Don't get up in my undercarriage

 

I have an ongoing quest to lighten my load. To that end, I have offloaded more kitchen stuff to my housemate. This trailer easily absorbed a microwave, a rice cooker, and a toaster oven. I brought the microwave from Portland. It was Mom's microwave, the one she had at the Cottage. It's got two dials and it dings. The rice cooker and the toaster oven I bought when I moved into the Bat Cave. I don't know why I thought I would suddenly start eating rice and toast. Probably for the same reason I thought I'd buy orange slacks and flowered shirts, now that I'm in the desert. As if moving would make me a different person. Nope. I still eat nuts and twigs. I still wear grungy pajamas. I've regressed to my personal mean. There's no budging me now.

I have a short stack of cardboard boxes ready to offload to the thrift store next week. I can't believe I'm still downsizing. On this round, I'm jettisoning some coffee cups. I only need one. I'm letting go of a clear glass dish good for baking banana bread, or meatloaf, if you are so inclined. I think it might have been Mom's. My old beat-up $20 blender is going. My little waffle iron, so long. The coffee grinder. I'm not buying beans anymore. I'm now mixing Sprouts French roast with Yuban. It's just a matter of time before I'm stirring instant coffee with a plastic spoon. 

I doubt I will miss any of it. If I haven't used the stuff in a year, it's unlikely I ever will. Besides the kitchen gear, I boxed up a couple desk lamps I bought when I moved here, when all my stuff was still in storage and I needed to have light in the Trailer. I'm letting go of my light therapy box. Brain fog is the least of my worries given my affliction with vertigo or whatever it is. The ENT doesn't think it is vertigo. It might have been at one time, but untreated, now it's disequilibrium stemming from vestibular migraines. She made up the diagnosis based on what is popular in the medical literature, I'm pretty sure. Vestibular migraines is all the range right now. Who cares? If it can't be measured, it's not really happening. Just stick a fork in it and call it done. 

I'm in a downsizing contest with myself, it seems. How little do I need to live? I remember reading about that guy who has all his possessions in a backpack, something like forty items. He showed a photo of them all spread out on a small picnic blanket. What he didn't talk much about is how he relied on the generosity of others in order to live. He could afford to mosey around without the basic accoutrements of American life because he was borrowing the accoutrements of others. 

What are the basic accoutrements? A bed, I suppose, or something to sleep on. I didn't see a bedroll or sleeping bag, so he must have been sleeping on other people's beds. Did he have a way to store and cook food? He had a dish and a spoon. That seemed overly optimistic. I didn't see a method to keep clean, a mechanism to handle waste. He had his feet for moving from here to there, but I seem to recall people gave him rides. You can get rides when you are a social media celebrity. And beds. And cooked food. I want to be a minimalist, not a moocher.

Did that guy feel as if he had a place to be? Was that one of his basic accoutrements? 

I guess that is the part I still find confounding, that place-to-be thing. Where does a person go when they have no place to go? My worst fear used to be that I would end up living in my parent's basement. Oh, how naïve. At that time, they had a very nice basement. I've lived in basements, they aren't so bad. I'd live in a basement now, here in Tucson, if anyone had such a thing, which they don't, because the entire city rests on top of caliche, which is cement, in case you didn't know (I didn't). Not many basements here. Or lawns, either. This is such a weird place. The sunsets are amazing, though.

With climate change shaking up the globe, it might make sense to be a nomad, if I can still buy food, water, and gasoline. No guarantees on any of that, but what is my alternative? I can't afford to buy a home, I can't afford to rent an apartment. When the next viral pandemic arrives and turns us all into mindless zombies, I guess I'll just go with the crowd. Why fight it? I might be able to outrun the plague if I'm mobile, assuming my car still runs and there's still electricity for pumping gas. Well, if it isn't the virus that takes me down, it will be a fire or a flood. Or maybe an old-fashioned boring car crash. They have a lot of those here in Tucson. 

I don't have a lot of years left in me, so I don't expect my suffering to last long. Besides, suffering is optional. So they say. 

Busy getting something done

Do I exist? I'm beginning to doubt my identity. Google certainly does, and I'm pretty sure Google runs the world, so it's no wonder I am starting to think I need a verification code every time I do something, just to make sure it's me doing it and not some hacker from Podunk. I blog every week, you'd think Google would catch on, but no, something shifted in the alignment of the planets and suddenly Google is asking me to verify my identity. Are you really who you say you are? Is anyone, really? How would you know? 

You might scoff but I don't take Google for granted. I've been locked out of two Google properties simply because I can't verify my identity. There's no reasoning with Google, because there is no one there at Google. The company consists of a bunch of bots, rolling up and down aisles night and day blowing dust off servers. You could go and knock on the door, but even if someone came to let you in, you'd still have to prove you are you. What do you mean you don't have that phone number anymore? Don't you know your phone number is more precious than your social security number? No, I didn't know that. Too late for me.

So now I question my existence.

When I used to teach business classes at a career college a long time ago, I ran across a concept that haunts me still: the idea of efficiency versus effectiveness. I think I was the only person really floored by the idea that I could appear to be super busy but never do anything worthwhile. 

I can spend my days doing the things on my calendar task list, showing up for appointments, fulfilling my volunteer service commitments, paying my bills, maintaining my body and my car . . . and the things I think are important don't get done because they don't make it onto my task list. It's an insidious form of self-sabotage, to avoid acknowledging that things I care about don't get the attention they deserve. Whatever they are, doesn't matter. Some things are hard to do, and so I avoid doing them. 

Some people are very effective. They use their time wisely, they manage their resources well, and they accomplish the tasks that are important to them. Other people are very busy getting nothing done. I think I'm somewhere in the middle, most of the time. I ponder this conundrum while I'm watching Facebook videos of baby sloths being rescued by kind humans and returned to their smiling sloth mothers. Baby deer stuck in a fence, rescued by kind human and his companions with smartphones. Baby monkey stuck in a pond. Baby elephant in a hole. Baby moose stuck in the rapids, heading over the falls, oh no. Facebook has my number, for sure. And how many of those videos were taken by humans who created the dire situation and then filmed themselves coming to the rescue? Oh, cynical me. 

I was thinking today as I was riding my bike around the mobile home park in the dark that it really doesn't matter what I do, or if I do anything at all. Effective or efficient, who cares? Nobody cares. I'm not being tested. I'm not being surveilled. Nobody is counting the diminishing words in my vocabulary and going, she lost ten more words this week, assisted living, here she comes. It's kind of a relief to realize as long as I pay my bills, nobody will chastise me if I choose to do nothing. 

It's called retirement, I guess. I've been retired in my mind my entire life. I was born retired. That is, I was born believing I should be allowed to do what I want whenever I want, and that includes the privilege of doing nothing at all. You can imagine how well that has worked out. 

The sunset tonight was astounding. Wish you were here, Mom. 

Chasing the filthy lucre

I finally did it. After two-plus years, I initiated the firing sequence (two negative Covid self-tests) and launched myself back into community. I'm (sort of) proud (but mostly shocked) to announce I mingled unmasked with a group of humans in an indoor setting for a two-hour event. I can't believe I did it, and I hope I don't regret it. 

On a mild morning this week, I drove up the winding road to an art gallery-slash-gift shop in an upscale mall in the Catalina Foothills. (Now that I've moved to the Trailer, I can claim I live Catalina Foothills adjacent. Look at me go, I've been here just over a year and already I'm a snob.) I had expected to wear my mask, as I always do in an indoor setting. However, nobody else was wearing a mask when I arrived. After seeing that, my higher reasoning faculties shut down, and I caved to peer pressure. Nobody said anything. I just folded. It is embarrassing and humbling to admit how little spine I really have. 

Maybe if I hadn't been the star of the show, I would have had more gumption. As an audience member, I'm good at hiding out in the last row. I could have quite happily hid behind my N95, no problem. However, I was at the art gallery to share with the gallery membership the knowledge and experience I've accumulated as a mentor to artists who think it would be jolly good fun to turn their art into a money-churning cash cow. In other words, I was there to give a lecture on business plans. Whoa, did you feel that breeze? That was your brain checking out for a second. I know. It happens to me too. Art and business? Wha—? 

Seems like we don't really hear of those two things being discussed in the same sentence, do we? At least, not in the real world, and by real, I mean like, actual reality, not the magical world of marketing that makes billions of dollars persuading artists they can become rich and famous without dying first. Art and business hook up in the business world, but not in the art world. MFA students aren't taught how to register as an LLC and get their marketing plans ready. Budding artists are told their art is not a commodity. It's something unique and special. In fact, to call art a product is a deadly insult to some artists. To call their art anything less than fine is fighting words. Don't you dare use the word artisan. Craftsperson. One step away from hack. 

Whatever. Artists love to hear about the joy of delivering their art to the art-hungry world. As soon as I mention the words sales tax or LLC, they all but run screaming into the night. In fact, only one person in my audience of a dozen or so wannabe artist-turned-millionaires was wearing a mask, so I could see the exact moment when their brains turned up their little cerebellar toes and said nope, not for me, I'm outa here. 

