On someone else's memory lane

My new friend Bill at the trailer park called me on the phone. “I have something to show you. Come over sometime. But call first, okay, unless you want to scrub my back in the shower.”

Bill is eighty-two years old. I’ve learned when socializing with old folks, it’s best not to lollygag. They could die before you get around to showing up. Case in point, Bill’s wife Linda died in her sleep. Imagine waking up next to that. Anyway, if you promise to do something for an old person, and you are serious about it, do not delay.

On the day Bill called, I was at the housesit trailer cleaning up the place in anticipation of the return of the homeowner. I wanted to leave the place spic and span, whatever that means, you know, pack it in, pack it out, leave no trace. I don’t want them to realize I slept on my foam rubber mattress on the floor for four months because my back does not appreciate memory foam. I was quite comfortable, thanks for asking. I regret nothing. I consider my four months living out of boxes and bags and sleeping semi-rough to be good preparation for living in my car, should that moment ever come.

After the sun went down, I hauled the bike out of the back of my car and rode over to the clubhouse to mail some letters back to their senders. I’ll tell you the story of those letters some other time, if I remember. Here, I’ll just say that I finally got around to checking the mailbox at my new apartment. That box holds a lot of mail.

From the clubhouse, I called Walt and told him I was around if he wanted me to come over. “I can be there in two minutes.”

Two minutes later, I wobbled around the curve and found him waiting for me on his back porch, delighted to see me. “You look like you are riding more smoothly,” he said.

“Less wobbly,” I agreed. I propped the bike on its kickstand and followed him into the kitchen.

“I have something for you,” he said. He handed me a 5 x 7 color photo of me sitting on his wife’s bike in his driveway. Behind me is a tall block wall and beyond that are the tops of cactuses and trees. Starbucks is just out of view. I am wearing black pants, a white jacket, and my straw hat—my bike-riding uniform. I am smiling self-consciously at the camera. I always prefer to be the one taking the picture.

“Thanks, Bill,” I said with appropriate appreciation and enthusiasm. I assumed he had a photo printer stashed away in the bowels of his trailer, excuse me, mobile home. In one of our conversations, I referred to the homes in the park as trailers. “Trailers have hitches,” Bill had said. “These are mobile homes.”

Bill invited me into the living room. It looked the same as I remembered—altar for Linda’s ashes, comfy seating, baseball game on the big screen television. “Remember those shows I was telling you about? I have them on DVD.” Bill pulled an enormous black zippered disk holder from a cabinet. There must have been three hundred CDs in the thing. He flipped through the sections. “The truth about the war,” he said, meaning Viet Nam. “The truth about Watergate. The truth about the environment.” Most of the DVDs were labeled with the word “Frontline.”

Finally he found the disks he sought. I sat on the marshmallowy loveseat while he queued up a DVD. He stood in front of the big screen, a tall bony man with skinny legs, a slight pot belly, square shoulders, and no neck, pointing the remote at the DVD player, fast-forwarding until he got to the right part. “Here we go,” he said, grinning like an adolescent through his crooked overbite.

The video quality was poor. Someone had set a stationary camera on a table near the open area that served as a stage. In the background, people could be seen moving through a hallway to and from the restrooms. The audio was scratchy, and the images were pixelated, but I got the gist. It was a home movie, amateur documentation of a holiday event of the kind you hope you never have to see again. Bad enough you had to live through it once. Not for Bill. Bill clearly loved reliving his time in the limelight.

It was a holiday-themed party at the clubhouse at the trailer park. MoHo park, excuse me. The year was 2010. A huskier, more limber Bill came onto the stage, recognizable by his overbite and square no-neck shoulders. He was dressed in garish printed pajama pants and a snowman shirt. On his head was a wig made of long stringy black hair. He was joined by three other oddly dressed people. Two women wore tie-dyed t-shirts and the otherman man in the group wore a red plaid sport jacket that looked like it was made from a quilt. This guy introduced the group as the Grandpas and Grandmas. They proceed to lipsync to songs from the 50s and 60s, including Monday Monday, an homage to the Mamas and the Papas. Present-day Bill giggled as he watched his younger self performing. I did my best to be appreciative, although I kept an eye on the clock. It was growing dark outside and I still had to ride the bike back to my car.

“Wait, I have one more to show you,” Bill said, switching out the DVD for another. “This one is a little longer.” I settled back on the loveseat, telling myself if there is a heaven, I’ll have something nice waiting for me there, like maybe some ten percent off coupons to IKEA.

The second event was another holiday party, in the same clubhouse room, three years later. In 2013, Bill looked about the same, wearing the same ridiculous snowman shirt. His associates this year were two women (neither of which was Bill’s wife) and and a younger man. Of course, this is a fifty-five and older mobile home park, so nobody was all that young. I can hardly believe I qualify to live in this place, but whatever.

I was interested to see Bill’s wife on the video. Linda was a short, small-boned woman with narrow hips and heavy breasts. Her gray bubble of hair did not move as she clapped and bounced to the music. She stood offstage by a piano and smiled the whole time. She looked like she had a nice personality. I noticed two things. She had no sense of rhythm, and Bill largely ignored her throughout the forty-minute show.

Bill and his group performed a pantomime to bits of songs from the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. The audience was in good spirits and clapped and sang along, despite the fact that dinner had been delayed because no one had turned on the pilot light to heat up the lasagna.

The video operator was more creative this year, panning around the large crowded room. At least sixty people sat at long tables in the large meeting room, sipping beverages with a minimum of heckling. It’s a large space, with a piano and fireplace and shelves full of books. I’ve seen that room through the windows but never been inside. They’ve been remodeling during my sojurn at the moho park. I peered inside a couple times as I came by every few evenings to borrow and return paperback books at the book exchange boxes placed on the walkway outside the clubhouse door. During Covid and remodeling, the clubhouse was closed. Now the books are back inside on the shelves, and the outdoor book exchange is gone.

Bill was thrilled to have me as a captive audience to witness him relive his memories. He watched the show with obvious glee. “Here comes the good part,” he said several times, or “Let’s see if you recognize this song,” or “Did you see what I did there?” I did my best to be a good audience member, laughing in the right places, clapping once in a while, nodding, asking some relevant questions to show I was paying attention. I tried not to watch the clock, which was directly above the television screen.

