Almost time to roll credits

Near the end of most romantic comedies, a moment arrives that lets you know a change has occurred. The hero has been driving all night. The montage of headlights, dotted lines, and highway signs flows into a calm sunrise to represent the hero emerging from the dark night of the soul into a new day, transformed somehow, usually by grief or remorse or chagrin. The hero realizes the answer was love all along, or moving home, or apologizing, or singing outside someone's window holding a boombox. The music swells—usually violins—as the hero crests the hill or lands at the airport or whatever and sees the ocean, or the city, or the house, or the love object. When that moment comes, you know credits will soon be rolling up your screen and you can head for the bathroom.

Lately I'm hearing that music when I drive home from my mother's nursing home. I used to call it her retirement home—an unsettling euphemism for a warehouse where old people are sent to die. Now I call it the nursing home, because as she slides deeper into dementia, she's clearly way past the retirement phase of her stay there and there's no use pretending she's going to suddenly start knitting again or playing bingo with the other old ladies.

The music isn't anything specific, usually. Usually Marketplace is on when I get into my car and turn on the radio. It's not like my drive has changed. The restaurants with their optimistic welcome back, we missed you signs look pretty much the same every day, rain or shine. A smattering of cars in their parking lots, a few aggressive drivers on the road, and the sun setting in my eyes over the mountain I live on. Same destination, nothing fancy, nothing new, just my kitchen and my computer and the bad news about the corona virus. It's more of a feeling that a change is coming. 

I visit my mother's window every evening like a hopeful peeping Tom, peering through the screen with the sun reflecting in my eyes. What I hope to see is my mother just arriving from dinner, still alert enough to visit for sixty seconds at the window before she sinks limply on the couch. Earlier this week the nurse called to say they were going to let her take her meals in the dining room. Mom wasn't into eating her meals all alone from a tray in her room. Losing weight, headed south, yada yada. The past couple days she's been more alert. If I time my visit right, I can catch her before she fades.

Yesterday I was too late and she'd already settled into the black hole. I thumbed the button on the parental baby monitor unit and said softly, "Hello Sleeping Beauty, are you awake?" 

She opened her eyes and looked at me. I moved from the screen to look through the glass and pulled my mask down so she could see my face. She gave me a childlike grin and waved. 

"Hey, Ma," I said, waving. "It's me at your window again."

She gazed at me, smiling. After a long moment, her voice came through the monitor in my hand: "There's my Carol." 

"How ya doin', Ma?" I asked, hands cupped around my eyes, trying to see through the reflection. 

"Not too bad," she said as her eyes were closing.

"Okay, I'll let you sleep," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow . . ." 

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," she sang back, and opened her eyes to give me our version of the high-five—the peace sign. I returned it and leaned over the waist-high bush to put my nose on the glass. I can't quite lean far enough to kiss it, and you know, cooties. I try not to think about all the bitty spiders that are jumping from the bush to the front of my jacket.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll love ya, tomorrow," I sang, off key of course, because I can't sing very well. Who cares, not me, I never see any other family members out there peering in their loved ones' windows doing their best to keep them alive by sheer force of willpower. I'm alone except for the occasional dive-bombing crested blue jay guarding a nest I suspect is in the gutter overhead. I wave goodbye, pull up my mask, and head back to my car.

She's pulling away, she's receding from me. It tears me up but I'm doing my best to be there for her. I read that our hearing is the last of our senses to leave us when we are dying. I hope that I'll be with my mother when she leaves. If I am, no matter who is listening, even if I'm bundled head to toe in PPE, I'll be singing the Happy Wanderer into her hearing aid as she goes over the crest of the hill. Roll credits, but not yet, not quite yet.

The Chronic Malcontent waits for summer

Two weeks after spending an afternoon in the ER, the maternal parental unit came out of quarantine and joined her fellow inmates in the dining room for the first time in three months. Earlier in the day, the nurse called me to tell me they were changing Mom's care plan to allow her to take her meals with other people. Mom hasn't been eating well in her room. She'd just as soon sleep as eat. Consequently she has been losing weight. 

I wasn't there to see her triumphant entrance to the dining room. I could have peered in the window but I didn't want to scare anyone. I assume all social distancing protocols were followed. When I visited Mom at her window after dinner, parental baby monitor to my ear, she said it was nice to go to the dining room but she still couldn't talk to anyone. I can only imagine what any conversation might have sounded like. Even on a good day, she doesn't always make sense. Well, who does, really. Nobody is having good days, these days.

Speaking of sense, when it comes to vertigo and ear infection, nothing makes any. I can't figure it out. I thought if I treated the vertigo, the ear rustling would cease. I studied some videos of the ear canals to see where my renegade ocotonia were vacationing. Wow, I know we studied the ear in elementary school but I'd forgotten how complex a structure it is. Amazing. And so tiny. It feels as big as the ocean when waves of vertigo sweep through my head. Who knew such a tiny contraption could reduce me to head-banging.

Three semicircular canals. Remember those? Horizontal, posterior, and anterior. Somewhere in there, maybe in more than one canal, are some wayward ear crystals dancing on nerve endings they were never supposed to see. I'm trying to think of them fondly as little dudes gone astray, enjoying a walking tour without proper permits. I'm not feeling much benevolence. It's very hard not to want to rip them out of my head like the lousy gravel that they are.

YouTube is great. People, especially chiropractors, naturopaths, and physical therapists, are so helpful, if you can endure the interminable ads. I found conflicting remedies but in desperation, I tried them all. The Deephead, the Epley, of course, my traitorous maneuver that never works, and a new one, the Barbecue Roll. I now know where my mastoid bones are, and I know what happens if you use a vibrator on them (temporary clanging bells). 

This is nuts. 

I'm trying to treat the vertigo on the theory that the ear hissing will subside, because the hissing seems to be linked to the vertigo. The hissing is rhythmic but not regular. It's as if someone is tapping you on the shoulder every five to thirty seconds, saying "Hey." More like, "He-e-e-e-e-e-e-y-y-y." For three to five seconds, a really long h-e-e-e-y. Like, hey, don't forget me, here I am, hey.

I'm a doctor's worst nightmare: the self-diagnosing patient. What did we do before WebMD? I think my Eustachian Tube needs a major overhaul. I'm ready to try the Modified Muncie, so you know how far gone I am. That's where you poke your tonsils with a finger to massage the malfunctioning Eustachian Tube opening. I'm also treating the ear infection with Valsalvas, antihistamines, nasal sprays, hot packs, ginger tea (by mouth), nasal rinses (with distilled water so I don't get amoebas in my brain), and ear lavages with alcohol and white vinegar. 

The only time I get relief is when my head is immersed in a hot tub of bathwater. These conditions are difficult to replicate sitting in front of my computer doing Zoom calls. I'm operating under the assumption that heat opens the Eustachian Tube and stops the ear rattling. Therefore, I have a new remedy in the works. It's only in the design stage so don't get too excited. It's called the Fire Turban. I don't have much hair anyway, so if something gets singed, probably my usual black hat will cover it.

I'm holding out for summer, my solution to all my problems. I've always believed summer will cure what ails me, which is why I moved to Los Angeles when I was twenty. You can imagine the rest. Usually summer starts on July 5 in Portland, but this year, summer is late, and according to the forecaster, it doesn't seem to be wafting over the horizon any time soon. Man, I need some high pressure. It's my last resort. If I don't get some relief when summer finally arrives, then I'll give up. I crawl to my doctor (virtually of course, via a telehealth appointment I'm sure will cost me $100) and I'll admit defeat. 

Next weekend is the first class of my five-week series on business tips for artists. Luckily it's on Zoom so I can keep my feet warm with my heated rice-filled foot warmers. I'm a little anxious that I will be distracted by waves of dizziness and relentless hissing in my ear. It will be hard to explain to the class if I suddenly break down weeping. Well, we either survive or we don't. Meanwhile, we are intrepid: We carry on.