As usual, each artist in my crowd was at a different stage in their career. No way was I able to address all their needs. It's dumb to try and yet I keep trying. Isn't that the very definition of insanity? Well, no big epiphany there. Still, I did my best to be informative, pleasant, and engaging, even as they one by one got right into my personal space and breathed all over me. I didn't shake any hands and nobody touched me, I don't think, probably because I am a stinky mess, having forgotten how to groom. I've lost the art of caring about how I look. Or smell, apparently. Clearly, I've been alone and sweating in the desert for too long. But I wasn't stinky enough, apparently. They still got too damn close. 

I delivered my dog-and-pony show, and when it was over, I helped schlep the chairs back into the storage room and stack them in neat vertical piles, ready for next month's members' meeting, because my mission in life is to be useful, even if it kills me. I am not a member of this gallery, in case you are wondering, nor do I plan to be, even though as a creative knucklehead, I would fit right in. The idea of immersing myself into the bubbling angst of artists struggling to retain a shred of their creative souls as they troll the world of commerce for enough filthy lucre to pay their rent is too much for this introvert. 

Every conversation I have with artists these days starts the same way: I want to make money selling my art. After a while, I want to scream. With laughter, of course. I think I've been alone too long.

Landing peanut butter-side up

I’m embarrassed to report, life is looking up for the Chronic Malcontent. Thanks, I'm happy, too. It’s a healthy indicator of my mental state that I’m not so attached to my persona as a morose wack-job that I can’t acknowledge that even though bad things can happen, good things can also happen, even to me. Ha. See how self-obsessed I am? Even in my moroseness, I can still make everything about me.

I closed out the lease at the Bat Cave a few days ago. After all the angst about hiring a “professional cleaner” in order to abide by the terms of my lease, I found out the cost of such a cleaner would be more than the amount of my security deposit. At that point, I surrendered that deposit to the Universe. I was willing to let it go. Sunk costs are not worth whining about. Gone, soon to be forgotten, moving on. 

Well, as sometimes happens (even to me), the Universe said, I know you are attached to your pessimism, but here, take this security deposit refund as a token reminder of the Universe’s neutrality in all things. I received an (automated) email from the property management company stating that I would be receiving my entire security deposit in the mail (someday). I’ll believe it when it’s in the bank, but still, it’s a nice testament to the power of detachment. I don’t care if it ever comes. My well-being is no longer dependent on that property management company, may it rest in pieces at the bottom of a deep black pit.

Creativity has a chance to grow in this new place, even though it’s a mobile home, excuse me, manufactured home. Or maybe because of it, who knows. There’s something strangely energizing about living in something that is always on the verge of getting up and going. It mirrors my own existence. I haven’t seen the underpinnings of this building—and I use the term “building” very loosely—so I don’t know if wheels still exist in the "basement." But, I also don’t know that they don’t. Therein lies the joy of uncertainty. The cat might be dead. But then again, the cat might be very much alive and chilling.

I closed my account with the power company, and it seems to have worked. I paid my final bill. I returned the modem rented from the internet cable company and might receive a refund someday, although again, I haven’t seen it yet, so who knows. I don’t chase money. At least, not small amounts like that, not worth the angst. I know some people sniff after every penny in every crack in the couch but that is not me, not anymore. If the Universe wants me to have money, it is going to have to shove it someplace where I’ll be sure to notice it, otherwise I’m moving on.

Speaking of noticing things, this week I’ve been noticing headlines.

Funniest headline: Is it raining diamonds on Uranus?

Most relevant headline (to me): It is possible to land peanut butter-side up

Saddest headline: I can’t remember the last time I had fun.

I haven’t seen any no-see-ums, for obvious reasons, but I still bear their scars on my hands. I haven’t seen any javelinas lately, babies or parents, just lots of lizards, many flat, as I mentioned last week. Could be because the heat is back. Monsoon might be done for the year. The Rillito River has resumed its alter ego as a dry riverbed filled with decrepit trees, green but leaning westward like drunken soldiers from being bashed by the westward-flowing monsoon floodwaters. Last night I walked along the bike path that parallels the River and watched a man with two big dogs walking in the river sand. I wondered what that would feel like. It’s not every day you get to walk in a dry riverbed. Well, I guess soon we’ll all have the opportunity to enjoy walking where water once flowed. Except along the oceans, where we will be rowing boats where there used to be dry land. What the heck? I’m glad I’ll be dead before the worst happens. I've seen enough climate change for one sad lifetime.

Meanwhile, the question, as always, is this: how do we want to live until the moment comes when we die? Often I have chosen self-pity as my preferred mode of living. The saddest headline above was not written by me, but it could have been at one time. Not anymore. I have a lot of fun, according to my rather unique definition of fun. My idea of fun is probably not yours, just in case you wanted to invite me over for bingo and ice cream. Save your breath.

I could rewrite the headline to I can’t remember the last time I had a vacation. One of my friends is in Norway right now. One friend is in Paris. I might have to do something about my stay-putted-ness one of these days. It’s possible a road trip is in my future. I have no specific plans yet. But I need to see what is out there. Don’t worry, I won’t go far, not much beyond the Moon or Mars, probably. But you never know.

The unbearable flatness of a hapless desert lizard

Somewhere between last week and this week, I got fed up with suffering and decided to stop. I gave up bemoaning the vertigo. Instead, I'm embracing my burgeoning skills as a meteorologist (although I'm not sure how useful it is to know if the air pressure is rising or falling). This week, I got tired of thinking about my frailties and started focusing on the present conundrum, which is trying to decide if I am plotting or pantsing my latest novel. Best of all, I turned a corner on the existential belongingness problem. At one point this week, I woke up to the realization that if I have no destination, then I can never be lost. 

You might think it sounds like I've given into despair and apathy. The truth is, I actually feel pretty good, considering the uncertainty of my life, which you know has been my nemesis for a while. (I even had to write a book about it.) I think the magic remedy for me has been resuming my walks and bike rides. Even though it is still close to 100°F at sunset, it's great to be out of the Trailer, listening to the birds, feeling the stifling air on my face, and waving at the old farts, excuse me, Over-55s, sitting on their verandas. 

So here I am, making peace with Tucson. I've got one toe still in the Bat Cave and nine toes in the Art Trailer. That is what I'm calling it. Or maybe the Trailer of Creativity. Trailer of the Creative Minds. (I know, I know, it's not really a trailer. It's a manufactured home.) Next week I'll check my Bat Cave mailbox, flush my Bat Cave toilet one last time, and turn in my Bat Cave keys. The end of an era. Or as my sister says, the end of a chapter. The story continues.

I'm glad to trade the bugs and bullets for javelinas and lizards. I haven't seen the javelinas this week, but the lizards are everywhere, all shapes and sizes, skittering hither and thither on the hot asphalt roads of the mobile home park. (I'd call it the Village if that name didn't remind me so much of The Prisoner and that terrifying marshmallow Rover that swallowed people from time to time.) Given the fact of lizard season and the number of vehicles in the Park, it's not surprising that as I take my evening walks or bike rides, I see some lizards that are flat. They weren't born flat. They got that way because of an error in judgment on their part. It's usually the little ones. They get excited, I'm guessing, when a big warm car comes rolling by and they lose their minds. Even with tires moving at 10 mph (the posted speed limit in the Park), one wrong move and splat. I've thought about taking photos of the flat ones. They remind me of that book about pressed fairies that was popular for a short time in the 1980s. One of my fears is that I will find one of these little guys squashed on one of my tires. Ew. On the downside, it's sad some of these flat lizards get creamed. Their live brethren are pretty cute. On the upside, if I do want to snap a photo, they hold still quite nicely. Unlike the sunsets, which don't hold still for anyone.

Ho hum, another gorgeous sunset in the desert

I don't have much to report this week. Here's a quick follow-up to the ENT appointment from last week. I know you are following the story closely. There is no surefire remedy for the malady, as I anticipated. However, she did offer me something. Can you guess what it was? I wasn't far off the mark. It's the hygienic equivalent of a pencil in my ear! You heard it right (ha). She offered to poke a hole in my ear drum to equalize the pressure.

"It probably won't work," she said. "It will hurt like hell. And insurance won't pay for it."

I said, "Well, when you put it like that . . . "

She booked me for another follow-up in six months, no idea why. Meanwhile, my ears keep on rolling and hissing, sometimes more, sometimes less. For the past couple days, the incline in air pressure has been gradual, more like Portland's graph. My head has been relatively calm. Earlier today, the altimeter hit a peak at 30.13, and now it is dropping again, a little more abruptly than it rose. That means two things. My head is reeling, and rain is coming. How about that! I can predict the weather (for the local area). Very handy talent to have. I probably missed my calling as a meteorologist. Well, I've missed multiple callings over the years. They called. I did not answer. I was hot in pursuit of other pursuits.

