Tubbing it with my laundry

 

Howdy Blogbots. Feeling like giving thanks yet? Yeah, me neither, although I should. I'm alive, after all. I hesitate to admit things are going well but I can't honestly claim it's all bad. For a chronic malcontent, that is some admission. I pride myself on my ability—it's an art, really—to look on the dark side. Little Mary Sunshine, I am not. And yet, I persist.

Last night I was multitasking by taking a bath and doing laundry at the same time. I can hear you asking, what? Laundry must be done, and washing skivvies in the tub means I can save my quarters for the sheets and towels. So, rub-a-dub-dub. Nobody gets close enough to smell me anyway, so who cares if I reek slightly? Anyway, I often think while I'm tubbing, and last night as I was squeezing water out of my socks, I was thinking, should I feel guilty that my life hasn't really changed all that much since Covid? 

Sometimes I think I should be suffering more. It feels like my inner empathy machine is just a click or two out of alignment. Before I can get the empathy machine to lurch into gear and flood my system with angst, I have to nudge my brain into having a thought, oh hey, people are suffering, I should feel compassion. I should suffer too. Then the sluicegate opens, the wave of empathy and angst washes through me, and I cry a little. Then I wonder, were those tears artificial? Am I crying for others, or am I crying for myself?

For me, the great tragedy happened on January 9 when my cat died in my arms. Since then, I have felt frozen in amber, mired two heartbeats from feeling much in real time. I'm responding to life, I'm taking action, I'm talking, and showing up, but I always feel a step behind, like, did I say the right thing? Am I feeling the right thing? There's a long moment in which I feel suspended in freefall. I can name the abyss. It's uncertainty. The dark hole yawning beneath me used to be hidden by the fog of my mundanities but no longer. Yowza. Life is damn precarious! I bet you feel it too.

After a remarkably smooth trip to the dermatologist on Friday, we learned my mother has a pressure sore on her right ear. (Yay, not skin cancer.) After researching ear-hole pillows on the Internet, I leaped into gear, determined to use materials on hand to create a pillow remedy. A few hours of cursing later, after repeatedly remembering how much I despise sewing, I proudly presented my accomplishment to Mom's caregiver: A pillow with a hole in it and a pillowcase to match. Essentially, it looks like I took a pillow and shot it with a small cannon. I'm still picking up the stuffing scattered around the Love Shack, but Mom has her ear-hole pillow.

Tonight I finally conquered the problem of foggy glasses. It's difficult to drive with fogged up glasses, have you noticed? During the day, okay, but at night, impossible. With or without glasses, not good, I can't see a thing. That reminds me of a time my former boyfriend and I got stranded hiking in an arroyo near the Colorado River after dark. I had only my prescription sunglasses. After dark, I was blind with them and without them. I tied a bandanna to his beltloop and stumbled after him along the sandy riverbed, sure our bones would be washing out somewhere down onto the plain below after the next thunderstorm. Well, driving with foggy glasses at night is like that, without the bandanna and the boyfriend.

In an earlier blogpost I reported that I had discovered my ears were not in a good location for wearing a face mask. Now I can report that my nose also presents a prominent issue. That is to say, the bridge of my nose is quite prominent, which makes it difficult to get a face mask to cover that bony curve. Has my nose always been so bony? Big, yes, since my teens, but gosh, so bony? Why is all the meat on my body migrating away from my wrists and nose and going straight to my ass? Well, a question for the ages. Anyway, today I took a dust mask and stapled a rolled up strip of fabric along the inside top edge. I sprayed the strip of cloth with a little water (I read it on the Internet so it must work, right?) I donned the dust mask and pressed the metal band tight into my skin. Then I took two cotton balls and stuffed them into the two gaps on either side of my nose. Then I covered the whole mess with my faded plaid cotton pleated mask. 

Feeling well barricaded, I expelled some experimental breaths. Eureka! Success. No fog! Special added bonus: Tonight the rain stopped long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the half moon in the southern sky. See what you miss when your glasses are fogged up?

My bathroom is festooned with drying t-shirts, tank-tops, underpants, and socks. Because the bathroom is cold and damp, each load of laundry takes about five days to dry. I've got a nightly routine. After I am done with my bath, I dump the clothes into the tub with me. No, I don't try to wash them while I am wearing them, although that did occur to me. Even though washing them while wearing them might be more efficient, wet clothes are not comfortable. I won't do it, even in the name of efficiency. 

I wash each "load" cursorily with bath soap. I rinse the items in the bathwater and hang them on hangers to drip dry from the windowsill. That's the nightly routine. Every day I take one load of cold but mostly dry, wrinkled stiff clothes, fold them like cardboard, and put them away in my drawers. This is an odd way to live but I don't mind. I conserve quarters, which saves me a scary trip into the bank. 

Tomorrow I get to make a scary trip to get a mammogram. After that I'll do my weekly scary trip to the grocery store, masked and gloved. In and out, like a burglar. It's a scary time but I feel oddly well-equipped to handle it. I don't let the pesky holiday season get in my way. My family stopped celebrating years ago. This is a piece of cake. You stay over there, and I'll stay over here. If you want me, you'll find me on the Zoom. 

 

The Chronic Malcontent tries to settle down

Is it time to exhale yet? I'm not sure. I keep telling myself, wait until this class is over, wait until this event is done, wait until that election outcome comes to pass. I'm very busy waiting. I'm waiting until it is safe to breathe but forgetting that life is happening now, daily, moment by moment whether I'm breathing or not. I am no longer a bystander in my own life, which is probably a good thing, but I'm tethered to my calendar, gritting my pearlies as I attempt to do the next thing on my list, wondering when it's all going to finally be done so I can stop running and start breathing. Aren't you tired? I'm exhausted. 

Life is just a habit of showing up. Some days showing up is just getting out of bed, but most days I'm an action-oriented dynamo. I fear I've come to believe that I'll only be safe if I accomplish everything on my list. I get an inordinate sense of satisfaction from checking things off. For example, the only reason I'm writing this blogpost is because a week ago I put it on my list. Dang it. If it is on the list, I have to do it. That is the rule. The upside is I get a lot done. The downside is I am my own cruel taskmaster. 

The schedule holds me together. The structure of my day orbits my evening visits to my mother. I don't want to go out after dark, especially if it is raining, but I do because I've set an alert on my phone—5:50 pm, visit Mom, bring gizmo. I bundle up in many layers of polyester fleece and fill my pockets with the baby monitor, a small flashlight, hanky, and gloves. I pull up my hood and venture out into the cold. For my reader in Minnesota, sorry. It's not Minnesota cold—40°F tonight, but I'm not built for cold, just saying. 