I’ve met people like Bill, people who are desperate to be the center of attention, even if their moment of fame comes in a skit at a mobile home trailer park holiday party. He relished being the star. I got the impression he watched this DVD often. He knew all the lines. He echoed his words as he sat on the couch, chuckling, reliving his moments in the limelight, giving me the play-by-play of the show, explaining what was happening, like for example when the two women suddenly crouched down behind a barricade and started putting on vests and neckerchieves.

In fact, the group had props for all their songs. A lot of effort went into creating this production. The group dressed in cowboy hats and western gear to sing “Long Tall Texan.” The younger man “rode” a horsehead attached to a stick. During another number, they tossed armfuls of stuffed skunks into the audience as they sang “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”

“I was singing,” Bill told me. “I wasn’t pantomiming, I was singing. I only listened to the song three or four times to learn it.”

During the closing number, a lively Beach Boys tune, some of the audience members near the stage joined the group to dance to the music, Linda among them. She bounced on stiff knees, clapping off-beat, smiling gamely, while her husband Bill ignored her. Other than introducing her once at the start of the show, he never interacted with her, did not look at her, did not dance with her or touch her, did not stand near her when she joined the group on the stage. She might as well have been one of the props.

After the show was over, Bill motioned me to follow him toward the back of the mobile home. I followed him in sock feet along the plushly carpeted hallway as he showed me the photo gallery of Linda with the grandkids, one every Christmas until the last Christmas, when it was just the grandkids alone. Bill led me into the master bedroom, occupied by a king-sized bed and a couple dressers. I thought, if this goes sideways, I can probably take him. He’s built out of sticks. The overhead light was harsh. He pulled out some things from a dresser drawer.

“You might like to have these,” he said, holding out a navy and white machine-knitted winter scarf with tassles on both ends. “And these,” he said, holding out a plastic pack of footie socks. “And these gloves,” he said, handing me a pair of worn black wool gloves. I accepted the gifts politely, thinking oh lord, not more stuff. I put the scarf around my neck. It smelled of perfume.

Next, Bill led me into a large dressing room area. He pointed at a row of bottles and jars arrayed along a counter in front of a wall of mirrors. “Can you use any of that stuff?” I declined, claiming allergies, which is true. I do not wear cosmetics and use lotions at my peril.

Bill led me to a closet. “These?” he said, pointing to several knitted pullovers that I knew were much too small for me, even if I wore that style of clothing. I shook my head. “How about these shoes?” Bill said, pointing to a shoe caddy holding black slip-ons with low heels. I shook my head regretfully. Back in the hallway, Bill opened a cupboard. The shelves were packed with hardback books, most of which were by the psychic Sylvia Browne. Linda had been enamored with the psychic’s writing and performances. Bill offered to loan me some. I declined.

By now it was 9 pm and solid dark. I felt like I’d just missed meeting Linda, like she was just in the next room, just out of sight. I knew her clothes, I knew her smell. I did not have to ask Bill how much he missed her, even as he was jettisoning the last of her possessions. I did the same with my mother’s things before I left Portland. You can’t keep everything, and it’s better if someone else can use the stuff.

We went outside. Bill got his bike out of his shed and rode with me through the warm night air back to my car. Along the way, under a street light, I saw yet another flat lizard, pulverized into the asphalt by a car tire because it paused when it should have hustled.

Flying through the night

Bill rides a bike around the trailer park in the evening and we occasionally cross paths as I'm out walking my route. A few nights ago, we stopped and had a lengthy conversation about the weather, whether it would rain, what monsoon means, and the phenomenon known as virga. 

The next evening we crossed paths again. Bill told me his wife had died last year and asked me if I would like to have her bicycle. I said yes. He told me the number of his mobile home, and two nights ago, I set out walking in that direction, despite ominous clouds and light sprinkles. I'm an Oregonian—I'm not afraid of rain, even the downpours we have here in Tucson. I marched up the middle of the asphalt road, intent on my destination. I almost didn't see the woman standing on the edge of her gravel lawn waving at me in the deepening twilight.

"You might not want to go that way."

I stopped. She was brown-haired, perhaps somewhat younger than me, who can tell, everyone in Tucson looks ageless to me. She wore a big t-shirt and loose pants. 

"Why, what's going on?" I asked.

"There's two javelinas up there walking around."

I wanted to say javelinas, I'm not afraid of two javelinas, but I didn't want to offend. At that point, the sprinkles intensified. Not quite drops yet. We both looked at the clouds and continued our conversation. 

"I've seen one javelina around," I said. "She seems pretty shy."

"They usually run in packs," she said. "They can be nasty, especially if there are babies around. Oh boy, looks like it might start pouring!"

"That's okay. I'm staying just over there, on the other side of the wash."

"Do you want a ride back home?"

I was thinking, who is this troll blocking my way? My destination was close but the rain was coming down harder. I had the feeling I just needed to back off. I was more leery of her than I was of two javelinas. To keep walking forward toward danger after her obvious warning seemed rude, so I turned around and retraced my steps. I walked around the park in circles, waiting for the rain, which didn't arrive until much later in the night, disrupting my sleep by pounding on the metal awnings. 

Last night, the sky was clear. I tried again. The troll was nowhere in sight as I marched up the street past her place. As I came around the corner, there was Bill on his bike coming toward me. I waved. 

Bill is a thin rangy sunbaked man with bad teeth, glasses, and shaky hands. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a beige polo shirt, tan cargo shorts, knee-high socks, and well-worn white sneakers. 

"Come inside, I have something to give you," he said. "Besides the bike."

"Oh, I don't know, with Covid, is that such a good idea, to let a stranger into your home?" I said, standing on his back steps 

"Just for a minute."

He obviously didn't care about Covid. I didn't have my mask with me. I've had my shots. I assume he got his too. The likelihood of us transmitting Covid to each other was probably small. I followed him through his kitchen door, admiring his shiny beige compression socks as he went up the steps. 

