Can you prove that you exist?

When I planned my move to Tucson several years ago, it never occurred to me that I might have a hard time renting an apartment. There was and still is no lack of apartments in Tucson in my price range. After eighteen years being a model tenant (she said modestly), I really thought finding an apartment would be easy. Who wouldn't want me? I'm like a property owner's dream tenant. Clean, quiet, uncomplaining, and most important, I always pay my rent on time. What's not to love?

Apparently in this computerized world, decisions involving risk depend on algorithms. In the case of rental housing, the decision to rent is orchestrated by credit reporting agencies. You've heard of these outfits: Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. They all collect data on all of us all the time. Unless you live under a rock (which I haven't ruled out if my plans fall through), you can't avoid getting on their radar.

Unless you don't borrow money. I haven't borrowed money for a quarter of a century. That means I haven't purchased anything with a credit card, taken out a loan, or bought anything on time payments for a long time. With no data to report for over twenty-five years, my credit report is pretty sparse. In fact, the only data on the form are the four addresses I've had since 1997. I know this because I asked to receive a copy of my credit report. I can see how a property manager might not want to take a chance. They'd be like, does this person actually exist? Maybe she is just a pile of boxes in a storage unit, ever thought of that? It's hard to evict a pile of boxes. Nah, better pass on this one.

What this means is that I have no credit score. Decisions regarding hiring, housing, and insurance rates are made based on credit score. If you have no credit score, companies might not be willing to take a chance renting to you. They aren't really 100% sure that you exist. 

I emailed a modest property in the neighborhood and explained my situation. It was sort of a message in a bottle. I'd sent a few before. You know what I mean, those contact forms on websites that are prefaced with something friendly like, "You've found your new home at Palm Oasis Desert Canyon Vista Terrace Village! We want to hear from you!" I can hear you yelling at your computer monitor right now. You are yelling, how can she be so naïve? Well, you are correct, yes, I live in my own world. You probably don't remember, but a long time ago I wrote a blogpost about how I'm not really a chronic malcontent. I'm actually an optimist. I act like I'm constantly in despair, but the truth is, I really do believe that people are inherently good and that the world is a benevolent place. I can hear you screaming again.

Anyway, to my surprise, a man named Robert called me back the same day. He was remarkably kind. He asked me some questions and seemed to laugh a lot for some reason. Maybe he was astounded that I could be so naïve too, like you are. My excuse is I'm new in town, haven't figured it out yet. Out-of-towners always get a mulligan or two, don't they? We yell at them when we are behind them on the road because they are driving like idiots, but the truth is, we sort of like them too. Newcomers to the place we know so well and love to hate. Well, I'm guessing that is how it is here. That is how I sometimes felt in Portland, when I was younger and could still remember how to get from SE Portland to NW Portland without driving in circles. Here, I drive in big squares, because the roads are laid out on a grid, which is so helpful for me. I just keep turning right until I get somewhere.

So, here's this nice guy Robert asking me questions on the phone and I'm doing my best to answer honestly without telling him I'm a nutcase. With my luck I'll never meet him. Luckily for him and the company he works for, I'm the right kind of nutcase, the kind that pays her rent on time. He told me he thought they could work with me. He recommended I fill out the online application (only $51.95, including the $2.95 admin fee). After seeing some of these applications requiring a nonrefundable $200 administration fee on top of the application fee, I was like, right on, no problem, I'm on it.

I jumped on that form like a hungry cat on wet Friskies and the next day I got an email telling me I was approved to rent an apartment at XYZ Apartments. I felt like I'd been given an existence permit—you know: You have the right to exist! You exist, therefore you belong! Come live at our property. We accept you, we accept you, one of us!

Later I looked at the floor plan and the Google Earth footprint and realized the place is an overpriced dive on a busy street. The unit I believe I'm renting is in the back, though, so that is good. But it's on the ground floor, so I expect total darkness—but all the units will be dark. Each unit has only one window and the blinds will be drawn all the time. This is Tucson, after all. No sunlight allowed in the habitat. On the downside, instead of a park, there's a car repair shop on the corner of the block. Or is that a plus, hmmm, not sure. For sure a plus, there's a library just around the corner, no doubt placed to serve the middle school that is right across the street. As long as there are no lockdowns or active shooters, I should be okay.

I'm happy that I managed to convince one property management company that I exist and I'm worth taking a risk. They won't be sorry. I might be, but they won't. I'm heartened to think that if one company bucked the algorithm, there might be more. I'm going to get a secured credit card, though, because this level of uncertainty has been hellish.

The apartment comes open in early August, so I have time to obsess over how I will place my boxes in the postage-stamp floorplan. Meanwhile, I'm working on my novel. It's blazing hot here, too hot to do anything else. Enforced creativity while I wait for my little abode in Tucson is not the worst thing that could happen. 

Dodged another opportunity

I'm hoping my housing search is going to be a Goldilocks tale of too much, too little, and just enough. If I were any normal person with a normal life and a normal job, the just enough housing option would look something like a modern apartment in a safe walkable neighborhood with stores nearby and no snakes, lizards, or roaches living under the sink. However, as all seven of you blog readers know, I don't tend to take the road most traveled. Last week I dodged the opportunity to live in a tiny stone casita in the desert. This week I toured a tiny mobile home in an RV park situated by an open field next to the freeway that would take me south to the border or north to Phoenix, depending on my frame of mind. 

Mobile homes are bizarre, present living situation notwithstanding. Having grown up in an old farmhouse solidly squatting over a concrete basement dug into wet Pacific Northwest soil, this newfangled mode of building feels oddly unfinished. I'm not used to the prefab, temporary nature of mobile home living. These buildings begin their existence in a factory, getting outfitted with lightweight accoutrements made of plastic, fiberglass, and fake wood paneling. Then they get loaded on a massive truck for an aggressive trip to the mobile home sales lot. You've probably been stuck behind half a house leisurely blocking two freeway lanes during rush hour traffic. From the sales lot, they get purchased and trucked to their final destination, usually a mobile home park, where they perch primly on concrete piers a few feet above dry dirt. And there they sit fading in the sun, changing owners from time to time and moldering into vinyl dust. Manufactured homes aren't quite the same thing as mobile homes, being somewhat, well, less mobile, right? To be honest, anything that doesn't require a constantly replenished coat of paint on its peeling clapboard siding doesn't really deserve the moniker house. Just my opinion.

