A derailed life

Today I donned rain gear and risked a walk in the park. As I kept one eye on the clouds, I thought about how I would describe the evolution of my grief over the death of my cat. The fact that I'm thinking about words is a sign that I'm moving out of my broken heart and back into my crazy head.

Three weeks ago, my life was going in a direction. Yes, it was a confused, uncertain direction driven by my mother's slow descent into dementia. Still, it seemed like a positive direction . . . somehow I managed to keep creating, even in the limbo of my confusion. Then my cat died.

Now I seem to be derailed into a different direction, judging by the boxes of stuff I am preparing to cast out of the Love Shack. However, I'm aware it's possible I'm stuck on a siding. I can't be sure. Maybe the previous three years were actually a siding, and now I've been bumped back onto the main track. Who can say?

I've learned two things about myself.

First, I have learned I am capable of commitment. I wasn't sure. My track record of relationships seems to indicate otherwise. However, now I know I was fully committed to something. That seems reassuring on some level, to know I'm not devoid of a characteristic important to mature human interaction.

However, the other thing I learned is that I used that cat like an anchor, like ballast, to keep me on an even keel during the tumult of the rest of my life. He was the steady presence. What an unfair burden to place on another creature. Some part of me knew he would eventually leave me—nothing lasts forever, especially not a fat old cat. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

Reality seems nebulous now. As I walked today, I found myself mesmerized by the images of trees and clouds reflected in the mud puddles along the path. Sheltered from the wind, the mud puddles showed a dark alternative universe. I wondered what it would feel like to dive into that other world and sink into those black trees.

I can't yet occupy the middle of my twin-sized bed. To help me sleep, I made a cat-shaped pillow and filled it with dry rice. It takes up the space on my bed formerly occupied by my cat. Even though my cat was sixteen pounds, the inert heft of five pounds of rice resembles the presence of a sleeping cat. The first night I slept with my rice cat, it felt so authentic, I dissociated from reality. I wasn't sure if he was really dead or if he was there after all, pressing against the small of my back, and the horrible morning at the vet was just a horrible nightmare.

Now I say to myself, This is a pillow, this is not a cat. This is a pillow, this is not a cat. That seems to help.

A couple nights ago, I drove out to the emergency vet to pick up Eddie's ashes. The tech handed me a sky-blue box. I checked and saw Eddie's name and my last name on a label. I wanted to scream, but I thanked her and walked outside to my car. I patted the box and felt something like relief. Then I proceeded to get lost in the neighborhood trying to find my way among avenues, streets, and courts back to a familiar part of the city. Later that night, I saw on the news that there had been a shooting half a block away from the vet a half hour after I was there. Such is life.

When I finally got home, I opened the box. Inside was a nice wooden cube engraved with Eddie in gold letters. They also included a little clay tablet imprint of Eddie's paw and a tiny plastic envelope of his hair. I don't know what is in the box (could be sand for all I know), and I don't know if the imprint really is of Eddie's paw. However, I do know those little snips of hair are Eddie's.

I put his box on the shelf above my computer desk next to a photo. Now he's home.

My loss seems trivial in light of the losses people face daily all around the world. When I cry, I try to include everyone and everything in my grief. That seems only fair; the death of one cat means something only to me, but the world is full of sorrows worth lamenting. Off the top of my head: The death of democracy; the death of a basketball star; the deaths from famine, earthquake, illness, and war; the deaths of millions of kangaroos and koalas . . . don't forget the slow death of a planet no longer capable of supporting human life. How do we put all this suffering into perspective? I don't know. I can't.

Meanwhile, here I go, back to my Swedish death cleaning in preparation for my new life.

Take me with you

The death of my cat smashed a hole in my life last week, leaving me a shattered mess. I've done my best to ride the waves of grief as I clean up and reclaim my space. It's not easy.

Thank you to all who reached out to sympathize and console me. Thank you to my sister-in-law who carted off the leftover cat food and cat litter. And the toys, fleastop, and fur grooming devices. I hope she will come with a truck and take up the six-foot tall cat tree occupying five square feet of my living room.

This week, I've coped by staying busy. I felt compelled to move furniture around, to take down the cat perches in every room, to do all the noisy home projects I postponed to avoid disturbing sacred nap time. I washed four loads of cat bedding. I vacuumed cat hair tumbleweeds. Even so, tiny balls of fur remain, stuck like burrs to blankets and rugs and all my fleece pants.