Living on the edge with a notebook on my head

I'm sitting at the computer with a notebook balanced flat on my head to remind me to sit still. It's another ploy to defeat the vertigo that drives the waves that set off the crackling in my right ear. Apparently I move my head around a lot and that upsets the ear crystals. It's harder than you might think to stay perfectly upright. Plus it hurts when the notebook slides off my head and hits my hands. As a preteen, I used to mince across the bedroom with a book perched on my head. (It's what girls did in the early 1960s before they got the message that love was free and didn't require poise.) This is not that. Maybe a neck brace would be better. However, I don't happen to have one, and I know from experience, wrapping a long scarf tightly around my neck is not an ideal solution.

Speaking of breathing, yesterday I went for a walk in the park after visiting my sleeping mother. I've avoided the park, mostly, because I want to avoid people. But I'm tired of wandering the neighborhood. I wanted to see my reservoir. I donned my plaid mask like a good citizen, jammed in my mp3 player's ear buds, and hiked into the park. I saw dozens of people, and not one was wearing a mask. Maybe they all feel invincible in the outdoor air? Maybe I'm the overly cautious canary?

Amazingly, no one was on the trail through the trees. I had the 87°F shade all to myself. Early summer is a luscious green season here in Portland. I came down the hill above the tennis courts and saw all three courts occupied with players. No masks, but some nice social distancing going on, okay (nods in approval). When I came out into the sun by the big reservoir, I saw a some people strolling, a few running, but fewer than I had anticipated. I saw not one wearing a mask.

Excuse me, time out while I remove my suddenly chirping smoke detector from the ceiling. I may have ear troubles but I'm not deaf. Oh darn, I don't have a replacement battery. I guess for a few days I'll be living on the edge. Oh well, aren't we all. Hold on while I put the notebook back on my head. There.

Where was I? Oh yeah, walking around the reservoir, contemplating the nature of virus particles. How many times have you passed someone on the street or in the hallway and held your breath so you didn't inhale their perfume? Or their body odor, halitosis, farts, whatever cloud they left in their wake? Come on, you probably do it instinctively. It's a social-dissociative mannerism adopted to help us maintain our personal bubble and the illusion of safety. 

I did the same in the park yesterday. I passed a chubby shirtless tanned man walking his bicycle. I passed a man and woman, obviously a couple, who walked shoulder to shoulder. I passed two young women walking while looking at their phones, ignoring the beautiful reservoir mere feet away. I passed several people walking dogs, singly and in small family groups. After I passed each person or group, I held my breath to avoid inhaling their perfume plumes, covid clouds, and fart mists. 

I walked three times around instead of my usual four because it was getting dark and the wind had kicked up. Low pressure was moving in. I could tell because my vertigo was cranking up. I think I'm going to start a local weather blog. Are you interested in checking the weather in a small region, say, a ten foot diameter circle around me? Great. I'll just access my right ear. Currently, the weather around me is medium crappy. That means, it's not raining, but it's not sunny, either. It's medium crappy. I think tomorrow high pressure will build in and the hiss in my ear will lessen. 

Wow, holding your neck in one position is really hard on the back. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be helping much with the vertigo waves, either. So much for that remedy. My best option is still to immerse my head in a hot tub of water. It's very difficult to do that outside the tub, though. I've tried. Big mess.

Mom sleeps most of the time, less like a napping cat and more like a soon-to-be dead person. When I visit in the evening, she is always sprawled loosely on her couch. Sometimes her mouth is open. Sometimes she twitches. Once she took her life-alert pendant and wrapped the ribbon around her hand quite neatly without opening her eyes. A few times lately, her TV has been on. Last night someone had turned on her air conditioner. 

I talk into the baby monitor: Hi Mom, howdy, Mom, Mom, Mom, wake up, Mom, it's me at the window, look, Mom, it's me. I watch and wait. I try again. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty, Mom, Ma, Ma, Mommy, wake up. Sometimes she'll twitch. Rarely does she open her eyes. Sometimes I sing, but I don't yell. It seems cruel to make her wake up just to entertain me. If I were her, I would prefer to sleep through to the end. I stand at the window, a morose peeping tom, and watch her chest rise and fall. Proof of life.

I cut my mother's hair in the emergency room

On Wednesday morning the light inside my refrigerator burned out with a pop at 6:30 am when I opened the door. Not a good sign, I thought. I was up early, getting ready to cook my breakfast and dash over to the retirement place to pick up my mother and take her to the dermatologist. After several postponements, the day had finally arrived to have the Mohs surgery on her cheek. 

The clinic had previously informed me it could be a day-long ordeal. Accordingly, I packed three bags of gear. One big bag held a pillow and a fleece blanket so she could sleep in between rounds, and a neck pillow for me in case I was lucky enough to catch a snooze leaning back against a wall. The food bag was crammed with Cheerios, almond milk, a dish, a spoon, napkins, coffee in a thermos, two water bottles, and some paper towels. The personal hygiene bag was jammed with a towel, two washcloths, some baby wipes, what few remaining disposable gloves I have left from previous gleanings from the nursing home, a pair of my old cotton knit pants, a pair of socks, and my hair-trimming scissors. I had Chinese food for us both for our lunch: veggie lo mein for me and cashew chicken for her. The only thing I was missing, and possibly the most important thing, were the six pairs of pull-ups. Those, if all went according to plan, would be in the bag I would receive from the nursing home when I arrived to pick up the star of the show, my mother.

I was prepared for eight hours of hell, and it seemed like I might get it. Despite an assist from my brother and his wife, the day didn't start out well. The guardian at the door almost didn't let me into the building to be with her. Once we got up the elevator, I saw the waiting room was roped off, inaccessible. No visitors allowed. I explained to them the incontinence situation. No more needed to be said. They welcomed me in and made room for my four bulging grocery bags. Next, we spent ten minutes cleaning her up in the bathroom. I mean, I spent ten minutes cleaning her up. She wasn't much help, but she did her part: She pooped on command, and that rarely happens. 

After leaving a toxic waste dump in their garbage can (I had the pull-ups but no plastic bags, argh), I'm happy to report: smooth sailing! No more bathroom breaks, no agitation, no complaints . . . and Mom was really calm, too. The skinny young skin doc knew her stuff, wielding that gleaming scalpel with a sure and steady hand. I felt blessed by the skin cancer gods that we got out of there in less than three hours. Miracle! You know how sometimes you prepare and you make all the proper sacrifices and promise to be good if only things will finally go your way . . . and then things do, and you wonder, did I over-prepare? Did I worry needlessly? Was all that existential angst wasted? I'm here to tell you, burning sage and compulsively texting your sponsors really does work! Who knew! 

Mom got sliced, diced, punctured, stitched, packed, reamed, steamed, dry-cleaned, and bandaged. In between rounds, she ate a bowl of Cheerios with good cheer and didn't twitch when the doctor came back to take a little more skin. Everything happened so fast, we didn't have time for me to give her a haircut. She barely had time to finish her cereal. The assistant warned me she would have a shiner tomorrow. Mom grinned. Sporting an enormous bandage from forehead to nose, Mom walked out of there with a swagger, well, almost a swagger, more like a little sashay, and made it easily to the car. 

As I buckled her in, I wondered if I should keep her for a while longer. Who knows when I would get to see her in person again? For the first time in three months, I was able to touch my mother. We sat shoulder to shoulder in my Ford Focus, breathing the same air. (I wore a mask; she let hers dangle below her chin.) Her hair was still falling in her eyes, darn it. Well, maybe they could give her some hair gel or something at the place. I figured it would be best to take her home in time for lunch. I buckled up her seat belt and pointed out the new buildings to her as we drove the streets she used to drive so nonchalantly barely more than five years ago.

At the nursing home, they welcomed her back like family, which she is, really, if you think about it: they see her more than I do. She was sleeping when I visited in the evening. The next day the house call doctor visited her to see how she was doing. I met him in the parking lot after his visit. Blood pressure good, more confusion, but that is to be expected, all in all, thumbs up. Right on, Mom.