On Friday I found my way south and west to a straight two-lane stretch of road edged with several RV parks and mobile home parks. These are not the same thing, by the way. RVs, no matter how big their widescreen TVs, are not considered mobile homes, even if you live in them full time. As soon as the temperature hits 85°F, RVs unplug their shore power cables and drive away to cooler climes, leaving vacant concrete slabs. In RV parks, a few folks park their travel trailers and never leave. As gravity and weather take their toll, these little trailers sag and sink toward the dirt, weighed down by homemade awnings, canopies, gewgaws, and strings of lights. They start to look like weird plants that grew up out of the ground. To keep out these bottom feeders, mobile home parks don't allow transient RVs to overwinter. If you have an RV, you park it offsite in a respectable storage facility and fetch it when its time to make like a snowbird.

The property I sought was an RV park with a mix of buildings (can I call them buildings?). Some were tiny travel trailers, a few were larger trailers no longer near any sort of tow vehicle, and a couple were single wide mobile homes. The rental I was going to tour was one of these single wide mobile homes, renovated in the recent past with a small addition built to the side to create a dining area. This mobile home had three doors to the outside and a postage-stamp size yard that butted up next to the side yard of a heavily decorated sagging travel trailer parked in the next lot. I found this trailer mesmerizing. All my gypsy nomad genes sprang to attention. (I'm not sure I actually have any of those genes but I'm a romantic at heart, drawn to the caravan lifestyle, and I don't mean Dodge Caravan! More like circus wagon, festooned with flags and ribbons.)

I sort of wanted to tour that travel trailer but I dutifully followed the manager into the mobile home. Fake fireplace, check. Multiple doors, check. Oh hey, vinyl floor in imitation hardwood. That was a nice touch throughout. There wasn't much to see. The place was pint-sized, chopped into a tiny living room, a dining area, and a bedroom in the back. The kitchen was carved out of the space in the middle, edged in a half-wall like a taco bar. The sink was okay, the fridge was big, the cupboard under the sink was clean and mold-free. The bathroom was next to the kitchen, also very small, with a pale brown plastic tub circa the 1970s and a white porcelain toilet that looked much older. The owner apparently renovated the kitchen but spared the bathroom, no doubt wanting to retain some of the quaint old-fashioned charm. Well, who wouldn't.

Is it time to explore my prejudices at the idea of living in an RV park? As the manager advised me on how to present my finances for best results, I imagined myself telling my sister I rented a mobile home in an RV park next to an open field by a freeway. It took me a moment to identify the feeling that frissoned up my spine. Was it . . ? Yes, it was shame. Why? Who do I think my ancestors were? My grandmother came from South Dakota and put half-and-half on her Rice Krispies. I cannot deny my roots. My genes would fit right in at a trailer park. It's just my snobby education and upbringing that tells me I deserve something better. 

I’m really out of my comfort zone here in the desert.  Landowners own the wealth and rent slum-pit trailers to elderly, low income, and undocumented. There are no laws to protect tenants from unscrupulous slumlords. Maintaining trailer homes and mobile homes is expensive. People in RV parks are often living in substandard housing with no recourse. Complaining results in evictions. The only way to win in the desert is to own the land.

Homes in Tucson's neighborhoods reflect the culture and the weather. Buildings are low profile, built out of cinder block or brick, stucco or adobe. The architecture is so different from the northwest. The heat dictates design. There is no water here, not in the air, not in the soil. Lack of water dictates landscape design. I'm shocked at the rare sight of green lawn. The ground is dust. There is no dirt, just dust. Roofs are flat (no need for slopes to handle snow). Awnings are deep to cover doorways and windows (or they should be, but not all apartment windows have awnings). Windows are tiny, barely letting in light. Everyone covers their windows to ward off the blazing sun. In the middle of the day, they hunker in their dark air-conditioned caves or blaze around the streets at 50 mph in their air-conditioned SUVs. 

The light here is a miracle. The moment I step outside, the heat is a strange toasty blessing I can't refuse. It envelopes me and sucks the air from my lungs. It cannot be ignored or avoided, only embraced. Bare mountains encircle the city, crisp and clear viewed through air that contains zero moisture. The blue sky canopy beckons me up, up, up. This place is closer to God than a lot of places, I bet. It's bathed constantly in raw sunshine. The sun strips off the veneer of lubrication and hydration and leaves only the parched elegant bones. No meat, just a bit of tough sinew holding moments together in a string of experiences, which I gather for blog fodder when I venture out to compete with the speedsters. This is not an oasis. This pueblo is not built on clouds but on desiccation and dehydration and dryness. D-words denoting desertification. The only waves are in my inner ear, washing me up on the shores of BPPV where I’ve been many times before, hoping to find a place to rest without losing my balance.

Which is why I can’t take showers.

Wait, time out. Joe Biden needs me to send money right away. Sorry, Joe. Okay. I'm back.   

Digging for drawings to illustrate my blogposts is fraught these days. To find the drawings I scanned last year, I have to scroll through photos of my former life. It hurts. I scroll past photos of my domicile, my neighborhood, my mother, and the one I really want to avoid, the last one of her lying dead in the ER, eyes closed, mouth open. I see photos of all the stuff I donated on Freecycle and Craigslist. I get weepy over photos of my efforts to downsize, to sort, to pack, and to pare my life to fit into a U-Box and a Dodge Grand Caravan. (I don't know what is so damn grand about it.) 

I filled out the application for the mobile home, attracted to the open fields next door, which reminded me of the fields behind the farmhouse of my childhood. It would only cost $35 to apply and I would probably be approved. But after a night to contemplate the prospect of living in an RV park, I decided once again that I'm not the right person for that place. I don't know what interesting experiences I'm passing up, but we know that when we turn away from one path, we end up going down another. No matter where I end up, there will always be things to blog about, and as long as I have internet access, I remain your faithful chronic malcontent blogging from the Hellish Hand-basket. 