Now that I'm back in the Trailer, I am trying to be more active. Sometimes I ride my bike around the mobile home park. Sometimes I walk. Whatever mode I choose, I have found it is best to keep moving. If I stay still, I'm eaten alive by no-see-ums. I hope they are nearing the end of their life cycle for this season, although I fear as long as it is raining, they will keep on hatching. They don't go far from the river, but they go far enough to find me, tasty morsel with uncovered hands and forearms. If I go out while the sun is still up, I bake. If I wait until the sun goes down, I'm eaten. 

It's critter season here at the Park. The human residents I encounter on my evening sojourns often get this funny look on their faces when I get close. That is how I know something is up. Last night a tall old man with a well-trimmed white beard stared at me. I took my earbuds out of my ears to hear what he might say. Good evening? How's it going? Lovely sunset? No, none of those. 

"There's a big javelina roaming around this intersection," he said, pointing toward my street. "Be careful."

People here are obsessed with javelinas, large and small. They are interesting animals, if you like weird pig-like creatures that smell like skunk. They aren't pigs, though, in case you are thinking javvie on the barbie. I don't know what they taste like. I don't eat meat, javelina or otherwise, but you are welcome to try it. They might be easy to catch, if you can dodge the tusks. I hear they don't see well. They hear well but have poor eyesight, I mean. I have neither good hearing nor good eyesight. However, I have the superior intellect. Except with my earbuds in, while I'm listening to oldies on my mp3 player. Then I'm pretty much too stupid to live.

The sunsets here are stunning. Even my sister thinks so. She's a connoisseur of all things cool and beautiful, and she expressed amazement at some of the photos I sent her. The colors are rich and deep. But you have to act fast if you want to capture them. They disappear into gray very quickly. I'm not amazed at the sunsets anymore, ho hum, but it still catches me off guard that the sunset comes so quickly, followed soon after by solid dark. When I say solid dark, I mean pitch black. Except for a few streetlights, the mobile home park is a dark place. If I weren't avoiding no-see-ums and javelinas I would probably spend more time standing out in the street staring up at the stars. 

I do not heart monsoon

It has become very clear to me that my inner ears march to the unseen unheard drumbeat of fluctuations in air pressure. I am a creature of the weather. I did not anticipate this problem before moving to the desert. In fact, I didn't know what monsoon meant, except in a general way, like a whole lot of rain dumping all at once. It is that, and more. Sometimes monsoon is exciting. When the lightning gets going, it's really quite festive, in an electrifying sort of way. Not a good time to be out riding a bike, but there's nothing like a clap of thunder overhead to elevate the heart rate and make you feel alive. Sometimes in the desert, it's hard to tell. Siestas exist for a reason.

The air pressure graph for Tucson is a series of jagged peaks and valleys. No smooth transitions here, no gentle slopes signaling the serene passing of highs and lows. The line is either shooting to the top of the scale or plunging to the bottom, no refreshing pauses in between. My ears never have a chance to catch up. The bucket of mucky goo in my ears is constantly on the move. And being a human, I'm constantly on the move too, at least when I'm not laying prone on my bed with a pillow over my head, trying to block out the crackling and hissing in my right ear. It's very hard to hold completely still. Have you tried it? Sooner or later you have to breathe. Monsoon sucks.

Last February, I visited an ENT doctor. I was coming off two weeks of relatively stable air pressure, feeling fine to the point of ebullience. She couldn't do much for me but clean the wax out of my ears and set me up for a follow-up appointment in six months. During monsoon. If vertigo was going to return, she said, now would be the time. 

Well, here we are. The afternoon I saw her, it started raining. My vertigo returned the next day and it hasn't let up for more than a day here or there since. Now it's August. Monsoon is in full swing, and the bucket in my head is sloshing constantly. Unless the ENT is a weather god, there is nothing she will be able to do. Can she control air pressure? I'm predicting she will tell me I have vestibular migraine and I should stop drinking coffee. I wonder what she would say if I came to the appointment with a pencil jammed in my ear. She seemed like a pretty cool cookie. She probably wouldn't bat an eye. She's probably seen it all, here in the desert during monsoon.

Enjoying the storm

Once again, I have lifted and transported every possession I own. This week was spent vacating the Bat Cave and invading the Trailer. Well, one room in the Trailer. My presence is limited but profound. From long experience, I know how to fully inhabit small spaces. I once lived in a ten by ten square foot storefront in Santa Monica. The bathroom was two doors down the street, in a dark courtyard. Ah, those were the days. 

These days are different. With shelves, you can store a lot of boxes. Too many boxes. Even after all the downsizing of the past two years, I still have too much stuff. Maybe not the typical possessions, though. No couch, no easy chair. No dining room table. I built a platform for my bed, but I wouldn't classify that as furniture. I don't have many dishes, just a couple bowls and some coffee cups. I have Mom's microwave and a dinky toaster oven I used to toast almonds. I have hardly any clothes, because who cares how I look, not me. But I have Mom's old TV, on which I get like five channels. Yay. 

What am I dragging around with me? Shelves, for one thing. Wooden ones I built myself and wire racks I bought after I got to Tucson. What is on those shelves? Thanks for asking. The dregs of my creative life. Two flat plastic bins of art supplies. My crummy Singer sewing machine and a box of notions and patterns. A box of methodology books left over from my grad school days. Some office supplies, because who knows when you might need a lime green #10 envelope. Two big plastic bins of travel gear, collected toward the day when I finally make good on my promise of going car camping. 

Compared to the average American, if there is such a person, I don't have much stuff. But packing, lifting, schlepping, unpacking, and organizing the possessions I do have has just about ruined me. I am very tired.

So, to celebrate, I pumped up my bike tires and went for my first bike ride around the mobile home park in some months. 

Monsoon is trying to happen here in the city but it's been hit or miss this year, especially compared to last year, 2021, the third wettest monsoon on record. Morning skies are clear. In mid-afternoon, the clouds start boiling up to the south. If the wind starts kicking up, I know there might be a chance for rain. Last night around midnight a thunderstorm rolled over us. We got a little rain, not the downpour I remember from last year. 

Tonight clouds ringed the mobile home park in three directions. The only sky showing was to the west, where the sun hung just above the horizon. The rest of the sky was a mashup of bubbling white clouds, gray puffy clouds, and flat black, against which lightning streaked earthward from time to time. The rumbles of thunder were far away. I figured I was safe. So I rode my bike up to my friend's Bill's house. Is that what I named him? I can't remember. He's the one who gave me the bike last summer, in his quest to rid his mobile home of his dead wife's lingering presence. I have her bike, which she rarely rode, and her Persian rug runner, which she hated (and I love). 

Bill was glad to see me. He got his bike out of his shed, and off we went into the stifling hot gloaming. 

Did I mention Bill is 83? Bill is a tall man, but he's built like a stick. A strong gust would blow him into the next county. As I watched him repeatedly ride his bike into the curb, I asked him if he ever wore a bike helmet. He said no, but he'd thought about it. He said something I interpreted as "sh-t happens."

Well, he was right. Sh-t happens. At the end of our ride, when it was almost full dark, we returned to his trailer. He tried to ride across his white gravel lawn, bogged his front tire in the rocks, and fell over in a heap on the asphalt. 

I dropped my bike and ran over to help, praying nothing was broken. Neither one of us wore a helmet. I feared the worst. He waved his arms and legs like a bug for a moment, and then rolled over on his knees. I helped him stand up. His arms were shaking. He wobbled for a moment as we took stock. His elbow was skinned and a little bloody. His legs looked bruised, but I think those were previous injuries. 

I suggested he go inside and clean up his wound. Instead, he told me a story about what happened the day after his second Covid shot (he fainted). He told me the best remedy for a skin wound is a thin layer of Vaseline. Then he invited me to come with him to the Air Force base commissary, where I could shop and he would pay for stuff.

I pointed at his door and told him to go inside. For a brief moment, I considered going in with him, but I had already promised myself I would stay outside. I had my mask, but the inside of Bill's trailer smells like a bottle of Downey fabric softener. In other words, like a peculiarly fresh hell. 

Finally, Bill went inside. I rode back to the Trailer in the dark. I'm guessing Bill will be sore tomorrow, if he doesn't die of a blood clot or brain injury in his sleep tonight. 

All the windows in the Trailer are closed tight and covered with blinds to keep in the AC and block out the heat and sun. I can't see a thing outside. I'm back in a cave, looks like. I can hear, though. Thunder is rumbling as I write this. Usually the storms roll up from the south, curling around the left side of the high pressure bubble over the four corners. Last night I sat on a tall chair in my new bathroom, looking out the window at the lightshow. It was too loud to sleep. Tonight the radar shows the storms rolling down from the northwest, over the Catalinas. I heard rain briefly, just a light shower. It's still 95°F outside, too hot to open the window. 

Five minutes later, now it's pouring. NWS says the temperature has dropped to 84°F. Time to open my bathroom window and enjoy the storm.

