Planning my getaway

I remember a moment several months ago, sitting outside the care home with Mom in the dark. Even masked-up and six feet apart, we did a pretty good job of communicating. Mom asked me how things were going. I said, "Situation normal," and rolled my eyes. She didn't know what that meant. I explained. I'm sure she used to know, because she was married to a former Marine for over fifty years. However, dementia has a way of dispersing brain cells, and most likely some of the ones that evaporated from her head were the few that would have provided a definition of SNAFU. 

All that to say, situation normal. Mom may be gone, but I'm not, and life continues. I am not the boss of circumstances, no matter how I try to pretend I can predict or control what occurs. I don't fret a lot about it anymore. I have my multiple branching contingency plans (if this happens, then that; if that happens, then this!). I brush my teeth, scrub my skivvies in the tub, shop on Mondays, and continue to dismantle the detritus of my life so I can resurrect it somewhere in Arizona.

It's hard to plan for some things, though. Toothaches. Car problems. We all know teeth and cars go gunnysack sometimes, and we all know they don't heal themselves, although in the specific case of strange noises in cars, it helps to have a working radio.

Twenty-four years ago, shortly after I moved back to Portland from Los Angeles, one of my lower molars began to ache. I'd had a crown put on the tooth before I moved and figured the job was done. But teeth choose their moments to wake up and sing. I got a referral from a friend to a dentist, who admired the crown and then proceeded to break it when he drilled through it to give me a root canal. So, a root canal and two crowns later, you'd think the job would be done. Over the years, however, that tooth never gave up. The first dentist retired and died and a new dentist took over the practice. Every six months as I lay captive in the comfy chair, the new dentist would say, "Any teeth giving you trouble?" I would reply, "Well, just that one that refuses to die." Ha, ha, the dentist would laugh (her teeth were perfect). "The x-rays don't show anything," she would say, shaking her head.

The zombie tooth came to sluggish life a couple weeks ago, providentially coinciding with my six-month cleaning. I reclined in the chair, feeling awkward and wrong at being so close to other humans without a mask on my face. When the dentist arrived, I said, "This tooth! It's alive, I tell you, alive!"

She poked and prodded, gave me some things to bite on. The tooth didn't hurt much but I had this persistent belief that it shouldn't hurt at all, seeing as how it was supposed to be dead. 

"Well, root canals don't last forever, you know," she said. What? That is the first time I'd ever heard that. A dead tooth should remain dead, they should not be able to come back to life. This is not the dental equivalent of The Walking Dead. "I'll give you a referral to an endodontist," she said. Apparently she doesn't do root canals. 

As soon as I got my stimmy, I made the appointment with the endodontist. Her office was in a half-vacant building in SE Portland, not far from an area rife with shootings, conveniently located near the freeway for quick getaways. I was the only patient in the place, probably by design. The office looked like a 1990s hotel, all gray tile, gray carpet, and recessed strip lighting, very moody and mod. 

The endodontist was a tiny woman, much younger than me. She peered at a monitor nearby showing the CT scan of my jaw. I took a quick glance from the chair. I'd never seen teeth in such fine resolution. Those dental x-rays you see on your dentist's screen? Amateur hour. It's like the difference between microfiche and Blu-Ray Hi-Def plasma TV. 

"Wow, is that my tooth?"  

"Lay back. Let's see this thing." She put a light on her head and a microscope over my mouth and came at me with something shiny and sharp. "You have a rather small mouth."

"Yow!" I yelped around her fingers. 

"Nine millimeters," she said, oblivious to the tear edging out of my left eye. She jammed the probe in again. "Yep, nine millimeters. It looks like when they did the original root canal, they missed a little spot here in the back. And now the tooth has grown away from the jaw, leaving this large pocket, which has been infected, probably for a while."

I hoisted myself out of the chair and followed her into the room with the CT scanning machine. The room was set up like a movie theater, with several rows of folding chairs facing toward a large computer monitor, on which I recognized my CT scan. I imagined the endodontist and her staff unwinding after a long day by watching movies of suffering patients enduring remedial root canals.

She took a blank CD from a stack and inserted it into the computer. As the file transferred, we sat shoulder-to-shoulder on folding chairs in front of the screen. "See that dark gap there? That is where the tooth has detached. It's empty space, nothing there."

I gazed resentfully at my delinquent tooth.

"We could try to save it, but it probably wouldn't work." I turned and looked at her eyes because that is all you can see when a person has a mask on. She turned and looked at my eyes for the same reason. So there we were staring deeply into each other's eyes. I'm thinking a succession of thoughts: she has nice eyes, what the hell, Dr. Jim!, and why am I not more upset, I'm going to lose a tooth. 

"I'll send my report to your dentist," she said. "Here's a copy for you to take to Arizona."

The receptionist graciously gave me copies of the many forms I had filled out and signed in the waiting room promising not to sue if the remedial root canal went sideways. (Ha, ha, all moot, but I still wanted those copies.) She took my check for $330, and I took my throbbing jaw home, dismayed at the pain. No more half-dead zombie tooth. It's simmered down a little but I'm not back to baseline. Almost a week later, I'm still cutting my food into tiny pieces, cooking it to smithereens, and swallowing it whole. Even sneezing is dangerous—do you mash your teeth together when you sneeze? Right. I didn't think I did, either. 

This tooth wakes up and salutes every four hours. Tylenol and Advil are tiding me over until my dental consult on Tuesday. I think I know what will happen then. My lovely dentist (who specializes in cosmetic surgery, not root canals) will cluck her perfect teeth and express her sorrow that I'm leaving town before I can buy an implant. If all goes well, I expect I'll be taking antibiotics soon and by the end of April I will be driving out of town with a new hole in my head. I'm not afraid. I've had braces. 

On the bright side, today I took my Focus through the drive-through car wash for its annual scrub. I always clench up at first, afraid to take my foot off the brake and surrender to the giant maw. Once I relaxed and let go, the giant felt fingers and rivers of white suds worked their magic. I felt calmer and my car came out minus one layer of dirt and moss. Next task is to vacuum the interior. I want the old thing to look its best when I trade it in for my getaway car. 

Time to put on my infinity hat

Mom started keeping a journal in 2005, when she was seventy-six years old. I scanned it into a pdf file last night. Each entry was just a few lines long, mostly centering on the weather and her garden. Defrosted freezer received equal weight with July is half over already! She noted some major moments in her life and in the lives of her four children, mainly the passing of people and pets, but most of her journal chronicles the weather. Few entries offer insight into her mind, which makes this one notable: In 2006, she wrote, Some days fly by—others crawl. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here—What am I supposed to do with myself? She answered her own question: to be useful. 