A thirteen year relationship ended in the space of two fraught days. I still can't believe he is gone. That cat was my parent, my child, my spouse, my business partner, my interior decorator, my personal trainer, my meditation coach, and my best friend. He filled more roles than any human could, and he did it with something as close to unconditional love as you will ever find in a living creature. I would gladly trade a lifetime of cat litter in my bed to have that cat back again.

People who are not cat people have asked me when I will get another cat. As if cats are interchangeable. As if any random bundle of fur will do. I can't imagine another cat taking Eddie's place. Cats are no more interchangeable than are spouses or children. Maybe someday I will welcome a new cat, but it won't be to replace Eddie. He was one of a kind.

Grief has its pace and tone. I don't need to defend or justify my sorrow. Let me put it like this. I don't care if you think I should be over it by now. I try not to burden others with my sorrow. However, sometimes grief takes me down. Not for long. I can't breathe when I start keening. My congested sinuses don't allow much wallowing. Still, I feel what I feel. I can't be your Little Mary Sunshine. I can't get my face to fight gravity right now. Every part of me sags. If you spent thirteen years with something you loved, you'd miss it if it suddenly disappeared. The pain of loss is physical. I would gladly trade my mother to hold my cat in my arms again.

I dread coming home to an empty house. My heart tears open that moment when I enter and smell only mold and cooked onions. The place smells unoccupied now, like no one lives here. The absence of his presence is profound. For a small creature, he commanded a lot of space. He was sixteen pounds of energy, even when he was sleeping. That was never more clear than when the vet gave him a sedative. My weary sick cat sank into my arms, all sixteen pounds, nose in my jacket, finally at rest, finally out of pain, while I stroked his fur and dripped tears. I wish I could forget that moment. I wish I could freeze that moment in time. Stop time, right there, when he was alive but not in pain. Twenty seconds later, he was dead.

Maybe if I had had more time to let him go, this wouldn't be so hard. You know, months or years of pumping him full of treatments to keep him going so I could postpone this awful moment. We had thirteen wonderful years together, just us. He suffered two days and exited, stage right, leaving me in free fall. I don't know what comes next, but now I'm closer to finding out.

The terrible no good very bad king hell bummer week

I wish I could say it was my mother, but no, it was my cat. On Tuesday last week, I took him to the vet for his annual wellness exam. They cleaned out his ears and treated him for an ear infection. Somewhere along the way, he apparently had a stroke. By Thursday morning, I could tell he was going to die soon. I took him to the emergency vet. An hour later, he died in my arms.

I am destroyed.

Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-Basket

I'm relieved to have survived 2019. As I wait for 2020 to blow us all to smithereens, I am reflecting on some accomplishments, challenges, and surprises from the past year. I mean mine, of course. I'm not qualified to judge anyone else's, although that never stops me. I wonder, should I be looking forward rather than backward? Good question. I'll look forward some other time. The wreckage of the future always beckons. Tonight, I'm reflecting backward.

First, I've been a writing machine this year. I'm like the meat grinder of writers. Ideas in, content out. Of course, like any meat grinder, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. Luckily for us all, I never let a little thing like concern for quality stop me from grinding out words. Sometimes I string words together into actual sentences. I know. I'm amazing.

Second, I'm getting things done around the Love Shack. It is good to be proactive when one is preparing for homelessness. To that end, I'm ticking things off that have been on my list for twenty years. For example, this week I have been transferring my music audiotapes to digital format. I know! I'm a dynamo.

It was really easy once I figured out where to plug the cable. Thank you to all the wonderful people who post tutorials on the Web for idiots like me. So now I can throw away all these hissing compilation tapes of songs captured off scratchy albums I dragged to Portland from Los Angeles and then donated to thrift stores. As if Portland needed an infusion of Monkee albums. Downsizing is an incremental process—first the albums, then the tapes, then the computer. After North Korea's bomb destroys the power grid, I'll be completely free.

Third, I've learned some new words this year:  Shingrix. Costochondritis. Ganglion. Retinal artery occlusion. It's good to expand my vocabulary after many years of shrinkage. Where did all my words go, I wonder? Probably the same place my socks go. Inside my duvet covers.