 

Optimism is optional

After a year in the Bat Cave, it's that time again. Time to pack up and move. I'm ready but I'm still feeling anxious. Maybe I should treat moving like an annual pilgrimage. Some people move a lot. Not me. I spent the last twenty-four years in Portland. I was in one apartment for eighteen of those years. Moving to Tucson was a shock I'm still not over. 

It feels traumatic to put everything I own in my car and take it someplace else. I've been dreaming about unplugging computer equipment, packing Mom's TV, loading up my bed platform, stacking boxes and bins so they don't slide around and brain me while I'm driving. I don't know why I'm fretting. I'm not moving far. It's probably about a mile from the Bat Cave to the Trailer. And nobody is forcing this on me. I can only blame myself if I forget how to reassemble my computer. I think I'm feeling some PTSD from my move to Tucson last year. That move involved a U-Box, a car filled to the brim with possessions, a 1,500-mile road trip, a bad Google map, and a deadline. Needless to say, that move was fraught. I break out in a sweat when I remember driving alone for hours on I-93 through Nevada.  

I have another couple boxes ready to take to the thrift store, a few more used-up items to toss in the trash. I should be glad of the opportunity to pare a few more things out of my cold arthritic hands. It is good to own less, consume less. However, downsizing makes me sad. I know where downsizing leads. I remember helping my mother downsize. From the big house to the smaller house. From the smaller house to the condo. From the condo to the retirement home. From the retirement home to the care home. From the care home to a box currently on a shelf at my brother's house. Downsizing isn't only about letting go of possessions. It's about letting go of people. Of place. Of life.

It's raining again. This afternoon the southern sky turned black. The wind kicked up, sending leaves and trash skittering around the parking lot. Lightning flashed a few times, followed by rolling thunder. Then the rain came pelting down. It's happened almost every day this week. My neighbors and I no longer open our doors to marvel at the moisture falling from the sky. Ho hum. It's nice to feel cooler air, even though the ground will be dry thirty minutes after the rain stops. I prefer blue sky. 

My days are punctuated by Zoom meetings, planning the next novel, doom-scrolling, and getting weather alerts on my phone. Waves of grief wash over me from time to time. I have the luxury of riding the waves. I'm not at risk of flash flooding. I might be at mild risk for depression. I am missing my cat. I'm missing my mother. I am missing my old life. I used to know where I was. Now I sometimes forget where I am.

It's hard to feel excited about life when I am feeling sad. I should make a gratitude list. Let's see. The rain is amazing. I haven't seen a cockroach in over a month. The power hasn't gone out. I published my book. My car is running well. I haven't heard any gunshots lately. I don't have a hernia. See? Lots to applaud. I don't sit around paralyzed by grief. Optimism is optional. Despite my discontent, I carry on. 

Time to go crazy

I've been in phone hell this week. My old service provider got bought by a larger tech company and "upgraded" its network. My old smartphone has dementia and forgets how to communicate. It was time for a new phone and a new provider. I thought, how hard could it be? The new provider will magically transfer my phone number to the new provider and life will carry on. Oh, how naïve I was.

I won't mention the new provider because that company does not need more mentions on the internet. Not that anyone would care what I have to say. I have spoken with a dozen people over the past week or so, trying to get this new phone working with the new service. Eventually I realized the effort was futile. I gave up and said, just give me a new phone number. Within five minutes, I had a new number. My new phone rewarded me with a slew of text messages from the new provider.

So now I have two phones, two service providers, and two phone numbers. I'm not sure if I should celebrate the unexpected abundance or lament the way technology has wrecked my life. You know what I'm talking about, right? Without that original phone number, all my Google accounts will be lost. That old demented phone has to keep working long enough for me to access all my accounts that use two-factor authentication so I can either turn it off or update to a new phone number.

I almost had a panic attack thinking about it. My entire life is based on this phone number. Forget my SSN, who cares, that number has been running loose for forty years. One of the universities I attended way back when used the SSN as the student ID number. There's no closing that barn door. My descent into technological hell hasn't been sudden, though. It's been an insidious creep, like noxious weeds taking over my neurons. In my quest for success and money and connection, I've sold my soul to technology. Technology is like fire. Fire can keep you warm. It can also burn your house down.  

I know whereof I speak. I lost access to a phone number when I switched to the service provider who just got sucked into the maw of a larger provider. That was ten years ago, before Google had its modern security measures in place . . . before two-factor, before backup numbers, before recovery emails. I've tried multiple times to get into my old Google account. I still have the password. No dice. Without that old phone and phone number, I can't receive a code. Without that code, I'm toast. Google sneers at me: We can't verify that this is really you. Then it sends me an email to another account that apparently is somehow linked, congratulating itself for "protecting" me from some nefarious unauthorized access. Someone is trying to get into your account! Yeah, Google, you idiot monster I have discovered I cannot function without, it's me, trying to get into my own account. I hate you.

I'm trying to reframe all this disruption as a fascinating adventure, a riveting window into the way an aging brain adapts and flexes—or doesn't. I'm not really flexing gracefully. You know that sound your knees sometimes make when you get off the floor after doing a few half-hearted sit-ups? No? Well, maybe it's my bursitis. Anyway, I can hear my brain creaking sometimes. It's isn't as nimble as it used to be. And when I'm putting pressure on it to perform—even simple tasks like mental arithmetic—my brain cells shred into a tattered mess. I'm reminded of my mother's brain, which I could practically see evaporating in front of me. She lost brain cells the way she dropped gloves and used tissues. I learned to follow a step behind. I rescued her gloves and tissues, but I could not save her brain.

Soon I will be vacating the Bat Cave. You'd think after moving to Tucson, I'd be used to moving. I have less stuff, fewer boxes, fewer attachments. It's a physical chore, yes, but it's the mental chore that wears me down. Worse than the physical act of packing and lifting boxes, transporting them, and unpacking them, it's the wear and tear on my brain. I can't say I've felt settled here in the Bat Cave. I always knew I'd move on after a year. But living a year at a time is not a familiar pace to me. I think people who travel a lot probably get used to waking up in the night not knowing where they are. Me, I used to know where I was. On a map, I had a location. In a city, I had my place. It wasn't much, but I once had roots. Not many, but some. Mom's death severed the few roots that were holding me there in the city of my birth. Like a dandelion seed on the wind, I let the wind blow me to Tucson.

I don't want to go back to Oregon but I don't know where I'm going. Why am I having so much trouble just being where I am? Now that I've relinquished most of my possessions, I seem to be seeking a connection to a geographical place, as if that will keep me safe. I can hear my inner nihilist laughing right now. Maybe I'll be laughing soon, too. Still working on it. Meanwhile, let me offer my grudging gratitude to the technology that allows me to express myself on this blog every week. 

Taking wing

When I first came to Tucson, I couldn't imagine I'd ever contemplate becoming one of those residents who vacates for six months out of the year. I don't remember thinking the actual thought how bad could it be? But I must have, because what I feel now is chagrin, regret, and embarrassment. After a year in Tucson, I begin to understand that I've moved to the Mars. Being a snowbird is starting to seem like a survival option, rather than a way to flaunt how many homes one has. 

I've read that many desert cities swell in the winter and shrink in the summer. Some people have winter homes in the desert and summer homes in the mountains, and they travel back and forth. Two homes! What a concept. Some people take their homes with them wherever they go. I'm thinking of the infamous nomads who live in RVs and vans and trailers, follow the weather, and have roundups to share tips and take videos they post on YouTube to make a few bucks.

Only poor Tucsonans are out in the daytime. They stand on street corners holding up signs in leathery hands. They set up house in the culverts that drain into the washes—not a good place to be in monsoon. Have you seen video of a wall of sticks, trash, and floodwater tearing up trees and shrubs as it moves down a wash? If I ever happen to see the actual beginning of a raging river, it most likely means I didn't get out of the way in time and off I go, headed for the next county. 

It's mostly the poor people who get creamed by speeding cars as they cross the street to the grocery store after dark. Tucson ranks thirteenth on the list for U.S. pedestrian fatality counts. It's not just my imagination. Walking here is dangerous. If you walk in the mid-morning you fry from excessive UV rays. If you walk in the afternoon, you run the risk of heat stroke, not to mention getting torched by lightning if a thunderstorm cell happens to sneak up and dump on you. If you walk after dark, you run the risk of getting mowed down by a texting Tucsonan in an SUV. 

Bicyclists don't fare well here either. Early mornings are most dangerous. They ride in packs, wearing bright uniforms, but that isn't always enough to save them.

Heat is a tangible thing. Along about noon, I wet a tank top, drape it over my head, and stand in front of the fan for a minute. The water coming out of the cold water tap is warm. Really hot days (over 110F) require two wet tank tops. Evaporative cooling works well here in the desert. 

Around 5:00 pm, when I'm done with my Zoom calls, I punch the button on the wall unit and let the roar overtake me. It sounds like a jet is warming up in my living room but it throws out cold air, and that's all that matters. After thirty minutes, the place is cool, but it heats up rapidly as soon as I turn it off. The entire front wall of the apartment radiates heat. It's a wonder the fridge still works. (Knocking on wood now.)

