: Americans eat too much protein, more than they really need (those selfish hogs). So, add in my broccoli and maybe I'm getting 45 grams of protein a day? I don't think that's enough, sorry, Bravadita. My joints are telling me I need more protein. And probably more water, too.

As I trotted down and around the hill, feeling every little sinew between my hips and ankles, feeling every scraping bone and twinging muscle, I lamented the loss of strength, stamina, flexibility...and even as I lamented those prized assets, I knew if I really wanted them badly enough, I could get them back. At that point, gravity sucked my facial skin into a sinkhole somewhere around my knees and my brain along with it. Save that conundrum for a rainy day.

Still, I had to count my blessings: the vertigo was bad this morning, but it calmed down while I was finishing the final edits on a small job, an insubstantial treatise on the casual carpooling phenomenon now occurring in San Francisco. (Who knew! People are so amazing.) My jagged jogging didn't seem to stir the accursed ear rocks up much, I'm happy to say. I'm going to try not to move my head much while I type this and hope for the best.

After my choppy scoot down and around the road, I walked once around one of the reservoirs, admiring the deep green water, noting the occasional floating cup lid and tennis ball, and then headed up one of the dirt trails toward the northeastern flank of the mountain. As I walked, I began to feel sad, and then I remembered why sometimes I don't like to go walking: Walking gives me time to think, and when I have time to think, I feel sad.

First, I grieved the loss of my mother (she's not dead yet, she's actually doing better, but that doesn't stop me from indulging in the wreckage of the future). Then I grieved for the plight of people suffering at the hands of terrorists. Next, I grieved for the plight of animals suffering at the hands of mean people. Finally, I grieved for the plight of the planet, weighed down by humanity's greed and selfishness. All this grief I felt as I sauntered along the dirt paths wearing polyester (or nylon) pants, listening to an mp3 player that I charged with electricity generated by coal plants (and maybe some hydropower—this is the Pacific Northwest, after all). And now I'm blogging about my sadness while enjoying a cup of tepid coffee (think I'll heat it up in my microwave) and listening to Ultravox's Hiroshima Mon Amour on Window Media Player. Oh, how I suffer.

Pre-worrying solves nothing, but planning and action can help ease my fears about the future. I fear my mother's decline and eventual demise. I fear the impending earthquake and tsunami. I fear my landlord will evict me this summer so he can triple the rent and I'll have to move in with my mother. I fear my crappy car will croak; it's a Ford, after all—found on road dead. I fear I'll never finish my book (I'm almost done). I fear ridicule for my attempt to write a screenplay (but I submitted it to a contest anyway). I fear I'll soon be size extra fat instead of just medium fat (I still went jogging).

Nobody knows the future, except for the one thing we all know and don't want to talk about: We all will die. We don't know when, we don't know how, but we know we can't escape it. The essential, mind-blowing question is (and has always been), how do we want to live until we die? You know what they say: A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. Do I want to get to the end and realize I was a bystander in my own life? How many of us just trudge through our days without letting ourselves feel anything? I know that's what I do. I don't feel much rage anymore—I go straight to sorrow.

I don't like to feel sorrow, so I avoid feeling anything. But I've learned that the sun only comes out after I feel the sorrow, after I acknowledge the pain of living life, after I let myself feel the feelings. Then I can shrug, take a nap, have a blueberry smoothie, and get on with the business of living.

Happy anniversary to my vertigo: a year of imbalance

Just over a year ago, I woke up one morning with a new companion: Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) or just plain old vertigo. I leaned over to pick up a sock. Suddenly I felt like I was being hurled violently toward the ceiling, then back at the floor, then back at the ceiling. I quickly sat down and assessed the situation. Earthquake? No. Bus crash into the Love Shack? Nope. Had I somehow been dumped on a trampoline while I was sleeping? Nope. Conclusion: a localized disturbance has infiltrated my inner ears—aka, vertigo. Bummer!