I've learned some new skills this year, too. Taking my own blood pressure! How cool is that! It's so fun to wrap my arm in Velcro, one of the great human inventions, and then grimace as my arm is all but severed.

A few weeks ago, I made my every-other-year visit to my doctor for a wellness exam. I brought her a drawing I made of my naked body labeled with all the things I thought might be failing, head to toe. Cysts, warts, hiatal hernia, bladder, high cholesterol, arthritis, yep, the works. In moments like these, all those years of art school really pay off. She was surprised, perhaps nonplussed. Perplexed, confused, astounded . . . all words that might apply.

“Can I keep this?” she said, holding the drawing carefully between two fingers. I magnanimously said, “Of course, I made it for you.”

Finally, my major achievement for the year is showing up for my mother. Almost every evening, I drive over to her retirement facility, park my car, hike through weather, and enter the code on the back door. I stride down the hallway, noting which door name plates have come and gone. As I walk by the dining room, I dodge white-haired people heading back to their rooms, most assisted by aides, who smile at me and greet me by name. I look to see if Mom is still eating. Almost every evening, one old lady waves at me. Another one points at me and says, “Who is that guy?”

In Mom's room, if the lamp and TV are on, she's sitting up watching the Flintstones. If the lamp and TV are off, she's snoozing on the couch.

A few nights ago, the room was dark. She was lying on the couch under her blue plaid wool blanket. I entered with my usual greeting: “Howdy, Slacker.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn't say anything, which is not normal. I sat on the couch by her feet.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You're my daughter, Carol.”

I guess some days are better than others. Tonight, she was sitting up, laughing at Fred and Barney, as alert as ever. We enjoyed the rest of the Flintstones, followed by the last thirty minutes of Love it or List it, and then M.A.S.H. came on, my cue to leave. I drove home in pouring rain, wishing I wish I could freeze time.

Let me just stay here in this moment. This moment in which my email inbox remains blessedly empty. This moment in which my phone is silent. This moment in which my mother knows me and loves me. This moment in which I can let my mind wander among the dwindling choices in the word boutique. Tonight, in my quest to be prolific at the expense of quality, I will choose a few overused words and spatter them at this blog. Happy new year, everyone. You go on ahead. Let me just stay here in 2019, in this moment, before everything goes to hell.

Wishing you all the best in this stupid cold season

On Friday night, Mom was just leaving the dining room as I came strolling down the hall from the back door, dripping from a strangely balmy rainstorm.

I slowed down and matched my pace to hers. “How was dinner tonight?” I asked.

“Well, it's over with,” she replied, leaning heavily on her walker, eyes on the floor.

“Ha. That's funny,” I said. “Was that a joke? That was a joke!”

I couldn't see her face. My view was of her hunched shoulders. I admired her red fleece top, very festive.

I made a mental note to remember her joke so I could report it to you. She often says funny things, but I don't remember them. I enjoy her jokes in the moment, receiving them as they occur. Sorry you miss most of the good stuff. Her jokes and observations evaporate from my brain almost as fast as I suspect they evaporate from hers. I can't tell if I'm getting early dementia or my brain's memory failures are a sympathetic response to help me feel compassion for a woman I spent most of my life denigrating, avoiding, disparaging, or sucking up to.

The holiday season is barreling at us full speed, propelled by anger and fear. Fear that we'll miss out, that it won't be good enough, we won't get it all done, we won't get what we want. Anger that other people refuse to bend to our will (get out of our way, give us more love, stop believing stupid things). Anger that time and space are oblivious to our desperate need to find the right something for someone who could not care less.

Some years back, my family abandoned giving gifts to everyone in the family (all six of us, plus my one brother-in-law and my one niece), resorting instead to choosing "Secret Santas." That went over so well we eventually evolved to avoiding giving gifts altogether. After Dad died, there seemed to be little point.