This morning I get a call from the nursing home: She won't wake up. They are sending her to Providence ER. I drive to Providence ER. No mom. Lost in transit, it seems. Done a bunk? Gone fishing? No, they took her to Adventist ER, three blocks from her nursing home. In case you are wondering, even in a pandemic when everyone is supposed to be staying home, it takes twenty-three minutes to drive five miles in SE Portland. As I'm driving, I'm thinking, what if she died and I missed it because I was at the wrong ER? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

I arrived. I passed the temperature check, got my hall pass, and found her alert and talking in a cubicle in the ER. I was late. The doctor had come and gone. The nurse told me a few things. Pretty soon, the CT scan tech whisked her away. Ten minutes later, she was back. As soon as she was layered with heated blankets, she went to sleep. I thought, should she be sleeping? Then I thought, if she's dying, she'd probably rather sleep through it. The bandage was gone from her cheek. I could see the oozy stitches. She looked like she'd gone ten rounds in the ring.

She woke up after a while, yelling for a bed pan. The feisty mother was back. As we waited for the test results, I did everything I could think of to keep her entertained. I turned on the television. I showed her photos on my phone, look there a kitty, look there's another kitty, there's a duck on the reservoir. Every five minutes: "When can I get out of here?" I was exhausted and she was just revving up. I don't know how parents do it. In my defense, I was extremely hungry and thirsty and needed a bathroom.

"Why are you wearing all black?" Mom asked me. "Do you think it will keep away the . . . ?"

"The virus?" 

"Yeah, the virus."

"If only it were that easy," I said, and the nurse laughed. "We'd all be dressing like Johnny Cash!"

"I'm trying to remember what happened," Mom said after the nurse left. 

"This morning?"

"Yeah, and when I went to the eye doctor."

"You mean the skin doctor?"

She pointed to her eye. "That thing."

"They took that sore off your cheek."

"I tried to tell them to leave me alone."

"This morning?"

"Yeah. I could hear them. And then they were putting me on the stretcher."

"They couldn't get you to wake up. You were half-awake and half-asleep, sounds like."

She pointed her finger at me. "Bingo."

"Hey, let me cut your hair," I said, grabbing a pair of bandage scissors that were next to the sink. She didn't protest, so I leaned in and started whacking off hunks of wiry gray hair. She laughed. I couldn't do much but the front and sides, but she didn't look too bad after a few careless chops, considering I don't know how to cut hair. We left some hair on the pillow. Oh well. Something to remember us by.

Four hours after she arrived, the ER doctor came in and said he didn't know what had happened. All the tests were fine, and she was free to go. I signed the paperwork. I helped her get dressed, and the nurse took out the IV in her arm. In that order. I wheeled her outside, brought my car around, buckled her in, and drove the three blocks to the nursing home. They met her at the door with big smiles. Someone brought her walker and helped her totter inside. I naturally was not allowed in the building. Unclean. No time to say good-bye. I drove toward home, thinking of breakfast. My phone rang as I was halfway home. 

"Did she have any paperwork?"

I drove back and gave the paperwork to the nurse. 

Tonight I drove back over there, because that is my commitment to my mother, no matter what. She was asleep on the couch, as usual. I could hear her breathing through the baby monitor. I peered at her from outside her window for a few minutes, thinking how lucky I was to see her in person twice in one week. Maybe those crystals really do work. 

What to do about vertigo and ear crackling

If you clicked on this link in the desperate hope of finding a solution to the ear crackling torture that is keeping you awake at night, you've come to the right place. If you didn't, skip the next few paragraphs. Let me just get this out of the way for all you folks who are on the verge of shoving a pencil in your ears to get some peace and quiet. 

Here's what I discovered today after a week of hell. First, I assume you have vertigo. As you know, vertigo is the result of ear crystals shaking loose and wandering into parts of your ear canal where they don't belong. The antics of those wayward crystals will really make you appreciate that there is fluid in your ears. You will feel actual waves rolling through your head. If you happen to have vertigo and then are unfortunate enough to get an ear infection, which happens to me sometimes in spring allergy season, that infection can cause ear crackling. Guess what I discovered today: The ear crackling responds to the waves of fluid you feel moving in your head when you have vertigo. Treat the vertigo, and you treat the ear crackling. There. Go do the Epley Maneuver on your head and feel better. You are welcome.

Here's my backstory, thanks for asking. Again, skip ahead if you've heard all this before. I've had garden variety vertigo for about six years, I believe from bumping my head on the door jamb of my mother's old green Toyota. Some time after I first got the vertigo, I started hearing a loud crackling noise in my right ear. I thought the noise was related to the vertigo but I couldn't find any information on it. Novice that I was to the off-balance experience, I freaked and went to an ENT, who couldn't hear the noise and clearly thought I was mental. He put me in the gravity chair, whirled me around, and sent me on my way with a recommendation to take antihistamines and stop whining. After a few months of misery, summer came, the ear infection cleared up, and the ear crackling finally went away. The vertigo has remained. We have a truce.

Say, is it okay to resume my self-obsession? I forgot to ask. I'm not qualified to write about anything but myself, and even that is iffy. If you are hoping for an essay on current events, sorry, I've resumed my normal position, that is, with my attention laser-focused on my own parched existence.

Back to my story. A week ago my right ear began to spit and hiss and soon was crackling merrily like a New Year's Eve noisemaker. Zzzz, zzzz, zzzz. I could get it to go faster by leaning my head forward or backward but the only way I could get it to stop completely was by immersing my head in a tub of hot bathwater, which I always do before bed. I mean, I immerse my whole body, not just my head, that is to say, I take a bath. It helps me sleep. So for a few blessed minutes, the ear crackling stops and I enjoy pure silence, except for the unnerving sound of my erratically beating heart (am I having a heart attack? what is my heart doing? If I'm having a heart attack, I'd rather not hear it, please). Each night, grateful for the quiet in my right ear, I have survived my fear of a heart attack. Inevitably, though, I have to get out of the tub. As soon as I lay down in bed, the crackling cranks up. With all that racket, it's almost impossible to sleep.

I have tried everything I can think of, like I said in my previous post, short of sacrificing a chicken. Here are the remedies I have tried in addition to the hot bath head immersion: sipping warm coffee, sipping warm tea, leaning to one side, leaning forward and backward, blowing my nose, popping my ears, leaning over a pan of boiling water with a towel over my head, jumping repeatedly in one place, taking an allergy pill, spraying two kinds of nasal spray in my right nostril, rinsing my nose with the neti pot, squirting an earwax removal remedy in my ear, wrapping a scarf around my head with a hot pack of microwaved rice strapped against my right ear, eating hot soup, eating hot oatmeal, pouring a mix of alcohol and white vinegar in my ear, putting a vibrator my head, and banging my head on a pillow.  

Today I did a little reflection. You know I'm an analytical kind of gal, or if you don't know that about me, now you do. I thought, this ear crackling can't be a random diss from the universe. What could account for the way the crackling crackles? Sometimes it's a fast sequence of pops, like the noisemaker. Other times it pops and hisses and spits with more space in between. I can get it to speed up and change tone by bending over, so it seems gravity affects the crackling. Why does it stop when my head is immersed in hot water? There is some kind of rhythm at work here, but it isn't affected by my heart rate or breathing. 

Finally it dawned on me. It's the vertigo. The waves of vertigo that I hardly pay attention to anymore are crashing through my head and setting off the crackling. Once that theory occurred to me, it wasn't hard to start paying attention to the vertigo, and sure enough, they were related. Like waves crashing on the shore, only in this case, crackling on the shore.

I immediately performed the Epley on my right ear and enjoyed fifteen minutes of silence. It was a miracle. Maybe there is a god. It didn't last, but my good mood did. Now I know this annoying noise is not random. It's not personal. It's not me winning the reverse lottery. It has a rational cause.

Vertigo for me is affected by gravity, movement, low air pressure, temperature, and stress. All those things are working on me in the spring. Gravity and movement, check. I can't avoid gravity, and I rarely stop moving, even at night. I'm up and down several times depending on how much tea I've had. So, yep, gravity and movement. Let's see. We had a tornado yesterday so air pressure is definitely a factor. Plus, our temperature is ten degrees below normal for this time of year. So that leaves stress. Am I stressed? I have discovered that I vibrate when I'm on the phone. Who knew. Now I know. Vibration sets off ear waves, which cranks up the crackling and makes me completely insane. So maybe I am mental. Huh.