She led a supremely useful life, in my opinion. She kept lifelong friendships with high school chums, nursing school classmates, neighbors, fellow librarians . . .  As an bubbly extrovert, she spread love and hugs to just about anyone she met. Dementia stole her outgoing talkative nature and turned her into a confused, cautious, reticent old woman. Her journal is filled with exclamation points almost right up to the last entries. In 2015, she wrote Growing older. No car. Carol does financial and food. The next entry was in 2016: Just maintaining! In January 2017, her final journal entry: Cold, very cold. 

A few months later, she admitted she couldn't live alone anymore. We moved her into the retirement home. She had her computer but stopped using it. She had her TV but forgot how to work the remote. She forgot how to use the bathroom. She forgot how to think. 

I postponed scanning her journal because I didn't want to feel sad. Last night, I scanned it without reading it. Instead, I listened to the news and let my hands go through the routine motions of flipping pages and pressing buttons. Before I sent the pdf file to my siblings, I finally took time to read through her entries. 

I hear her voice in her Farmers' Almanac style entries. She sounds like the mother I used to know before dementia took her mind away. I wish she'd written more, left more of a legacy. She lived a life of loved experiences instead of documenting her thoughts in writing like I do. She preferred to keep her introspective moments hidden. 

I wonder if she knew when she was writing these pages that I would be the one to go through her journal. 

Probably not. She stopped writing as her life started unraveling. By the time I was visiting her daily at the retirement home, sitting with her on her stinky couch, finding M.A.S.H. reruns on TV, and helping her navigate the meal menus, she had become anchored in the present. If she had introspective moments, she did not share them. After Covid-19 barred me from entering the building, I taped photos of her family on her window so she wouldn't forget us. When she moved to the care home, the caregiver pinned those strips of family photos on her wall in her little bedroom. She loved looking at pictures of her children interspersed with beloved characters from M.A.S.H.

I'm taking those photo strips with me to Arizona so I don't forget where I came from.

Every day is backwards day

Yesterday afternoon, I felt like I was choking. Allergies, you ask? Stress and anxiety? All those things are present, but that was not the problem. The problem was the physics of fashion. When I pulled my shirt away from my neck, I discovered my shirt was on backwards. 

That happens to me more often than I care to admit. It's one of the downsides of not doing laundry properly using a washer and dryer. On the plus side, these long-sleeved Eddie Bauer t-shirts have lasted more than fifteen years,  long past the point at which they could improve with age. However, on the downside, the cotton jersey is super-stretchy when wet, and now that I'm washing the shirts in the tub and hanging them to dry, the necklines are so stretched out, it's hard to tell the front from the back, especially in the dark when I'm dressing. 

I'm trying to think of ways to reuse, repurpose, or recycle these cotton knit t-shirts. I thought about cutting them up into narrow strips to knit with, although it's been years since I knitted and I no longer have knitting needles. I thought, hey, I could braid the strips into long ropes. These colors would look great in a rag rug. Then I realized if they ever got wet, they would stretch like unbaked pizza dough. Then I thought, well, maybe birds would like this soft cotton knit to line their nests. The problem with that is selling the idea to the birds. Thanks for brainstorming with me. Let's keep working on it.

I've reached a reflection moment in my packing process. I've boxed up everything I don't use daily. Now I see that most of my possessions rarely get used. Is that how I should be living? Maybe all I really need is a backpack. I looked at the labels on the boxes: summer clothes, summer sheets, sewing machine, art supplies, dishes, IBICO machine, books . . . I know I will need these things eventually, if I move into a new apartment. It's a little unsettling, though, to reflect on how little I really need. Has my life been one long acquisition excursion? I feel so privileged, and so ridiculous. 

One thing I am vowing: If I move into a new apartment, I will not build furniture. If I need shelves, I will put planks on bricks, like we used to do in college dorms back in the day. No more sawing and screwing together contraptions I will just have to unscrew and send to the dump. I have unscrewed thousands of screws, undoing the evidence of my seventeen-year building spree. When I first moved here, all I needed was a jigsaw, a drill, and a measuring tape, and I was off to the races. I filled every empty wall with terraces of shelves. I chopped up planks of pine as if they grew on trees. My little jigsaw chewed through sheets of half-inch mdf like ants on birthday cake. I was a builder! 

Now I am an un-builder. It feels strangely I-warned-you to be unscrewing all these screws, feeling them get hot enough to burn my fingers, as I coax them out of holes in wood and walls. I left behind a few gouges in the walls, oops, sorry, Mr. Love Shack Landlord. I have been bandaging the holes with that patching plaster that comes out purple and turns white as it dries. So festive, in a melancholy way.

Speaking of launching myself on the mercy of the universe, I thought I had a line on a Freecycler who expressed interest in taking the scrap wood that occupies a substantial part of my living room. She finally surfaced to email me that her phone had been gunnysack and when is a good time to come over. I thought, right on! But today, no communication about pickup plans. It's raining, it's cold . . . I'm thinking she's bailed on the idea of getting free stuff. I have another person in line for the wood, but darn it, if you say you are going to come over to pick up this precious garbage I took time to advertise on Freecycle (photo and everything!), by golly, you should get off the darn Zoom and follow through. Free things don't grow on trees! Or, wait. What? 

My family hired a lawyer to help us clarify what to do with Mom's will and estate. She wouldn't answer our questions until we paid her a retainer. We paid the retainer, she answered our questions, and the upshot (from my limited perspective) seems to be, we didn't really need to hire her. If that is true, I take my hat off to her. That is one cocky approach to making money. Imply that you have the answers, demand a retainer, and then tell the client, well, you really didn't need me, you could have done this yourself. It's like Dorothy and the Ruby Slippers. We had the answers all the time, all we had to do was click our heels together three times and say Lawyer? We don't need no stinking lawyer. 

This is just my opinion. I'm writing to find the humor in a situation I don't understand. I'm a hack writer, I admit it! Please don't judge me too harshly, and if you are a lawyer, please don't take this personally. Again, I'm trying to be funny. Yes, I confess, sort of at your expense—because it's amusing (to me) to poke fun at familial and societal norms and expectations. But this is not about you. Notice you are not named. Everything I write is about me. And the Chronic Malcontent remains anonymous, thanks to my tight-lipped Twelve Step friends who will never spill the beans. 