The relief at opting out of the season of consumption overtakes me when I perform my weekly hunting and gathering chores (Winco). I feel no mania. When I'm at Mom's, watching TV with her, we remark on the proliferation of holiday commercials exhorting us to buy stuff, from perfume to trucks to burgers. No product is exempt from the season of giving. We marvel at the ploys marketers use to persuade us our lives will be perfect if we just buy that thing. Trucks barreling through snow (ugh, yech, who would want to do that?). Slim-limbed women in golden evening gowns soaking together in a giant Roman bath (like, what?). As the anti-Christ of marketing, I am chagrined to realize that the marketers' ploys have succeeded, at least with me—alas, I can remember the brands they were advertising. Curse you, marketing machine!

Here we are at the end of a year even more bizarre than the last. My friends have stopped watching the news, opting instead for deep dives into Netflix, where they settle among empty pizza boxes like traumatized goldfish sinking into crusty sediment. I don't have Netflix or pizza. I find relief reading library books in the bath.

Back in her room, she settled into the black hole of her couch and pulled her blanket over her. I turned on the TV. Friday night television leaves us bereft, now that MeTV has opted for College Football at 6:30 pm. No Flintstones, no Stooges, it's a real entertainment wasteland. It's either HGTV or golf.

“No more golf!” Mom said firmly.

Desperate, I switched to the Smithsonian channel, which was showing a program about World War II. We watched as Allied bombers blew up some buildings.

“I don't think I should watch this, do you?”

Our last resort is to watch the young man we have nicknamed Dimples, the tattooed host of the lottery dream home show on HGTV.

“Okay, I guess we are stuck with Dimples,” I said.

“Who?”

Her eyes were at half-mast. I snapped a photo of her coffee table with her in the background zoned out on the couch. On her table in the foreground of the photo, in this order: tissue box, fake flickering candle, Christmas stick (two ornaments on a bit of pine tree I found in the street, stuck in a bud vase), a bushy red poinsettia plant ordered by my sister from France and sent from California the day before, and a foot-tall dark green crocheted Christmas tree strung with tiny objects that look like they belong on a charm bracelet. In the background, my mother dozing in a red fleece top with her mouth open. If that doesn't say happy holidays, nothing will.

On Sunday night, M.A.S.H. will return and the world will align once again on its proper axis. It's winter solstice. We can put up with a few more days of these obnoxious commercials as we do our best to ignore this stupid cold season.

We gotta have art

The reward for being willing to work for nothing (also known as service or volunteering) is the opportunity to do more work for nothing. Few are called to this level of self-flagellation. Most people volunteer once a year dishing up spuds at a soup kitchen. Maybe they sell wrapping paper for their daughter's scout troop. These smart givers have figured out how to maintain their sense of selves when giving by engaging in some carefully controlled giving. They manage the time, place, duration, and level of emotional involvement. They live to serve another day.

Me, when I jump off the cliff into the great pit of service, I don't hold back. I go all in. Whenever I see that finger of service pointing my way, I almost always say yes. Even when I don't want to show up, I do. Because that is what I have learned is required of me to survive in my own skin. I am no longer a quitter. Well, hardly ever. When I first got vertigo, I quit on a service commitment. I was capsized by the rocking water in my head, not much good for anything for a while.

The vertigo still bubbles up from time to time, but it no longer swamps me. Now, I show up for my service commitments. I show up for meetings, I show up for phone calls, I show up for my mother.

Now I'm showing up for a new volunteer commitment. I'm in the process of being inducted (onboarded, waterboarded, whatever they call it) into a service organization. A request went around by email for someone to co-chair the workshop committee. Prodded by the finger of service, I raised my hand. Most of the work for 2020 has been done, it appears, by the massively overachieving and micromanaging “acting” workshop chair. Probably they just need an ignorant snoid to show up, check names off the list, and make sure nobody inadvertently unplugs the projector when run they their chair over the extension cord. That snoid could be me.

The hardest part of the snoid job is getting to the location in downtown Portland. Parking is exorbitant and scarce. Public transit is slow and expensive. Volunteering means clients pay nothing for service; however, volunteering shouldn't require the volunteer to fork out great sums of time and money. Just saying. Not up to me.

Speaking of trying to help others, at the invitation of one of the artists who took my art and business class at the community college, yesterday I visited an artists' workshop in Northeast Portland. Well, it was really an old concrete brick garage with a massive wood stove flaming against the back wall, uncomfortably close to shelves of tarps and other possibly flammable materials. I tried not to notice.

Three artists from my class had kept in touch. Apparently, taking my class had inspired them to support each others' marketing efforts. I felt a little frisson of pride, completely unearned.