In the mornings, the skies are clear blue. Around 2:00 pm, I usually see big white fluffy clouds starting to boil up to the south. Within an hour, the visible sky is a grungy shade of gray, a color I am very familiar with, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest. In Portland, that kind of sky in summer would indicate 70F, maybe sprinkles, good walking weather. Here, it means 107F, humidity, excessive UV risk, and threat of thunderstorms. Who can live like this!?

Now my computer is notifying me of rain off and on, showing me a little umbrella icon. Isn't Windows cute? If a thunderstorm parks itself over me, an umbrella won't do much good. Thunderstorms here tear down powerlines and uproot trees. So far this season, very little rain has fallen in the actual city of Tucson. Waiting for rain is a useless waste of time. I keep thinking I hear rain but it's just the neighbor kids on their bikes outside my window. Storm cells move through bringing dust clouds but no rain. 

My sister suggested I get in my car and go north. Or up. Either one or both. She's right. I think the only way to survive living on Mars is to be a snowbird. People who don't escape to a summer home in the Northwest clog the roads to 9,000 ft. tall Mt. Lemmon, the local equivalent of Mt. Hood, where the temperature is thirty degrees cooler than in the valley. I see the mountain forecast on the news. People ride on the ski lifts, even though there's no snow. 

I haven't driven up to Mt. Lemmon yet. I continue to wait for monsoon, keeping cool in the Bat Cave and packing for my move next month to the Trailer.

 

It happened again

Once again, you had to remind me! I can't believe I forgot to blog last Sunday. I looked at my calendar to see what happened. Every line was full, and every line was checked off done, except I had forgotten to put "Blog" on the calendar. 

Now we know. My life is ruled by my calendar. At this rate, soon I will be putting "eat" and "sleep" on there, too. That will be a sad day. I probably won't be blogging when I reach that point. You can visit me in the retirement home, if you can still walk.

Speaking of last legs, many thanks to my blog reader who checked in to see if I'm still alive. It was 106°F today. I don't know if I would call this living. Summers in Tucson resemble being in a prison. Not that I would know from firsthand experience, just that being confined to the Bat Cave for most of the day doesn't exactly feel like freedom. Still, roof over head, not complaining. Much.

Another thing to be grateful for: no little dudes! I believe the property management company actually took some action. I didn't see said action, but they sent round a notice saying they were doing inspections for pest control. That makes me think maybe they did something. I haven't seen a little dude in over two weeks. I still tiptoe into my kitchen though, and I'm still spraying insecticide every Sunday like I found religion. I'm sure the little dudes aren't far away. 

It's been so hot, I had to finally turn on the air conditioner. It works, that's nice. Fans don't really suffice when it's over 100 in the Bat Cave. When I turned on the AC, a huge black beetle flew out. It was probably lounging comfortably in the dark dusty crevice, then whoosh! I can imagine it thinking what the heck? It came fluttering out and went behind a box. 

I screamed a little, remembering my previous encounter with a flying monster. I grabbed the ammo bottle and spritzed it to get it to come out of hiding. It landed in drunken fashion on the window sill. I saw it had some iridescent markings on its tummy. Suddenly feeling magnanimous, I captured it and let it go outside. Sorry, big black dude, for scaring you. I was willing to save you, because there was only one of you, and you had art on your belly. I don't extend the same courtesy to the little brown dudes that live in the walls. 

Happy birthday to CS and to Bravadita. Also to my older brother and to my mother, who would have turned 93 later this month. 

I self-published my third novel this week. Yay, me, getting it done in the desert. 

Legacy DNA leaves a mark

For some reason I thought that after my parents died, I would not longer be  . . . what's the word I'm looking for? Not troubled. Not haunted. I don't know. That my parental units would no longer have an influence on my life? They have shuffled off the mortal coil, and even though I think of them, I am no longer troubled by them, if you know what I mean. No, of course you don't know what I mean, because I haven't told you yet. 

My father's DNA legacy reached out from beyond the blue horizon to let me know that I am still my father's daughter, even though he's been dead for eighteen years. He had an enlarged heart, apparently a genetic defect. Well, guess what? That insurance company house call doctor was right! The cardiologist refuted my primary NP's claim of predominantly opening snap, whatever the heck that is, and concurred with the cardiologist's diagnosis of a two-on-a-scale-of-six heart murmur. Thanks a lot, Dad.

Something isn't working quite right but the doctor couldn't be certain exactly what part was failing to meet standards. More to be revealed, as they say. Specifically, echocardiogram in my not-too-distant future (September). Apparently it's not an emergency. Yay.

In other news, I had my first and I hope last MRI this week. I'm sure many of you have had MRIs, it's probably quite common, what do I know? Like getting your nails done. Not for me. I don't get my nails done, and I don't have MRIs. 

In fact, all my life, I have gone to great lengths to avoid getting enmeshed with medical care. I'm the type to pretend not only is there nothing wrong, there's not actually a body. Nothing to see here, move along. I'm just an incorporeal intellect fluttering around somewhere in Tucson, completely detached from any sort of human biological disaster that might need to be shoved inside a big noisy person-sized tube.

An MRI is quite an experience. Not an adventure. Not an ordeal. Somewhere in between. I was warned it would be noisy and that I would be given headphones to protect my ears. I pictured vacuum cleaner noisy. Nope, not like that at all. It was loud, all right, but all the banging, thumping, buzzing, whirring, and beeping made me fear I had been swallowed by a demonic washing machine. 

Before she pressed the button that sent me into the tube, the med tech asked, "What music do you want?"

She didn't seem surprised when I said "60s or 70s rock-and-roll, please."

Pretty soon, I heard Jim Morrison singing "Light my Fire" far off in the distance.

From time to time, obscuring the old rockers singing in the background, I heard a prerecorded dude's voice say, "Take a breath . . .  Let it out . . . Take a breath . . . and hold it." Fifteen seconds later, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Breathe normally."

For forty-five minutes, I enjoyed a cacophony of old rock music, directions to hold my breath, and the bed-rattling, bone-shaking clanging and banging of the machine. As I said, it was quite an experience. There's something surreal about listening to In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida while wearing a hospital gown and lying on a bed that goes in and out of a metal cylinder. At the time, I didn't appreciate the metaphor. There's a joke there somewhere but I can't quite put my finger on it. 

I was glad to discover I am not claustrophobic. With the earphones, I didn't mind the noise. The only thing I did not enjoy was having an IV port inserted into my vein. Having never had an IV port before, or an MRI, I was anxious about being dosed with the gadolinium contrast dye. The med tech said she would warn me when she was going to send it into my vein, and she did. A few seconds later, I felt my entire body flush with a chill I can't describe. Muscles in my belly started twitching. Before I could say oh hell, it passed and I was fine, other than a freezing right hand, which I can tolerate, having lived most of my life with freezing hands.

I don't know which parent to blame for the genes that landed me in an MRI cylinder. I'm suspecting my mother. I'm going to go out on a little dinky limb here and self-diagnose with digestive issues related to dairy and possibly eggs. Alternatively, it could be a hernia. 

What it is not, thank god, is cancer. 

The gadolinium gave me a new layer of dizziness to my vertigo, but it passed by the next day. As instructed, I drank lots of water. And tried to breathe normally. Thus, I live to fight another day.

Art and the end of the world

In this isolated new world of video mentoring, I talk with artists all over the country. One of my favorite pep talk mantras is the world needs your art. I usually say this in response to their complaints that they are afraid to put their work out in the world so people can buy it. "What if no one likes it?" they say. They are afraid to set prices. Posting their art to social media is terrifying. Anything but my art! Such tender self-centeredness. As if anyone cares. 

"The world needs your art," I tell them. "We are given creative gifts to share them with others."

Of course, this is total hooey. I am implying that whatever "gifts" we are given are magically bestowed upon us by some sort of power outside of ourselves. Call it the Universe, call it Goddess, call it the Muse, the assumption is that our creative "gifts" came out of the womb with us, like our skin and bones. 

Moreover, it's our job to make our creative gifts manifest. Didn't some old dude say if we don't bring forth what is within us, what is within us will destroy us? So refreshing. Nothing gets me inspired to make art like the threat that I'll be obliterated if I don't.

Anyway, the point is, I tell artists it's their job to make art. 

I think I need to stop doing that. I'm reinforcing their delusion that their creativity is something special. It's not special. Everyone is creative. Not everyone is an "artist," if you are using a strict definition of the term, but every person alive must exercise creativity in order to stay that way. As soon as they learn how to scream, kids are masters at creative manipulation. Adults don't usually resort to screaming, but they are equally manipulative in their efforts to get their way. That sometimes takes ingenuity and innovation. In other words, creativity. So, just because you think you are an artist doesn't make you special. In that sense, everyone is an artist.