On Wednesday if all goes according to plan, I'm taking the maternal parental unit to the dermatologist to get her face scraped and repaired. It's an all-day ordeal. I'm bringing everything. Literally.

I can't help remembering taking my senior cat to get his ears cleaned. Two days later he was dead. Mothers aren't cats, I know, but we love them both the same.

Exit-seeking, stage right

These days it seems as if the only words I find are platitudes: When it rains it pours. Well, it's either feast or famine. Well, you know, if it's not this, it would be something else. Sometimes you are the windshield . . . har, har, har. So far in 2020, I'm definitely not the windshield. I thought I'd melt from sadness when my cat died in January. Then along came the Covid, followed by the protests. Big stuff, hard stuff. Now guess who's back? My vertigo. And along with the vertigo, an unwelcome pest I had hoped never to hear again—the incessant ear clicking. The jack hammer in my head is going at it like flash bang grenades down at the Justice Center. I'm currently seeking the nearest exit, which right now is looking like a sharp pencil in my right ear. 

Yesterday I visited Mom as usual, lurking outside her apartment window in the azalea bush, waving at her and holding up signs. It's plenty warm enough to have the window open, but last week I got read the riot act by the Med Aide on duty. The window was open one inch but even standing at the window, Mom couldn't hear me. I pulled my mask down so she could see my lips. “Did you have some ice cream?” I called. At that moment, the Med Aide came in the room.

“No more open window!” she shouted, hustling over to my mother.

“Where are her hearing aids?” I yelled back. “She wants ice cream!”

The Med Aide looked around in confusion and found them. “Oh, the caregiver must have forgotten to put them back after her shower.” She sat Mom down on the couch and inserted the hearing aids into Mom's ears. She stood up to leave.

 I yelled, “Close the window! And get some ice cream!”

So yesterday evening, I visited Mom as usual and brought my little sketchpad of prepared signs and a felt-tipped Sharpie in case I needed to write some more. She came to the window to open it. I held up a sign explaining that we can't open the window because we are trying to keep all the old folks safe from germs. She shrugged. Who cares. She lost interest and went back to sit on the couch. Her dinner looked barely touched. I yelled, “I love you!” through the window. She gave me two peace signs, and I left.

Shortly after I got home, my phone rang in the special tone: Trouble. Oh dear, I thought. Did she fall? Did she crack her head open? Is she dead? Is this over?

“Today your mother went out the front door.” Same Med Aide.

“Uh-oh,” I said, thinking, right on, Ma.

“Yeah, she was very angry and combative. And she didn't have her walker. She made it outside but one of the staff was outside walking with another resident. She stopped your mother and brought her back inside.”

This news was a blow but not a surprise. A few nights ago, the nurse had told me, Mom was up early in the morning, making a run for the front door. Mom said she had to go home. My sister is my witness. We were video chatting when the nurse called. 

Looks like I'm not the only one looking for a way out. Poor old Ma. My next thought: poor old me. 

We come up with remedies to cope with our problems. To remedy the Geiger counter in my ear, I'm just about ready to call the witch doctor and sacrifice a chicken. I've tried everything short of personally performing aural surgery with a sharp stick. For a few minutes, usually after eating, the clicks fade and diminish. I don't know if that means the ear infection is easing or if I'm going deaf in my right ear or if I should just keep eating and never stop. At this point, I don't care. I'd do just about anything to keep the blessed silence. 

In Mom's case, the remedies are lame, because the underlying problem is she is going to die. There's no solution to that problem. We redirect. We cajole. Well, we don't actually do anything, because we don't get to see her anymore except from outside her window, like she's a fish in a tank. The care staff at the nursing home are her family now. They know her better than I do. I see her for two minutes every evening. I don't see her in the middle of the night bolting for the front door, yelling that she has to go home.

All we can do is agree to put a Lo-Jack on her and let her go down swinging. 

Covering one mask with another

Every now and then I get a Facebook friend request from someone who knows someone I know. I check out their profile, and if they seem interesting, I will accept their request. It's like putting your hand in a grab bag. Do you remember grab bags? We had them at school fairs when I was a kid. You pay for the privilege of jamming your hand into a bag of supposed goodies. You feel around among the wrapped objects and make your choice, hoping you chose the treasure and not the trash. I have yet to find treasure on Facebook, but the good news is, I can always unfriend the person after I see their true colors.

Today I accepted a friend request from a man (I presume he is a man, gosh, you can't tell from photos, can you?). A FB friend of a FB friend who is the brother of someone I went to high school with. That should be okay, right? I clicked accept and forgot about it. An hour later, a message popped up on my computer alerts.

"Hello, how are you doing?"

Oh, boy. Here we go. The last time I corresponded with a FB "friend," he tried to sell me insurance. Today, I'm bored and looking for some distraction. I have to take my entertainment where I can find it in the new age of COVID. I limber up my chit-chat fingers.

"Great, how are you? Why did you want to be FB friends with me?" I believe in the direct approach.

I wait and pretty soon the little dancing dots start burbling. And burbling. Either we have a slow connection or this person is a very slow typist.

While I'm waiting, I have some time to ponder the new world of grocery shopping in a pandemic. Yesterday I ventured out for my weekly foray to the store. As usual, I brought a cloth mask and a pair of purple gloves (meant to be disposable, but I'm recycling them with soap and water.) I carefully donned mask and gloves before grabbing my shopping bags (yes, they are plastic, and I bag my own groceries, so back off) and headed into the store, vigilantly maintaining distance and avoiding eye contact. I'm still a little anxious, but not as anxious as I was a few weeks ago. I'm starting to get the hang of it. Although I always forget to wipe down my plastic shopping bags, darn it. Well, whatever. Good news: I'm still alive, so whatever I'm doing (or not doing) must be working. It's hard to know, though, because my two-week-old actions might kill me tomorrow.

Eventually another message pops up on the FB messenger feed. My new FB friend has finally finished typing his missive.

"Well, you were among my suggested friends and I decided to add you up, sure you are not at me?"

I have to read the message a couple times to parse the bad grammar. Add me up, yeah, okay, I get that. Sure you are not at me? Hmm. Let me dodge around that hole in the sidewalk.

I write, "You are FB friends with [So-and-So], brother of [Other Guy], who I went to high school with many years ago. Are you a local person?" See what I'm doing there? First, I ignored his plaintive inquiry about me being mad at him. Don't really care about his codependency issues. Instead, I mention our shared connection (to build good will) and then I add the all-important words—many years ago—that signal I'm old and why are you wasting your time talking to me? Then I click send and sit back to wait, thinking about masks both actual and virtual.

As an older white woman, I'm used to being mostly invisible wherever I go. Wearing a face mask escalates my invisibility to a new transparency. People see my shopping cart, but I think they wonder, how is that shopping cart going by itself? I'm not sure, though, because I don't make eye contact.

Have you noticed: Avoiding eye contact is a thing now that so many people are wearing masks. On my morose days, it's always been my default mode to avoid eye contact. Making eye contact is excruciating sometimes. Now it's totally de rigeur to let my eyes skitter away, to glance at people sideways so I can take evasive action if they seem to be lingering near me or blocking my path. It's as if now that I can't see mouths and noses, I can't see eyes. And even better, they can't see me at all! I'm completely not there!

As I was cruising along the aisle hoping to score some facial tissue (allergy season continues to progress at roughly a box a week), I realized I felt more relaxed than usual. Invisibility means it doesn't matter what my face looks like. My expression was neutral under my mask. I wasn't walking around with an inane smile that I hoped said I'm harmless, please don't kill me. Nobody could see my mouth! It didn't matter if I smiled or not. Oh, the relief, I must tell you. I felt ten feet tall as I muscled my cart past the picnic supplies to the paper goods. Who cares if I can only buy one box. I'll sneak an extra box into Mom's order. That will make up for the loaf of gluten-free bread-like substance I bought her last week. No more slinking along the edges of the aisles, making room, grinning like a fool, giving way, hoping people won't be offended by my . . . oh, I don't know, you name it, my weirdness, my fatness, my whiteness, my obviously healthy diet of vegetables (just look in my cart).