Just inside the big open garage door, I chatted with two artisans I had not met before. The first was a young woman who sat behind a display of hand-pinched clay pots adorned with grotesque cartoonish faces (not unlike some of my grotesque cartoonish faces). I admired them and asked what people typically used them for.

“Rubberbands,” she said. “Paper clips. My Mom has them all over her house.” Yay, moms. We gotta love moms.

“Where are you selling them?” I asked.

“Well, nowhere, yet.”

The second artist new to me was a long-haired scruffy man named Tim who sat at a power machine sewing leather tags on pieces of pillow ticking for a custom order of bags. I admired his hand-dyed, one-of-a-kind backpacks stacked on a big table behind him. Ever the marketing critic, I gave Tim my signature eye-roll when he was unable to produce a business card: In lieu of a card, he gave me one of the tags he sews into his packs. Today I visited his website: clean design, perhaps a little too clean. Lots of nice photos but no verbiage to romance me into paying $114 for a clay-colored book bag.

Next, I stopped to chat with Cherise, an artist who I vaguely remembered from my class earlier this year. She stood next to a colorful display of hand-made cards encased in clear plastic wrappers, arranged in a little twirly rack on a table. Next to the rack were a few small paintings set on easels. I liked her images.

“How are your marketing efforts going?” I asked.

“If you had a class to help people post their art on their website, I would totally take it,” she said, looking embarrassed. Hmmm, I thought. An unfilled need. Could I fill it?

Today, I looked up her website, a drag-and-drop Go-Daddy affair that looked good to me. She had a page of digital art that people could buy, download, and print. I don't know what she was complaining about. Looked like she had it handled. Maybe she was having tech-swamp brain, like I often do. It's the inability of my brain to recall technical skills I previously learned, even the day before. She may have forgotten she knew what she knew. Or maybe she enlisted a niece to create the shopping page. I need more information.

Next to Cherise, was a card table showing a sparse collection of handmade embroidered patches and ... well, bigger patches, or maybe they were wall hangings? Heidi, the artist who invited me to the show, huddled under a laprobe behind the table. Heidi is an embroidery artist, I guess you could say. She takes tiny pieces of denim, embellishes them with microscopic cross stitches, attaches a minuscule fabric tag with her name on it, and safety pins a dinky price tag to the corner: $85. Yipes. She also had a dish of about twenty denim embroidered buttons for $35 each. I mean, buttons that you pin on your lapel, not buttons that go through buttonholes.

My eyesight is pretty bad, especially for closeup work, so I had to lift up my glasses to appreciate the fine detail. Even up close, though, I don't think I fully grasped the appeal. Now, if she had turned one of those miniature denim masterpieces into a huge wall tapestry or a rug . . . well, I guess I like my art over-sized. And functional. The way I like my brain. But I digress.

The third artist from my class was Marge. Marge works with wood. She does custom decks and fences in her outdoor life. Indoors, she builds wooden boxes on legs or wheels to hold things of various sizes, including stringed instruments.

“Is this where the magic happens?” I asked, patting the beat-up workbench shoved against the wall under a window and thinking, wow, this is really primitive. The lack of space and paucity of tools possibly explained why her work could best be described as rustic. I was reminded of the day many years ago when I showed my attempt to sew a leather outfit (turquoise lamb suede) to a professional seamstress who used to sew couture for Galiano. I'll never forget the look of withering pity she bestowed upon me as I wrapped up my amateurish effort and slunk out the door. I took a vow not to do that to anyone. I admired Marge's photos and patted her boxes.

I don't know if any of the artists sold anything but they didn't get any money from me. I'm in downsize mode. Cognitive dissonance kicks in when I imagine the hordes of artists around the world cranking out art that few people will see or buy. How is all this production helping the planet? But we can't tell artists not to create. That would be saying, dancers, stop dancing; singers, stop singing. Fish gotta swim. Artists gotta create. And we need art, even if we are running out of places to put it.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Hellish Hand-Basket

This afternoon as I was eating under-cooked apple-and-raisin oat bran muck out of my beat-up thrift-store stainless steel pan, I contemplated . . . oh, darn it, now I don't remember what I was contemplating. I lost my thought remembering the dusty aisles of the many thrift stores that have provided me with clothing and household goods over the past forty years. Practically everything I own has been used by someone else. I return some of the things I use to thrift stores when I feel I've received my money's worth. However, like a good American, most things—for example, people, clothing, cars, and time—I consume until they fall apart.