You can't take the city out of the girl

A bit of wind blew in a bank of gray clouds and a little rain, which dissipated into lots of puffy white clouds. I guess blue sky is back. It's warm enough in the trailer for the AC to kick on so I assume it is warm outside. I live in two climates, cave and desert. 

Speaking of desert, this week after receiving my second Covid-19 vaccine, I almost found a place to live. On Craigslist, I found a unique posting for a "quaint and rustic" stone casita. The one photos showed a charming wooden door and a stone paved patio. Perfect! It was situated west of the 10 freeway in a patch of old ranch land. I Google Earthed it and plotted my path out to what passes for ranch land in Tucson.

When I hear the word ranch, I think of my grandfather's cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon. We visited the ranch for a few days most summers when I was a kid. No more than a weekend though—my father hated that ranch. I had mixed feelings about the visits. The dry brittle air made my nose bleed. (To be fair, back then, everything made my nose bleed.) The harsh silence was disconcerting to a city kid. I could see planes high overhead, heading for PDX, but hear nothing but the wind scratching through the trees in the yard. 

For me, the best part of visiting the ranch was being around horses. My grandfather kept a few in the barn to help him with the cattle, but we were only allowed to ride old Betsy. One at a time, my father lifted us up to sit in front of my grandfather. Grandpa twitched the rein, and Betsy shambled along the dirt road to the gate. She was slow going away from the barn but fast coming home. I was paralyzed with the chore of parsing two conflicting emotions:  the utter joy of being on horseback and the fear of my grandfather, who was a large, gruff, mostly deaf, intimidating man.  

The Tucson desert is not like Eastern Oregon. Eastern Oregon gets snow. It's dry, but not this dry. Here, ranch land is littered with rocks, dry brush, and cacti. You could not graze cattle in the Tucson desert. You could not graze anything. You could probably grow a fine herd of rattlesnakes, though, if you had a hankering. Which I don't. Which brings me back to my story about the stone cottage. 

At some point in the early part of the twentieth century, some rancher built a stone mansion and some stone casitas out in the desert near a dry wash. The current owner of the ranch rents the casitas to over-55 year old adventurers who think living down a dirt road in a desert would be fun. I was almost one of those renters. 

I drove way out into the suburbs, noting the well-paved road and the many houses scattered around the hillsides among the cacti. As I parked my car, I marveled at the view of the mountains. The manager of the "apartments," an eighty-year-old artist, said she often saw coyotes and deer, and even a couple stags drinking at her outdoor water station. I thought, I like stags. I could set out water buckets and quench the thirst of wildlife. She took me into the available casita, which for some reason had four doors. 

First impression: it's a cave with a red concrete floor. Whoa, cool. A voice in my head said, wait, is that cool? The stone walls were painted a solid glossy white. The wood ceiling was low overhead. I thought, oh, how cozy, and then I thought, wait, where will all the hot air accumulate? I noted the beat up air conditioner leaning into (out of?) an open window. The hearth of a once-handsome stone fireplace had been covered with a piece of plywood, painted gray to blend with the stone surround. I pointed.

"No fires allowed here," she said. "Too much fire danger." I thought, well, of course, out here you would have to think about that. My next thought: would I worry about fire danger if I rented an apartment in the city? Possibly not as much, except for the odd neighbor with candles and cigarettes. 

To the left was a semblance of a kitchen. A double farmhouse sink, an old gas stove, some ramshackle cupboards, and a narrow refrigerator. 

"You'll have to buy the refrigerator from the previous tenant," the manager said. "Unless you want to buy your own."

"How much?"

"Two hundred." Oh, I thought, that's reasonable, while the other half of my brain said hmmm, is that reasonable? It's not very big. Do I need a bigger refrigerator? 

The bedroom was beyond the living room. A wood door with glass panes opened out onto a little patio. Cute, I thought. That might be the place to sit sipping my iced coffee while writing my novel. Except when it is cold. Or hot. Which here it is either/or, not much in between. So is that patio really cute and charming? Or is it just another doorway for scorpions?

Up three tall concrete steps was the bathroom—in essence, a bathroom on a pedestal. 

"Wow, three steps up," I said. "So you know when you get there, you are about to do something really special."

"The electricity isn't on so the light doesn't work," she said. I wondered what else didn't work. I hopped up the steps and peered inside. No tub. A large shower. I took a photo using my flash. Later I discovered the walls of the shower were yellow and the floor was the same red as the living room floor. I thought, could I live without a tub? The desperate part of my brain said, tub schmub, it's only $500 a month!

I was in a dream, imagining my life as a solitary writer, cocooned in a cozy cave in the desert. Could I live out here miles from anything resembling a grocery store? At that moment, I thought I could.

Back at the trailer later that evening, hours after she offered to rent the casita to me and after I said yes, as I was starting to feel a bit peaked from the shot, I started researching the task of keeping desert pack rats from nesting in my engine compartment and chewing up the wiring under my hood. Home remedies with dubious efficacy include Irish Spring soap, Pine Sol spritzers, and dryer sheets. Ugh, even I can't stand dryer sheets. Part of my brain was like, well, this is what people must do if they want to live the romantic life of a writer in a casita in the desert. The other part of my brain was like, dang it, I just spent another $1,800 fixing the dang check engine light and the transmission leak. Do I really want to pay to remedy pack rat damage? 

Next I pulled up information about rattlesnakes, scorpions, and spiders. You can imagine how it went from there. After getting input from my Tucson friends, my spiritual advisors, and my sister, I gave up on the idea of renting the casita in the desert. 

The benefit of this decision was immediately apparent. I got a return call from a woman renting a tiny house somewhere north of here. After looking on a map, I know that north of here is nothing but desert. Mountainous desert. 

"Oh, you live down in the city?" she said, aghast. "I only go down there when I have to. I can't wait to get back up on the mountain."