Speaking of spilling some beans, I gave my official notice to Mr. Landlord today. Come the end of April, if the planets align, I will officially be homeless. 

Organizing my dog house

I vacuumed the two lime green shag rugs and rolled them up in preparation for giving them away on Freecycle. The bedroom rug departed to a new home today. With bare walls and floors, I'm now living in an echo chamber. However, I'm appreciating seeing the hardwood floors again. 

Overall, this place is a well-loved, tired old apartment—well, let's call it what it is: it's a dump. The generic off-white walls are pockmarked, peeling, and scraped; the sinks are rusty, chipped, and partly nonfunctional; toxic black mold grows behind the toilet, along the cracks in the kitchen ceiling, and in all the cupboards. The kitchen is unheated. All the metal hinges are rusted and frozen; the wooden cutting board is so swollen it can neither move into nor out of its slot. My landlord will need to do some serious renovation to make this place inhabitable (and worth charging market-rate rent). On the bright side, the floors were covered with area rugs for the past seventeen years, which means they still look great. Chip and Joanna Gaines would drool over these 1930s-style authentic wood planks.

Today I tried to calculate the cubic cargo space on the model of minivan I think I want to buy. The number of cubic feet I calculated doesn't match the number of cubic feet claimed by the car manufacturer. Should I blame the company's marketers or blame my brain? Math doesn't lie, if you do it correctly, but marketers lie all the time. I know. I am one. I used to call myself the anti-Christ of marketing, back when I used to teach it. 

Therefore, because I don't trust math, marketers, or my brain, I used masking tape to outline the dimensions on my newly revealed hardwood floor. The letter-sized boxes are already stacked along the wall. It was pretty easy to see that my cargo space is five boxes long by three boxes wide by three boxes tall. I believe that means I can transport forty-five boxes. I'll wait while you find your calculator and double-check. 

I have an excess of some possessions and a dearth of others, compared to most of my friends. For example, how much scrap wood do you have leaning against the wall in your living room? I bet you don't have an IBICO machine (I'll let you look that one up). I make up for having lots of some odd things by having very few clothes (most of which I plan to trash when I walk out the door of this place). I also have a mostly vacant refrigerator. I buy fresh food for one week at a time. By Sunday evening, the box is almost empty. A friend texted me some photos of what her refrigerator looked like after a can exploded and destroyed several of the glass shelves. I was astounded at the amount of glass, and I was even more astounded at the amount of condiments that somehow came through the ordeal intact. I am really lacking in the condiments department. Sometimes it is helpful to see how others live to see how I am failing. 

Speaking of failing, yesterday I discovered I put the mushrooms in the cupboard instead of in the refrigerator. They were looking somewhat ancient by the time I realized my error, but they tasted fine. I buy twenty-one mushrooms per week, and I sauté and eat three per day. The morning eggs and veggies don't taste right without mushrooms.  

After last week's blogpost, I'm in the doghouse with my sister. She thinks I hold her in low regard because I don't care if she thinks I'm socially unacceptable for bathing with my laundry. Of course, I don't know what she really thinks about my behavior. I was just making a lame joke, based on my family experiences. She didn't find it funny. Now we are taking a break.

She has no idea how she held me together while our mother declined. She helped me find the care home for Mom last summer. She was my patient and rational sounding board. For several years, our weekly video calls were my lifeline to sanity. She was the only one who listened, who understood the situation, and who remembered our mother as she used to be. I will always treasure those calls. Now that Mom is gone, the dynamic in the family is shifting. The siblings no longer orbit the maternal parental unit. We are free now to find new paths. 

I shaved my upper lip to see what that would feel like. It's a little numb. I ask you, why has the hair on my legs migrated to my nose and upper lip? I despair. That question is right up there with what to do about Google following me wherever I go on the Internet. Jeez, all I did was look at some pictures of ancient Greece on Pinterest and now every website I visit thinks I'm in the market for a vacation to the Mediterranean. This is why I hate marketing. Although I admit, sunny Greece looks pretty good right now while the Love Shack is enduring a hailstorm. Portland is still cleaning up from the ice storm. I'm just thrilled to have electricity and temperatures over 50°F.

I found out last week that I will need to visit an endodontist to fix a twenty-year-old root canal that has gone bad. What is an endodontist? It's a special kind of dentist. Endo plus dentist equals endodontist: a dentist that inspires you to say, when you look at your bank account, well, that's the end of that. I'm not stupid. I know teeth don't heal themselves, and having a dental emergency on the road between here and somewhere else is not part of my plan. I'm not worried. I'll be okay. It's tax return season, and stimulus checks are on the horizon (thanks, half of Congress!), and don't forget the pot of gold if I can catch that dang leprechaun. Rainbows were everywhere today but I wasn't fast enough. It's spring in Portland, though, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Guilty of sitcom behavior

My chest hurts from sneezing and coughing. My nose itches and burns. Have I finally been felled by Covid-19? Thanks for asking. No, it's just allergies—a reaction to one specific allergen, to be precise: black mold. 

Last night I was wracked by rounds of violent sneezes while I sat in my TV-watching chair enjoying SNL. My symptoms calmed down overnight but bloomed again this morning while I made coffee. It seems clear that the allergen is in my kitchen and possibly in the living room, not in the bedroom. I've sprayed the cracks in the kitchen ceiling, I've sprayed the cupboards . . . where was the source of my misery?

Today between drips and coughs, I hunted through the kitchen with my spray bottle of bleach held before me like an automatic pistol. I thought I had sprayed every possible nook and cranny. And then I looked behind my raincoat. The entire wall behind my long vinyl raincoat was speckled with black mold. A-ha! I blasted the mold with my magic mixture of bleach and water. A few hours later, my nose is starting to calm down. Mission accomplished. Until the next time. 

That's a really long way to say, the Love Shack is a toxic waste dump and it's time for me to go.

Speaking of moving, I jettisoned more surplus wood today. Almost all my walls are denuded of shelves, and now the shelves have found new homes with people who think shelves are the answer to life's myriad organizational challenges. I know better. Shelves are the answer to nothing. The answer is to not have so much stuff to begin with. I wish I'd learned that before I spent so much time and money wallpapering my apartment with shelves. My rationale of "getting things up off the floor" echoes as hollowly as my sniffles bouncing off the empty walls of the Love Shack. If you build shelves, stuff will come to fill them. This is what I know. I pass this nugget of wisdom on to you. You know what to do.