"It's all original," he said, pointing proudly to the counters and cupboards. "The floor too." I nodded in appreciation, noting the1970s beige linoleum squares and pale green and white swirl Formica countertops. "My daughter-in-law painted that part," Bill said, pointing to a strip of blood red wall running around the room above the white cupboards. I admired the breakfast bar with its pale swirly Formica surface. "Psychedelic," he grinned.

He led me into the dining room, which was carpeted in plush beige shag. I took off my shoes and left them on the kitchen floor. He told me the story of his dark brown oak dining room table (oak grown in the U.S., shipped to the Netherlands to be made into a dining set, and then shipped back to the U.S.).  Next, we toured the living room. Three big overstuffed pieces of furniture occupied half the space, arranged around a coffee table. The base of the table was wrought iron, and the top was made from squares of desert-colored cut rock. "It took two guys to get that thing in here," Bill said proudly. 

A large dark wood entertainment center dominated the wall opposite the longest sofa. Bill pulled out doors and opened cupboards to display his collection of DVDs and CDs. He asked me what kind of music I like. I mentioned 1980s new wave dance music. I wonder if he's heard of New Order or David Bowie. 

"You'll like this, then," he said, handing me a stack of CDs with hand-written labels. He'd compiled his favorite songs onto CDs. I lifted my glasses so I could read the songs. "Air Supply," I murmured. "Okay." 

"You take those and listen to them." 

I dutifully accepted a small stack of CDs and held them carefully as he led me over to a table against the wall. The table was covered end to end with sympathy cards. In the center of the table was a wooden box with an engraved tree on the front. I read the inscription about losing a limb from the family tree. Bill started to read it and choked up. I finished reading it for him. 

"Everyone here loved her so much," he said. "She was the nicest person you could ever hope to meet."

I did my best to be a good listener. When it was time to go, Bill put the CDs in a plastic bag along with an extra inner tube for the bike tires. I slipped my shoes back on and followed him out to the carport. He got a little bike out of a shed and wheeled it to me. It was a sturdy girl's bike with tall handle bars, no gears, and old-fashioned foot brakes, a lot like the bikes I rode as a child. I got onboard. 

"You have changed my life today, Bill," I said, thinking about the rides I could take on the bike path and around the mobile home park. He grinned. 

"I hope I remember how to do this," I said. I hung the plastic bag on the handlebar and off I went into the darkness. 

I rode back to the trailer, reveling in the warm darkness. When I pulled up next to my car, I heard a voice.

"I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."

I knew right away who it was. I turned and saw Bill on his bike. 

When javelinas fly

I came face-to-face with a rotund javelina a few nights ago. I think it might be one lonely female who wanders the trailer park nibbling on weeds. She moves slowly. I don't think I could call it a saunter, after getting a better look at her. I think she's moping. She is always alone, and javelina normally travel in packs. I think she's lost her family.

Her preferred weeds might soon be gone too. A man in boots carrying a two-gallon jug of some liquid I suspect I would not want to get on my hands came around a couple days ago. I am guessing it was a man. All I saw were hairy legs and large shoes. 

I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of my laptop reading the online news in order to avoid preparing for my Zoom class when I heard a strange rhythmic groaning sound outside. Through the window blinds, I saw a pair of hairy legs and booted feet walking on the rocks between the trailers. Every few moments, the boots would stop. One human hand holding a spray wand would appear and shoot a clear liquid onto patches of green weeds that had enthusiastically emerged after the first rains. Every now and then, the other hand would appear and push a plunger into the jug to prime the pump on the sprayer. That priming motion was the source of the noise. After jamming the plunger a few times, the spray wand was ready to attack more little green weeds. I never saw the man's face; however, I noticed he was not wearing gloves. Or long pants. And it was mid-day, easily 105°F. Wouldn't want that guy's job.

A few days later, the green weeds are looking peaked, but that could be because we haven't had rain for a week or so. Or it could be because they were murdered with herbicide. 

Speaking of murder, on Thursday, after two long months of wanting to strangle the leasing staff at the apartment that supposedly had approved me to rent, I finally signed the lease. A link to the lease agreement had arrived in my email inbox on Tuesday. The lease agreement email came from a no-reply email address, not a strong signifier of good faith. Luckily, another email arrived from an email address I could reply to, telling me about an option to get renters' insurance. I quickly saved that email address into my contacts list.

I went through the lease's many pages and addenda, jotting a list of my questions. The main problems I saw had to do with the lack of specificity about the unit I would be renting and how the electricity charges would be calculated. Signing a lease without knowing which unit I was renting seemed wildly risky, similar to packing everything you own in a minivan and driving 1,500 miles to an unfamiliar city. I certainly didn't want to rent one of the units that fronted on the busy street. I practiced deep breathing. I was ready to accept the possibility that these two months of waiting might have been for naught. 

I called the leasing office and left a message. No response. I sent a message to the legitimate email address with my list of questions. No response.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I visited the property management company website to find contact information and sent a polite email. Their website touted their fantastic customer-centric service, and proclaimed their desire to build relationships with tenants and property owners (probably more with property owners than with tenants, but I admired their inclusivity). Welcome home, they said. You belong here! Right. They manage many properties throughout Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. I'm a marketing professional (sort of, sometimes). I know how it works. 

Because they recently took over managing this apartment complex, I had hopes. Almost immediately, I received a response. Miracle! We will forward your email to the leasing staff. Oh, and what are your questions, maybe we can help. Even though the email was not signed, I was heartened to receive a response from what I'm mostly certain was a live human.

I tidied up my list of laments, sent it off, and waited. No response. I wondered, are my expectations out of line? Marketing is all about communication. I know how it should work. I can recognize when it doesn't.

It occurred me to call the leasing agent again to leave yet another message. Maybe the property management company had succeeded in lighting a fire. Miracle! She answered the phone! The first time in two months, a real person answered the phone! I know it sounds silly, but I'd forgotten how low my expectations had fallen. I was so excited, I could barely speak. I stumbled through my questions, and she gave me acceptable answers! I asked if I could come and see the unit before I signed the lease. Twenty minutes later I had parked my beast outside the leasing office and met the leasing agent for the first time. I felt like I was in the presence of a unicorn. I wore my face mask (she did not), and I treaded softly, not wanting to scare her back into the jungle. After some tries, she found the proper key and opened the door into what I think will be my digs for the next year.