Today both sides of my brain are in agreement. We aren't going to rent a tiny house, a cute stone cottage, or any other dwelling that is on a mountain or down a dirt road in a desert. Romance is one thing, but reality is real. You can't take the city out of this girl. I know you are saying, Carol, there are critters in the city, too. However, most of the critters I encounter in town will probably be human. Given the choice between snakes and humans, I'll take my chances with human critters any day. 

Reality and wishful thinking walk into a bar

You know how you have a picture in your head of what something will be like after you buy it, and then after you buy it, you realize it is nothing at all like they promised it would be? Like that InstaPot thing, for instance, that was supposed to make all our meals so healthy we would be size 2 in a matter of weeks. Or like those shoes with the toes that were supposed to make us run faster so we feel safe to finally run that marathon before we turn forty without totally embarrassing ourselves. Or like that move to a new state we were sure was going to transform us into a completely different somehow cooler person. That kind of mental picture.

Pictures like that are definitely mental, and so is believing that those pictures could come close to representing reality. The truth is, the InstaPot is not a magic dietary aid—the equation is still calories in, calories out, no matter how we cook it, and what's so great about being a size 2, anyway? Those shoes with the bizarre toes aren't cool and they won't help us run even down to the corner 7-11 if we trip on a curb and fall along the way (I know, it happened to a friend of mine). And I'm here to tell you, moving to a new state is not a cure for anything. Wherever we go, there we are. 

I had this mental image that after I moved to Tucson, I'd go shopping at a mall or thrift store for a new summer wardrobe consisting of soft linens and cottons in dusky desert colors. I'd toss out all my old ratty t-shirts and baggy underwear and get clothes my sister would approve of. I'd get some espadrilles, with low heels, of course, or some leather huaraches in honor of my proximity to Mexico. I'd wear them with socks, of course, because well, I'm still an Oregonian, but I'd do it with pizzazz and panache. 

I pictured myself wearing those new shoes while sitting on a deck or patio sipping iced coffee in the balmy shade, writing my novel on my new laptop. I envisioned myself driving my pristine white Dodge Caravan on adventures around the city, learning my way and finding the hidden gems that only the locals know. I imagined taking tours of apartment buildings, admiring their tubs and closets and basking in the endless supply of frigid air blasting from strategically placed air conditioner vents.

After three weeks in paradise, it is clear to me that in the matchup between dreams and reality, reality wins every time. It's the nature of reality to not be swayed, bribed, or otherwise influenced by the dreams we have in our tiny fuzzy heads. 

Reality is a mixed bag. Yes, I sip iced coffee, but did you know coffee is a diuretic? I'd do better just drinking lots and lots of water. However, the water here tastes like chlorinated salty vinegar. I'm finding ginger and turmeric herbal tea makes a drinkable concoction when cold. My wrists are emaciated but my ankles are swollen, a weird combination that tells me I'm dehydrated and I have high blood pressure. I applied to move my Obamacare from Oregon to Arizona. Arizona Medicaid is unable to verify my identity. I am waiting for them to reject me so I can choose another health insurance company through the marketplace and find a primary care doctor. Hope I live that long.

On the bright side, the car is running great, except for the ubiquitous check engine light, which came on again despite spending $50 on premium gas. I should have known the mechanic-in-a-can remedy wasn't aligned with reality. Wishful thinking goes down for the count once again.

On another sunny note, I found an apartment I might want to live in not far from the trailer park. The property management company wanted an application first before they agreed to show me the unit. No doubt trying to weed out the losers. That is a good strategy on their part. I might be one of those losers, by their rulebook. My income is low and they will discover that I'm a credit history ghost. I'm pretty sure that is why Arizona Medicaid cannot verify my identity. As far as the credit agencies go, I don't exist. Oh, and I can't open a bank account here until I have a "permanent" address. I guess the banks have caught on to people living in UPS Store mailboxes. 

On the brighter side, I have been working on my novel. Why not? It's way too hot to go out except to forage for food at a grocery store. Going shopping for clothes seems like an impossibly heavy lift. I have clothes but they are packed away under boxes in the storage unit. My entire life is in boxes in that storage unit. It's great I have all my stuff, and why did I pay to ship all that crap down here again? I'm forgetting why an IBICO machine was so precious to me. 

Now I sound like I'm complaining, don't I? Well, I am. The joke is on me, for sure. The image I had in my head of a new life in Tucson is unfolding a little differently than I pictured. On the bright side, I'm sure I do not want to return to Portland. At least there is one place on the planet I know I don't belong. Meanwhile, I'm living a life I barely recognize in an amazing yet surreal trailer park in a beautiful yet strangely unfriendly city. Reality and wishful thinking bellying up at the bar. 

A conversation with Mom on Mother's Day

Today was my first Mother's Day without a mother. I occasionally forget she's gone and feel an urge to bring her up to date on the latest happenings in my life; however, she's no longer listening; she died on January 7. Even if she were still alive, I would not tell her the details of my personal fruit-basket-upset. Over the final five years of her life, she grew increasingly uninterested in anything beyond her couch, her next meal, her next moment. Sometimes I would forget and mention something inane, like, for example, the neighbor had a sewer line dug today. She had no connection to sewer lines or the loud heavy machines and men that dug them, so it was probably for the best that she forgot everything I said five minutes after I said it. 

Now she's gone and I can "tell" her anything, which is not really a philosophy I subscribe to, that we have an unseen audience of dead parents and cats waiting to hear about our day and cheer us on. I mean, if it makes you feel better to believe that, go ahead. I can't really picture my dead folks hanging out with my dead cats in some lovely heavenly place eating bonbons and cat treats and caring much about what is going on in my sordid earth-bound life. 

Seriously, if you were lounging in paradise, would you really spend much time looking down at earth and hoping humans will start learning how to live with each other? Me neither. I assume heaven has endless ice cream and no weight gain. Given the perks, who cares about politics, the environment, or moving house out of state? Just a bunch of striving in the wind, if you ask me, which I know you didn't, but this is my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

I'm not whining, really. I'm grieving. I don't think it has hit me fully yet, the losses of the past year and some. Eddie my cat died a year ago January, just as Covid-19 was ramping up in Washington State. Then we moved Mom into the care home. Then she died. Then I packed up and moved to Arizona. So with one thing and another, I haven't really had time to stop and feel much. And who wants to feel things anyway? Not me!