Ding! My new FB friend responds, "Not really, we are just friends quite a while now. Where are you? Sure you're not mad at em?"

Seriously? Should I cut this guy loose or keep going? Anyone who can't write a grammatically correct message in FB messenger will never become a close friend of mine. Just saying. Politically incorrect, maybe, but grammatically incorrect, never. Still, I keep going.

I write, "Portland. What are you asking? I'm not understanding you, are you asking if I am mad at you?" I click send and sit back again.

A few nights ago, I went walking after I returned from my two-minute visit outside my mother's window at the nursing home. Spring is here, but warm weather isn't yet. It's good to get outside. I don't bother going into the park anymore, though—too many people. I wander up and down the hills in the neighborhood, crossing streets to avoid fellow wanderers. I guess I'm not totally invisible when I'm out on the streets. I admit, I feel just a twinge of rejection when the party coming toward me crosses to the other side of the street before I do. Like, darn, they rejected me before I could reject them.

Ding! There he is again: "About sending you a request. I'm from Austin Texas but presently in Copenhagen Denmark."

Wow! Copenhagen. That could be an interesting discussion topic. Later, it occurred to me to wonder what time it was in Denmark. Nine hours ahead, right? So about 2:00 a.m.? Insert heavy sigh here. Drunk? Sleepless? Up all night coughing with COVID?

"Why would I be mad?" I respond. "I didn't have to accept. I like [So-and-So] so I thought I might like you. Are you going to try to sell me something?" Might as well get it out in the open now. Insert long pause here. FB messages take a while to cross an ocean and several time zones.

His message appears: "No I'm not. I'm an independent rig engineer working with [Company Name] and also a teacher to the trainee down here." [Pause, new message] "What's your profession?"

Oh, darn. I should make up something really cool, like, underwater photographer or retired botanist. Penguin manager. Bluegrass fiddler. I'm not much of a fibber. Or a fiddler. I can't help but tell the truth, but not all the truth, of course, just the part of the truth that might make me seem really cool.

I write, "I'm an author and an artist." Then in the same message, I immediately deflect. If he is really interested in what I do, he'll pursue it. Meanwhile, I shove the focus back in his direction. I add, "What is Copenhagen like?"

After some moments, he writes, "Pretty, good entertainment, and beautiful morning when the sunrise."

"Is it cold there in the spring?" I know, dumb question. It's a conversational gambit to assess the willingness of the other party to be forthcoming. To bridge the gap. To extend the branch. You could do so much with that, really, if you think about it. Like, what is cold, in your opinion, and how cold is it, and do they have spring there, and what does one wear in the spring in Copenhagen?

"Yes it is."

Right. Okay. I guess I wouldn't be all that coherent at 2:00 a.m. either. Waxing poetic about spring in Copenhagen is clearly not something you can easily do in the middle of the night. Time to wrap this up.

I write, "Okay. I'm going back to work now. Thanks for the interesting chat. Stay warm, stay safe. Bye for now."

Might as well leave it on a pleasant note. I will probably unfriend him when I get home later. Then again, maybe not. In this strange new world, you can't have too many friends.

Looking for the new normal

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Sing it with me. Come on, Blobgots, I mean Blogbots, you know you want to, let me hear you bellow it out from your Zoom rooms. All you tiny squares, you. Dance too, if you feel like it, because I guarantee you, few of us are watching. It's too hard to see you against all your household detritus. You might consider noticing all the knick-knacks and gewgaws on the shelves behind you. Because we are. Oh, and please, some of you should dust off that ceiling fan, because that is all we can see of you when you Zoom on your smartphone.

I Zoom in front of a black curtain, because, well, you know, it's basically curtains for the human species from here on out. I don't know about you, but I am finding out a pandemic definitely complicates the chore of living. Everything seems more difficult. Maybe because everything is. I deserve a medal for just getting out of bed.

Being stuck at home means I'm excruciatingly aware of my physical presence in relation to the outside world. Did I bring the virus home with me today from the grocery store? Are my surfaces clean? Did something come in on my shoes, besides the usual bird poop and pollen? Did I scoop some of the virus into my lungs this week? Is this violent set of ten sneezes from breathing in birch tree pollen or COVID19? Did I transmit a tiny bit of virus to my mother's hearing aids, even though I wore a mask and gloves and sat outside the nursing home on a hard wooden bench when I swapped out the batteries last Sunday?

This stupid virus has made me ultra-conscious of my body. I'm experiencing corporeal disintegration  in real time. I can't point to any specific injury or illness. Rather, I'm riding a slow decline. The changes I see and feel are so gradual, I hardly notice them, until suddenly I realize it hurts to stand up, it hurts to bend over, it hurts to stretch, it hurts to breathe. Every damn thing hurts but not enough to take a pill and not enough to conclude it's the end. It's so odd to witness my activities become more and more constrained, like I'm standing outside myself watching the erosion of a shaky earthen dam. Do I try to patch the holes? What would that look like? People much older than I am push back against age. I doubt if I'm one of them. One marathon was enough for me.

Life as I knew it ended in January when my cat died. Already reeling from shock, it didn't really feel much more shocking when the virus came to town. First my cat, and then the pandemic. My response was, right, that makes sense. Total catastrophe is the only logical outcome. Finally, the chronic malcontent is vindicated. Since COVID19, it seems as if the world has joined me in my grief. My sadness is magnified a thousand fold everywhere I look. Even the stories of heroes, supposed to be uplifting, make me weep with despair. Nothing will ever be the same, not for me, not for any of us. I'm grieving a loss of innocence—I guess it is the illusion that the world was safe, that I was in control of my life, that I could predict what would happen next.

For some reason, I woke up the other night at exactly 3:45 a.m. and saw the final super moon of the year at its apogee, blazing brighter than a streetlight through the trees over the shoulder of the mountain. During the four-hour lull when the buses stop running, nights are dead silent up here on the hill. It's so loud I can hardly think. I am both alive and dead, like Schrodinger's cat, hunkered in a box originally of my own making but perpetuated by obligation, circumstance, and COVID19. I can't fully live until the maternal parental unit dies. But once she's gone, the box is open. I'm set free (assuming I outlast her), but the price is her death. And where would I go, how would I move, in a pandemic?

She's having a harder time getting up from her couch to visit me at the window. She shifts her fanny , then leans forward until she's got both hands flat on her coffee table. Slowly she gets her feet under her. I say, “Use your walker!” She pretends not to hear me. Bent at ninety degrees, she shuffles toward the window by hanging onto to her coffee table, then along the top of her flat-screen TV (pausing to read the sticky note I put there many months ago: Turn the TV on and off here, with an arrow pointing to the button), and finally, reaching the window. Clutching the window sill, she straightens up to look at me and smiles. She knows me. I'm never sure, until she smiles.

I remember when she used to walk me to the back door and we sang She'll be coming round the mountain together, me the thready alto, her the raspy tenor. The past two nights, she hasn't felt inclined to come to the window. I don't know if two data points make a pattern. Maybe we have a new normal. Every damn day is a new normal. After a while, normal ceases to have any meaning.

Manifesting introversion

The world has gone mad. Blogger has zeroed out all my view counts. It's official. I have ceased to exist. I always suspected I wasn't real. Now I know. All sound and fury, signifying a failed attempt to garner attention. Clearly, no one cares. I guess we all have better things to do with our time now, right? Like worry about our unkempt hair. I have to laugh when I see shaggy-headed women carrying placards reading Open up the country. I need a haircut. Poor dears. It's moments like these I am grateful I am so self-contained. Not only to I do my own nails but I also do my own hair. I have the photos to prove it.