A few days ago, I realized I've committed a sin even more egregious. In encouraging artists to produce more art, I am indirectly contributing to an unsustainable pattern of production and consumption that relies on manipulation in order to function. It's a self-destructive cycle. 

Sut Jhally identified this cycle years ago in his film Advertising and the End of the World. I used to teach marketing and advertising at a career college. The marketing program was on its last legs, so usually there was no more than a handful of students in the program at any one time. Sometimes I had classes with only one student. Once every ten weeks, I rented Jhally's film from the library and showed it on a VHS player. I don't remember my students being terribly impressed. The message scared the living crap out of me.

Over the past few years, I have moved from fear to despair. It's too late to save the human species. If there is some sort of rescue coming, perhaps from space aliens or a magical melding of human consciousness into one wise mind, it will likely happen after I'm dead. (I'd love to see what American politicians do with an influx of extraterrestrials.) Meanwhile, what does it matter if millions of mediocre artists create millions of Sculpey animals, acrylic pour paintings, and plastic-bead portraits of Mickey Mouse? Who cares if our creativity ends up in landfills? Who cares if the oceans are more plastic than fish? Oh, poor whales, poor turtles. What's a few species in the big scheme of geological time? Species come and go. Nothing and nobody is special. I find it reassuring to realize the earth will remain until the sun goes pop. 

Artists, I'm doubling down. Go ahead, fill up your garage with oil paintings nobody will ever buy. Promote your crappy art on websites nobody will ever visit. Post your stuff on social media in the deluded belief that you have control over the algorithms. Who am I to rain on your parade? If it makes you happy to believe you will become rich and famous selling your insipid pour paintings, go for it. We passed the tipping point a long time ago. Choose your deck chair. 

Strategic thinking departed with the art

It's a cool 94°F outside. I'm sitting in the Bat Cave with two fans blowing and a wet tank top wrapped around my head. I really don't need the wet tank top. The fans are enough. Like many Tucsonans, I keep hoping to see some rain. Sprinkles come and go, but so far I have not seen anything but dirt spots on my windshield. The ground is never wet. I know that is going to change once this monsoon gears up for real. Right now, this wind phenomenon is  revving it's motor, testing its ability to suck water out of the Gulf and dump it on this desert. 

This is the strangest place. Well, strange to me, compared to the other two places I've lived. After a year here, I still haven't figured it out. Everything here seems so precarious. Maybe it's because I still haven't found a direction. Maybe I should get a job. 

How do people cope with the uncertainty of life? Is everyone going around saying prayers under their face masks like I am? No, because hardly anyone is wearing a face mask anymore. I was at the pharmacy yesterday to pick up yet another drug for my hypertension, and I counted barely a handful of people wearing masks. The people inside the pharmacy cage aren't wearing masks. They have glass windows between them and me. It must be nice to have the illusion of feeling safe. I've decided not to care. I will not succumb to peer pressure. My fear of getting COVID far outweighs my concern about what people think of me. 

I'm trying to peer inside my head to discern what might be changing. That isn't possible, I know. You can't see inside your brain using your brain. I want to find the place where I've misplaced the thoughts that sum up my life and help me make sense of things. I know those thoughts are here somewhere, because I'm a strategic thinker. According to the Strengthsfinder, four of my top five strengths are strategic. I don't remember what the fifth one was. At least, I used to be a strategic thinker, before I tucked that ability into a box somewhere and then forgot where I stored it. Thinking strategically is now a memory, sort of like the memory of doing handstands or step aerobics. That is what I'm missing now, that ability to assimilate and summarize all the events of my life and the world into a single cohesive equation or directive that will let me know, finally, here is what it all means and here is what to do about it. 

Meanwhile, since the strategic thinking skill seems to have deserted me for the time being, I have been exploring another skill, one I never had to develop because the boss driver in me always knew where the bus was headed. What do I call this new skill? I guess, being in the here and now. It's a new thing for me. Now I'm pulling off at every scenic rest stop, metaphorically speaking, to sniff some stupid flower or watch another dumb sunset.

In the moment! Who knew it could be so confoundingly unsettling? 

There is a lag between the question and answer now, when I look inside my head. Well, I never used to have to ask the question, did I? I always knew who I was and what I was doing. So sure I knew. Now, I know so little. 

I mentor many artists, as I've mentioned, mostly about marketing their art. In the thick of our conversations, I am fully immersed and present. I enjoy the brainstorming process, and I am pretty sure I'm being helpful. After the conversation is over, however, I return to my flatline state. When they send a follow-up email, updating me on their progress, to me, it's like the conversations never happened. I have to review my notes to remember what we said. I think it's because I really don't care much. Should I care more? After descending into the messy emotional bog of interacting with artists who think the world owes them a living, it takes all my energy to dig myself out after we end the video call. Oh, they don't say it like that, but I recognize my fellow kindred spirits. 

 

Another bug in the life of one day

After a recent Windows update, my computer started giving me the weather report in the notification area of the task bar, whether I want it or not. This week the reports are somewhat unsettling. UV alert! Fire danger! Very hot! in scary red letters. 

Yes. It is very hot here in Tucson. It is summer in the desert, after all. But not as hot as predicted. Yesterday, instead of 110°F, it was only 109°F. Today, instead of 110°F, it was only 108°F. I say, quit whining. I think putting the forecast in a scary red font is click bait. A few seconds later, the alert says mostly sunny, as if to say, ha, ha, got you, sucker. It doesn't matter. I can't parse what I'm seeing. I have the air conditioner cranked up to bring the interior air down to 80°F. The sound of a jet engine screaming in the Bat Cave makes my eyes wobble in their sockets.

Speaking of wobbling, a few nights ago I was getting out of the shower when movement along the floor caught my eye. Even with glasses, my vision isn't great. Without them, I'm half blind. But I can see movement, and movement on the floor can only mean one thing. 

The ammo I normally use to defend my turf was in the kitchen, so I grabbed the closest thing to hand, which was a spray bottle of Clorox. I grabbed my glasses and jammed them on my nose as I sprayed in the general direction of the thing. Now that I could see it, I wished I hadn't. It was the biggest cockroach I have seen in my time here in the Bat Cave. It was built like a fat little tank, more than an inch long, glossy brown, like sort of a warm brick color, and fast as hell.

I sprayed the bleach in its direction and then fell back gasping as the thing spread its wings and took to the air. It flew into the closet and landed on my dad's white plastic chair (the one I tied to the roof of my car when I moved here, don't ask me why, all I can say is, it has Dad's handwriting on the back of the chair). The thing landed and sat there looking at me. If you had been here, you would have seen me stark naked, dancing around with a spray bottle of bleach, screaming, "They can fly? WTF, they can fly?"

Yes, Virginia, they can fly. The adults, anyway. So now I know that the ones I had been claiming were ooh, these big scary adults were barely past their teens. This guy was a grown-up. Lucky for me, they don't fly fast or far. I was able to spray it down onto the ground. It ran like hell under a plastic chest of drawers. I sprayed under the chest, hoping eventually I would find its dead body. Then I dashed for the big guns.

I brought two spray bottles back to the closet with me: the insecticide and the alcohol. Long-range, short-range. Or maybe I should say long-term and short-term. I took the insecticide and sprayed full blast under the chest of drawers. Out came the big dude, moving fast. I scuttled backward as it scuttled forward. We passed each other. I stood in the bathroom doorway, and it headed full speed for the kitchen. I guess we retreat to the places we feel safe.

I lit out in hot pursuit, spray bottle in each hand. I shot it with insecticide as it ran before me, and as far as I could tell, it wasn't a bit fazed. I switched to the alcohol. The critter ran behind a thing, looking for a crevice in the cabinet. There wasn't one, so I let loose a torrent of alcohol, blam blam blam, and eventually it was so soggy, it rolled over on its sodden wings and surrendered.

I was taking no prisoners. I shot it a few more times, just for kicks, and then I finished getting ready for bed. Of course I couldn't sleep for a while. I had to walk around with a flashlight like I was hunting possums in the dark. I didn't see any more dudes, big or small. I am really hoping that was the grandpa or grandma, the last of the line. We can hope.

Meanwhile, more excitement at the Bat Cave. A night later, I was typing and heard a boom. I thought, oh, no, did someone just hit my car? I peered out the window and saw the dumpster was on fire. I opened my door and stuck my head out into the oven-like air. Yep, my eyes did not deceive me. Flames were roaring out the top of the metal dumpster. The dumpster boomed again. I heard sirens. I saw some neighbors come out and take video. I did the same, although I don't know why. I didn't talk to anyone and nobody acknowledged me. The fire truck pulled up. The guy who drives an air conditioning repair truck came home at the same time. He inched past the fire truck, determined to make it to his usual parking spot. He probably just wanted to get into his nice cool apartment and pop open a cold one. He was probably like, so what, a dumpster fire. People wandered around in the hot evening, walking their yappy dogs and watching the firefighters spray stuff on the flames in 100°F heat. It was all over in five minutes. 