Hey, Mom, you might be interested to know that next week I will begin the apartment hunt in earnest. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for this smoothly paneled landing place, for sure. The palm trees remind me of Los Angeles. I'm fascinated by the wildlife in the dry riverbed of the Rillito River. From this safe launching pad, I'm learning my way around the vicinity, extending my scope onto palm-lined side streets and cacti-lined country roads. This is an amazing city.

However, sooner or later, the owners are going to want their trailer home back. I can't get comfy here. Goldfish remake their tanks to suit their needs, and I'm like a goldfish in some ways (short attention span, stinky lifestyle), but this mobile home is not a water tank. I'm missing my algae, I mean, my stuff, the detritus that supports my creative existence. I've got my bowl of paper clips but I really want my art supplies, my computer, my IBICO machine, my microwave, my television, my paper products. I'm such a hothouse flower. 

Mom, you'll be glad to hear, I'm getting things done. On a toasty Wednesday morning, I unloaded all my stuff out of the rented U-Box and into the rented storage unit. Even though I can't find anything, I know it's all in one place. That's progress. What's more, the grizzled guy at the AutoZone told me how to fix my check engine light, and lo, after one dose of mechanic-in-a-can, it worked! Next, on his advice, I filled the tank with the good stuff, and now the wild mustang minivan seems more amenable to being ridden. That's good because I might be living in that thing one day. 

Mom, here's something funny. I shopped at a Kroger's food store called Fry's last week, thinking it would be like our beloved Fred Meyers in Portland, and it was sort of, if you remember what the Glisan Fred Meyers looked like in the 1970s before it was renovated. Dingy, dark, narrow aisles, small produce department. Crummy selection of apples, and not one pear. Clearly we are not in Portland anymore. The good news, though, is that Phoenix has a Winco, if I want to drive a hundred miles. One of these days when I'm bored and have nothing to do, I will make a run to Winco. And IKEA too, while I'm there, hey, might as well. Let me know if you need anything.

I miss you, Mom. If a shred of your spirit exists anywhere, I hope you are content and enjoying big bowls of Rocky Road ice cream with no lactase blowback. Rest in peace. 

Starting a new life in the desert

Howdy Blogbots. At long last, I'm coming to you from beautiful northwest Tucson. It really truly finally happened. As promised, I moved. It happened fast. On Wednesday, April 21, I took a deep breath and unplugged from the internet. I spent a feverish day loading up my minivan with as much stuff as I could fit and still leave room for me to drive. That night, I slept snuggled in the reclined passenger seat. Apart from setting off the car alarm when I made my final trip to the bathroom, everything went smoothly. I drove away from Portland at daybreak on Thursday, April 22. 

After a three-day road trip through the nether regions of the American West (perhaps the topic of another blog post, yes, I got lost several times), I arrived at my friend's house in Tucson on Saturday afternoon, more or less intact, and have been trying to find myself ever since. 

I've had a lot of alone time to figure things out. My friend and her partner left on Sunday in their fabulous RV with their orange cat who rides shotgun above the cab. I've spent the past week alternating between driving my minivan in circles (which I call "learning the city") and hunkering in the cool burrow of their mobile home. With only myself to talk to, I'm fully present and feeling things.

The first two days, the weather was lovely, blue sky and sunshine, not too hot. The next two days, thunderstorms blew in and dumped bands of torrential rain across the trailer park, rattling the awnings and turning the sky an ominous gray. It was cold. I was glad I hadn't tossed my fleece into the U-Box. The City of Tucson upped the chlorine content of the city water supply. For a couple days, I thought I was drinking from a swimming pool. I looked up how to neutralize chlorine in tap water: You can boil it at least twenty minutes, let it stand (could take days or longer to dissipate), or you could add ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C. After a few days, the chlorine is gone, and that is how I realized that rainstorms upset the quality of the City's water supply.

When I'm feeling discombobulated, which I am right now, lost and confused, I turn to my routines and task lists to ground me and give me structure. My routines are shot to hell, starting with waking at dawn. I've never been a morning person! But as soon as the first white-winged dove starts chortling, my eyes pop open. One particular dove is getting under my skin: I can almost make out what she is singing: It's either Give us this day or Hang up and drive. I have no opinion on religious white-winged doves, it's the repetition at 6:30 a.m. that I find irksome. So my routines are toast, how about my task list? Thanks for asking. My task list evolves daily. I managed to find my dinky bottle of white-out, thank god. My calendar is getting pretty crusty as things keep changing. For instance, I successfully applied for an Arizona driver's license, but I have to wait to register the car until I get the title from the State of Oregon in about three more months. I can't get a local bank account until I get the driver's license. I couldn't get the driver's license until I got a street address. See how that works? White-out is my little helper.

I'm house-sitting in an amazing over-55 gated trailer park. The trailers butt up close to each other, all painted in pale shades of taupe, gray, and peach. All the front yards are filled with rocks and various types of cacti. Some of the saguaros are home to multiple cactus wrens. There are mourning doves and white-winged doves all over the place. I saw four Grendel's quail marching in a row across the street. Rabbits noodle around in the gravel. 

It's an orderly but strangely silent community. Other than the Neighborhood Watch person Linda, who drove over to me in the golf cart on the second day I was here to find out who I was and what I was doing in their community, I rarely see anyone. In fact, since the day my friends left, I have had no interactions with anyone in the trailer park, other than to wave at a gentleman who drove by in the golf cart (husband of Linda, I believe). The house is on a cul-de-sac, so I know he received a call from someone across the way. Suspicious activity, better check it out. I was outside organizing the boxes in my car in preparation for taking them to my new storage unit. That is how I know people are watching me, even though I don't see them. I don't tend to peer into their windows. 