There's only one thing I want and I can't have it, so as a second choice, I have decided to see if I can practice my visualization technique to manifest something. I'm willing to start small. Manifesting stuff hasn't really worked before but I'm feeling lucky. Today, I would like to manifest some glow-in-the-dark paint. I'm not sure why, exactly. I just think it might be entertaining to have arrows to guide me around my dark apartment at night when I am wandering with insomnia.

I often wake up thinking about my mother. Usually I have a playlist running in my head, whatever I listened to before taking my nightly bath and going to bed. Last night I watched a YouTube video of the life of Cher so I woke up humming If I could turn back time. I'm not a big Cher fan; as a former fashionista, I was more focused on Bob Mackie. Still, that song seems like a good theme for an insomniac during a pandemic.

The news is not all bad. I'm heartened to see images of wild animals taking over empty roads, city streets, and yards, raiding refrigerators and busting into cars. Right on! I read that birds are altering their songs now that the world is quieter. I saw video of jellyfish in a Venetian canal. If we humans all just go away, the world will be fine. I'm willing to consider going away.

Then again, half the population would be delighted to kill off everyone over sixty. I reconsider my willingness to consider going away. I won't go willingly, I just decided. You'll have to take me out back and shoot me.

I did my part to tickle the economy by replenishing some footwear I have needed for several years. I didn't want to buy from the big mean online megastore so I bought from a different online megastore I hoped was less mean. How can you tell? I heard some American brands aren't paying their overseas contractors. This is not a good time to be poor. Hmm. Is there ever a good time, I wonder? Before I clicked the button, I gave some thought to the plight of the workers who would pick and wrap my package and the delivery driver who would drop the box on my porch, pound on the door, and run. Then I clicked the button. I could almost hear the funds draining out of my bank account into the pockets of the big online megastore.

I wonder how much my insurance rates would go up if I decided to become a delivery driver? Several months ago, I applied to be a Census taker, just for the experience. That so far has tanked; for me, I think that ship sailed over the edge of the earth. I could probably be a candidate for contact tracing training. You know, calling people to ask them where they went and who they talked to before they got sick. Ugh. Yeah, probably delivering footwear would be a better fit for me. I don't really like people up close, and I really dislike them on the phone.

Speaking of phones and people, I video chatted twice today, once with a friend and an hour later with my sister. I told my friend I thought that over the next several years, families with children (and resources, of course) would start migrating out of cities into rural farmland, seeking safety, space, and sustenance from the land. My friend listened thoughtfully and said, wow. We discussed the possibility that red counties could start turning purple. In contrast, my sister said she didn't think that would ever happen. I get the feeling she doesn't like to think about the possibilities of large cultural change. I mentioned my belief that we'd soon have robots doing personal care. She rolled her eyes. (Don't you love video chat?) I didn't tell her my other predictions about how children will learn to distrust people from outside their family tribe, or how there will likely be less personal privacy, or how new houses will be built with self-contained quarantine units.

I admit, I don't like change either. I'm still pissed off that all the hair on my legs has migrated to my eyebrows, nostrils, and upper lip. But like I said last time, what is fair to the cat is not always fair to the mouse. Or the other cat.

An acquaintance who works in the alternative wellness industry called me last week. As we were talking, I coughed. A short dry cough. Twice. Sounding alarmed, she asked me if I was sick. I said no, I just have allergies. Later in the conversation, I told her that I would be disinclined to sit in a small meeting room with a group of people anytime in the near future. Sounding amazed, she asked me why. I said because I would feel bad if I unknowingly spread the virus to someone in the group and they got sick or died. She had no response. I chalked it up to her youth.

Since then, I have asked several people how comfortable they would be going back to the old way of gathering in groups. Even my older friends are itching to hug their friends. I seem to be the only one reluctant. I guess in my case, introversion is sort of like a disease. Too bad it's not contagious. It could save your life.

What's fair to the cat

It's a great time to be a microbe. Seven billion humans on the planet means lots of moist juicy lungs to explore, conveniently crowded into densely populated cities. All you can eat, always open, never closed! It's spring break on the beach for COVID-19. The umbrella in the drink is humans' confounded propensity to move from place to place even when told to stay put—free mass transit, bring your family! Over eons, microbes always win the day, mostly by stealthily being too tiny for humans to see. However, humans are crafty, too, so I wouldn't count us out just yet.

It's hard for one person to eradicate the invisible. Just because I can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, lurking on my doorknobs, infesting my gear shift, congregating on my gaudy tatty plastic shopping bags. I should invent a bug bomb for humans, like we have for buildings. Just zip yourself into this here plastic body bag, hold your breath for a minute or so, and (if you don't suffocate), you will emerge sparkling clean, disinfected of every germ, even the ones you need, whoops. Well, I'll let you know when I have a working prototype. Maybe it shouldn't look like a body bag. The images I'm seeing daily on the news would probably not do much to boost sales. 

This pandemic is a slow-moving tornado, scouring the entire world. All we need now are a few real tornadoes to really put paid to the futility of human existence. The terrible choice is to find shelter together or die alone. Maybe more like, die now or die later. What are we surviving for? Does it matter? The U.S. economy is bleeding commerce, cash, workers, and customers . . . seeing a tornado kick a dead carcass isn't exactly a top headline. I hope no one dies, but well, like I said, die now or die later. 

Just a few long months ago, I used to drive the back road to my mother's nursing home. As I drove, I often said to myself, someday I won't have to do this anymore. I won't park under this tree. I won't stroll to the back door and enter the code. I won't stride along the hallway past the dining room, greeting the same people everyday heading painstakingly back to their rooms. I won't stop and check my mother's mailbox. I won't enter her room, saying howdy, howdy, Slacker if she's sacked out on her couch. I used to think, someday all this will be in my rear view mirror, a blur blending with all the other actions I've repeatedly taken and then suddenly stopped. Jobs. Schools. Relationships. The habit of participation seems forever engraved in my behavior until suddenly it's not. I'm amazed at how quickly I can let those old “habits” go, yet how stubbornly my compulsions live on.  

I expected my nightly ritual would end when my mother died. I did not anticipate that the ritual would end because of a pandemic. Now my ritual has shifted. Now I park in front, in the near-empty parking lot. I put on a mask. I gather a few items into my pocket and head past the front door, along the side of the building to my mother's window, where I peer into the gloom. I want to say, this is so unfair (to me). Then I remember, what's fair to the cat is not fair to the mouse. Right now, I'm the mouse. I have the whiskers to prove it.

She's always on the couch. Sometimes she's sitting up, eating her dinner or watching TV. Sometimes she's stretched out under her blue plaid blanket, eyes slitted, mouth open. When I tap on the window, she jerks to awareness like a wind-up doll. In slow motion, she gets to her feet, bent over at a right angle, and totters to the window, holding onto the coffee table, then the arm of the couch, then the top of the TV (I know!), and then the windowsill. She's a fall risk, a disaster waiting to happen. But aren't we all, these days.

The spring weather means her window is ajar just an inch, enough for her to hear my voice if the TV is not too loud. Some days, she doesn't seem inclined to engage. Other days, she's alert and talkative. I don't know why. I show her whatever little photo I have brought to add to her window collage. I tape it into an empty space. So far the one she seems to like best is an old photo of her as a child with her older brother and their dog, Tippy. She didn't mention her brother, but she murmured Tippy a couple times. 

A few days ago, one of the nursing home residents was sent to the ER where he/she/they tested positive for COVID-19. The nursing home administrator sent out an emotional email to family. Kudos to her for keeping us informed; bad news is better than no news. I'm doing a pretty good job of staying out of the wreckage of the future. Everything depends on how vigilant the staff have been. It's out of my hands. Symptoms take time to appear. So now we wait to see if a few wild viruses will make the leap to party in my mother's fragile lungs. 

Alone. Alone, alone, alone

Foraging for food has taken on a new tension in this surreal new world order. Never my favorite chore, now going to the grocery store means venturing into an enclosed space that could be swarming with hungry viruses. Certainly, the store is swarming with tense, anxious, fretting, hungry humans, all bent on cornering just slightly more than their fair share of the last box of whatever. Fear and greed make a frightening combination.