As part of my personal kindness campaign, I've been eschewing the parking spaces close to the Love Shack, leaving them for my neighbors who of course are oblivious to my sacrifice. Instead I park about one hundred yards down the street. Every night I wonder if my car will still be there. Every night, so far, it has been. On Halloween night, someone broke into my car and took my cell phone charger and spare change. The contents of the glove box were on the floor. The intruder rifled through the crates of car gear in the trunk but rejected the jumper cables and tire iron. Even though the thief was no doubt disappointed, in exchange, they left me a little bag of Halloween candy, wasn't that nice? And in spite of their disappointment, they didn't trash the car. They could have, but they didn't. So I still have a car that works. Maybe there is a god. 

Every evening when it is time to visit Mom, I take a little flashlight and stumble down the street to my car, masked up, wary of pedestrians. Even if they are walking a dog, you never know if they are wackos pretending to be dogwalkers. People with dogs are everywhere up here on the hill. They could all be wackos. With everyone masked, you can't see their faces. Luckily, they always give me a wide berth. Maybe they think I'm a wacko. Like, why would I choose to be out here walking in the cold dark if I didn't have to walk a dog? 

It's fall. That means my car is buried in golden leaves. I scrape them off the windshield with the wipers so I can see but I ignore the piles on the roof and hood. The soggy leaves will disintegrate and dissolve the paint but the car will be long dead by the time that is a problem. I might be too, who knows. 

You may remember Mom moved into a small care home in my neighborhood. It takes about four minutes to drive there. The streets up on this hill seem darker year by year. I'd like to blame the old streetlights but I'm pretty sure it's my eyes. My eyes are old. Everything else on me is old, no reason to think my eyes would escape the ravages of time. I don't really care except I get a little nervous when I drive in the dark. I am learning to drive by feel. By the way, you might want to avoid the east side of Mt. Tabor if you are driving after dark. 

Yesterday the caregiver at the care home sent me a two-minute video of Mom. She was sitting at the dining room table talking with two other white-haired women. The big screen television played football on the wall behind them. The audio wasn't great but I gathered that they were discussing books. The conversation was slow as Mom struggled to find her words. It emerged that the newest resident at the care home had worked in a library somewhere. Mom remarked with some excitement that she used to be a librarian herself. Common ground! I felt proud, like I was watching my kindergartener behaving appropriately during milk and cookies. 

Tonight Mom bundled up to visit with me outside the care home. The sky was black and filled with stars. We sat in the patio chairs six feet apart. Her breath billowed out in front of her face; mine was blocked by my face mask.

"Guess what?" Mom said. "We have a new president!" 

We congratulated each other. 

"Maybe now things will calm down," she said. She has no idea. 

Shortly after that she packed it in. Too cold. We visited through the bedroom window for a few minutes, using the baby monitor system. I pulled my mask down so she could see my entire face as I chatted through the walkie-talkie. She hasn't seen my face in weeks. For some reason, that mattered to me.

I drove home slowly like the aging person that I am, conscious that one careless mistake could result in tragedy. In keeping with my personal desire to do no harm, running over a dogwalker (or a dog) would blow my good karma to smithereens. Don't want that. It's cold and dark, and I'm old and tired. I need all the good karma I can get. 

Living in the present

Happy fall!? What was I thinking? More like happy winter here in the Rose City. We bypassed fall and went straight to misery. I am ramping up my whining a bit earlier than normal this year, thanks to a cold front and some gusty east winds. Only a few weeks ago I removed the sunshades from my front windows. Now it's already time to hang the plastic on the back windows. Fall was barely three weeks long. Why am I surprised? It's 2020. You'd think I'd be all ho hum by now but sometimes I can't believe this is real. This, meaning, like, everything.  

After I moved Mom into the care home last month, many of her possessions ended up in my living room. Over the past month I've made a pretty good dent in the stacks of boxes and bags. I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters, bundling up clothes, and organizing stuff into boxes for the thrift store. All the yarn disappeared from my front porch, thanks to two happy Freecyclers (I assume they were happy, I didn't actually see them in the world of contactless donating). Some things I don't know what to do with.  . . . the $40+ toilet seat riser, for one, which we purchased to add to her toilet at the retirement home. It's the kind of thing you wonder, like, will I need this any time soon or should I . . . donate it on Freecycle? Yeesh. I think I can give it to the new care home. Still, I wonder, like, should I stash this away, just in case? You never know when you might suddenly realize your toilet is too low. It's 2020, after all.

When I packed Mom's stuff last month, I had little time to decide what would go with her to the new care home. For example, for many years, Mom kept a small basket filled with pastel-colored guest soaps on the back of her toilet. I assumed it was to gently combat the bathroom smells with pleasant scents of lavender, rose, lilac, and lemon. On moving day, I threw many disparate items into one box for later sorting, including the basket of soaps.

Eventually I went through the boxes and bags in my living room and found the basket of soaps. As I lifted the dusty basket, it fell apart in my hands, probably because of rough treatment during packing. I decanted the soaps into an empty yogurt container, maybe a dozen grungy soaps in various shapes and colors. A gray heart, a speckled egg. . . Should I donate them to the thrift store? I sniffed them experimentally. No odor. I examined them with a critical eye. Would anyone I love welcome these objects as a gift? Not a chance. I walked around my apartment with the container of soaps, reminiscing about my boasts about downsizing, and eventually ended up in the bathroom, as we are all wont to do, and there the soaps found a home on the back of my toilet, where they now sit gathering dust and doing nothing to combat the bathroom smells. 

When I went through Mom's castoff clothes, mostly fleece jackets and cotton-poly knit polo shirts, I set aside a navy blue cardigan I thought she might like to wear again. I am not certain but I think it might have belonged to my father. It's nothing fancy, acrylic, I'd guess, loosely woven and unraveling in a couple places near the neckline. I hung it on a hanger and left it on a doorknob where I noticed it from time to time and thought, hey, I should mend that thing. 

Tonight I looked at the sweater more closely. Mending is not a favorite chore. For Mom, I would tackle the job, but would she be glad to see Dad's old sweater? Or would it make her feel sad? What would the new caregivers think of Mom wearing a decrepit unraveling cardigan? Would they think Mom is a slob? Or would they blame the family (me) for not getting her some new sweaters? All this was going through my mind as I fingered the holes and wondered how I would mend the thing given that I have no navy blue thread, and I hate to mend. In the end, I hung it in my closet. It's getting cold in the Love Shack. Maybe I'll wear it for Zoom meetings; maybe people will think I look professional if they don't look too close.

I visit Mom at the new care home every evening after dinner. As you may recall, the first week was rough. The second week she was morose. By the third week, she and the main caregiver Erin were old chums. For the past week or so, we've visited outside on the patio. One evening I sat six feet away, making a face under my plaid mask while I watched Mom hug Erin like a . . . well, like a daughter. 