Even though I'm basically moving into a motel with a kitchenette, I signed the lease. The next day, I drove over there to get the keys. I was told I needed to procure a money order first. Would have been nice to know that first, but oh well. Off I went to get a money order, and returned, money order in hand. The hoop appears. I jump through. 

Upon receiving the keys, I inspected the apartment (can you really call it an apartment, maybe postage stamp would be a better descriptor). I took lots of photos and made a list of issues. Compared to the Love Shack, this new place is clean and dry and free of mold. It's got a tub. It's got a full-size refrigerator and a Barbie-size four-burner stove that might accommodate one loaf of bread, not that I plan to do any baking. It has a walk-partway-in closet. The floors throughout are gray woodgrain vinyl planks—not hardwood, but I've seen worse. At least, the kitchen floor isn't a black and white checkerboard of poorly adhered, chipping, paint-stained linoleum tiles. The walls are off white textured, no holes allowed. Perfect Zoom background. It's going to be fine. 

I just returned from my evening walk around the trailer park. I met the usual residents. For some reason, their tiny dogs decided not to bark at me. I discovered why, I think, thirty seconds later. As I came around the corner, the man in their dog-walking party appeared and said, "There's a javelina crossing the street down there. William in 65 feeds it."

Well, how about that. I'm sure now one sad lonely overweight female javelina wanders the park. We make our rounds at about the same time, just as the sun is setting. I'm walking to keep my blood pressure down, and she's walking to get handouts, which no doubt keep her from getting depressed. As I went along the street, I kept my eyes peeled, and there she was. I was a good hundred feet away. We had a standoff for a minute. She wanted to get past me, and I wanted to get past her. I went across to the other side of the road and walked very slowly toward her, trying to video the interaction with my phone. There was no interaction, really. She skulked along from driveway to driveway, trying to get past. She could smell me but not see me all that well. She tried to hide behind a bush that didn't have enough room to hide her. She seemed shy, morose, and not inclined to linger or nibble, so I went on my way.

Is anything really new?

Howdy Blogbots. How are you doing? Have you ever wondered how time can seem as slow as summer and yet also be as fast as a flash flood? Time is clearly malleable (but not by me). I know I get the same twenty-four hours every day, not more some days and less other days. I know it's my perception that shifts. It's like my assumption that I stand at the center of the universe and everything revolves around me. It's erroneous, I know, but darn hard to shake.

So, time. I'm waiting to move into an apartment. It's been a long two months, waiting. Somehow, though, I still wake up every day and say out loud, what the heck, how can it be another morning? Seems like we just had one yesterday. What gives?

Part of me thinks, this better be one hell of a great apartment, considering how difficult it has been to wrangle it into being. I'm past the point of frustration and headed into the great hilarity beyond. Can this be happening? This can't possibly be happening. Yet, it seems to be happening. What a joke. Har har. 

Speaking of getting bored with the same old, one word for you:  sunsets. At first I was entranced with the Tucson sunsets. I photographed them endlessly and sent sunset-of-the-day photos to my siblings and friends, who responded with polite appreciation. After a while, I realized I might as well have sent them the same image every day, because every sunset looked just as amazing as the last. I hate to admit it, but seen one, seen all. 

Same with flash floods and the rushing Rillito River. I could hardly believe my eyes the first time I saw that tree-lined dry riverbed flowing bank-to-bank with muddy brown water. I filled up my phone with a gallery of photos and sent some to my siblings and friends, who were equally amazed that a rushing river could suddenly appear out of nowhere in a dry desert town. 

Not so dry. The wettest July on record, I guess, given that we've had thunderstorms and torrential downpours almost every day for the past month. At first I was leery of opening the front door. The wind howled and lashed the trees. The rain pounded on the metal awnings. The energy was overwhelming. The second time, I ventured down the steps. The third time I took my phone out into it and tried to capture the lightning without getting killed. Now I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and groggily think, oh hey, is that another thunderstorm as the thunder crashes overhead and the rain hammers the roof. Ho hum. I bet the Rillito is full. Cool. Maybe I'll check it out later. Or not.

My first sighting of a javelina got my heartrate going. It was dark when I saw a mysterious shadow crunching in the gravel next to the neighbor's little red Toyota. I was properly astounded when I recognized the porcine silhouette. My second sighting occurred a couple evenings ago as the sun was setting in yet another glorious display. I was about ten minutes into my hike around the trailer park when a fat brown peccary sauntered across the road barely ten yards in front of me. I froze, wondering if I could outrun the creature if it happened to point its tusks at me. My hesitation delayed my second thought, which was, phone, get my phone! It took me long precious seconds to dig my phone out of my pocket so I ended up photographing the javelina's porky brown hind end as it moseyed between trailers toward the dry wash out back. 

I enlarged the photo and put a red circle around the hind end so you could maybe just discern the dark hind end of the javelina from the dark shrubbery around it. I sent the photo to my family. My sister responded with gratifying amazement and a little bit of concern for my safety, which is always nice to hear. Then she asked me when am I moving, again? thus reminding me that I perhaps have better things to do than photoshopping red circles around the butt of a javelina. 

I've (metaphorically) jumped off a cliff into a new city and here I am, frozen in midair, not know if or when or how I'm going to stick the landing. I'm repeatedly bombarded by novelty. After a while, I have to wonder, is there anything new under the sun? Now I find my amazement in realizing I'm on my way to becoming jaded by fantastical Tucson. Wake up! New day, new sunset, new critters to admire. The sun is going down. No thunderstorms on tap to boil up and rush down the mountains at me. Time to go see what's outside.

 

Life in the trailer park shadows

 

Howdy, Blogbots, all seven of you. How is it going? It's Sunday again. I don't have much to report on the Occupy an Apartment front. I'm still waiting for more data before I initiate Operation Freakout. Meanwhile, I take each day as it comes. Daily, it seems, I'm gobsmacked by some new Tucson experience. 