Right. Buy more stuff and build more shelves. It's the American way, after all. Gotta keep that economy humming. 

After pondering the philosophy behind landfills and waste streams, I'm leaning toward keeping my bed. It's old, but it's still working perfectly fine, adequately performing the function that a bed performs. It's a low-key bed. I don't expect a lot from it. Compared to those fancy foam things that adjust to your movement and temperature, that ascend and descend when your bed partner decides you are making too much noise, my bed is a total Zen master. It makes no sense to give away my bed or send it to the dump when it is still doing its job. Besides, I'll just have to buy another bed when I get to wherever I'm going, and what if that new bed is louder or pricklier or more demanding? Plus, you know what happens if you buy a new bed—then you have to buy all new sheets, and a plush of ten pillows, and a duvet made of Egyptian cotton. Well, then you can kiss your credit rating goodbye—you have fallen down the rabbit hole at the online furniture store and we won't see you till next Christmas. Next thing you know, there's a truckload of furniture outside your door and some husky dude demanding your signature.

That won't be me. I don't care about mundane things like credit ratings. And I don't expect to have visitors ever again, so I don't care if my sheets and pillowcases don't match. 

Speaking of not caring, I told my sister this week that I wash my clothes in the tub while I'm taking a bath. She said she wouldn't tell anyone, like it was sketchy behavior best kept secret. Was I supposed to be embarrassed? What I see as intelligent efficiency she apparently sees as a social peccadillo. It would not be the first time I've done something to embarrass a member of my family. My father was a master at the embarrassed eye-roll. I'm used to it. I know my sister loves me, even if I do scrub my laundry and take a bath at the same time. It has taken a lifetime of shame and guilt to achieve the nirvana of not giving a rat's ass about what others think of me. Freedom from guilt and shame is even better than freedom from shelves crammed full of stuff I can't take with me, in this move to a new home, or in whatever life comes after. 

Saddled with the job

Google is so funny. Whenever I log into this blog, it sends me alerts to tell me that I'm signing into my account from a new device. As if to warn me I might be having an out-of-body experience. I'm sure it makes sense to Google. My confusion is near-constant when it comes to the Internet. I've had to abandon several Gmail accounts because I couldn't remember the password, and even though there are other ways to verify my identity, Google has decided it just can't take a chance. After I give up, it sends me an email to my "verification" email stating that it just protected me from an unauthorized log in. As if it expects a pat on the head. For protecting me from myself. Hmmm. Maybe that makes sense after all.

Everything is back to normal at the Love Shack, that is to say, all effed up in the usual way, moving along according to the moving plan. The kitchen table and chairs departed this week with a grateful Freecycler. I still don't know how she managed to fit all three pieces into her little SUV. Maybe those things are roomier than they appear. I have one more shelf to donate to the local reclaim store. After that, there's just the bed. The question I'm now facing: at what point does one let go of one's bed? I still haven't shaken off the residual trauma left from two days of no heat. The thought of discarding my bed is fraught.

Nevertheless, I'm starting to get a sense of the rhythm of letting go. I thought at first the best strategy would be to hang onto the small stuff to the end. However, I've discovered all the small stuff takes a long time to unscrew and dismantle and pack up and discard. The big stuff leaves an obvious vacancy in the space near the front door—visible and therefore impressive. The small stuff, though—I'm talking about the knicky-knacky things, the shelves, the shower curtain (and rings), the mirrors, the plants, and the pots on the back porch, and the car gear in the basement—all that stuff takes up a lot of emotional space. The best strategy, no debate, is to tackle the small stuff while you are waiting for Freecyclers to venture out in the rain and snow to pick up the big stuff. 

Therefore, my downsizing victory today was removing the shower rings from the shower curtain rod. It was more difficult than I expected. I already packed the curtain. I never take showers because of the vertigo. 

My other victory today was enduring a Zoom meeting with my siblings without losing my serenity. Our mission was brief: to state aloud that we were all in agreement that we are going to hire the probate lawyer and to make a list of questions I am to ask her next week. I am not sure how I ended up the the facilitator of this endeavor, considering I am not the executor named in the will. Somewhere over the past five years, I volunteered to be Mom's personal rep, and even though now she's dead and doesn't need me anymore, I'm still it.  

The reward for being of service is the opportunity to do more service. It's easier for everyone if there is a control freak in the bunch, one person to step up and take the reins while the others enjoy the relief of not being saddled with the job. Did I just mangle some metaphors? Who is wearing the saddle in this case? I guess it is me. Well, get on up and hold on tight, kidlets. You asked for it. Away we go. Yee-haw. 

Stuck on a cold hard rock

Life for me seems to consist of a series of delays. Clearly the Universe has its own timeline. After my cat died, I thought, okay, now I can move to a house share while I wait for my mother to die. Then Covid-19 came along, and I was like, no, probably not a good time to have a roommate. So I stayed in the Love Shack and began the process of downsizing—jettisoning books, scanning drawings, shredding journals, getting ready for the move I knew would be coming. Then my mother had to move from a nursing home to a foster care home. That was an ordeal for sure, but I learned moving during Covid can be done. Then three months later, Mom died, and I was like, okay, maybe now I can begin the final countdown toward a move to warmer climes. 

Then... winter. Just a little slice of the wintry mix, compared to some parts of the country. I feel stupid complaining, it's just a few inches of snow, followed by a bit of freezing rain. And a little more snow, and now another half-inch or so of freezing rain. It's a parfait of winter, a little something for everyone. The skiers, snowshoers, and sledders are happy, that's for sure. The snowboarders scud along the center of the street in their big black boots, heading for the park. The skiers and snowshoers maneuver along the sidewalk, balancing with their poles. 

Snow ploughs came through a few times, followed by gravel trucks. The main road is mostly clear. Drivers don't seem fazed as they merrily attempt to park on the piles of dirty snow on either side of the road.  However, the unthinkable happened on Friday: Bus service, MAX service, and streetcar service—in other words all public transit—was shut down across the entire Portland metro. Has that ever happened? Apparently not. This would not be a good time to be carless. 

Speaking of cars, I think I have one, somewhere. It's buried on a side street about two hundred yards away from home. I don't feel like risking my neck on treacherous pavement to go see if it has been shredded by a snow plough. 