The people at the care home are her family now. Anyone who prepares Mom's sandwiches and wipes her nether regions deserves family designation. I'm just the peripheral person who visits outside and pays the bills. It's okay. A month in and I am grateful daily that the move didn't kill her. Her life might actually be better. She sounds calm. She's doing puzzles. She looks clean. She's making more sense. She voted. Did you hear me? She voted. 

This week my mission is to cover the east-facing windows with layers of plastic and drape my work desk in a booth of drop cloths hung from the ceiling. I hope this bit of crude remodeling will retain heat in my work area, where I spend most of my time. The heat comes from the $14.00 heater I wrested from Home Depot during a three-month slow-motion curbside pickup. Now I'm toasty warm while I doom-scroll, attend online webinars, mentor clients, and endure Zoom crashes. I'm glad 2020 is almost over but I don't expect much from 2021. Maybe spring will come again, who knows. I'm doing my best to bundle up and live in the present, one day at a time. 

Happy fall from the Hellish Hand-basket

Howdy Blogbots. How's it going? I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. Oh, I have the usual challenges, like anyone in these strange times. Life during Covid kind of sucks. I have Zoom fatigue. Fall started, that's a drag. I mourn the end of summer. I hear some folks are dealing with venomous caterpillars. Jiminy crickets. I have yet to see any Murder Hornets, though, so that's good. I try to stay out of the wreckage of the future, especially about the rather consequential election coming up next month. Got your voting plan? I got mine: Vote early and pray for peace.   

All in all, situation seems normal, that is, in general, all effed up, but I have to say, I'm doing fine. Why so cheerful, you ask? It's out of character for a chronic malcontent, I know. I'll tell you why I'm chipper. In only two short weeks, my maternal parental unit has adapted to the new care home. It's a miracle, proof of god. I was amazed. I credit the dementia and a really awesome caregiver. Mom now seems to like the saintly, endlessly patient, wonderful Eren. 

Things are looking up. I've almost but not quite forgotten the heart-stopping stomach-dropping moment when Mom glared at me and demanded, "Why did you do this to me?" That memory lingers because of the heavy emotional load I unintentionally attached to it. It will fade. Like all my memories now, it will fade. It's the curse of age, but it's also a blessing. I've forgotten most of the stupid things I've done and said. All that lingers is a frisson of humiliation and a desire to immerse myself in Time-Life Midnight Special music infomercials. I imagine Mom feels somewhat the same, except for the urge to sing along to Aretha and the O'Jays.

I'm slowly regaining floor space in my living room as I redistribute Mom's unwanted gear to the local thrift store, mostly old clothes pockmarked with cigarette burns. Some things I incorporated into my habitat—for example, staples, paper clips, sticky notes. Some I tossed—three little boxes of gummed reinforcements, for instance. Maybe I could have sold those on eBay as antique office supplies. Hmm. My former couch now turned writing desk is littered with stacks of old cards and letters sent to her from friends and family over the three and a half years she was at the retirement home. I need to go through all those, scan the ones that are meaningful (not the dozens of cards that say "Love and hugs, Dorothy"), and fill up the recycle bin. It's a task made for winter weather so I'll save it for a few more weeks.

Almost every evening since she moved, I've been walking the ten or so blocks from my place to Mom's place. I set my phone to alert me at 5:45. I don my walking gear and head out into the neighborhood. It takes thirteen minutes going (mostly downhill) and about seventeen minutes returning. Most nights Mom comes outside and we sit in chairs six feet apart, me wearing a mask, and discuss the meaning of life. Well, sometimes the topic is, Who is that walking a dog out there past the gate? Her memory is still stuttering but I think her ability to be in the conversational moment has improved. She sounds like my mother. It is beyond thrilling to see her in person. 

Tonight a windstorm blew up from the south, bringing some tepid rain. My rain gear isn't great, but I brought an umbrella (bright blue, a gift from Mom's health insurance company), which snapped inside-out after a block. I turned around, popped it back open, and kept going, peeking up once in a while to make sure nobody with Covid was coming toward me. Oddly, I was the only person out walking. 

I made it to the care home without mishap, slightly unsettled by the tall fir trees whipping in the wind and rain. I wasn't expecting Mom to come outside, but there she was, in her black fleece jacket and knit cap. It was a short visit. Even though our patio chairs are under cover of a large porch, Mom didn't want to sit out in the chilly wind for long. Still, she was glad to see me. She wanted to hug me. She seems to barely come up to my waist now, so strange how old people shrink, so I turned my face away and patted her on the back. It's a great relief to know she no longer hates me. 

Things in the mirror are closer than they appear

Moving day came and went last Thursday, sandwiched between two days of heavy rain, and nobody died. In the morning, I spent two hours feverishly packing acres of knick-knacks, worn out clothes, and well-loved books no one reads anymore into boxes and garbage bags and tagging furniture for the movers while my mother reclined on her bare mattress, snoozing under a layer of fleece jackets. Right on time, the movers arrived, masked, eyes neutral, hands gloved. Within minutes, they loaded up the big red truck. The last thing to go was the bed. I rousted Mom and parked her outside in a patio chair. A few minutes later, the movers were on their way to drop half the load at my brother's garage. I fetched my car, loaded up the precious cargo, and off we went to the new place.

For weeks, Mom had been saying to me through the baby monitor, "Get me out of here. I want out of this place." I counted down the days with her, taping notes to her window every night. Five more days, four more days. The night before moving day, I took down the photo collage and all the notes. I thought, whew, finally she can grow old in a place that won't kick her out when she runs out of money. 

When we got to the new care home, Mom sat at the marble dining room table with another old lady, displaying her best social skills, while the movers traipsed around the corner with her couch, coffee table, end table, armchair, end table, and a little round table to go next to the armchair. I directed them where to place things in this new room, a quarter of the size of her old apartment. The new care home care manager, Eren, helped me make the couch into a bed, laying down a foam rubber slab over the old couch cushions and covering the mess with a king-size dark gray cotton sheet. I thought it looked pretty good.

Eren invited Mom in, and she entered, looking shell-shocked. Soon she was prone on the couch with her head under a blanket. I went back to the retirement place to fetch her clothes, lamps, and more hygiene gear. She was still sacked out on the couch when I returned to the care home. I thought, okay, is that a good sign or a bad sign? I went home and ate dinner. At 5:45 pm I walked over from my place for my usual after-dinner outside the window visit, now at a new location, through a new window. 

Mom was sitting on the couch, awake and cranky.

"How is it going, Mom?" I asked through the baby monitor. Eren hovered near the closet, putting away clothes.