The holiday season thunders ponderously at me like a freight train through Sullivan's Gulch, first Thanksgiving, followed by Black Friday (also known as Buy Nothing Day) and Christmas, followed closely by New Year's. I dread the season of disruption. Even on Monday, Winco was packed with milling shoppers intent on acquiring frozen dead birds and pie tins of sugar and fat. Merry ho ho, says the Chronic Malcontent.

I can't even complain about the weather. The center of the bombogenesis is to the south of Portland. A little breeze and some rain and we throw up our hands while our neighbors in southern Oregon can expect 100 mph winds and a foot of snow. Oh, poor us, we have to use our windshield wipers. Speaking of wipers, I closed a bank account yesterday and treated myself to new wipers front and rear. The Autozone guy came out in the mizzle (misty drizzle) to put them on for me. He said I should clean my hatchback window once in a while. My wipers would last longer. I said okay, but I probably won't. That rear wiper was only five years old. (Clearly, I don't care much about seeing what happens behind me.)

The Med-Aide at the retirement home asked me tonight if I would be joining my mother for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, which occurs at lunch time. (For the old folks, lunch is called dinner and dinner is called supper. I don't understand that.)

I must have looked confused. “We need to know how many people to plan for,” she explained.

I tried to imagine resentful family members clumsily helping the old folks shovel pureed turkey and stuffing into their toothless mouths. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I'll visit after dinner. I mean, supper. Like I usually do.”

I wonder how many family members will show up. If anyone new arrives, Mom will notice. She notices everything that departs from normality. Like when I move something on her coffee table. Like when I almost leave behind the grocery bag I used to lug in her Cheerios, almond milk, gluten-free bread, and dairy-free ice cream. Like when her neighbor came into her room and put his hand on her forehead. (Dan is on bed-rest, now, confined to his room, possibly not long for this world.) Mom may be demented but she's not blind. She notices stuff.

I read some advice on a blog that appeared in response to my Google search on How do I make a decision. The blog author indicated I should focus less on doing and more on being. I sat with that idea for a few moments before I snorted derisively, startling my cat who was sleeping on the top level of his six-foot cat tree where the weather is much warmer than it is down here on the plain.

Being versus doing. Ha. I have dedicated my life to the quest of being, avoiding the chore of doing in the process, resulting in several kinds of being I didn't really want, for example, poverty. If I could sit around and just be all the time, don't you think I would have? Eventually, I get hungry. My car runs out of gas. No, focusing on being doesn't cut it, not for me. I'm all about the action.

Which is why I felt compelled to Google How do I make a decision. Like most creatives, I feel pulled in multiple directions. How do I choose my focus? You should interpret that question as, How can I prod, bend, stretch, or torture my creativity into producing some income? A friend called me tonight to suggest I apply for a job at a fabric store across town. Having spent some of the worst years of my life working with fabric, I had to swallow the bile and say thanks, but I'd prefer to find something closer to home.

I could ramble on but my high-tech foot warmers (microwaved rice-filled socks) have lost their heat and my feet are getting cold. I'm wearing two hats, finger-less gloves, sweatpants, a fleece jacket, and a wool shawl knitted by my mother on oversize needles. The space heater labors continuously to cut the chill. I am such a hothouse flower: It's at least 40°F outside, not even freezing.

Hey, here's my cat, ready to take over blogging. Time to microwave my foot warmers.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Hellish Hand-Basket.

Is there a human in this room?

In the past year, I've walked down the hall from the back door of the retirement home to my mother's room almost three hundred and sixty-five times. (I missed a few evenings in the past year.) Every night at about 6:15, I park my car in the cul-de-sac under a tree that drops detritus on my windshield. I admire the tall fir trees overlooking the unkempt garden, hoping when they topple in the next winter storm, they will fall toward the empty field. I punch in the code and pull open the heavy door, doing my best not to let it slam behind me in case the residents in the first two rooms are snoozing. People go to bed right after dinner at the retirement home.