Yesterday, I prepared my purple rubber gloves, put a face mask in my pocket just in case I started coughing, and drove to the store, ready for anything. I put the gloves on and trudged to the entrance, keeping a wary distance, thinking to myself, am I six feet from that guy? Does it matter if we are both facing in the same direction, or is it more dangerous if we are facing toward each other? Wait, why is he stopping? Should I stop too, like keeping two car lengths from the guy in front of me?

Oh, no, can I go around this slow guy without getting creamed by cars pulling up to the front door to disgorge a horde of people of all ages who I assume are all part of the same COVID-19 death squad, wait, I mean, family?

I guess if you are all part of one COVID-19 pod, you sink or swim together. That is sort of sweet, in a Three Musketeers kind of way. All for one, one for all, together we die, although we'd have a better chance if we spread out a little. But hey, we're family, and family stick together, right? I wouldn't know. My family has always preferred being far-flung.

Inside the door, the cart arena was almost empty. Most of the carts were apparently out in the parking lot. As I grabbed one of the last carts, praying it didn't have a hitch in its gitalong, I saw the cart wrangler leading a caravan of carts from the hinterlands. Ah, replenishments. Now if only the shelves were equally as replenished.

I donned my purple gloves but left my face mask in my pocket. We don't need the mask unless we are spewing germs, right? I'm not clear on the purpose of the gloves and face mask. Am I trying to keep viruses in or out? This is so confusing. Of course, I don't want to transmit something to someone, especially if I don't know if I'm sick with something gruesome like a killer virus. If I am going to transmit something to someone, it better be for a good reason, you know, because I don't like them and want them to feel as wretched as I do. But I'm not sick. I don't think. At least, before I went to the store, I could say with some certainty that I wasn't sick. But who knows now. I went to the store. Who knows what I touched. All my zucchini and apples could be contaminated with viruses just waiting to jump onto my unprotected hands. From there, it's an easy jump to my mouth. Agh, I rubbed my eyes once or twice yesterday! I washed my hands, multiple times, and I wiped down surfaces inside my car, but did I wash up after transporting the zucchini into the fridge? Oh my god, I'm doomed.

In the store, I observed some shocking behavior, mostly from myself. I drove my shopping cart with purpose, making eye contact sparingly, as if minimizing eye contact equated with minimizing air space. I think I read that the virus needs prolonged contact to make the leap between respiratory tracts, so if I whizz by a shopper in the frozen vegetables aisle, I'm probably okay, right? Especially if I don't make eye contact. I can do this. I quickly filled my cart with all the items on my list. I was especially happy to see there were some boxes of facial tissue on the shelf. Bigger boxes than I would normally buy, but in allergy season, I've been going through tissues like, well, like the virus going through a crowd of drunken teenagers on a Florida beach. I grabbed three boxes because I was running low.

No lollygagging in the produce today, wondering what parsnips taste like. I made it to the checkout line in record time. As I waited my turn, I felt a nudge from behind me. The old guy in line behind me at the checkout, ungloved and unmasked and wiping his dripping nose with a tissue, seemed to be trying to push his cart past me, even though there was no space for two carts.

“Hi, are you okay?” I asked politely, thinking I could get irate, but now is the time for compassion, let's practice your promise of being loving and kind in this challenging new world.

He smiled and mumbled something. I realized English was not his first language. I nodded my head and started putting my vegetables and tissue boxes on the conveyor belt. He backed off.

The customer ahead of me wore a face mask but no gloves. He poked the credit card gizmo with his bare fingers. That strategy was exactly the opposite of my strategy. I wondered if I had got the whole thing wrong, that I should be protecting my lungs rather than my fingers? Oh boy. This apocalypse is confusing.

I did my best to show appreciation to the checker, an older gal who wore her glasses on a string. I wondered if I was old enough to start doing that and if it would help me cope with my trauma.

“I sure do appreciate you being here today,” I said as she started scanning my modest collection of items.

“Essential workers,” she said grimly. “That's what they are calling us.” I got the impression she would rather have been at home. Not much I could say to that.

“Oh, you can only get one paper product per household,” she said after scanning two boxes of tissues. She put two boxes aside. I forlornly bagged the one box that passed the scan, thinking, dang, I hope my allergies will be calm this week or I'll be honking into my fingers over the sink.

When I got home, once again there was no place to park. My neighbors have embraced the shelter-in-place order by taking all the parking spaces. Not only that, they seem to spend all their time doing laundry.

After disinfecting my car, putting away my possibly contaminated apples and zucchini, and washing my hands several times singing the Alphabet Song, I checked my receipt. Of course, I was charged for two boxes of tissue. I now possess a very expensive box of tissue, perhaps the last box of tissue I will ever be allowed to purchase, if the world of paper products implodes along with everything else. I should probably have the box bronzed or encased in resin or something, a testament to a time when we bought expensive products to wipe our noses and then discarded them into the every-growing waste stream that will eventually choke us all to death.

Tonight, as I've been doing for the past two weeks, I'll drive over to my Mom's nursing home, wave at her through the window, note how the pace of her decline seems to be accelerating, and drive home.

Well, on that happy note, I'm signing off from the Love Shack, wallowing in self-isolation, which for me is pretty much no different than the life I normally lead. That is to say, alone again, naturally.

Don't cry, it's just the end of civilization, not the end of the world

Today was a lovely spring Wednesday in Mt. Tabor Park. With all this extra time on our hands, and all this lovely sunshine after last week's bizarre snow storm, a walk in the park seemed like the thing to do. On Wednesdays, no cars are allowed to drive in the park. Thus, one day a week, the roads are filled with bicyclists, pedestrians, runners, and skateboarders. I walked diffidently along the park roads, rather than along the foot trails where I usually walk, making sure not to spew germs. As I walked, I watched to see if others were maintaining proper social distance.

I wasn't surprised to see families clustered together, walking dogs, riding miniature pink bikes, skipping and singing. I smiled at the little vectors of disease as they pedaled by, giving me sidelong glances. School has been cancelled for what, a week, now? Any moment, some of those little vermin will start to whine and cough. Wonder how that will work out. I have visions of virus sheriffs nailing doors shut, guns at the ready. These families walked near me, not three feet away in some cases, apparently not caring that I myself could be a vector of disease, a carrier, a spreader, a Typhoid Mary.

Lots of couples walked close together, some actually arm in arm! I can't look at television images of people shaking hands or kissing now without feeling queasy. It's the same feeling I have when I see old movies in which people drove without seat belts, smoked like chimneys, and littered without thinking. Eeewww. How could they have done that? I predict in only a few months, movies showing people snuggling and kissing will be X-rated. Images of men shaking hands will elicit groans from the audiences now too freaked out to watch movies with anyone else but still remembering how great it felt, sort of, to be touched by another person. No big surprise, the couples in the park ignored me as if I weren't there. Nobody notices old women.

In fact, the only park goers who stopped, stepped off the trail, or made wide detours near me were old women like me. We came close enough to make eye contact, but just a wary glance, as if we were assessing the risk of a rabid rush, a bite on the leg, a cough in the face. I smiled the thin-lipped smile I reserve for times when I am anxious but determined to acknowledge another person's presence despite my discomfort. I tried not to feel rejected or disappointed that my airspace was no longer tolerable.

The desire to make others feel okay is strong in me. My codependent nature wants everyone to feel safe and happy so they won't kill me. That used to mean smiling, waving, moving closer, patting, touching, shaking hands. Now taking care of others means avoiding them, shunning them, keeping my hands, voice, and breath to myself.

I'm finding some comfort in the stories of earth's ability to bounce back now that we have quit polluting the air and water. We thought it couldn't be done, that pie-in-the-sky climate agreement in which we cut our consumption so the earth can survive. Look at us now, cutting our consumption in half, at least. It's a sad but delicious irony that this pandemic will reduce the world's population and pollution load to the point at which some of humanity might survive.