"She ate a good dinner," Eren said, coming through loud and clear over the baby monitor.

Mom glared. She looked like a two-year-old woken up too soon from a nap. 

"I just want to sleep," she said.

"Okay, Mom, I love you, I'll see you tomorrow," I said and hiked home, enjoying the fresh air, thinking, okay, maybe this will work. She'll settle in, start enjoying all the attention . . . right?

The next day just after lunch, my phone rang.  

"Your mother wants to talk to you."

"Hi Mom, what's up?"

"Carol? Come and get me out of here!" The desperation in her voice made my heart fall into my stomach. 

"Why, what is happening?"

"How soon can you come and get me? I want to go home."

"But Mom . . . we can't go back to retirement home. We had to get you out of there."

"No . . . I don't know. I just want to go home." Terrifying visions of taking her to my house passed before my eyes. 

"Mom, take it easy, you need to give it a little time."

"I don't like this place."

"Okay, let's see how it goes. Everything is new, it's scary. It will take time to get used to it. It's like going from grade school into high school, right? Remember how scary that was? Take a nap and things will get better."

Poor old Mom. Nothing is going to get better. Dementia is a terrible disease that kills in excruciating slow motion. I look at her and wonder how anything that decrepit can still be walking and talking. But clearly I have no clue what her world is like on the inside. My mother lost more essential brain cells in that move, and it's all my fault. Over the past few weeks, when she begged me to "get her out of there," I thought she meant out of the retirement home. What she meant was, get me out of here, this horrible present where nothing makes sense and I can't control anything. 

I visited her later in the afternoon and she didn't remember anything about her tantrum. Eren told me Mom had bolted out the front door, heading for the gate. Where would she go? She has no idea where she is. In the evening, I brought her a map and traced the route from her new place to my place. It's all uphill, she'd never make it. We would find her expired in juniper bushes.

Three days later, she's still alive, still cranky, and from the good people on the internet, I know that when a demented person asks to go home, they mean back to where they felt safe and in control. Mom hasn't felt "in control" since 2014, when her brain still worked pretty well, she was still smoking and driving and eating what she liked. Now she thinks I moved too, and keeps asking me where I moved to. Good news, a hair stylist came and gave her a haircut. Mom looks like her usual disheveled self, but with less hair. 

In the evenings after I return from my visit outside her window, I sort through the boxes and bags of stuff I moved from her old place to my place. My living room looks like a thrift store. The bedroom is in similar disarray. I'm taking inventory: Boxes full of cards from everywhere, mostly France. A box of Dick Francis paperbacks. A hardback dictionary and a thesaurus. A softbound medical dictionary and pill book, with her maladies and medicines bookmarked. Even as she was losing her mind, she wanted to know the side effects of donezapil and mirtazapine. Open seed packets in a rusted coffee can, pruning shears, three huge plastic bins full of mostly acrylic yarn, Christmas decorations, including the felt stockings my grandmother made for our family when I was a kid. (Do I still have mine, somewhere? I don't know.) Handwritten notes, including instructions for writing a private Facebook message. The birthday of her youngest great-grandchild on a heart-shaped sticky note. I found a diary she started in 2005 . . . not many entries, pretty terse. Fell outside Carol's apartment, broke pelvis, in rehab for three weeks. The final entry was four months before she moved into the retirement home in April 2017.

When we moved Mom from the condo to the retirement home, I remember standing in her derelict condo, looking at the detritus she left behind, thinking this is how it will feel when she dies, but she was still half-alive, like Schrodinger's cat, just downsized to accommodate the loss of her brain. I have the same feeling now, but the clock is closer to midnight. She's slightly less than half-alive. 

I am resigned to a long drawn-out death. I don't know why this is her path or mine. Our paths intersected when I was born, split apart for many years, and then cleaved back together in 2015 when she realized her brain was going gunnysack. Now we are stuck like glue to the end of the ride. Thelma and Louise, frozen in our descent. 

The Chronic Malcontent celebrates clear sky

After nine long days, the stinky brown haze is gone from Portland skies. Nine days of smoking twenty packs of cigarettes a day gives me renewed appreciation for breathing. I promise I will never again take fresh air for granted. If I were truly a good global citizen (which I'm not), I would immediately stop driving my gas-powered combustion-engine automobile. I would stop buying and burning fossil fuel. I would park that Focus at the curb and live in it. I haven't done it yet, but I reserve the right to do that in the future. The time may be coming sooner than I think. 

What would put paid to 2020 so we can be sure without a doubt it was truly the most king hell bummer year of our lifetimes? (It's not over yet, whoops, be careful what I whine about.) Hey, I know. How about an earthquake? L.A. just had one. Or another hundred-year storm like the one that decimated Portland on October 12, 1963? Maybe a fire in the Gorge, like we had in 2017? It's still fire season—more wildfires are likely. More riots? Yeah, that's too easy: Now that the smoke is gone the protests are back. More police shootings? I hope not. How about a long drawn out election night, one that lasts for weeks? Maybe a flood? I know, how about a derecho? Jiminy crickets.

At this point, I would not be surprised to see hordes of locusts swarming over Mt Tabor or armies of ants commandeering my kitchen. I've heard that people are part of nature, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I suspect we severed our claim to that haven back when we invented the internal combustion engine and spawned a bunch of oil tycoons. It's hard to turn your back on prosperity, even when you know it might kill you. So now that we aren't part of nature anymore, we must be against it, and thus we are fair game for anything nature might do to eradicate humans from the planet. It's a good time to be a virus.

Speaking of viruses, so far no Covid at my mother's retirement home. Nevertheless, we are moving her to a smaller place next week. I'm not sure she knows what is happening. I've got a countdown clock going outside her window—a number on a little card indicating how many days to moving day. Tonight it was four. Four days left. Four days until I find out what I'm really made of. I think I can do it. I keep reminding myself I successfully took her for Mohs surgery and got her back safely without turning the clinic restroom into a toxic poop waste dump. I made it through nine days of wildfire smoke, shuffling through the haze to deliver gluten-free bread upon request. I've booked the movers. I've paid the deposit on the new care home. I've made a plan, I've written a list, I've made the proper sacrifices to the gods that care for demented old mothers. My secret fear is that my mother thinks the countdown numbers on her window are the number of days she has left to live, that her internal battery will wind down and when the movers come, we will find her stiff and dead on her stinky old couch.

Speaking of stinky old couches, Mom has decided if she has to choose between taking the bed or the couch to the new place, she'd rather have the couch. It apparently has more "comfort spots." It's hard to argue with comfort spots, even if the couch is ten shades of grime grayer than it was in the Christmas photos from 1998. She doesn't care what it looks like. At 91, she should be able to sleep on whatever she likes, eat whatever she wants, and say what's on her mind, even if it makes no sense.