I don't hear or see much from my window at the back of the apartment complex. Last night on the news I was startled to see a photo of the sign outside my apartment building. Apparently early in the morning, there was a double homicide in one of the apartments on the street side. The police came, set up a little white tent, and conducted their investigation. I saw photos. I didn't hear a thing. This morning I went out to check my mailbox for the first time this week (empty) and there was no sign two people had died.

This morning the manager sent a text saying the water would be shut off for some emergency repairs. I filled a bucket of water and put it by the toilet, just in case, but for some reason, the water in my building kept flowing.

Life goes on.

If artists ran the world

I thought I could make some money being creative. Not so fast. 

I spent the week whining to myself about how hard it is for U.S. artists to legally sell their work. I'm not wrong. It’s true, many administrative hurdles block artists from starting small businesses, but maybe my whining is overly dramatic. Other entrepreneurial wannabes have to stumble over the same hurdles. Just about anyone who wants to start a small business in the U.S. has to do a few things if they are going to operate above the radar, and when I say “radar” I mean the IRS radar. The IRS thinks you are running a business if you have at least $400 in net profit when you file your annual tax return. Sell a couple paintings, lead a couple workshops, and there you go, bam, you might owe somebody some taxes.

And don’t get me started about the confounding world of sales taxes. The topic irks me so much that I’ve cut off my hair, literally whacked it back to an inch, so I am not tempted to yank it out by the roots. I’ve even toyed with the idea of moving back to Oregon, which has no sales tax, just to avoid the whole headachy mess of charging sales tax.

I'm freaking out on behalf of all U.S. artists. It's my way of being of service. You're welcome. It’s not like I sell my art. I’m not even making art these days, at least, nothing anyone can put their finger on. Earlier this year, I was selling some 99-cent templates to dissertators on my website, until I realized, hey, I should probably be charging sales tax to customers who live in Arizona. Considering the likely number of Arizona-based dissertators (few, I'm guessing), the odds that I would owe more than a dollar are slim to none, but rather than find out the hard way, I now give the templates away for free. I do not want to rouse the wrath of the State of Arizona. In any case, I never collected mailing addresses, so I have no idea where my buyers live. 

All that got me thinking about what artists must go through to be sales-tax compliant. If they sell any tangible art at all, and if they live in a state that has sales tax, then the artist is supposed to collect sales tax from buyers in their state and remit it to the state. I’m not even going to mention the regulations affecting artists who sell digital art remotely into other states. Let’s just keep it simple.

Forty-five of the fifty U.S. states have a state-level sales tax. If you live in one of those states, and sell art to buyers who live in or visit that state, then you should be collecting sales taxes.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Until you factor in the artist’s brain.

Think about what artists are being asked to do. To collect sales tax from buyers means artists must keep track of sales and money. What are the odds of that happening? Artists don’t use Quickbooks. They don’t even use Excel. Artists use napkins and sticky notes, notebook paper, and handmade journals with cats on the covers. Ask artists to produce an income statement or a balance sheet and their eyes will roll back in their heads as if someone had asked them to do math. Right.

Second, to remit those funds to the State means artists must register with their State (unless they live in one of the five states with no state sales tax). One look at the web form would make most artists run screaming into the night. It won’t take long for them to realize if they register to collect sales tax, they will need to apply for a business license. Then it’s one slippery misstep toward opening a business bank account, hiring an accountant, and discovering they owe income taxes. The next thing they know, all the joy and creativity they derived from their artmaking is gone, and now they are running a business. Bummer.

Third, the artists must remit the funds to the State. Dream on. All the artists I know will be using those sales tax funds (supposedly held in trust for the State) to pay their rent and buy their Frappuccinos. This is how I got into debt. Back in the 1980s, I found out too late, from the accountant I hired too late, that I should have been collecting sales tax on the clothing I made and remitting it quarterly to the State of California. Darn it, now you tell me.

Fast forward to now. I could have registered with Arizona. But I know the limitations of my artist brain. I balked after I found out the terrifying fact that even if I had no sales, I still must report to the State or be fined $100. That means $100 in fines for each missed sales report. It's like checking in with a probation officer. No check in, uh-oh, warrant for your arrest. In the face of financial terror, my brain goes gunnysack. Art becomes a burden, and all outcomes favor the State. 

Lawmakers don’t get it. They think artists will prepare business plans, hire lawyers and accountants, install and learn Quickbooks and Taxjar, and file their tax reports with the State on time. As if! Maybe on another planet in a galaxy far far away, where artists are the lawmakers and lawmakers are the whiners. What would a world run by artists look like?

My artist brain is not the brightest crayon in the box but it knows when the system is rigged against it. If you are one of those rare artists whose left brain works as well as your right brain, apologies for lumping you in the crayon box with me and all the other ratty, worn-down crayons. I hope you will run for office. I would definitely vote for you.

Fight for your right to be stupid

Actually, we don’t have to fight hard to be stupid. Everyone is doing it, in some shape or form. If you don’t mind a little weak-willed nattering from a few bleeding hearts, you can pretty much do and say whatever you want. Hardly anyone will push back on even the most egregious act of stupidity, the most ridiculous assertion, especially if it happens to align with their worldview. It’s sad that women may give up their bodily autonomy, and it’s tragic that our school kids buy our freedom to be stupid with their lives, but that is how it goes in the wealthiest country on earth. I’ve said it before and recent events seem to support me, humans are too stupid to live. The demise of the human species can’t come too soon. The planet will be much better off without us.

Meanwhile, my heart keeps beating, sometimes hiccupping, sometimes swooping, the ticker takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It’s working harder than it should, though, which has precipitated a condition with an interesting name: a predominantly opening snap. My primary care provider offered me a choice: (a) get on medication or (b) have a heart attack or stroke. Nice of her to offer me a choice.

I made my choice. Despite the terror and sorrow of living, I still want to live. I want to see how things turn out, until it’s curtains for me. Therefore, in a brazen bid for survival, I’m getting medication to lower my blood pressure.

That brings my total medication list up to three prescription meds. It feels a like a moral failing. I think I should be able to just tough my way through it. And I could try, it’s my right and privilege to be stupid, remember. Curtains might come sooner than statistically expected, but nobody lives forever. Then I think of my departed maternal parental unit, who was taking a dozen meds and didn’t think anything of it. Maybe it was the dementia, but she seemed really at peace with the reality of her failing health. She bemoaned aging, saying things like getting old is not for wimps, but she always took her meds. The only time she really got pissed off was when we took away her car keys.

I wonder who will be brave enough to take away my car keys?

In other news, I’m feeling a bit lonely these days. I haven’t seen a little dude for almost a week. Maybe they’ve all gone north for the summer. Maybe spraying poison weekly convinced them this is not a good hotel and they’ve packed the aunties and kids into the minivan and headed up Mt Lemmon. Nice to imagine. I hope the reason I’m not seeing many little dudes, alive or dead, is that I’ve killed them, but pride and hubris go before an invasion. They could be watching from the baseboards and cupboards, waiting to strike. They could be planning World War III, Bat Cave edition.

I am starting to get organized for my move back to the Trailer. Notice, it’s the Trailer now. I’m giving it the proper-noun status it deserves. It’s not really a trailer, it’s a mobile home (also known as a manufactured home, depending on when it was built). It’s a single-wide thing, long and narrow, made of fake wood paneling, Fiberglas, and plastic, and wide metal awnings on both sides to ward off the blazing sun. It’s utilitarian, clean, and safe, and it will be a good place to hunker down and figure out what comes next.

Intermittently deteriorating

Like an automaton whose internal clock is winding down, I find all systems are no longer go. My brain likes to think it is in charge. It’s not. In this cowardly new world after Medicare, it’s every body part for itself. My parts have discovered they are autonomous and thus emancipated, which means they are no longer communicating with each other, or even with me, sometimes. Each part seems to have taken the position of, it’s my system and I’ll go if I want to.

Is it possible that past a certain age, when one’s life is notoriously small, there’s nothing left to talk about except one’s physical ailments? So-called normal people with normal-sized lives can always pull out the grandkid pictures. I don’t have any of those. I have lots of photos of my dead cat, my dead mother (before they died, I mean, ew), and my distant siblings whose lives are so much more interesting than mine. In fact, the photos take up a significant amount of room on a 2-TB external hard drive. What am I going to do with all these photos?

Digital property is a thing nowadays! Did you know? If you are a prolific and greedy creator of digital files, like me, some dispensation for the mountain of bits and bytes needs to be made in your last will and testament. So I hear. I had started writing my will, and everything was going swimmingly until I hit the digital property question. We will not regret the past? Right.

Yesterday I spent much of the day organizing and transferring my many thousands of electronic documents to two external hard drives. It quickly became apparent that I need more storage. I need another device just to hold my photos, something that can be mailed to one of my siblings, as if they would ever care about my photos of Tucson. I need another device to hold my scanned and photographed artwork, which I would mail to the hapless soul who has agreed to be my digital property executor, my kind friend in Phoenix who doesn’t really know what she signed up for.