Mom didn't have a great day today, I heard. She was asleep on the couch when I peered in her window this evening. Her eyes were closed; her mouth was open. Her dinner was untouched on the coffee table. I taped a little photo of a bouquet of daisies to the outside of her window, adding to the growing collection of clippings: flowers, a leprechaun, and my siblings faces taped to pink hearts. Then I just stood there and watched my mother breathe, as if I were watching a movie of a quiet peaceful moment in someone else's life.

The Chronic Malcontent does her part to flatten the curve

Last week I did a stupid thing. I went to the hospital lab to get my blood drawn for a cholesterol test I've been postponing for months. I guess I'm trying to check all the tasks off my list before the virus kills me. As I sat in the waiting room watching people who arrived after me be invited into the inner sanctum, I had some time to reflect (indulge in self-pity). I had some trepidation that a hospital might not be the safest place to be. Now looking back, my fear seems so quaint.

A tall, heavy young man came into the lab and approached the check-in iPad. He might have been Hispanic, Samoan, I don't know. Something slightly darker than pale. He looked like a wrestler. I noted his baggy red shorts and floppy team jersey. I bent my head back to my fingers. I missed the moment when he slapped the tablet, knocking it off its perch and sending the table sign flying onto the floor.

“I can't figure this out,” he said in disgust. One of the check-in staff left his cubicle and hurried to get the young man checked in. In an effort to distance myself from emotional drama, I moved to a chair directly outside the door I was trying to get through and stared at it, willing it to open and admit me so I could move on with my day. The young man took a seat to wait for his turn in the x-ray machine. My back was to what happened next.

“What's the problem?” I turned around briefly and saw two uniformed security officers flanking the young man, who now was on his feet, towering over both of them. I quickly bent my head and pretended I didn't exist.

“What? Why are you hassling me?”

“Let's go into the hall and talk about it.”

“What is your problem?”

The back-and-forth continued. I thought, this is how it happens. Arrogant people in power make assumptions in the name of public safety. Next thing you know, multiple people are dead. In a few minutes, the encounter was over. I couldn't hear all of it, and I didn't want to. I sat still, adopting a freeze and maybe they won't notice me strategy. We all survived. If that young man had been a few shades darker, it's likely the outcome would have been different.

After the drama ended, I meandered diffidently over to a check-in clerk, who looked up my check-in information and confirmed, yes, I had indeed somehow fallen off the list, so sorry. In a few more tedious minutes, I was invited through the door. Soon, I was punctured, patched, and on my way.

In for a penny. Time to address the next item on my task list. I headed over to the pharmacy nearby to get my second shingles vaccine. The wait wasn't as long.

“Getting it all in one arm, eh?” The pharmacist noted the cotton taped on my elbow. He looked like a young Ben Affleck. I could feel my smile returning.

“Yep. Luckily I have two arms, I can afford to lose one for a while.”

“You probably remember the side effects of this vaccine? Relax your arm. This will burn a little going in.” I looked at the ceiling as the needle went into my shoulder. “It can make you feel like you have the flu.”

I stared at him in dismay. No, I had completely forgotten.

“I think it was just a day,” I said slowly, totally not remembering.

“Hope so. Some people have five miserable days.”

My mother's nursing home instituted a no-visitors policy that afternoon. Despite my increasing muscle aches, I visited with her outside her window, scribbling and holding up notes for her to read. No, I can't come in because of the virus. I got a shingles shot today, ouch! I miss you. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. No, I can't come in. 

Our visit was cut short when she pointed to the bathroom. I waved and walked away, loathe to watch my mother struggle in the bathroom with no way for me to help.

Regular doses of ibuprofen kept me going as the shingles vaccine ravaged my body. I moaned and groaned through two long nights and emerged on the third day feeling refreshed just in time to see the stock market tank. So long, IRA!

Now it's a few days later. The no-visitor policy remains in effect at the nursing home, and the staff are screened and masked. If that virus gets in, all those old frail seniors will drop like flies. I'm staying home from everything but visiting Mom outside her window, doing my part to flatten the curve. The two inches of snow we had yesterday definitely inspired me to lay low. Not to mention my near-constant allergy attacks. My brother says tree pollen, but I suspect indoor mold. The libraries are closed. I hear there are lines outside the grocery store. My sister is flying to Boston from France next week. I hope she makes it. I'm freezing and scared. I miss my cat. Every damn day feels like a snow day.

An acquaintance told me (on the phone) that she wasn't curtailing any of her activities. She gets around on public transportation. I pictured her boarding buses with her wheeled suitcase, spewing germs. Appalled, I said, even if you know you could be spreading the virus? She said she believed the world was coming to an end soon, so it didn't matter. I said lamely, well, at least your behavior is consistent with your beliefs. I wanted to say, I don't care if you are ready to die, but I'd prefer if you didn't take me down with you. But I didn't.

This might be the end of civilization, I don't know. I think we are seeing how fragile the veneer of civilization really is as people yell at Asians and hoard toilet paper. At some point, I'll have to go forage for food at Winco. Meanwhile, I will hunker down in the Love Shack, mopping my dripping nose and compulsively reading the news.

Stay safe, blogbots.

The chronic malcontent reads a book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not quite over it, thanks for asking

Life goes on. I'm adapting to living life alone, just me in the Love Shack, bouncing from project to project, moment to moment. Now that I don't have to worry about disturbing a slumbering cat, I've vacuumed more in the last week than I have in the previous year. I can rearrange the furniture. I can pound on things. I can play loud music. I admit, it is nice not scooping poop or sweeping up cat litter. Once I've absorbed the cost of Eddie's demise, I predict I'm going to save a lot of money at the grocery store.

It's been just over a month. I'm not quite over it. That horrible it I'd rather not think about. I divide life into BDE and ADE (Before the death of Eddie and After the death of Eddie). I'm still sleeping with the rice-filled cat pillow. I find it comforting. However, you may be relieved to hear, the grief is lifting. Seeing BDE photos of Eddie and me on my screensaver is becoming less of a stab through the heart.

I used to be such a pot-stirrer, a brazen risk-taker, a leaper into abysses. I was always ready to move on . . . new city, new job, new relationship, one little hiccup and I was packed and gone. Old age has tempered my willingness to explore the unknown. I don't like change now, I realize. When my perception is that I'm hanging on to sanity by a thin thread, change can look a lot like a sharp pair of scissors. Change happens; I know I'm not immune. For instance, losing my mother will be a drastic change. I've wondered if my intense reaction to losing Eddie has been heightened by the slow grinding demise of my mother. She's dying in slow motion. I'm grieving in slow motion. I don't know. I don't live with my mother. Eddie and I were roommates for thirteen years. You get used to something after thirteen years. When it's gone, you miss it, even if it's a cat. I'd miss a ham sandwich if I lived with it for thirteen years.

When I realize most of my life is behind me, what used to seem important no longer interests me. I continue the process of jettisoning stuff from the Love Shack. I'm like a rocket burning off its boosters as it launches into the stratosphere. Why did I think I needed all this stuff? The books and DVDs are almost all gone now, donated to the library. My wardrobe is in tatters; if I ever move to warmer climes, I will consider replacing some clothes, but really, how much does one person need, especially considering the unpleasant consequences of unbridled consumption?

Well, let's be realistic. I guess I'm not ready to let go of everything. I'd miss my bathtub, if I didn't have one. And my coffee maker, can't live without that. I wouldn't miss my television but I'd probably stroke out if I had to go without my computer. So there's that. I still eat food I buy in stores, so I won't be foraging in the fields or making campfires in the near future. I wouldn't call what I do cooking, but I do heat food before I eat it. Although if the big one hits, we may all be pooping in holes and cooking mush over fires made from our broken furniture. Well, I'll help my neighbors in any way I can, if I can extricate myself from the wreckage of the basement.

At least my cat won't have to go through that trauma. A strange kind of blessing, to count up all the terrible things he has avoided by dying. That may someday be my strategy, when dementia scrapes away the rest of my functioning neurons. I hope I'll have a few brain cells left to help me make my escape when it's time to exit, stage right.

A derailed life

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

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

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

I've learned two things about myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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