Tonight I decided I would give them something to talk about and even call the golf cart dude if they felt inclined. I put on my sneakers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a sunhat. I brought my mp3 player and strapped a mask around my neck. I locked the kitchen door behind me (I don't trust anyone) and went out into the breezy 88°F evening sunshine. I walked in the middle of the narrow Disneyland-esque street, admiring the twirling pinwheels and spiky cacti, smiling to show I was not a threat. I did not dance, nor did I flip anyone off, as I walked past a dozen or so mobile homes to the secret gate leading onto the bike path along the Rillito River. My friend left me a key to the lock that leads from the trailer park onto the bike path. In moments, I was through the gate, free.

I walked to the west toward the setting sun and then turned around and walked to the east, taking photos of cacti, mountains, the Rillito River, and the Tucson Mall. The river bed is wide, dry, and overgrown with shrubby trees. I wish I'd thought to see if it filled with water those two days we had rain. I imagine it's pretty spectacular when the water starts flowing. Now it's like the ghost of a river, all sandy bed, rocks, and beat up plastic bottles, chairs, and bags. I saw a jack rabbit. I guess it was a jack rabbit. It definitely wasn't a plump fluff ball like the rabbits in the trailer park. He posed, and I took his picture.

It felt good to be out walking. Distances are less than I imagined. This area of northwest Tucson is consumer heaven, if you like shopping, which I don't, all stores, strip malls, and wide traffic lanes occupied by speeding SUVs. I'm learning the grid of streets in the area. On Friday I found my way to the vaccination site at the University of Arizona. On the way back, I stopped at Trader Joe's for Vitamin C tablets, just in case I need to treat the drinking water again. Before she left, my friend warned me to pound down the water and she wasn't kidding. With relative humidity in the single digits, everything desiccates quickly to a husk, including human bodies, especially if there is a breeze. Today there's a red flag fire warning in Southwest Arizona. Fire danger is everywhere, and in the desert, water is a scarce resource.

So, in other news, the check engine light came on again on Friday. I'm hoping it's just the gas cap, you know, maybe I didn't get it all the way screwed on—it's been twenty-four years since I pumped my own gas. The gas cap is new. But you know how it is with cars. And teeth. They rarely heal themselves. 

Tomorrow the plan is to deal with reality as it comes at me, like we all do, the way we all meet the bumps and potholes in whatever road we travel. 

The delusions of an impostor

I'm typing my final Portland blogpost from a miniature desk crammed into the chaotic mess in the main room of the Love Shack, a place I have enjoyed for almost eighteen years. It feels surreal to be leaving. I can't believe this is really happening, even after I loaded up a U-Box with most of my possessions and approved its departure to some unknown facility in Tucson. I am fully prepared to never see my stuff again. My next challenge is to get myself there. Departure is set for Thursday. 

My brain swings between delusionary extremes. I try to plan, organize, manage, control. I can't seem to predict circumstances with any accuracy. On the bright side, I was pleasantly surprised to find the U-Box held a lot more than anticipated. I was afraid I would have to abandon all my lovely handmade lopsided wooden shelves. They all fit! Plus my work chair and my TV watching chair, in pieces. If I ever find the allen bolts (carefully stored somewhere in a plastic bag), I can reassemble two chairs. Awesome. 

On the opposite end of the delusionary scale was my assumption that buying a used car would be an easy, smooth, painless process. I'm not even factoring in the tooth extraction and subsequent round of antibiotics (I'm fine now, thanks). You should assume that people don't sell cars they love. They only sell cars that are currently or imminently going to have a conniption fit. On the bright side, I have learned so much about myself in the process of getting a new radio installed. I look forward to another learning experience tomorrow when I attempt to locate a mechanic who can diagnose and resolve the mysterious check engine light, the dreaded indicator that could mean mutiny among the oxygen sensors. 

I fear my apartment has more stuff in it than can fit in the car with me on this trip to Tucson. I've built boxes for Mom's TV, my computer, and my computer monitor. Perhaps I was overly generous with the cardboard, I don't know. I'm not sure there will be room for me in the car. I laid some boards in the cargo space to get a sense of a floor plan. In my mind, I pictured something larger. That is another instance of delusion usurping reality. Reality wins every time when it comes to cargo space and cubic feet. I may be sleeping in the driver's seat. 

Another delusion I have entertained lately is the idea that I will be a different person when I move to a new city in a new state. I know in my heart that executing a geographical won't change me. However, I am hoping that I might, I don't know, be able to eat things that normal people eat. Bread. Cheese. Pasta. Milk. Sugar. I might start wearing bright colors, cotton dresses, bras, sandals. Hey, I might not like eating cheese and wearing dresses. To be honest, I doubt I will feel comfortable wearing a bra ever again. However, I reserve the right to try on another persona, at least for a while. Everyone who moves far away should have the right to make new style choices. I might even grow my hair, who knows.  

Yesterday while I waited for my new radio to be installed, I visited a nearby grocery store and bought a Honey Crisp apple, a protein bar, and a box of plant-based chocolate chip cookies. I ate the apple first, sitting on a bench in the shade outside a Kohl's store. Between bites, I wrote in my journal and consulted my calendar to make sure my afternoon was on track. The weather was gorgeous, summer-like temperatures and soaring blue sky. The heat felt great, even though the dry air was turning the skin on my hands into crepe paper. Next, I ate the protein bar. Feeling adventurous, I tore into the box of cookies. Six cookies nestled in a plastic tray and wrapped in plastic. I didn't feel quite so happy after seeing the wasteful packaging (and realizing only six cookies came in the box). 

I bit into the first cookie (mmm, chocolate) but was distracted by a commotion ensuing about thirty yards away, outside the door of the store. A large bedraggled white woman and a chubby Black teen in a heavy jacket were coming toward me. The kid pushed a beat up bicycle. The woman was yelling, "I need to sit down, my feet are f**king killing me!" Despite other bench options, she made a beeline for my bench.

As she aimed her butt toward the space between me and the arm of the bench, I hastily closed my notebook, stashed my pen, stuffed the box of cookies in my bag, and leaped to my feet.