Tonight she told me she'd been to this new care home before. I wasn't sure what she meant. That seemed unlikely.

"You took me there," she said. I could hear her plainly through the baby monitor. 

"When was that?" I asked. 

"It was a nightclub of some kind."

"Oh, like, dancing?"

"What? I can't understand you." I'd just coached the Sunday night aide on how to replace the batteries in Mom's hearing aids, so I know she could hear me. I didn't think it was the baby monitor. The tall blonde-haired aide seemed to be able to hear and understand me okay as I gave her directions on how to open the hearing aid drawers and peel off the sticky labels on the tiny batteries. I must conclude it was Mom's brain misfiring. 

"Dancing?" I said. "Music?"

"Yes, music."

"Dinner too?"

She looked thoughtful. "No, I don't think there was dinner."

The care home she's going to next week looks a bit like a three-layer cake. It reminds me of the old River Queen, a floating restaurant we used to have near Swan Island in the Willamette River. I went to my high school prom on the River Queen. I made my long two-toned halter dress out of slippery orange and yellow lining satin. It kept coming untied at the waist while I was dancing with my boyfriend Steve. 

I don't know where Mom's memory went but mine definitely went someplace I haven't been in a while. 

The Chronic Malcontent is choked by luxury problems

Off and on over the past three months, people in other parts of the country have asked me if Portland is on fire. Each time, I scoff and say, "Don't believe everything you see on the Internet." I would think of the small areas on the city that have drawn protesters and picture the rest of the city going about its business, peaceful, untroubled, dusty green under summer blue sky. This week was different. This week, with the exurbs on fire, I started thinking about what I would be able to pack into my car if the wildfires marched across the county line toward the Love Shack.

It's great to have the luxury of planning ahead. Not everyone in this west coast conflagration has been so lucky. I didn't seriously think my apartment was in any danger, but . . . well, my sister asked me if I had a bug-out bag ready. I said "yes" but then I thought, hey, when was the last time I checked that bag? There might be a jar of ten-year-old cat kibbles in there, along with some crumbling protein bars. Maybe a roll of toilet paper or two. Hmmm.

This has been a long week, and it's not over yet. I can't believe today that my biggest worry on Tuesday was a power outage. An unusual late summer windstorm blew in from the east on Monday. When I got back from my evening visit to my mother, I saw my neighbors standing in the gravel road in back of my apartment building, properly socially distant, staring up at a transformer on a utility pole. 

"You might not want to walk down this road," a new neighbor said, obviously not recognizing me in my dapper plaid mask. I ignored her and walked on down the road to peer up at the transformer with the other neighbors. 

Roger, our local sage, said with relish, "There was a crash and a pop. Then the power went out."  Great. I went inside and flipped some switches. Yep. No power. Good thing I had closed down all my open Word files before I left. The computer was now a dead dark hunk of metal.

The wind kept howling all night and all day Tuesday. I sat in the dark with a little battery-powered LED lantern, whining in brief texts to my Twelve Step friends about how terrible it was to be without power. Ha ha. Periodically I dialed the power company for an update and watched my phone lose a little more juice. We are aware of an outage in your neighborhood. It is currently affecting one-hundred and thirty-four customers. Because of the scope of the problem, we are unable to estimate a repair time. 

Two huge crane trucks and some other gear arrived at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night. I was so happy I went outside to welcome them with a happy dance. The air was breezy and balmy, clear and delicious. I watched them beep and bang and pound and rumble and three and a half hours later, like a miracle, my power was restored. 

That mighty wind wreaked havoc up and down the west coast, fanning any flames that might have been easily squelched on a normal day. Within hours, it seemed as through the entire world was on fire. Homes were destroyed. Lives have been lost, the tally as yet unknown. Houses, cars, trees, people, and animals have transformed in four days into an enormous smoke cloud that is now choking the air, blocking out the sun. It looks like hell. 

As I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. The wind died and stopped pushing the fires north. I put away my collected bug-out bag gear and battened down all the hatches to keep the smoke out. I thought I did a pretty good job. I didn't go out of the apartment for two days. I didn't even go visit Mom. Then I talked on the phone today and realized my place is not the hermetically sealed sanctuary I thought it was. I'd been coping with the bad air quality by shallow breathing. 

Today I got the dreaded text: Your mother needs bread. 

I knew it wouldn't be fun going outside, but I thought, how bad could it be? Lots of people are outside. Lots of people smoke cigarettes. Mom smoked for seventy-five years and look at her. Apart from dementia, she's in pretty good shape, for a ninety-one year old smoker. An hour in the smoke would probably not kill me. I checked the air quality. Hey, just barely into the Hazardous zone. Come on, Carol. Quit whining.

The stench of smoke hit me like a wall when I opened the door. My plaid face mask was just for show. It did nothing to keep out the smoke, of course—it's made from old cotton pajama pants, for crimony sake. The air sat white and heavy, like the worst L.A. smog I'd ever seen, and I lived there in the 1980s, so I've seen my share of smog. I trudged to my car. It was covered with a fine ashy dust, but that's normal for my car, since I only wash it once a year. I turned on my headlights to be safe and trundled off to Mom's with two loaves of frozen gluten-free whole wheat bread and the baby monitor. 

I left the bread outside the kitchen door. Mom was just back from dinner. We chatted through the baby monitor. Half of what I said she said she couldn't understand but it was still nice to see her. I started coughing. She told me to get going. I gave her the peace sign and headed for home. Driving up the hill I passed a bicyclist wearing a face mask. I had to be impressed. Not sure if it was supreme courage or colossal stupidity. I didn't linger to see if he passed out at the top.

Now I know I can go out into the smoke and make the trek to see Mom. However, I now know I must differentiate indoor clothes and outdoor clothes. The smell of smoke followed me into the Love Shack, and not that sweet campfire smell that used to cling to my brother's Boy Scout uniform when he came home from camping. This smell is terrible, maybe because I know what is in it. I breathed in a lot of horror and grief and even after a bath, I can still feel it in my lungs. 

Blood on the keyboard

Oregon gave away free money earlier this month. I didn't find out I qualified for some until a couple days ago, long after the funds ran out. I don't care. My main concern is laundry. I haven't been able to get near the bank to replenish my stash of quarters for two weeks because of that free money giveaway. Long lines of unsocially distant desperate people wrapped around the bank every time I trolled through the parking lot. No way am I going to stand in line for quarters. So I'm doing my laundry by hand in the tub.

I guess in a pandemic I need to make some allowances for comfort. Wearing cardboard underpants is one of those allowances. My skivvies are stiff and ripply like crepe paper but I'm getting used to it. Once I've broken them in, it's really not much like wearing hair shirts. I'm not suffering. It's like being back in college. Back then I was oblivious because of substance abuse. Washing clothes in the sink was part of the adventure. Now I'm oblivious because of exhaustion and old age.