Today I threw handfuls of birdseed out the front door and back door and watched as little birds came by for a snack. I love animals. I confess, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching videos of animals being rescued by kind humans (who always happen to have a video camera handy, for some suspicious reason). I despise the algorithms that know me so well, even if I click on nothing. The more videos I watch, the more appear in my feed. Curses! I've seen the deer swimming in circles with a paint can on its head. I've seen sea turtles, dolphins, and whales trapped in fishing nets. I've seen two fighting elk stuck in a wire fence. I've seen a sloth stuck on a cold, hard rock half-submerged in a river (a real nail-biter, that one). I've seen myriad dogs rescued from various terrible situations, rushing rivers, busy highways, you name it. I've seen a horse mired in a mud pit and a donkey running in frantic circles at the bottom of a cone-shaped well. What idiot community would build such a thing, impossible to climb out of, if not to trap animals? I despair. I'm trapped watching humans rescue desperate trapped animals. I'm trying to rescue myself by watching social media. You can imagine how well that is going.

I sit at my computer with my feet on my Tupperware bug-out bin. I nestle my feet next to three grubby microwaved socks filled with dry rice. I hardly move, except to reheat the socks in the microwave. There is no heat in the kitchen or bathroom. I spend as little time in these rooms as possible. Occasionally I spray a solution of water and bleach on the cracks in the ceiling and in the empty cupboards to keep the black mold at a tolerable level. Along the walls in each room, I have stacked the boxes I plan to take with me. I forget what is in them now. Maybe I will just leave them all behind. Pack a bug-out bag, dig my car out of the snow, and head south. 

Well, I can dream. Another delay is on the horizon. It seems I might be the person called upon to manage the closing of our mother's estate. Of course, I will accept. I love my family. I live to serve. However, this is not how I pictured freedom, interfacing with lawyers and filling out paperwork. Looks like freedom has been delayed a little longer. Oh well. It doesn't matter what happens to me now. I did my job, and I did the best job I could. Now she's gone. I surrender to the whims of the Universe.  

The Chronic Malcontent fights instinction

Every time I jettison a piece of unwanted furniture to a new home, I feel lighter. That is the only way I know I am moving in the right direction. Yesterday a young couple loaded up an IKEA shelf into a pickup truck. The shelf was left behind by a former neighbor, and I enjoyed using it. However, I cannot take it with me. It made sense to pass it on. I was glad to see how happy the young people were to receive for free something I would have paid to discard. 

Part of me wants to hold on to all this stuff, the wooden evidence of my former life as a wannabe-interior designer slash carpenter. Soon after moving into this apartment, I realized I needed to think vertically. Shelves! My design approach was to build shelves on every wall to get my stuff up off the floor. I succeeded. Now I see my method was really a form of madness. Just as some people buy bigger houses to hold their growing piles of possessions, so I built more and more shelves to hold my books, binders, tools, and art. Now that most of the shelves are reduced to useless lumber, I see how well I accomplished my objective. I am now hemmed in on all sides by boxes filled with my possessions. I can hardly move. 

Today I finally broke open a roll of quarters and did three loads of laundry, the proper way, using the machines in the basement. The third load consisted of many kitchen towels, some bath towels, and a duvet cover. Can you tell me what law of physics makes towels migrate inside a duvet cover? All but one or two items somehow ended up at the bottom of the duvet cover, which then twisted on itself multiple times, like a painful intestinal condition that can't possibly end well. This is one of the confounding questions of my life, right up there with why men spit.

The boxes stacked in my bedroom are now draped with damp towels. I cranked the heat up and shut the door. I hope they will be dry by bedtime but things are pretty damp here in the Love Shack. You would not believe how much water my table salt swims in. It's ridiculous. No wonder mold is everywhere. 

This place used to be so charming, my quaint, quirky little nest on the side of the extinct volcano. I designed and decorated a great place, which I have enjoyed for seventeen years. When did it turn into a toxic waste dump? Sometime over the past few years, the charming details—the rusty sinks, the peeling paint, the fusty tiles—morphed into health hazards and disgusting eyesores. Clearly, it's time for this one to move on. Twizzle twazzle twozzle twome. 

Unfeathering my moldy nest

In my preparation for leaving the Love Shack, I'm unfeathering my nest in circles, the same way I feathered it, adding a wall of shelves here, a set of bookcases there, all designed to accommodate my growing collection of paper products. I've shredded almost all the paper in the place; thus, I no longer need all these homemade shelves. Taking these things off the walls has been a sweaty chore. I build to last. However, my trusty drill and I have beaten the screaming screws into submission. Only a few more to go. 

Now my living room looks like a lumberyard. Seriously, I have designated a 10 foot by 10 foot space next to my TV-watching chair (used to be Eddie's chair) as wood storage. The space is already jam-stacked with planks and sticks and unusable constructs that used to be furniture. I've become a woodchuck! Well, maybe a reverse woodchuck. All I know is all this wood is going to get chucked. Actually, woodchucks don't chuck wood, but whatever. 

I was tidying up my desk tonight when I was suddenly blindsided by a fit of sobbing. It didn't last long. Weeping makes my nose drip and clogs my throat. If I wail too long, I'll barf. I hate to cry but I hate barfing more, so that works pretty well to keep the histrionics to a minimum. It's my loss and I'll cry if I want to, but not for long. Moving on.

I picked up ashes and death certificates on Monday. Next up on the list, getting Mom's taxes done, learning about probate, and sending copies of death certificates where they need to go. Just a bunch of busywork. It's okay. I need a sense of purpose. When I get done with my tasks, I continue going through drawers and cupboards, sorting and tossing. So far, I have eight boxes ready to go to the thrift store. I hate to give them my vintage cardboard boxes. Those things came with me from California in 1997. I see labels pasted upon labels, showing me the trail of possessions I thought were too precious to leave behind. Mostly paper. What can I say, I've always loved paper. 

You know who else loves paper? Mold. 

By the time you see mold, it's too late. Spraying with bleach is a feeble remedy, a sad desperate grab at temporary relief. Within minutes the mold is growing back, like alien spores on an episode of Star Trek. The original Star Trek, I mean—that's all I get on broadcast TV. I hope I'm gone before my landlord has a chance to see the job ahead of him. He's going to have to tear the entire east side of the apartment down to the studs. That means kitchen and bathroom. I really don't want to be around when he rips down the beige speckled Formica tub surround, which bulges with whatever is growing in the walls. Alien life, here on earth. I think about it sometimes as I'm soaking in the tub.