I need to sort through all this crap. This is overwhelming. It’s bad enough I took a billion photos, bad enough I made all this art and then had the temerity to think it might be worth documenting so I scanned and photographed every stupid painting and drawing before I threw them all in the trash. What have I learned? This lunacy is the opposite of humility.

There’s possibly not a moment to waste.

This week I invited a housecall doctor from my insurance company to enter the Bat Cave. I can hear you yelling, Carol, what the hell? I know. I was aware of the risks. However, I was also aware of the benefits. I saw firsthand how beneficial having another opinion was for my mother. I sat in on her housecall sessions. I credit those nurses with keeping her independent in her condo much longer than we would have expected. They suggested eliminating several drugs and adding a memory drug, which I think slowed the progression of her dementia.

Having a second set of eyes on me, even if those eyes represent the insurance company, is not a bad thing, especially given my not totally unfounded feeling that my primary care nurse-practitioner person doesn’t have time for me and my tiny health crises. Osteoporosis is not a health crisis until I fall and break a bone. Vertigo is not a real thing if the healthcare provider can’t see it to measure it. It’s a well-known phenomenon that people who complain of health issues that can’t be measured are assumed to be insane. I’m lucky my skin is white. It could be so much more fraught.

Anyway, the insurance company makes housecalls once a year for free. The appointment was for 9:00 a.m. He was late. At 9:20 he called and apologized and said he could be there at noon, if I could meet then. I said sure. At noon he called and said it would be closer to 1:00 p.m. I said fine, call me if you get lost.

At 1:20 p.m., there was a knock on my door. I opened the door to a real live M.D., a big, blonde-haired, teddy bear-shaped guy wearing pale blue scrubs, a surgical mask, purple gloves, and an ID card around his neck. I offered him a choice of chairs: Captain Eddie’s office chair on wheels or my grandmother’s straight-backed sewing chair with a pillow to hide the frayed seat fabric. He chose my grandmother’s chair, after lifting the pillow, probably to see if it was okay to sit on it. I watched him lift the pillow. With masks on, so much nuance is lost in nonverbal communication, but we muddle along.

Actually, not much muddling happened. He was completely professional, friendly, not overly chatty but interested and patient. He asked questions, I answered them truthfully. I had done my homework. I could tell him the dates of my vaccines, my shingles shots, my latest mammogram, my most recent flu shot . . . all the dates and major events. There were a few things he didn’t bring up and a few things I didn’t mention. Then he took my blood pressure and listened to my heart.

“You have a little bit of a heart murmur,” he said. No one had told me that before, but given that my father had some sort of heart defect, which probably precipitated the heart attack that killed him, I wasn’t totally surprised.

“It’s a small one, a 2 on a 6-point scale,” he said. Oh, I thought, only a two. Whew.

“And your blood pressure is very high. Do you have white coat syndrome?”

I was actually feeling pretty happy that he hadn't asked me to pee in a cup. I don’t pee on command very well these days. I am not aware that I’m twitchy around doctors but who knows. Like I said, my parts aren’t really conversing.

So you see my urgency at getting my digital property squared away, right? I could be nearing the end. Odds are, it won’t be soon, but you never know. My cousin Dave ended up on the roof at age 61.

I don’t have to engage in proper file management. I could just say eff-it and let someone else deal with the mess. Certainly, if I lollygag long enough, I won’t have to worry about anything. I just hope someone finds my dead body before I totally stink up the place. Although, here in the desert, we have a dry heat, which means I’ll probably be a pile of bone and desiccated fat cells by the time the landlord unlocks the door. Ew.

For some reason, I have a lot of anxiety over leaving a mess, to the point at which I find myself regretting my creative life. If I had a partner or lived near family, I could say, oops, sorry, and let go. But I’m alone here. Who will come into the Bat Cave and sort through my stuff? Who will box up my hard drives, my laptop, my cell phone, and mail them to my family? Who will recycle-bin  the gazillion photos from my gigantic solid state desktop-system hard drive? What crew of elves will erase the physical evidence of my presence on the planet? Who will hire said elves? There's no 1-800-LF4-HIRE. I checked. (Although, hey, you can work as an elf at the North Pole for minimum wage.) 

It’s not something I would want to dump on anyone, let alone someone I love. My family cannot afford to fly down here to take on the task, especially during COVID. My scant handful of Arizona friends might be able to help in their free time, but they are all busy leading rich lives filled with meaning and purpose. I admit, I made a mess. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Who will clean it up when I’m gone? I need to figure it out before I die. 

Anyhoo, I sent a message to my primary on Friday. If I don’t hear back within a few days, I’ll see if I can find another practitioner in the healthcare system who is taking new patients. Meanwhile, I’m sorting through the files. I may decide to chuck it all. It’s either all precious, or none of it is precious. In a few years, I bet nobody will be using a USB external hard drive. They will probably have computer chips implanted in their brains and operate their Netflix via a skin-based control panel, like a modern Dick Tracy. Either technology will have moved on, or the death of democracy and the environment will have rendered civilization unviable. We are a blip.

The human Roomba

Greetings from the desert. It’s been another typical week of chasing cockroaches, editing dissertations, dodging bullets, and poking pencils in my ears to block out the boom cars. Ho hum. I call myself the human Roomba. I aimlessly wander half-blind through my activities each day, picking up cosmic detritus. At the end of the day, I swallow my misgivings, sluice off the sweat, and park myself on my foam rubber mattress to recharge my batteries in preparation for another aimless day of wandering. What is the purpose? To get things done. What is the point? What is the point to life? To persist, until it’s time to stop.

Summer is on the horizon. We’ve hit triple digits here in Tucson, not the earliest on record for the season, but not the latest. During the day, creatures lay low, unless they have air-conditioned SUVs, then they are out barreling from Target to Lowe’s to Fry’s in search of I don’t know what. Company, I guess. 

Covid loves company. I still prefer to isolate, and when I go into a public indoor space, I still wear my trusty KN95. I’m one of the few. I don’t care. They can’t see my face, which means I’m invisible. Their eyes slide right off my mask as if my entire body is not there. That’s not new for me. Menopause precipitated my secret power of invisibility.

Speaking of growing old, I went to an ophthalmologist this week to see how my cataracts are progressing. Nicely, it appears, thanks for asking. A slow-growing problem, too soon to worry.

I sat in the waiting area with a bunch of other elderly folks (middle of a week day). Most of them watched the big screen TV. I reminisced about sitting in a similar waiting room with my mother, reassuring her every five minutes that yes, they would eventually call her name. She hated to wait. Time waiting in a waiting room must seem endless when you have dementia.

I got my prescription updated. I hope it will be accurate, given that my breath kept leaking out over my mask and fogging up the lens machine. Is A better? Or is B better? I don't know, who can say. Next, I endured the stinging yellow eye drops and didn't feel any of the pokes and prods. Then an energetic masked man stormed into the tiny exam room, peered into my soul through my dilated eyeballs, and said hmmm, come back in four months. I paid for my prescription and I stumbled past the oldsters and out the door into the blazing desert sunshine, mostly blind, wearing two layers of sunglasses. There should be a law that you can't drive in direct sunlight when your eyes are dilated. It’s a miracle I made it home without running my car off the road. I was useless until the drops wore off, six hours later. 

Speaking of useless, early Wednesday morning (4:05 am) I was awakened abruptly by the sound of gunshots. They sounded very close to the building. After a moment of panic, I rolled onto the rug, hoping I wasn't disrupting the party of roaches entertaining their young ones there. (Save the children! Run for the corners!) I grabbed my phone and called 9-1-1. Or I tried to call 9-1-1.

After this experience, I now know what happens when you have a VOIP cell phone provider. I have an area code 503 number. Thus, my call was bounced to Portland. The nice man on the phone tried to put me through to Tucson police but dialed the wrong number, then dialed another number (“no one seems to be answering”), before finally connecting me with Tucson Dispatch, who took the info and said, “Why didn’t you just call 9-1-1?”

After five minutes of kneeling on the floor, I was over it. It was clear that nobody was coming out to investigate. There had been no more shots and I heard nothing outside in the parking lot. I’d stopped shaking, and I could now see the humor in the situation. I hung up the phone and went back to bed.

In the morning, I checked the news: Homicide a block away. I read a little more about the incident over the following days. Some guy shot at his on-again-off-again girlfriend and her friend as they were driving away from him in a car. They thought he had a gun, and turns out, they were right. That happened several blocks south of here. 

He didn't realize his shots had nailed his girlfriend in the neck. He followed them in his own car. When they stopped, I guess he saw the blood and thought his girlfriend had been fighting with her friend in the car. So he shot at the friend. I think those were the shots that woke me up. His girlfriend died in the car a block up the street. Somebody called it in at 6:00 am.

Police caught the guy. He’s 21. His girlfriend was 18.

Meanwhile, there’s a lunar eclipse tonight. I’m working on my last will and testament. No connection, just thought I’d mention it.