Speaking of self-flagellation, I am hopeful that my family and I have found a new facility to receive our maternal parental unit. With the expert help of a placement advisor, we have located a care home in my neighborhood. We haven't signed anything yet. We have some questions to ask. But I'm hopeful that the search is successfully ended and in about thirty days, the chore of moving the old lady and her stuff can begin. I wish I could just put her into storage. I wonder if my vertigo will ease up when this task is finally done. 

Speaking of exhaustion, Portland is coming undone. It is unsettling to see Portland in the national news for so many weeks. My first thought is, ha, the joke is on you, to all the people who moved to Portland for its mellow laid-back vibe. Then I remember violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need, and I feel sad. I can't unravel all the needs entangled in the nightly riots I see on the news. I can't stop picking at my cuticles. Yesterday I felt something weird while I was typing and saw blood on my keyboard. 

I'm starting to create conspiracy theories in my head to explain the madness. Unsubstantiated theories comfort in times of distress. Maybe liberals are a little behind in the production of creative conspiracy theories, but I'm sure if we do a little brainstorming, we could catch up. Like, for instance, what if the rioters who are looting and breaking things are really minions of Mordor out to make the peaceful protesters look bad? Yeesh! Would humans actually do something so cunning and cruel? Today my brain wandered into the bizarre possibility that they sacrificed one of their own for the cause. How insane is that? But, I ask you, is there evidence to the contrary? I mean, can you prove the moon isn't made of green cheese? 

My protection is to hide in my burrow, keep my head down, and attract as little attention as possible. I wash a few pairs of socks and a couple t-shirts every night, marveling at how everything I wear is some shade of gray, even when it started out white or black. After I wring out the water and hang things to dry on hangers from the window sill over the tub, I watch the news and cringe when the Eye of Sauron looks our way. I feel sick when I realize how many wackjobs live in this city, possibly just yards away from my doorstep. My illusory bubble is evaporating. I wear my pastel plaid face mask and imagine I have a target on my back.

Summer is ending and I haven't properly sweated yet. I've cried some, though. I miss my cat. I miss my mom. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss being around people. 

Making a contribution

 I've come to believe that my purpose in life is transporting ants and spiders from one place to another. The ants prefer to travel by shirt. The elites like the view from my neck. The spiders, adventurous risk-takers, prefer traveling by automobile. They cling to both my side mirrors on tiny strands of broken webs. If I could read their tiny lips, I'm sure they are shouting "woo-hoo" into the wind. 

I'm glad to be of service. After all, the future belongs to whatever tiny critters can survive global climate change. I'm doing my part to keep life alive. Ants, spiders, and cockroaches should do well in rising heat. And don't forget the bacteria and viruses, rapidly ascending the food chain. Being human isn't looking like the privilege it seemed to be a few short months ago. It's great to be a Covid virus right now. Seven billion or so lungs, yum, what should I eat first?

Speaking of downers, there are few things more anxiety producing than turning on your parental baby monitor and hearing your maternal parental unit (Mom) yelling "Help. Somebody help me." 

I always turn on the baby monitor before I get to her window so the device has time to link to the monitor in her room. I never know what I will hear when I turn on the monitor. Sometimes she's not back from dinner yet, so I pace and mill around on the sidewalk, staring at my decrepit reflection in her window. Sometimes she's already prone on the couch. Sometimes she wakes, sometimes she doesn't. 

Hearing her yell for help really gets the heart rate up. Mine, I mean. I'm programmed to jump when my mother yells but there's nowhere to jump when I'm on the outside of the window looking in. 

I pressed the button on the monitor and yelled back, "Someone will be here in just a minute!" Then I set the monitor on the clattering air conditioning unit and frantically texted the Med-Aide Mom needs help. 

"Help! Somebody!" Mom kept shouting. She forgets she has a button on a necklace around her neck. She doesn't realize that catching the attention of an aide passing along her open door at just the right moment is a long shot akin to winning a $1,000 lottery scratcher. Leaning into the window screen, I could make out Mom's blurry figure sitting on the toilet in the dark. I'm pretty sure what I would have seen if the light had been on: Mom staring at a big mess wondering what to do next.

This all happened a couple weeks ago. Tonight the problem was her hearing aids. 

"These things are falling out," she complained, pointing to her ears. I wanted her to get up and come to the window so I could see if they were in wrong, but what would I do then? She probably wouldn't be able to figure it out. Luckily an aide was passing along the hallway. A tall blonde woman in flowered scrubs and a face mask came into Mom's room.

"Will you see if her hearing aids are in right?" I asked through the baby monitor. 

"I'll get someone who knows how they work," she said and went out the door.

"Go get someone who knows what they are doing," Mom said, smoothing her blue and white plaid wool blanket.

We waited.

In a minute, another aide, Anne, came in. She peered at Mom's ears.

"The red goes on the right and the blue goes on the left," I said helpfully. 

Anne took them both out of Mom's ears and studied them in the lamplight. She switched them and put them into the proper ears.

"Can you hear me now?" I said into the monitor.

"Can you hear me now?" Mom echoed. I gave Anne a thumbs up. She went out the door. I assumed she was smiling but who knows. My mask certainly hides a multitude of smirks and thinned lips.

"Mom, do you want to move to a smaller place?" I asked Mom. 

"Should we move to a smaller place?" she said.

"Better food, more outdoors?"

"Are we going to move me tomorrow?"

"No, not that fast. We'll let you know. We'll take care of everything, don't worry," I said, thinking I'll do enough worrying for both of us.

"I won't worry," she said. She looked down at her blanket and pulled it across her lap. "It's time to put this thing into orbit."

"Yes," I agreed. "Put that thing into orbit."

She laid down on the couch and pulled the blanket across her stomach. She gave me a peace sign. I gave it back and sang Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow. When I have the button pressed, I can't hear her but I saw her lips moving so I knew she was singing along. 

Future cloudy, try again later

 You ever have one of those days when it seems like nothing goes quite right, and then you suddenly realize you have your shirt on backwards? Then you are like, wow, that totally explains everything. That pretty much sums up the week for me. Well, let's be honest. So far, the entire first half of 2020 has had its shirt on backwards. From January 9, the day my cat died, it's felt like two seconds to midnight. I'm sure you can relate. 

So many times this week, I thought, I need to blog about this! And now that I'm actually sitting in front of my computer, all I can think of is, I wonder if the statin I just started taking for my cholesterol will kill me before I can finally enjoy some cheese. The week is a blur so I will take this interlude to wax philosophical while I wait for memories to emerge from the fog.