For most people afflicted with vertigo, the cause is unknown. After doing some research online, I hypothesized that the ear crystals (ocotonia) in my middle ear canals had somehow come loose from their usual location (possibly from banging my head against the door jamb of my mother's car) and were now freely gallivanting around the canals on an extended sightseeing tour. Fun for my ear crystals, I presume; not so fun for me. As the ear rocks swirled, my sensitive ear nerves told me that up was down and down was up. The floor was spongy like a trampoline. I was flying!

Walking without falling over became a challenge. The inside of my head quivered constantly. In the beginning, before I learned how to live with the vertigo, I felt shaky and weak. People who saw me said I looked pale and ill.

Of course, I scoured the web resources for information. I read some disheartening tales: vertigo could last days, weeks, months, or years. Luckily, the type I had was subjective BPPV, not objective. That meant I felt like I was doing the moving, rather than feeling like the world was doing the moving. (The difference between the two is profound.) I learned about the Epley Maneuver, which uses head positions and gravity to entice the crystals to return to their proper location. I started treating myself in an amateur fashion several times an hour, desperately seeking a cure.

During the first month of my affliction, I visited a doctor, who said there were some exercises I could do to desensitize my ear nerves and gave me a referral to an ENT. The ENT put me in a space chair, twirled me over and around, and sent me out dizzier than I'd come in. Clearly, there would be no easy cure for me. I've come to believe I actually have roving ear rocks in both ears, which makes it more difficulty to treat with a gravity-based maneuver.

Sleeping was a challenge. Lying flat on my back caused waves of pressure to roil through my head. I could map the ocean of fluid in my ears as the waves sloshed slowly back and forth, front and back. I was on a boat, but the boat was in my head, rocking on waves that scraped the inside of my forehead like surf on a rocky coastline. The waves felt loud, but were silent, like a wall of soundless air pressure lacking actual decibels. I couldn't make out any noise, but I was bludgeoned every time I tilted my head back even slightly. (No more crying to heaven for me.) Sleeping on my side after performing the Epley on my head seemed to help. I confess, I wasn't willing to sleep sitting upright for the 48 hours recommended by some practitioners.

Over the summer, I fought the vertigo by staying active, determined to outlast it. I went running to spite it. I found out jogging was more comfortable than walking. I guessed that jogging kept the crystals floating above the nerves; they came back down with a vengeance soon after I slowed to a walk. As fall swept in, I stopped running, and then stopped walking. As the air got colder, I didn't want to move much, because movement stirred the sludge in my ears.

Winter came; my vertigo and I reached an uneasy truce. I agreed not to move, and it subsided to a dull but silent roar. There were a few good days interspersed with the tedious unbalanced days. The trampoline walk gradually calmed. As the months went by, I gained some weight, but I began to think maybe the vertigo was starting to fade.

Enter this spring. Almost a year to the day I first felt the vertigo symptoms, I suddenly was back in the rocking boat. Surfs up!

The ocean in my head has been active these past few weeks. My hope is that this activity means the winter sludge in my ears has finally broken up, like Arctic ice in the spring, and the crystalline icebergs in my ears are on the move. I do the Epley whenever the symptoms threaten to swamp me. I hope the waves are starting to calm. They are intense, but don't last as long, leading me to imagine fewer crystals are touring my ear canals. I wish the cruise would finally end, but like any cruise, you get on and you don't get off till it's over.

I've tried to frame this year as a metaphor for the imbalance of my life, but after a while, day after day, it's hard to buy in to the notion that things are any more precarious than usual. The same conundrums plague me; maybe by now they've lost their capsizing potential. Mom lives. I struggle. Life goes on, tra la la. If my metaphysical imbalance were responsible for my vertigo, it ought to have dissipated by now, because after a while imbalance becomes the new normal.

Vertigo doesn't have to mean anything, symbolically speaking. Last year, I hit my head on a car door jamb, which probably knocked loose some ocotonia, which settled into sludge in my inner ear over the winter. Gradually, my body will assimilate the annoying little travelers. Eventually, most likely, the cruise will end. The ocotonia will head back to port and stay there, and I'll be able to do things other people do, like lean forward and backward. Like sleeping flat on my back. Like dancing (when no one is watching, of course) and jogging and walking... things I used to take for granted, not realizing how precious they were.