Last week I mentioned I saw a tarantula crossing the road. (There's a joke there somewhere, see if you can find it.) Two nights ago, around midnight, I had the front door open to entice cooler air into the trailer after a heavy downpour. I heard footsteps crunching in the gravel outside. I thought, who would be out on the gravel at this time of night? Some creepy neighbor, perhaps? I peered out the window and saw a shadowy creature moving between the trailers. Hmm, I thought, is that a dog? As the animal moved slowly across the path by the front porch, I saw the unmistakable outline of a javelina strolling next to the neighbor's carport. 

This monsoon is apparently already one for the record books. We have received over five inches of rain since June 15; monsoon officially ends September 30. These almost-daily thunderstorms are unsettling. As long as the metal roofs and awnings hold, we'll be okay, but the clamor of wind, rain, and thunder is deafening. I keep dreaming a freight train is coming through the living room. 

Up till now, I've learned to keep the blinds drawn to ward off the desert sun. My mole-like eyes are adapting to life in gloomy shadows. Today's gloom, however, was because of an enormous rain cloud sitting over much of southern Arizona. This cloud emitted a purposeful drenching downpour from a pure white sky. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I'm used to that sort of sky. It's the kind of sky that makes you think, Wow, the mothership is squatting over me, dumping buckets with no end in sight—guess I'll stay indoors today. I have the local NWS radar bookmarked in my browser. I check it more often than I check email. Today, on the radar, a huge solid splat of green obliterated Tucson. There it sat, for hours. 

The desert mantra is turnaround, don't drown. Some roads in outlying areas cross normally dry washes. During and after rainstorms, those washes fill up with fast-moving water, which flows through various channels toward the Rillito River, which flows west to the Santa Cruz River. Almost the entire state of Arizona has been under a flash flood warning for a few days. After particularly violent storms, my phone lights up with obnoxious emergency alerts, day or night.

This morning I checked the radar and during a lull, I walked over to see how the Rillito River was doing. Meaning, how much water was flowing along its wide tree-filled channel. I saw more water than I did the last time I looked a couple days ago but not close to full. The sound of the rushing water was eerie, though. The water is the color of milk chocolate, that cruddy stuff you eat only if you can't get ahold of any 85%+ cacao. Medicinal chocolate, yum. I don't buy chocolate of any kind, because I can't eat only one square—I'm an all-or-nothing kind of chocolate eater.

Anyway, the floodwater is an unappetizing brown, but that's not the memorable part. That water moves fast. It is not fooling around. It would transport you into the next county before you could catch a breath. It would probably take your car too, if you were stupid enough to drive through one of those washes. Which apparently drivers do quite frequently. I saw it happen in Oregon, too. There's some sort of magnetic attraction between Jeeps and mudpuddles. I once saw two teen girls weeping in a Jeep that they had managed to mire in a mudpuddle to the top of their big-ass off-road wheels. I'm guessing the hankering to drive your vehicle through fast-moving floodwater is probably similar to a jaywalking compulsion. Sometimes you just gotta do it.

Back to my nocturnal visitor. I read up on javelinas and learned that they tend to travel in small packs. The one I saw seemed to be alone, although in the dark, I could not be sure. It crossed in front of the trailer. I grabbed my little flashlight and stepped warily out onto the side deck, keeping close to the back door in case the critter should decide to mince up the steps on its cloven hooves and come at me with its tusks. 

That desert creature couldn't have cared less about me. It was busy nibbling on little succulents and green weeds that have sprung up in the gravel. I remembered reading that javelinas have a keen sense of smell but their eyesight is poor. I shone the flashlight on it and saw small red eyes peer in my direction. I was clearly of no interest whatsoever. I got the feeling I had perhaps met the real manager of the trailer park.

 

Stuff in the here and now

Welcome to monsoon. At any moment the sky can rip apart and dump buckets of rain on your head. You walk along the road toward a lovely pink and orange sunset, basking in the soft desert air. Don't look over your shoulder, though, because an enormous soggy gray cloud is sneaking up behind you. 

A couple nights ago, I went out for a walk around the trailer park. I've got a route now, thirty minutes of mindless walking. At the point furthest from the trailer, the deluge began. Raindrops are big as plates here. I was drenched in short order and slogged back to the trailer with my cotton knit (pajama) pants clinging like saran wrap to my thighs. Plus, it was almost cold. I'm not used to being cold anymore. It was shocking to shiver. 

The night before the rain storm I met a tarantula crossing the road. It did not speed up or slow down. I watched it move at a measured pace. I wondered what I would do if a car approached. A few yards away I saw what was left of a lizard that hadn't been quite fast enough, flattened on the asphalt with its little claws frozen in a permanent oh hell no pose. It would have made a nice addition to my pressed lizard collection, had I such a thing, which I don't.

I met a trailer park neighbor on the bike path. We were both peering over the edge into the Rillito River after a downpour, trying to see if the river had water. We couldn't see any where we were on the bike path next to Sam's Club. Later I discovered if we'd walked about twenty paces to the east, we would have seen that indeed, the Rillito River was alive with flowing water. Sally is a ceramicist who recently had a falling out with some hoity-toity gallery owners and is taking a break from making art. Southwestern ceramics sell well here, she said. Anything Southwestern sells well, I'm coming to realize. For example, the artist I met who lives out in the desert apparently sells quite a few drawings of round-faced indigenous children dressed in native costumes . . . for some reason, those images appeal to tourists. Why is that? No idea. As if kids on reservations don't wear sneakers. Whatever. Anyway, if I want to make money making art, I better learn to draw saguaros and maybe tarantulas.

Yesterday I visited my possessions at the storage unit. I was looking for my APA manual. I couldn't find it. It's in a box or bag, somewhere in that dark closet. Boxes are stacked ten high. There is no room to maneuver, open boxes, and see what is inside. Finding anything on purpose is impossible. Finding things at random is the only viable strategy, not that useful when I'm looking for something specific. I ended up buying an electronic version of the book when I returned to my laptop. I won't miss the print version. 

What really got me was seeing my stuff. Seeing all the boxes with their optimistic hand-lettered labels: paper, paper, paper. I saw like five boxes labeled paper. What the heck, Carol? Looks as if I paid a fortune to ship a bunch of paper to Tucson. Clearly I was not in my right mind during those last few weeks in Portland. 