It is good I'm leaving this place. To those of you who think I'm crazy to leave during Covid, I invite you to consider that staying here would not be healthy for anyone. Even I have my limit. I can put up with a lot of discomfort because I really don't care where I live, as long as I'm warm enough and have hot water in the tub. And internet, of course. Dust, spiders, and cat hair, who cares. Rust stains and missing porcelain in the kitchen sink, no problem. No hot water in the bathroom sink? No worries, as long as there is hot water in the tub. 

This is why I'm hopeful I will find new digs somewhere in a warmer drier place without much problem. My standards are more than reasonable—you might say they are low, compared to most white Americans. This means I have more options. And less disappointment. I recommend it. 

I'm seeking the balance between living like a woodchuck in a grubby burrow and living like an entitled melodramatic demanding whiny white American. Somewhere in the middle of America there must be a place in the sun for me. 

Waiting for the next episode

I miss her. I miss the routine, my sense of purpose, my north star. I knew this would happen, that I would be lost for a while. It’s different knowing something will happen and feeling it when it finally does. You can’t predict what it will feel like with certainty. You can say, I’ll feel sad, or I’ll feel scared, but until it happens, you don’t feel anything and when it happens, you are like, wow, this is different than what I imagined, this is murkier and ickier and I want to go back to where I was, imagining how the feelings would feel but not actually feeling them.

I've started packing stuff into boxes I've stored in a locked basement cupboard for seventeen years. No reason to keep them locked up. No reason to keep them at all, really. When I moved here to the Love Shack in 2003, moving on was my normal M.O. I don't remember now but I'm guessing I didn't expect to live here long. Then life ensued. I got a job, I got a cat, I went to graduate school, I got laid off and fell into self-employment. I peaked around 2013, I think. After that, my normal sense of confusion began to reassert itself. Regressing to the mean, as it were.

Until Mom got dementia. What a strange blessing. Once again my life had meaning and purpose. She needed me, I needed her. Of course, we knew that couldn't last forever. But it could have. I was prepared for her to live to one hundred. As it happened, I spent five wonderful but terrible years spinning in a tightening orbit around her. Then the cat died, then Covid, and you know the rest. Bam. Slow motion train wreck.

It's good I'm leaving this apartment. It's hard to stay warm in the winter. The heaters in the main room and kitchen have been nonfunctional for several years. The landlord attempted to replace the thermostat and almost set the place on fire. The wall around the thermostat is still singed black, a reminder that electricity can keep you warm or it can burn your house down. A small space heater works pretty well for maintaining a livable temperature around my work table. (The bedroom has heat, thank god, or I would have dragged up a long time ago.) The bathroom has never had heat, and in the winter, the room is both cold and damp. I've been doing laundry by hand at night and hanging the wet things to drip over the tub. The colder it gets outside, the longer the things take to dry. Last week I made the mistake of handwashing a small load of kitchen towels. Not a good idea. After five days of hanging on the shower rod, they are still damp, and judging by the smell, they are now starting to molder. No wonder my nose is trying to kill me.

Circumstances seem to be shoving me out the door. I'm going with the flow, hence, the packing. At some point, we will receive ashes and death certificates. All the tasks will be done. All the possessions will be distributed. All I need is a map and the open road. I'm ready to be reborn into some warmer, drier life, even if it means becoming temporarily homeless. I'm finding, though, that even though I'm happily letting go of furniture, the detritus of seventeen years is rapidly filling up all my boxes. Do I let more things go? Or do I get more boxes? The answer will depend on what kind of vehicle I find and how much it can carry. It's simple, really, just a matter of cubic feet.

Packing gives my hands something to do while my mind rummages around in a fog of shock and confusion. I have a plan, but it's in the ether. I haven't assimilated my new situation so I can't see a path clear to my next situation. I'm running on autopilot, just doing the next thing in front of me.

Last week I left four bags of her clothes at a thrift store. I donated her furniture to a second-hand shop. Today I tossed her upper denture in the trash, ew, I know. So weird. It all feels surreal. I still can't believe she's gone. Three weeks ago, in five minutes I would be bundling up to walk out to my car and drive over to the care home, wondering how much longer will this go on? I always knew this moment would come, but now that it is here, I feel no sense of peace. I have an intention, and I'm taking action, but it's like I'm a character in a movie. What will she do next? Is this a tragedy or a comedy? Or (most likely) is it the apocalyptic story of the end of the world? Stay tuned for the next episode.

Mom was home and home is gone

I decided that packing up all the clutter would make me feel better so I dug my flattened spider-infested boxes out of my basement storage cupboard and started with my books. Including the few academic books I would like to keep, I managed to fill three boxes. You might think, wow, that is a lot of books, Carol. If you think that, however, you clearly never knew me. Books were kind of like my thing. 

I don't know where I'm going. I just know that as soon as is reasonably possible with a minimum of impulsive insanity, I am leaving Portland. Home was Mom, and Mom is gone, so this is no longer home. I need a new conception of home. Maybe something with blue sky above it. 

My friend the astrologer would credit the arrangement of the planets with this upheaval that sends me on a new trajectory. I don't want to make this entirely about me. I would guess Mars is retrograding in Uranus for most of the world right now. I know I'm not the only one reeling from events. 

Sometimes radical upheaval brings blessings. It depends on how I decide to frame my experience. Lately I'm just going with it. Trying to figure things out so I can finally manage and control circumstances has never worked for me. 

For the past five years, I watched dementia constrain my mother's world into a narrowing circle. She shed interests, activities, possessions, friends, and even family, until after five years, all that was left was her couch, her clothes, and me. I learned the lesson: Nothing is permanent, everyone dies, and all I have is the present moment. Mom was the Zen master of being present—I'm nowhere near her level, but in my defense, she had the advantage of being demented and I only have my self-centered determination, which is the antithesis of being present in the moment. Well, I'm trying. 

So back to packing. 

Mom left behind her blue plaid wool blanket, a scratchy old ugly thing. I don't want it but I made the mistake of smelling it. It smelled like laundry detergent and Mom. My mother had a smell. After she stopped smoking, her smell was a combination of old lady and Tide Fresh. Not something I'd want in a bottle, but the scent of her brought me to my knees. I'll see if my brother wants that blanket. Maybe he needs a good cry.

She's gone

The day I have both dreaded and longed for arrived last Thursday. After an hour of terrible pain in her gut, my mother shuffled off the mortal coil somewhere between her care home and the hospital. By the time I got there, she was all laid out (sans dentures) under a white blanket. Luckily I have seen her sunken face when her teeth are out, so I wasn't completely horrified. If you've ever seen your mother without her teeth, you know what I mean. She was strangely still, eyes closed, mouth open a little, like she was about to sing.