A life in the day of the maternal parental unit

Earlier this week, I took my maternal parental unit to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Maybe I should say tooth cleaning. I think she only has one or two still holding down the fort in her jaw. (She reminds me a lot of Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies.) When we walked in the door at the clinic, a horde of white-haired old ladies sat around the waiting room, attended by walkers and canes. My mother marched up to the window, muscled one old gal aside, and pulled a wad of knitted blanket out of a paper shopping bag.

“Here's what I've been working on!” she declared in her foghorn smoker's voice. For a second, I got a glimpse of what my mother used to be like before dementia started to narrow her world.

The two receptionists and a hygienist rushed over to admire her work. A few patients toddled over to look, too. Mom has been knitting lap robes (or baby blankets?) out of leftover yarn. She donates her handiwork to a charity. Her color sense is unique. I have a particular garish blanket I'm rather fond of: orange and red stripes. Whatever you are picturing, it's worse. Today's blanket was tame by comparison: lavender, purple, turquoise, plus a variegated yarn that mixed all three colors. Stripes, of course. I think that's all she can remember how to knit.

“It's beautiful,” gushed Amy, the receptionist. Then she winked at me. I wasn't sure what that meant: It's ugly? Your mom is the bomb? I shrugged my shoulders, as if to say: I know? I don't know, this nonverbal body language is like Greek sometimes.

The door to the inner sanctum opened. The smiling young hygienist was ready to take Mom back for her cleaning. I was astounded: With all these people waiting, she walks in the front door, and the entire place rolls out the red carpet for her? No waiting, plus heaps of praise...I guess there are a few benefits to being 86.

While Mom was having her two teeth polished, I went to the store nearby to forage for food for myself. I bought my usual four vegetables: onions, zucchini, broccoli, and mushrooms. I got some cauliflower for good measure, and then, because I was feeling peaked and stressed, I got some organic chicken breast and a package of organic beef chunks. I don't eat beef very often, maybe once or twice a year. I heard Dr. Tony's maniacal laughter in my head: eat beef, it's good for you! This is the same guy who thought back-to-back colonics was the answer to all life's problems. (I'm here to tell you, it's not.) Beef, though, might have some nutrients I could use. I loaded up my bag of groceries and went back to the dental clinic to pick up Mom.

I was early, or she was late, so I had time to sit in the empty waiting room and wonder how long my groceries could survive in a closed car in intermittent sunshine. Eventually I heard my mother's voice coming closer. I pulled out her checkbook and paid her bill. As I wrote the check for $151 (with the discount), I thought, they should charge her by the tooth. By rights, the bill ought to be about $44. But dental school loans are massive, I know. And all those dental hygienists who went to those nasty for-profit career colleges will be paying on their loans for the rest of their lives. Someone's gotta help them, I guess. Might as well be the elderly... let 'em feel useful.

She lollygagged, saying goodbye to everyone. Who knows if she'll still be alive in six months? Hugs all around. As we were strolling out the door, she turned and said, “Let's stop at Bi-Mart. I need some bath soap.”

At Bi-Mart, she was waylaid by the displays of flowering annuals, arranged enticingly in the sun along the path to the door. She told me to grab a cart. I followed her along the wall of flowers, thinking about the $30 worth of chicken and beef sweltering in the trunk of my car and looking at her scrawny backside, noticing her thrift store denim jeans were at least two sizes too big for her tiny frame. Her pant legs seemed to be two different lengths. Her butt, hidden in folds of faded blue denim, looked like a little round rock. Suddenly, trundling after my scrawny pepperjack mother seemed hysterically funny. For a moment, everything aligned and life was good.

Boring story short, eventually I dropped her off and made it home. The meat was fine. I made beef stew and ate it with mixed feelings: I wish my health did not depend on occasionally eating the cooked flesh of dead animals. And boy, did that stew taste good.

The chronic malcontent is starting to drool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For those who say they can't...