At points in my life, I've stood on the edge of a chasm, staring across to the green pastures on the other side. (Metaphorically speaking, of course—I am not one of those foolish tourists who take selfies on the edge of the Grand Canyon.) I'm sure you have experienced the longing that comes from being able to imagine the paradise that lies just out of reach and wishing you had something—a glider, a parachute, a large cannon—something that could launch you out of your current misery into the bright future you know you deserve. No? Maybe it's just me. For some reason, I seem to find myself standing on metaphorical precipices quite often. I don't really like heights, but I seem compelled to find them. 

The current precipice has to do with the maternal parental unit. She's running out of money. The retirement barracks in which she is currently incarcerated has done a great job of keeping her alive, no doubt a nefarious plot to extend their ability to generate revenue. The cost of her upkeep has escalated with the increasing demands of her care. We, the family, knew this was a possibility back in 2015 when we had a family discussion about Mom's finances. Mom participated in the discussion. You've read all this before in previous blog posts. We all thought, what are the odds that Mom, a dedicated smoker with COPD and dementia, would outlast her money?

Never underestimate genetics. Or the power of quitting smoking. Now the family is revving up the hunt for a Medicaid facility, never an easy task even without a pandemic. How the hell is this going to work? That is a rhetorical question, but if you have suggestions, I'm open to feedback.

My sister has volunteered to help me qualify adult foster homes in the area. We did this back in 2016, before Mom chose the place she's in now. My sister came to town and we drove around, looking at houses, and making appointments for tours. We tiptoed gingerly on shag rug, grimaced at bad decorating choices, peered into bathrooms, and met some interesting inmates, I mean, residents. It was a lesson in what life can look like if you have money when you get old.

Now that my sister is confined to Boston, our care home search must roll out by phone and video. I have a short list of places. My next task is to plot them on a map and then scout out the locations, maybe take some surreptitious photos, like a weary gray-haired private eye. I hope no one calls the police to investigate the suspicious Ford Focus lurking in their neighborhood. Now is not the time to tangle with Portland police.

My sister and I will call each place and ask some questions. The first one will be, do you accept Medicaid after some period of private pay? If the answer is no, we will cross them off the list. I suppose the second question should be, does your facility have or has it ever had a case of Covid? One question for sure has to be, can I stand outside Mom's window and talk to her through the baby monitor? If the answer is no, I will cross them off the list. If Mom goes into a place that won't give me eyes on, I will most likely never see her again except as dust in a cardboard box. Window view is a deal breaker for me. If we could ask for the moon, it would be great if the food was a little better and she could get to keep her couch and TV. Not that she remembers how to turn it on, but still.

We have to do something. If she outlives her money, she'll end up in my bedroom, yelling for ice cream. That is not acceptable. She might graciously decide to die. If she really was thinking of our welfare, she would keel over soon, before we go through all this searching and questioning. You know how it feels when a car blocks the sidewalk where you are walking and you have to detour around the back end of the car, only to have the driver pull out into the street just as you pass their sputtering tailpipe, leaving you feeling foolish for taking unnecessary steps? Like that. If she could turn off the switch, I know she would. That's another chasm I don't care to contemplate.

I read an article about a rain forest community whose members patiently train tree roots and branches to form bridges across ravines. I wonder if I could do that—metaphorically speaking, of course. What would a metaphorical bridge look like that could lead us from here to there? And I can't help asking the question I always ask when I'm peering into the fog toward the promised land: Would there be any better than here? Where is that dang Magic 8 Ball when you need it? Future cloudy, try again later.

Getting things done

It was one hundred degrees today and I feel like a new person. The ear hissing is still digging into my skull every twenty seconds but I don't care. It feels so great to be warm. Like a cold-blooded lizard, I'm reveling in the heat. I was born to die in the desert. Someday maybe I'll get my wish. Meanwhile, here in Portland, if the city doesn't burn down first, we'll have a few days of heat, and being warm always makes me feel like getting things done.

To that end, tonight I ambitiously embarked on a new project: making a new face mask. The two masks I made back in March from old plaid cotton pajamas are holding up well, but I feel so . . . what's the opposite of possessing style and panache? That. You know, like, oh, plaid? That's so early curve. I really want one of those jet black masks that suck all the light from the room. Besides, a 2020 accessory wardrobe really should rock a selection of stylish face coverings. So I got busy.

I pawed through my box of old fabric scraps and found some black cotton knit containing liberal spandex . . . just the thing to cling but still let in a little air. I held two layers up to the light. No light seeped through. Perfect! I found the pattern my sister sent me a couple months ago. I arranged and pinned, snipped and clipped and sat down on Grandma's old sewing chair to start sewing.

If you've ever sewn on something stretchy with a twenty-year-old plastic Singer that cost $79.99 new, you know that it's all about pushing and pulling at the right moment to coax the weak tired machine over the lumps. The cool thing about this stretchy jersey is if you cut long strips, the strips automatically roll into skinny tubes that make perfect ear loops or ties. First I sewed the mask pieces together. Then along the top edge I inserted one of those wire gizmos that close the top of coffee bags. You can shape them to fit the bridge of your nose! How cool is that. To really put paid to the whole thing, I sewed it in purple thread. 

I used to be a professional seamstress in one of my former lives, no lie, but you wouldn't know it by what came out of my machine tonight. Jet black it was, there's that. Can't deny it. The purple thread looked ridiculous but when have I cared how I looked? I stopped caring when I turned fifty, which was a long time ago. The cotton knit was thick and bulky but the nose piece really held its shape. I took the mask to the mirror for the fitting.

I took off my glasses and looped the loops over my ears. I stared at my reflection. Something didn't seem quite right. The thing seemed to droop. I couldn't keep the loops around my ears. My ears seemed to be bending forward. Were the loops too big? Too stretchy? It seemed to me that the arch over the bridge of my nose was too high, which made the ear loops positioned too low. I folded over the top edge of the mask, making it four times as bulky and peered over the top of it into the mirror. Better, but still not quite right. 

I fussed in front of the mirror, tugging and pulling, huffing and puffing, and finally figured out what was wrong (besides the fact that I was hyperventilating because the fabric was too tightly knitted to make a good mask): My ears were simply too high. It's my damn ears. They are like elf ears without the points. When did that happen? 

Apparently my ears sit too high on my head, compared to my eyes. If I looped the mask over my ears, my eyes were covered. (This would not be an ideal mask design. We all know it is hard to drive without being able to see—hard, but not impossible.) On the other hand, could it be my nose? I don't know. I do have quite a large nose. Maybe if my nose were smaller, the mask wouldn't need such a pronounced arch. My ears are Lilliputian compared to my proboscis. I'm feeling out of balance. 