Even though I've had a few days to process the experience, I don't think it has hit me yet. It happened so fast. When my cat died a year ago, I had time to say goodbye and shed my guilty tears all over his fur while the vet gave him the drugs that would take him away from me forever. I didn't see that part happen with my mother. It happened in the ambulance, I'm guessing somewhere near Glisan and 60th. I don't know. Covid prohibited me from riding with her, not that I would have, because I had my car, and who wants to get stuck in the ER for four hours without a car to bring her back to the care home in, right? That is what I was thinking. Dang, another four-hour ordeal in the ER, and me without coffee! Oh, the horror. 

In the family "waiting room" where they put the folks who are about to be blindsided with the haymaker of their lives, the nurse put her hand on my arm, probably to make sure I wouldn't launch into orbit, and said, "Your mother has passed." For a moment, I couldn't believe what I heard. She had a festively decorated head wrap and mask, I think there were colorful balloons and stars, I can't really remember. She said after the EMTs gave her fentanyl, Mom was resting comfortably, and she died peacefully. I want me some of that stuff when my turn comes. 

So how does this roll out? I wasn't in town when my father kicked off, so this is all new to me. My brother and I visited the funeral home on Friday, masked and dazed, well, I was sort of dazed, not having slept well. We figured it out, paid the money, and went our ways. Mom is probably in a cold box in a basement as she waits her turn to get trucked to Seattle for cremation (the local furnace is busted). Eventually we will get death certificates but the wheels of government are moving at a glacial pace, thanks to Covid, so the nice compassionate caring lady said expect them maybe in three weeks if we are lucky. A month or so from now, our mother will be shipped back to Portland in a box, minus hip replacement hardware. 

My sister graciously consented to write an obituary, which is a thing of beauty, although we seem to be doing a Groundhog Day dance trying to wordsmith one line:  granddaughter and two great-grandchildren. There, I think I got it, finally. I can tell my brain is not tracking. When I reread this before posting, I will be appalled at how many words I left out. It's like there are holes in my brain. They were there before Mom died, though, so I can't blame grief. 

My older brother will rise to his role as executor of the estate. We'll see how that goes. Oh boy, I think I'm getting a migraine. 

I always knew this day would come, if I lived long enough, and I wondered how it would feel and how I would respond. I'm still wondering. The mother I knew left me a long time ago. It's been a strange four years taking care of the changeling mother that dementia left in her place. I grew fond of this changeling. In one minute, I would be walking out the door to visit her. What am I going to do with all this empty space? 

I mean that metaphorically. I have less space here than ever. I've cleared most of her stuff out of the care home. You would not believe how many clothes she had. Thirty-two tops (long- and short-sleeved) in various colors and some stripes, seventeen sweatshirts (most with some sort of embroidery on the chest: my favorite: Hugs - One size fits all). Nine jackets, most pockmarked with cigarette burns. We've downsized her three times now. The last two times, the excess has ended up in my living room. There is a lot less now compared to the previous time, but the place still looks like a thrift store. I had to bag it all up again after counting because the smell of laundry detergent gave me a coughing fit. I'm okay now, thanks for asking. 

Yesterday the family had a video call. After many technological glitches and hurdles, we finally got my older brother connected via speaker phone. Tensions were high at times, but we also saw the humor in the situation. Off and on, we coalesced as a family, something we haven't done in a long time. 

Someday, after Covid, my sister and her husband will come out from Boston. We will all drive down to the Oregon coast to find the secret beach where we scattered Dad's ashes in 2005. If it all works out, we'll send Mom off over the Columbia River Bar to the Pacific Ocean. That is if we aren't occupied by China or dead from Covid. I am taking nothing for granted. 

Bon voyage, Mom. Enjoy your trip to Seattle. I'll miss you forever. 

How to train your spider

For the past couple months, I've shared my bathroom with a house spider. I told my mother about the spider, and Mom named it Esmeralda. I presume Esmeralda was a female. I say was, because, yes, my pet spider and I had to part ways this week. She crossed a line, that line being the thin silk thread by which she hovered over my head just inside the bathroom door. If I hadn't disrupted her descent when I swung the door open, she would have landed on my neck. I like all creatures but we each have our place, and I admit, humans don't usually stay where they belong, but spiders on my neck is not acceptable. 

I captured Esmeralda in a plastic tub, carried her through the house to the back door, and put her in a dirt-filled flower pot on the back porch, where I hope she will be very happy. 

I miss her. Now I really feel alone. 

It's been almost a year since my cat Eddie died. I miss him everyday. A spider is not a substitute for a cat. Still, Esmeralda was a presence. When I entered the bathroom, I always checked to see if she was there in her spot, either clinging to the wall by the shower stall or hanging a foot below the ceiling nearby. Only once or twice did she make the trek across the ceiling to hang near the doorway. (I can't actually be sure it was Esmeralda, because, you know, house spider identification is not my strong suit.) Everyday I told her, "You stay in your space, I'll stay in mine." During nocturnal visits, though, just to be sure, I waved my hands over my head when I passed through the doorway. Just in case. 

I did my best to care for her. I put a piece of mango in a dish near the window to attract flies. I'm not sure my strategy worked. I never saw any flies hovering over the mango. It wasn't fresh—it was frozen, and it thawed to a remarkable gooey consistency that I found a bit off-putting. Maybe flies did too. It's winter, anyhow, so not that many flies are around the Love Shack, just a few little ones that zoom around the light above my computer monitor. 

I'm sure Esmeralda got enough water. I take a bath nightly. The bathroom has no heat, but it gets pretty steamy in there, especially when it is cold outside. The steam rises and condenses on the ceiling. Water, water everywhere, I'm pretty sure, for a thirsty house spider. (And for a fine crop of mold, but that is a different type of pet.) I read that house spiders can live for a year or more if they get enough to eat and drink. I'm sure Esmeralda and I would have continued on as roommates, wary but amicable enough, if she hadn't crossed the line.

I wonder how she is doing. When I enter the bathroom, I look up at the spot where she used to hang out, almost hoping she perhaps has found her way back inside the house. So far, her perch is empty. I see a few flies hanging around the monitor but flies don't make good pets. That is my opinion based on many years of observation and experience. 

Tonight I visited Mom at the care home. We sat outside under the shelter, me in a mask, her wrapped in fleece blankets. It was unseasonably warm for the time of year and the time of evening. We are enjoying intermittent rainstorms courtesy of the Pineapple Express, the subtropical firehose that occasionally points directly at Oregon. 