"You don't have to leave!" she whined. I don't know what she saw in my eyes. Being so close to another human felt shocking. I was wearing a mask. She was not. She wore dirty leggings, Birkenstocks, and a stained skirt. I suspect she was on drugs, not that I'm an expert. Her companion walked his bike away from the woman, moving from the shade into the sun. "Winston, wait, don't leave me!" He kept walking across the empty parking lot.

I backed away from the bench expropriator. "Wait, is this yours?" She picked up a piece of metal from the bench. We both stared at the object. It looked like a large paperclip, bent out of shape. I shook my head, confused. She tossed it toward me, and it bounced off my sneaker. "Oh, sorry," she laughed.

I hiked with purpose around the corner of the building, trying to avoid the other local houseless crazies and druggies who wander the parking lots, panhandling and socializing. They live in tents tied to fences and trees and inhabit decrepit RVs rusting along the nearby side streets. I could so easily be one of them. Yesterday, temporarily, I was an impostor, sitting on a bench eating my snack, briefly blending in with the other parking lot zombies while I waited for a radio to be installed in my fancy used car. When I walked back to the shop, the technician demonstrated the radio. The gizmo lights up, connects to my phone, and does everything but call me by name. As I sat in my fancy car looking at my fancy new radio, I still felt like an impostor. 

I am guessing a road trip through the desert will change me in ways I cannot yet predict. I'll update you when I find out who I am. 

Burning up some gas

Do you ever get a hankering for some humble pie? Me neither. But sometimes we get served up a slice whether we hanker for it or not. This was my week for gorging on humble pie. 

You may recall, last week I described my smarmy attitude toward an ignorant dental receptionist who seemed to think I needed antibiotics before I could make an appointment to have a tooth pulled. My dentist had pulled the offending tooth on Friday, as I reported last week, but the pain was not receding as I might have hoped. I white-knuckled through the week with pain pills and finally called the office on Thursday, almost a week after the extraction.

"I think I have a dry socket," I said morosely.

"Oh dear. Can you come in tomorrow morning at 8:20?"

I know they start work at 7:00 a.m., so 8:20 probably seemed like a late start to them. I, on the other hand, start work (or what passes for work around the Love Shack) at about 11:00 a.m. after a leisurely cup of coffee, a couple Duolingo lessons, and breakfast. Nevertheless, I said, "See you tomorrow at 8:20."  

I didn't need the alarm. An aching jaw is a very effective wake-up call. I threw on yesterday's clothes, swilled a cold swig of yesterday's coffee, and headed to the dentist in my fancy white minivan. Soon, the dentist was peering into my mouth. "I don't think you have a dry socket," she said. "The hole is healing up nicely. I think you have an infection down in the jaw."

I had a brief moment picturing myself a year from now with a missing jaw after a jaw removal for jaw cancer. Then she said, "I think we'll start you on a round of antibiotics. Are you allergic to penicillin?" 

Eight pills into a regime of thirty doses, four per day, I'm feeling much better. I'm still taking the pain pills, but not as often, and the humble pie is going down pretty smoothly too.

Meanwhile, the move out of the Love Shack plods forward at its own glacial pace. I look around at the stacks of boxes and think, why the heck did I pack up so early? Then I remember the yards of lumber that had to be removed from the walls, the furniture that had to find new homes. It takes time to explode a household into smithereens, especially if you want to save any of it to start over somewhere else. It would be a lot easier to just set a match to it all. However, I have neighbors. 

Speaking of which, I saw one today, one of those elusive neighbor entities. She was on her way to the laundry room in the basement, and I was on my way to loading boxes of family photos albums and keepsakes into my van to take to my brother's for eternal storage. 

We were both wearing masks. We are such good citizens. Minnie asked me how I was doing. I told her I was moving in a couple weeks. She was politely astounded and asked if I needed any help. 

"Would you like to take over the care and feeding of the birds and squirrels?" I asked. 

She said yes, they could do that. I pointed to the pyramid of cement blocks stacked up near the decrepit fence. I suggested she could move the blocks closer to their back steps. 

"We could put some plants in them," she said, hands on hips, surveying the scene. I began to feel a lightening of my stress level. My one regret has been abandoning the critters who have come to rely on this feeding station. Now I can leave knowing Minnie will care for them. 

I hope she was serious. I am going to get her a big bag of birdseed. 

Meanwhile, did you know that new-ish cars have brains? Yes, they do. And did you know, if you drain the battery, the car's brain doesn't work properly until you retrain it to think? Right, I didn't know that either. Well, my new van lost its brain because the amateur used car dealer who sold me this beast left the key in the car overnight, thus draining the battery. "Ha, ha," he laughed. "No problem. Now you take car to DEQ." DEQ is the state agency that handles the emissions testing and issues certificates so you can get your car registered. 

Trusting soul that I am, I trundle off to DEQ, wait in line, and pull up into the garage. Five minutes later, the technician hands me a piece of paper. 

"Your car isn't ready to be tested."

"What?"

"This happens when they work on the car. You need to take the car through a drive cycle, then come back."

He handed me the paper. He couldn't see my face under the mask but I think he could sense my distress. "Don't worry, it should pass when you come back."

I took my stressed out brain home, took some pain pills, and looked up "drive cycle" in the big brain in the sky. Drive cycle for this car: Drive 40 to 60 mph keeping a steady throttle for eight minutes, then stop and idle for three minutes. Then drive 20 to 30 mph for two minutes. Finally, stop, turn the key off and leave it off for ten minutes. This should reset all the oxygen sensors.

I'm like, what stretch of highway in this urban setting will allow me to go at freeway speeds and then pull over and idle? I feverishly pulled up Google Maps. Maybe east out the I-84 freeway? Meanwhile, I put calls into the two dealerships in town. Nobody in the service departments was answering. I left two  voice mail messages. I left a message on a contact form. I had a nice online text chat with a polite and helpful woman whose first language was not English. She said she would consult her service team and get back to me. 