If you've read my blog before, you know I spend a lot of time whining about stuff. As a self-obsessed chronic malcontent, it doesn't matter what it is, I can whine about it. I can whine about how my mother's dementia is turning her brain to mush, I can whine about the crummy Ford Focus I bought because I didn't want to shop anymore, I can whine about editing the papers of dissertators who have clearly balked at reading the style manual. Really, everything is a candidate for whining in my world. Lately, I've been whining a mantra along the lines of I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.

What does it refer to? Hey, thanks for asking. When I whine that I can't do it, I mean I've come to the end of my rope, I've hit the wall, the camel's back is shattered, and the fat lady is singing. It's a cry to heaven: I can't do it! Fill in the blank, whatever it is, I can't do it! Maybe I used to be able to do it, but no more. No can do.

I found myself whining this mantra today when my maternal parental unit (which really needs to go back to the factory on Clelldor for servicing) invited herself along on a shopping trip I hadn't planned.

“I need some baking soda,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“And some other things. Do you think we could go to Freddy's?”

Normally, I would be quite willing, but today I was scrambling to finish editing two chapters of a challenging dissertation, and I wasn't entirely certain I would be able to submit the file by the 6 PM deadline. My first thought was to cry, I can't do it! But Mom comes first, so I said okay and picked her up at 10:30. I took time to make some coffee and swallow a few gulps, but no time to make breakfast or eat it.

“You're late,” she said, assembling her going-out gear: cigarette case, lighters, gloves, cell phone case. “I thought I got the day wrong.”

“Sorry, Mom. Got your list?”

I drove the few blocks to the supermarket and parked. The wind was chilly; it was raining, but not hard. Just a typical crappy spring day in Portland. I let her manage her own exit from the car while I grabbed two grocery bags from the back seat, thinking to myself, it's good for her to maneuver independently for as long as possible, right? And wondering how I would explain to my siblings if she accidentally slammed the door on one of her twig-like legs.

We made it into the store without mishap. I pulled a small grocery cart from the stack of carts and let her go before me so I could pick up whatever detritus fell from her pockets as she walked. (I've learned that one the hard way.) Slowly we trundled through the aisles: baking soda, applesauce, chicken, ice cream, fresh fruit, one potato. I thought, no problem, we'll be out of here in 20 minutes.

In the produce department, I tried not to recognize Marge and Linda, relatives from my father's side of the family, shopping for broccoli. Marge is 94. Her daughter Linda is 66. I didn't know that, but as our two old mothers stood bleating at each other, Linda and I commiserated about the care of elderly maternal parental units and the prospects for our own futures, and in the course of the conversation, we both disclosed our ages.

Linda didn't sound like she's that worried about her old age. I figured it out: Linda has a husband, children, and grandchildren. In the struggle to beat old age, she'll be in the winner's circle. Me, I'll be working till I die penniless and alone. That's my health plan and retirement plan, conveniently packaged into one.

You can't rush two old ladies who are trying to touch base even though they can't hear what the other one is saying. I remarked at how similar the two looked: shrunken, tiny, wrinkled, bright-eyed skeletons. I didn't try to listen to their conversation, but I have an inkling of what it was probably about on Mom's side. For years, Marge has lived at the big retirement community Mom moved to temporarily over the summer—the “warehouse for old people”—so I'm pretty sure Mom was explaining to Marge why she didn't stay for long at that retirement village, opting instead to move back to her condo. That's the move that precipitated the steep mental decline, as you may recall, leaving me and my siblings with a strangely different mother.

Eventually I scanned and bagged the eight items in the basket and paid for them with my mother's debit card. Then we went over to the in-store jewelry department to get her watchband repaired. That only took five minutes, and Mom fretted impatiently on my behalf so I didn't have to. Then she complained about having to pay $10.00 to the guy for the repair. I wanted to scream, I can't do this anymore, but I didn't. We got the watch. I let her lead the way out of the store.

Here's the thing about whining that I can't do it anymore. It's bulls--t. Clearly, I can do it, because I keep on doing it, despite my whining. Until I'm unconscious or dead, or until I choose something different, I am doing this. That is irrefutable evidence that I can.

You know what they say about those who can't, right? Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Besides sounding a bit snarky, that saying might not really be accurate. Doing and teaching are sometimes the same thing, and the line between can and can't isn't always clear.