I've heard people say it's okay to look back at the past. Just don't stare. I don't regret my move to Tucson. I certainly don't want to stare at my past. I just miss my stuff. I know it's silly. I don't have much stuff, and none of it is important. But it's all I have left of my previous creative life. I don't know who I am without my stuff. I feel ridiculous saying it. I see the news. Many people around the world don't have stuff. A lot of people recently lost a lot of stuff, including people they love. 

I've heard people say suffering is optional. Maybe it is true I have a choice about how much I miss my stuff. Maybe I can decide what meaning my stuff has for me. Stuff is impermanent, I am temporary, and life can only be lived in the here and now. All that may be true. I don't know. I still hope to be reunited with my stuff someday before I get dementia and forget where I stored it.  

Still homesick for something

It's been six months since my mother died. After her death, I was busy helping my family wrap up the estate. Then I was immersed in the process of buying a car, packing and shipping my stuff, and driving to Tucson. Then I got busy finding a place to live. For the past two months in Tucson, I've been rolling with the weather, from warm to hot to blazing, and then to wind, rain, and thunder. I guess I could pat myself on the back for being in the moment, but at some point, don't we have to stop and reflect?

I spent the last five years of my life drawing inward toward my mother in a tightening orbit. Now she's gone. It's as if someone moved the sun. Like, there I was trotting around her, fetching, carrying, singing, showing up for whatever her moment looked like, and suddenly, there's nothing in the center anymore. It's just blank space.

You might be thinking, well, Carol, you didn't have to lose yourself so completely in her life that you lost your own. Nobody asked you to do that. It certainly wasn't on the daughter-duty list. Do I sound like I'm complaining? I think I'm reflecting. I woke up this morning and realized I'm orbiting a black hole. It's an unsettling realization but sooner or later, necessary.

I store an image in my mind of my dead mother lying in the ER bed, eyes shut, mouth just a little open. In that image, to me, it's not really my mother lying there dead, it's an unpainted papier-mâché sculpture of my mother. That's because this fake pale mother has no teeth. Her dentures are in a plastic bag on the counter. That means her face is sunken and misshapen, like the balloon inside popped and the newspaper strips are sagging with gravity. It isn't my mother's face at all. Not the mom I used to visit and talk with and sing with. Some cartoon body with a blanket pulled up to its chin. Nothing to fret about, nothing to miss. 

I talk to her every now and then while I'm stuck in stasis (indoors in the heat and monsoon) waiting for my new home to appear. Ma, I say. Sometimes that's all I say. Ma. Ma. Ma. I sound like one of those kids that frazzled mothers drag around grocery store aisles. You see them yanking on their mothers' jackets and demanding candy. Ma! Chocolate! Ma! Pay attention to me. 

I miss what she used to be, not what she became. I would not want her back. She would not want to be back. Likewise, I don't miss Portland but I'm not home yet in Arizona. I don't know where I belong, or if I ever belonged anywhere. When I think of "home," no place comes to mind, no place I can say, yeah, that place, now that place was home. Home for me has always been about people. I always came or went because of people. Now I'm alone and I have to put myself in the center of my orbit if I want to create my next home. Conceptually I know how to do that but I'm not feeling it yet in my body or soul.

Monsoon stampede creative vertigo head mess

I'm working on my second novel. What else is there to do when it's 110°F outside, I don't have a television, and moving day isn't until August? I'm a writing machine. Who cares if it is any good? The goal is to amass words into an irresistible mass of persuasion, otherwise known as a story.

In a coincidental instance of life imitating art, a couple days ago, I wrote a scene of about a small herd of escaped cows. That same evening, I saw on the news that a herd of cows had escaped from a slaughterhouse and were rampaging through a California neighborhood. My cows were not escaping from a slaughterhouse, they were escaping from a movie set in the hills above Malibu. However, any story about cows running amok in a city neighborhood makes a fun story. I watched the online video to see what a herd of forty cows looks like. I originally wrote thirty cows into my herd but I changed the number to forty. If you need a herd of stampeding cows, forty is the minimum, in my opinion.

I run my errands on Mondays before it gets too hot. On my way to the grocery store this week, I stopped to get gas. I always feel my heart rate go up when it's time to get gas. For one thing, my beast of a car takes a lot of gas, compared to my old Ford Focus. For another thing, here in Arizona, we pump our own gas. I haven't had to pump my own gas in over twenty years. Now they have gas pumps that are computerized. They even talk to you. I don't do a lot of driving so every time I have to pump my own gas, I have to relearn how to do it. This time, the pump screen was showing a news program. How long do they expect me to be standing there? I mean, the thing holds a lot of gasoline, but it's not the Queen Mary, for heaven's sake.

There I was pumping my gas, watching the ticker tick higher and higher, sucking money out of my bank account, when I saw a driver in a sporty white car drive away with the gas nozzle still in his gas tank. He was oblivious. I was like, uh, hey? He had his music turned up and didn't hear my plaintive little voice. And being an older white woman, I already know that I am invisible. 

He took off down the street with the nozzle dragging on the pavement behind him. I was concerned about the gas pump. I went over to look at it. Nothing seemed to be leaking. I finished pumping and paying for my gas and locked my car and went inside to see if the guy at the counter knew that someone had driven off with one of his gas nozzles. He looked at me like I was crazy. I thought I might have been invisible to him too, but finally he understood my pantomime. English was not his first language; I'm not sure what was. My first language is always self-conscious self-deprecation. Still, we managed to communicate, even with masks. He came outside and stood there looking around. Then we both laughed and shrugged our shoulders. 

I wonder what that driver thought when he realized that banging sound was him dragging a gas pump nozzle after his car. Maybe he didn't realize it until he pulled up into his driveway. Oopsy. I wonder if he came back to make amends. I guess drivers drive off with nozzles frequently. Gas stations have breakaway gas nozzles because drivers are stupid sometimes. I'm sure it will happen to me someday. 

It's hot here, but hotter in Portland where I moved from two months ago. Instead of my brother listening to my hour-by-hour announcements (now it's 107F!), I'm listening to his. Looks like today topped out at 112°F where he lives. Tomorrow could be worse. Welcome to the hot new world. We broke it, now we will have to wallow in it while we whine about how it wasn't our fault. 