Mom seemed inordinately sleepy tonight, for the third night in a row. I cast around for something to keep her engaged and entertained. 

"Esmeralda and I have parted ways," I said. 

"Who is Esmeralda?"

"She's the spider that used to live in my bathroom. You named her Esmeralda." 

"I did?"

"She made the mistake of hanging over the doorway into the bathroom." Mom looked confused. "I didn't want her on my neck."

"Ah." She got it. 

We looked at each other. 

"I'm tired," she said.

"Tired today or tired in general?" Leading question, I know. I dig for facts so I don't have to feel my feelings.

"Tired in general," she replied. "It's all a puzzle."

I think the caregivers keep her busy working on puzzles so she will stay awake during the day and sleep through the night. Mom is weary of puzzles, but I think it's deeper than just puzzles. She's bored with the whole thing, the showing up for life thing. She's like a fine old watch that is winding down. 

Of course, I could be reading it all wrong. Come spring, she might revive with the light and decide it's time to plant a garden. I'll be ready. Whatever comes, I'll be ready.

Top to toe in taillights, red lights all around

 

Howdy, all you Blogbots, merry ho ho. I hope you are celebrating the season safely, pandemic-style. I'm doing fine in the Love Shack, thanks for asking. Isolation is nothing new for me. I've had almost a year to get used to living with a cat ghost. I have a new song for the season, which some kind soul looped in an hour-long YouTube, so I'm immersed in a repetitive ditty with an insipid soothing rhythm and bland lyrics that remind me that yes, I used to drive home for Christmas. Every now and then, I see a shadow and think it's Eddie, a spirit from Christmases past. 

I didn't feel sad or lonely until I read comments on the YouTube page under the static picture of a decorated tree. I'm not the only one finding refuge in a soothing song with a catchy beat. People from around the world are posting comments. Some rave about the song and wonder why they haven't heard it before, even though it was written in the late 1980s. Some are reminiscing about past holidays being with loved ones now gone. Some send well wishes from lockdown and hope wistfully for better times coming soon. Stay safe, they say, the standard greeting of 2020. Who knew? Nobody says "Have a great day" anymore, do they? Illness and death lurk outside our doors. 

Covid has given new resonance to the term Swedish Death Cleaning. In the interest of leaving life with minimal mess for my brother to shovel into a dumpster, I've destroyed almost twenty-five years' worth of my journals. I tore out a few drawings from each, most of which you've seen in this blog, and cut up the rejects. I'm trying to say so long to my past creativity. I'm making room for something new, which might actually be a vacant space, depending on how things go with Covid and Mom. However, the stack of drawings is two feet tall—thus, I admit, I have more culling to do. 

The past two nights have been cold and windy, so no outside visit with the maternal parental unit. We visited through her window using the baby monitor. I pressed the button and spoke into the tiny hole: How's it going, Mom, over. Ha. No, I don't say over, that would just be confusing. We're two feet apart, separated by a pane of glass. She reads lips and so do I. It isn't hard to have a conversation. We sang Let it Snow, as many lines as we could remember, which took us to Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We grinned at each other. She looked happy. 

There's no Christmas for me here anymore, at least, for me, no day deserves any special celebration or attention. If no day is Christmas, then every day can be Christmas. Every day she lives, breathes, sings,  and smiles is a gift.  

Welcome to another stupid cold holiday season

 Hello, happy holidays to my seven blog readers. You sly anonymous folks, you know who you are. I've been anonymously writing this blog for some years now, hiding behind the moniker of The Chronic Malcontent (like about a hundred other bloggers). Now we are all living anonymous lives, hidden behind plaid and paisley masks, or tasteful cotton chambray, perhaps. Or maybe you use one of those disposable things I see lying on the ground in the Winco parking lot. Whatever we are covering our faces with, we are all hiding, waiting for this stupid cold Covid season to be over. 

I'm done trying to figure things out. I'm taking things as they come. You want to be stupid? Go right ahead. You want to complain? Right on, go for it. I support your right to be loud, stupid, and annoying. 

I'm taking my cue from my mother, living in the moment, not looking behind me, not peering ahead. She's the Zen Master of the Senior Vista Villa, or whatever the place is called. 

"How are your fellow inmates?" I asked a few nights ago as we sat outside the back door under the porte-cochère, six feet apart, me masked (plaid), her bundled in fleece blankets against the December chill.

"Those idiots are so dense!" she said with disgust. 

"Why, what are they doing?" 

"They do it all wrong," she complained. "The contract gets moved, and then everything goes haywire." I nod in agreement, even though I have no idea what she is talking about. 

"Are they messing with your puzzles?"

"You have to keep your eye on Vivian," she said. "She will try to get out the door if you aren't careful."

"You mean, she'll try to make a run for it?" 

"Yeah, she's a real pistol. Sometimes she tries to sit in my place." 

"At the table?"

She nodded, lips pressed tight. Clearly, the drama does not fade once we hit the nursing home stage. It's just like junior high all over again, only the mean girls are toothless and wear house slippers. 

"Well, if she takes a swing at you, you scream bloody murder. Erin won't stand for it."

"Yeah, she runs a tight ship." High praise. Moving Mom to this care home was traumatic for everyone but almost three months later, she's doing better than fine. She's happy and thriving. 

So, what about me? Thanks for asking. My life is no more precarious than it has ever been, hence my strategy of living in the moment. Nobody controls the future, nobody can determine outcomes. I try not to be stupid but hey, I'm human. Sometimes I don't wait as long as I should for the vents to clear the fog off my windshield before I tentatively drive the eight blocks to the care home. 

Every day brings new opportunities to remember that the Universe does not care what I think or feel. Gosh. I wish I could go back in time and have a little do-over. All the energy I have wasted whining about things over the years could have been spent writing ten novels or painting fifty portraits of my cat or planting a garden or waxing my car or my upper lip. Combined! I've been operating as if my complaining about how unfair life is and how mean people are and how stupid everything is has one tiny bit of influence on the Universe. The Universe does not care. Now I know. It's not about me. It's never been about me. I'm glad I figured that out before I catch Covid and die gasping in my bed.

The great benefit of living in the moment is that I'm free to pursue what interests me. I wish I'd done that back when I was eighteen, instead of doing what everyone else thought I should do. Oh well. All those choices brought me here. What a long strange trip it's been. 

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.