Later in the day I got a call from a young woman. I think I have identified her demographic characteristics correctly. She sounded young, and she sounded like a woman. You can't be sure, not that it matters, but for purposes of describing the situation, I can say it was not a man, and it was not an older woman. I mean, old like me. Hmm. Do I sound like an old woman when I'm on the phone? Older, maybe. Perturbed woman, for sure. Exasperated. Morose. All those things. 

"You asked about a drive cycle?"

"Yes! Thank you for calling me back! Is that something you can do there at your dealership?"

"You really don't need us to do that, just drive around for a few days, just regular driving."

"Really, that's it?"

"Yep, just make sure the gas tank is more than half full when you take it back to DEQ."

"Wow. Okay," I said, thinking, dang it, I just got a full tank of gas the day I took it through DEQ. Now I have to drive around and burn up a bunch of gas. "Okay, thank you so much!"

I went on their website, thinking they earned the right to have my business, and I'd like to have this car checked out six ways to Sunday before I take it on a hike to Arizona. Unfortunately, their service department was booked out two weeks, and so was the other dealership's service department, so it looks like I will be using my old fallback method. That is the method that always worked well for my father. I call it the wing and a prayer. 

To burn some gas, I drove about 70 miles yesterday to meet my older brother in a Safeway parking lot in a town called Clatskanie. I handed over his inheritance, tucked in a lime green envelope. He listened to my new-to-me car and said, "Does that tapping sound ever go away?" 

Well, I think I'll probably make it to Arizona. I am hopeful. Tuesday I'll make another run at passing DEQ. Then I can start the title transfer process. New Oregon plates will arrive at my younger brother's house in approximately four months, long after I've registered the car in Arizona. 

Gnashing and grinding our pearly whites

 Hello to my six (sometimes seven) readers. You know who you are, even if I don't. Thanks for taking time. We are all busy, it's hard to keep up with my escapades when you are no doubt dealing with your own challenges. Send me a link to your blog. I promise to subscribe. Meanwhile, because you are here, let me catch you up on the progress of my move.

It seems the entire city of Portland, after a year of gnashing and grinding their pearly whites, has decided it is safe to venture a visit to their dentists, who immediately sent everyone out for tooth extractions. I guess it's a thing. My dentist is capable of taking out my infected tooth, but during the consult (no charge), she mentioned that an oral surgeon could do a bone graft in case I wanted an implant to replace the tooth. She doesn't do bone grafts, and she clearly wanted me to get an implant because that is how she makes her real money. In an idle moment, I looked at her website: cosmetic dentistry is her specialty. I get it now. All this time she's been grooming me. She took care of my mother, who ended her life with a full upper and a partial lower—my dentist probably sees dollar signs every time I smile and reveal my receding gums.

I didn't want to make her feel bad, so I listened to her sales pitch about my options, thinking to myself, lady, no offense, but there is no way I will spend $6,000 to get a tooth screwed into my head. That is how much I paid for my Ford Focus, just saying. I'd rather have a car than a fancy white tooth any day. I admit, I might have felt differently if it had been a front tooth. I pretend I don't care how I look but I don't want to give my brother a reason to call me Snaggle Puss. 

After the consult, my dentist gave me a referral to an oral surgeon and told me to tell them I'm in pain, really lay it on thick, to motivate them to get me in sooner rather than later. Accordingly, I made the call and whined to the oral surgeon's receptionist about how much pain I was in, waaahh, poor me, and she said, "I have an opening on April 23," as if appointments were a scarce asset and she was doing me a huge personal favor. Then she asked, "Are you on antibiotics?" 

"Why, no," I said.

"Oh," she said, packing a lot of meaning into one small sound. I'm great at interpreting tone of voice. She was saying you can't be in that much pain if you aren't on antibiotics and what kind of fly-by-night dentist did you see who didn't immediately prescribe antibiotics? Loser. 

I aimed a half-hearted eyeroll into my phone, in too much pain to really care. I wanted to use my own snarky tone of voice to imply who are you calling a loser, clearly you don't keep up with the latest scientific literature, which says antibiotics are only necessary for patients with heart conditions or heart valve transplants. Loser, yourself. 

Not worth the trouble. It takes precious energy to be snarky when your jaw is throbbing. After disconnecting, I called my dentist's office. Sandi always answers the phone. I think she lives there.  

"Wah, wah, wah," I said, or something similar, I forget. 

"Oh, poor thing. I'll talk to the doctor and call you tomorrow," Sandi said.

Two days and many ibuprofen later, I got a call from Sandi. "I've checked around and no one has any appointments for three weeks. I don't understand it." 

"I cannot survive three more weeks of this," I said. We made an appointment for the next day for the dentist to do the extraction. 

I was nervous, not sure why. I've had braces—four teeth were culled to make room in my tiny head for the rambunctious survivors, so I'm no stranger to extractions. However, that was a long time ago, when I was certain the universe was not out to get me. Now I know better. 

The assistant took my blood pressure with a gizmo around my wrist. Do those things work? I'm skeptical. She told me the numbers, which never make sense to me but I know any number above 130 is bad. My number was a lot higher than 130. "That is very high, isn't it?" I said. 

"Yes, it's a little high," she agreed. I looked around for a crash cart, just in case I had a heart attack during the procedure. Then I thought, what the heck. There are worse ways to go than lying in a comfy chair surrounded by nice people in masks. 

The dentist came in. The fun began. After one glance at the gigantic plunger of Novocain, I shut my eyes and didn't open them again until I was so numb I wasn't sure I had a jaw anymore. I clasped my hands in my lap in a death grip, felt the waves of vertigo ripple around my head, and hung on for dear life. Once my face fell off, I was fine. The actual extraction was a breeze. A couple yanks, and it was over. 

"Bite on this," she said. "Do you want to keep your tooth?"

Half my face managed to chuckle. 

That was Friday at noon. It is now Sunday at 9 pm. I have discovered that the only way to survive this ordeal is to take the recommended dosage of over-the-counter pain relievers. Half-doses left me sweating in agony during the night. No more of that. I only have so many tank tops. 

On the bright side, I have almost bought a car! It's big, it's white, and it's a beast! Tucson, here I come. 

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.