Monsoon is here. That means the summer wind direction in the desert has shifted. In the evenings, wind comes rampaging up from the south. Sometimes it brings thunderstorms and torrential rain. The sprinkle of rain we had last week was just enough to sluice off the back end of my car. I helped it along with a yogurt container of water. No soap, I just wiped the dust off. As I mopped the dead bugs off the front, I said a prayer that the metal awnings covering the carports in this trailer park are all securely battened down. Awnings that come loose and go flying create bad hair days. 

My writing isn't great today. Vertigo is clawing up the inside of my head. I am pretty sure it's because of the vacillating air pressure; the readings are yawing up and down the barometer as storm systems ride across the land. The little ear crystals in my inner ears apparently want to ride along with them. Yee-haw. I feel like I'm galloping on horseback most of the time. Vertigo makes it hard to think. The waves in my head slow me down some—I have to do some acrobatics sometimes to get things to settle. Still, vertigo doesn't stop me. It's been six years, after all. I just keep writing. 

The myth of attracting what we fear

It seems kind of charming that all I had to complain about last week was the neighbor's wind chimes. I've heard people say what we resist persists. I've heard others say, what we fear will come to pass—in other words, we attract or even create what we fear. Are we really that powerful? 

I whined about how it was really hot in Tucson. I whimpered about how terrible it would be without air conditioning. Meanwhile, the washing machine in the backyard was pumping out cold air at regular intervals, doing its job so I could keep complaining. It's so easy to complain about fearing the bad thing when the bad thing hasn't happened yet. 

Well, the bad thing happened. Last Tuesday afternoon, the machine in the backyard, after being on all day, said, nope, no more, had enough, done compressing, need a break, tough luck, stupid human, you are on your own. That is what I imagined the machine would have said, but there I go anthropomorphizing again. It's a bad habit that is just getting worse the further to the left I move on the continuum between fiction and academic writing. 

The machine was still roaring, but cold air was no longer pumping out of the vent. The air, in fact, was warm and getting warmer. I quickly shut the system off and texted the homeowners. We got busy arranging a remedy. The soonest we could get service, turns out, was going to be Thursday afternoon. 

Blogbots, did I attract my worst fear by focusing on it? No, Carol, (I hope you are saying), you are not powerful enough to create a situation in which air conditioners are more likely to break. After a day of 114°F under a brutal sun, it should not be a huge surprise that air conditioners quit. Case in point, the two-day wait for service. No, I don't think I affected the climate, the weather, or the air conditioner by misplaced projections of fear. 

Like most humans, my life is ruled by fear. Sometime we fear things unreasonably, but we are alive today because our ancestors listened to their fears. I haven't been making animal sacrifices to appease the gods like some of my ancestors probably did (would that help, I wonder?), but like any modern creature living in a dark burrow (AKA a mobile home trailer), I have been doing my best to hunker down and ride out the heat wave. Unfortunately (for me), I won the reverse lottery and spent two days learning about my ability to survive extreme heat. 

As the temperature climbed, I made the mistake of contacting family and friends for empathy. Everyone immediately came unglued. My sister recommended I sit at the mall all day. Her husband suggested Starbucks. My friend in Marana wasn't home but was willing to turn her life into a pretzel to get me a key to her house. My other Arizona friend suggested I hop in my melting car and drive two hours in blazing sun through barren baking desert to get to her house in Phoenix, where the temperature was two degrees hotter than in Tucson.

The homeowners, obviously, expected me to stay and let the service technician in when he/she finally showed up. Thus, they could not tell me to bail, although I'm sure they would have understood. I got the feeling they weren't entirely sure what would happen to me, but no doubt they feared coming home to a slag heap where their trailer once stood. Nobody said, don't worry, Carol, you can do this. Honestly, I wasn't sure I could. But I wasn't sure that I couldn't, and therein lay the source of my secret power. Like the proverbial frog in a pot of tepid water, I didn't recognize the moment when the water started boiling, and by the time the water started boiling, I had figured out a way to survive.

People, it's all about evaporative cooling. I turned myself into a walking swamp cooler. I had only one towel, but I had a dozen tank tops in my bag of clothes. I quickly covered my head with a wet tank top and felt much better. Next I draped wet tank tops on my shoulders and upper arms. By the second day, I discovered I could drench my cotton knit cardigan in water, wring it out, and yank it on (not as easy to do when wet as when dry, try it). With a stylish wet cardigan, a dripping turban, and damp tank tops wrapped around my feet inside my Adidas slip-on sandals, I learned I could endure the heat.

The electronic gadgets in the trailer weren't so fortunate. On Wednesday morning, the modem stuttered during the middle of my Zoom presentation and knocked me offline. It regained its senses immediately, but my laptop balked at rebooting, so I lost a good twenty minutes trying to get things restarted and reminding myself that just staying alive in a trailer with no AC was a significant victory. The Zoom admin covered for me while I was offline, and when I reentered the Zoom room, it was obvious my presence was not missed. Go figure.

I was a bit concerned about sleeping in such high temperatures. At night the temperature outside dropped to about 87°F but it was hard to get that cooler air into the house. One of my friends suggested I sleep wrapped in a wet sheet. I was not willing to get water all over everything. I slept with the front door open and the screen door locked. Wrapping my head and feet in wet tank tops and sleeping with two ice packs stuffed into Mom's white sweat socks did the trick quite nicely. 

I was afraid my family members would not believe me so I took regular photos of the indoor temperature gauge. The highest indoor reading I recorded was 108°F. That was Wednesday evening. The outdoor temperature was approximately five degrees higher at that point. As soon as the outdoor temperature and the indoor temperature were about the same, I opened all the doors and windows to let the hot air blow through. 

Don't forget, I did not lose electricity. The ceiling fans were still patiently spinning. Without the movement of air indoors, I would probably have had to vacate. I'm not a total frog.