It's so embarrassing that my sewing skills are so rusty. I used to sew clothes for a living. No kidding. I really did know how to sew once. I never really enjoyed it, well, let me be honest: I have despised sewing since I learned at age nine in 4-H. Still, you'd think I could figure out how to make a workable face mask. 

In my defense, I do have some challenges. The vertigo and ear hissing are distracting, but I hope that will someday resolve. In addition, now that I'm well north of sixty, I can't see up close, with or without my glasses (hence the purple thread). On the bright side, my fingers still work okay, especially when it's ninety in the Love Shack. But now my darn ears have migrated upward. I really can't imagine how that happened. 

Speaking of getting things done, tomorrow is my mother's ninety-first birthday. I'm ready. I plan to hang some colorful balloons outside her window while she is in the dining room eating dinner. If I can find something chocolate and gluten-free that resembles a cupcake, I will put a candle on it and ask the nursing home staff to present it to Mom as she finishes her dinner. Whether they light the candle will be up to them. I have already notified the owner of the facility that I will be parading outside the dining room holding a Happy Birthday Mom sign. I think I can figure out how to attach some balloons to my straw hat. I'm guessing I'll do a little dancing. Maybe the other residents will think I'm a clown or something. If I can make them smile, that would be great, even if they think I'm a nut. I can think of worse things.

The chronic malcontent butchers the scientific method

Howdy, blogbots. How are you holding up in this bizarre war of masked versus unmasked? Have you figured out which team you are on or what exactly we are fighting for? In light of everything plaguing human civilization, including this new plague, politicizing facial coverings sure seems like rearranging deck chairs. I can't assimilate any of the strife so I'm opting out for a while. My sister sent me an excellent video of fluffy white sheep grazing in a green vineyard under a blue sky. Have you seen it? I recommend it if you are feeling like committing murder. 

Speaking of wishing you were anywhere but here, I'm sure you are tired of hearing me whine about vertigo and ear crackling. Yep, still going on. I've had no luck treating the vertigo, even after carefully studying the mechanics of the inner ear. Just goes to prove the old adage, knowledge avails us nothing. You'd think I'd have everything figured out, considering my lofty education level. Inner ears are complicated mechanisms, and my "knowledge" is in the social sciences, not the medical sciences, which explains so much about me. Including how I've haphazardly applied the scientific method in my attempts to treat my malady.

You've already read about the many treatments I've tried, most gleaned from those helpful folks out in cyberspace, thank you, all you BPPV and ear crackling sufferers. Sadly, the only thing that reliably produces silence is immersing my head in hot water. The golden silence gained from tubbing lasts a good fifteen minutes. Not quite long enough to get to sleep but certainly better than zero. I've tried without success to replicate the conditions outside the tub by pouring hot water into my ear while leaning over the kitchen sink. I get wet but the hiss goes on. I admit, I've considered hot oil and hot wax, but I'm pretty sure that would lead to a sheepish trip to the ER, which is not where we want to be at this point in the burgeoning plague. 

Ever hopeful, I've been trying other things willy-nilly without keeping good records, so I can't really tell what might be working. For example, someone on the Internet suggested chewing gum. I went to the store to buy gum. Gum is an impulse item, found near the cash register. Who knew! Generally I ignore everything that is not related to arranging my groceries on the conveyor belt according to how I want the items to appear on my receipt. It's easier to do my record-keeping that way—the zucchini and broccoli aren't disrupted by the toothpaste and coffee filters. Nice and organized, you should try it. 

Anyway, so there I am actually forcing myself to look at the impulse items. I have no idea what I'm looking at. I see something that looks like it could be bubble gum. I don't care, I grab it and toss it on the belt. When I get home, I'm sort of excited to see what it feels like to chew gum. I haven't chewed gum in years. What a miracle it would be if chewing gum was all it took to open up my dysfunctional Eustachian tube. I opened the package and discovered what I had purchased was some sort of chewy candy. I sucked on it, disappointed, peering at the package. Two hundred and forty calories! Per piece! I spat it out in the trash and chucked the package after it. 

I refused to admit defeat. On my next weekly foray into the dangerous grocery store, masked and gloved as usual, I applied myself again to the challenge of identifying gum at the checkout line. I found some! Sugar-free, this time, spearmint flavored. That sounded good. I bought the economically priced jumbo pack, feeling rather pleased. When I got home, I peeled off the plastic, unwrapped the silver foil covering, and popped a stick into my mouth. Yum, spearmint. Weird, though, to be chewing on something that wasn't intended to be swallowed. Still, I'm not a quitter, so I chomped diligently on the wad, monitoring my ear to see if it seemed inclined to settle down.

Like a mail-in election, results were not immediately forthcoming. I tried again with another stick. Then I had lunch. About an hour before it was time to visit Mom at the nursing home, I started feeling some alarming pains in my gut. Things clenched and unclenched, as they are wont to do, I won't give you the sordid details, but I was pretty miserable standing outside my mother's window, clenching my butt cheeks while she was in her bathroom trying to unclench hers. (I am sure I have never written the word clench so many times in my life.) As I danced in agony on the pavement, I called the Med Aide on my cellphone to send help to Mom stuck in her bathroom. She got help, and ten minutes later, she collapsed exhausted on her couch. I made it home, and after another trip to my bathroom, I looked up xylitol on the Internet. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that xylitol can cause digestive distress among some subset of the population. It's like winning the reverse lottery. 

No more gum for me. 

My sister suggested maybe I needed a dose of negative ions. I remembered that my therapeutic light box emits negative ions (according to the manufacturer), so I plugged in the box and pressed the button. The green light came on and a slightly acidic smell wafted toward my nose. Is that how a negative ion smells?  How would you know if you were receiving a dose of negative ions? I'm asking out of curiosity. I can't imagine I'd be able to differentiate a negative ion from a coronavirus, could you?

I also heard that spices can open up sinus congestion. Ears, sinuses, Eustachian tubes . . . now I really get why those Ear Nose Throat doctors cover the territory they do. It's like a miniature version of the universe, all connected. I put some hot red pepper in my tea. That produced a coughing fit, which made tea shoot out my nose. You don't see that everyday. I hope the next time I get an ear infection, I remember to reread this blog post. I'm sure I will forget.

Well, I give up. This afternoon I sit in the dark cave surrounded by votive candles lit to honor St. Eustachian, the patron saint of crackling ears. The blinds are drawn against the heat of the day. Summer is here, more or less. It's 90°F today. We'll have a few days of heat, and I hope that will help my head stop swimming. Maybe the heat will burn out the ear infection as well. If the heat doesn't work, my last resort is telemedicine. You know what that is, right? Some kind of newfangled way to talk to a healthcare professional. Stay tuned. 

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.