When the AC technician arrived around 2:30 on Thursday afternoon, I was feeling rather pleased with myself. It was only about 105°F, inside and out, no problem, so the doors and windows were open, admitting a blistering breeze. I greeted him with wet tank tops on my head and feet. All my tank tops are white—or were white when I bought them—so I probably looked like a dripping mummy not recently risen from the tomb. That is to say, I probably looked like I'd been dragging around some bandages for a while. The technician smiled at my appearance. I didn't care. I'm sure he's seen it all.

He tied a brimmed camouflage hat on his head and got to work. I watched him from the bathroom window, fulfilling my fiduciary responsibility to be a good house-sitter and make sure he wasn't ripping us off. I could see he worked from muscle memory. He'd done this job a thousand times. Job security, I was thinking. He's got it made. Unscrew these bolts, take off this panel, check here with the gizmo, unhook this little silver can thing, screw on a new silver can thing, put it all back together. 

As he worked, he yelled at someone on his phone in Spanish. Sometimes he had video on, so I could see a woman's face yelling back. I forget her name, even though he said it over and over. I have terrible audio memory, even for English words. Plus, my Spanish isn't great, despite a year of Duolingo lessons, but I certainly understood when he said esto es un problema, otra vez, otra vez, y otra vez. They were both frustrated and kept hanging up on each other, or the call kept getting dropped, I don't know which. When I realized it was a personal call, I stopped trying to translate the Spanish and let him do his work unobserved. I mean, really. Sometimes you just have to trust the Universe.

The homeowners kindly arranged payment over the phone. Within a few hours after the technician's departure, the air was back down to a balmy 85°F, my sweet spot. The electronic gear seemed to be back to a reasonable temperature—that is to say, not sizzling to the touch. I hung my wet clothes in the bathroom, and they were dry in twenty minutes. 

I've spent the last two days appreciating temperate indoor temperatures while I write my novel. After dark, I wander around the trailer park in the bone-baking heat, carrying a bottle of cold water and marveling at the sky. 

The journey continues. 

Chime in when ready

 A wall of heat descended on Southern Arizona, and now we are baking inside an oven. As hot as it is, though, it's not as hot as being in a sauna. I looked it up. Whenever I feel like whining, I just remember (a) nobody cares, and (b) I've been in a sauna and I survived. I have my jug of ice water. I'm doing fine. I've rarely been so aware, however, that heat can kill a human very quickly. I think I'll be okay going from the grocery store to my car, but I guess we will find out. Tomorrow is shopping day. 

I've been going outside a few times a day to experience hell. This is the Hellish Handbasket, after all. Just doing a little research. During one of my excursions, I heard some activity next door. The neighbors were apparently hanging another wind chime on the edge of their carport. I'm not sure what their wind chime strategy is, or even if they have one. Probably they made the mistake of telling their family and friends that they liked wind chimes, and now that's all they get for birthdays, anniversaries, and Father's Day. Like when my mom said she liked frogs and ended up with fifty frogs of various sizes, shapes, and materials. Be careful what you ask for. Your remaining family members will have to dispose of all that crap after you are gone.

Anyway, wind chimes. It's breezy here in Tucson, which makes the heat somewhat more tolerable, at least after the sun goes down. The trailer next door has about ten wind chimes hanging on the edge of the front porch and several more dangling from the edge of the carport. Most of the wind chimes seem to be made out of different kinds of metal. You know the kind I'm talking about. They sound like your cell phone is ringing, and you can just barely hear them over the roar of the air conditioner, which means you are constantly checking your phone. The new ones that I believe were added today are made of dangly lozenges of wood, so the sound is somewhat less melodious, more like a dozen wooden coasters banging around in a dryer. 

Last night, to accompany the wind chimes, the guys who drive in circles in the Sam's Club parking lot just over the fence were back doing their stop-start-screech-vroom shenanigans. I'm sure it is a lot more fun than it sounds. What could be more fun than locking brakes and burning rubber in a large parking lot? Well, doing it on ice, but there isn't much of that here this time of year, and I'm sure they figure, well, this big open space ought to be put to good use during off hours, so I'm just going to drive in circles at a fast clip and then slam on the brakes at 2:00 a.m. That ought to give those over-55 oldsters in the trailer park some interesting dreams. 

Speaking of dreams, I dream of the day when my sixty-fifth birthday has come and gone and I've made my Medicare choices. Maybe then I will stop seeing sponsored ads on Facebook from companies warning me not to screw this up. I'm irked that they are taking up space in my feed. I would prefer to watch video of tortoises going down slides. I'm tired of videos of animal rescues. They always turn out well. I don't know why I didn't realize that. Duh. I should have known they wouldn't post videos of animal stories that didn't turn out well. Whoa, maybe they do. I guess the only thing protecting me is clicking like on the tortoise video every time it comes up. Yesterday I watched a video of a man edging and mowing a lawn for almost thirty minutes. I hate Facebook.

The doves are less vocal on these warm mornings. A few days ago, it sounded like their admonition to hang up and drive had turned into hip hip hooray. Maybe they were cheering for the president's trip to Europe, I don't know. I'm not really following politics anymore. It's so boring. 

Now that I'm a prisoner of the desert heat, my world has shrunk to the size of a dot on Google Maps. The most excitement I have these days is when vehicles go by. This trailer is on a cul-de-sac, so it's a big deal. For example, I notice when an Amazon Prime truck pulls into the turnaround. I love it when the Sparkletts truck arrives. You have to admire the confidence of a driver who floors it in reverse all the way down the street. Delivering delicious water to thirsty oldsters is clearly something this driver takes seriously. The mail carrier seems much more laid back, buzzing lazily in a little white truck from mailbox to mailbox, like a bee delivering pollen. I hope the AC is going full blast while the driver leans out the window to put junk mail in our mailbox. Our taxpayer dollars going to good use. 

The AC just settled into silence. It will rest for about five minutes. Now I can enjoy the sound of the new wind chimes. They are actually more melodious than I expected. It sort of sounds like someone is trying to use an old-fashioned touchtone phone. Remember those? Oh, now the AC is on again. The trailer is under assault from the sun. I feel a bit like a critter hunkered in a dark burrow, waiting for dark. If the electricity goes out, I'll soon be a raisin-like desiccated critter. In the meantime, back to writing. 

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.