Every evening, I stride down the hall and pass a certain door. The door displays a large sign: Happy Birthday, Rudy! Last year, pasted around the sign were colorful stickers that said Happy 100! A few months ago, the stickers were changed to say Happy 101!

In all the times I've walked by that door, I have never seen it open. I have not heard a peep from beyond that door, not a radio, television, or murmuring pastor. I have not smelled poop as I passed. Is there a human in that room? Who, I wonder, is Rudy?

Tonight I saw an aide enter the room carrying a large garbage bag. That means someone is in there. I picture a stinky wizened man in a bed, gnarled and still, waiting for family that never comes. Well, I'm making up that story, for sure. They probably come on Sundays after church like normal people.

A few nights ago, Mom told me she was awakened from a nap on her couch to find her neighbor Dan's hand on her forehead.

Mom's neighbor Dan is a thin, long-faced grizzled man who has severe dementia and doesn't talk much. Normally, Dan gets around very slowly in a wheelchair. Apparently, nobody knew he could walk. When I mentioned my mother's story to an aide, she said, “Yes, we saw Dan in your mother's doorway. He's walking!” I told her Dan had paid a visit to my mother as she slept on her couch. “It's a miracle!” the aide said.

I sat next to her on the couch in my usual spot and switched the channel from the Flintstones to Love It or List It. I looked at Mom to gauge her level of concern.

“You could take him, I think,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said promptly. “I could take him.”

It isn't hard to imagine Mom and Dan ending up on the carpet in a slow-motion tangle of fragile limbs. Nobody will win that match.

“If it happens again, you can push him away or yell at him,” I said. “Then ring your call button.”

“It will be five minutes before anyone shows up,” she said.

“Well, punch his lights out, then.”

“Okay.”

I turned back to the TV. “All-righty then. What do you think, are they going to love it or list it?”

Yesterday I caught a bus downtown just after dawn to attend a five-hour workshop on business basics for small business startups. Five of the twelve attendees, me included, were volunteer mentors-in-training. The remainder were a motley group of hopefuls seeking information and advice. We packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a tiny room that alternated between stifling hot and freezing cold. The woman sitting by the projector kept bumping it, knocking the image askew on the screen.

I sat by the wall and sipped homemade coffee from a little cup, trying desperately to stay awake as the speakers droned on about business plans, banking, finance, record-keeping, and marketing. A lot of the material was familiar to me. I could teach most of it myself, and I have. I imagine I will volunteer to present something in that tiny stifling room at some point. They really need some PowerPoint help. In between drawing funny faces in my notebook, I reconfigured the tables and chairs in my mind.

At noon, I ate my homemade lunch of toasted oats, apple, raisins, and soy milk alone in a small break room down the hall. People who went out of the building came back and reported having a disappointing experience at McDonald's. At two-thirty, we were released. I gathered up my rain gear, made a pit stop in the restroom, and hiked a block to the bus stop.

The bus home was a long time coming but the rain held off until I was a few blocks from home. I shucked off my rain gear, fed my annoyed cat, and burrowed into my couch until it was time to visit Mom.

A talkative passenger gets the Chronic Malcontent thinking

Thinking is something I do a lot of, maybe too much of, considering that thoughts don't necessarily lead to action. Maybe you have figured out how to think and make things happen—think and grow rich? Think and get happy? Think and create success? If so, I applaud you, you dynamic thinker, you. For me, thinking is a convenient way to avoid doing stuff. It's so much easier to think (dream, ponder, ruminate) than it is to take action.

Consider the ritual of setting our clocks back one hour in the fall, such a colossally arrogant manipulation of our ridiculous human perception of time. Wait, what? Sounds like I still haven't caught up on my sleep. The cat, of course, did not set his clock, being a creature of earth rotation, so he's been on me all week at the hint of dawn, not my best time.

This year, I celebrated the clock-changing ritual by flipping my mattress, changing my sheets, and vacuuming the rugs. I like to do that twice a year. No need to be overly ambitious, especially when it comes to vacuuming. Dust mites have to live too, you know. I try to welcome all god's creatures.

My right leg has been falling asleep when I sit at my kitchen table. I looked it up: leg falls asleep while sitting. Lots of exciting possibilities. (How did we survive before Google?) Thanks to multiple web authors of dubious repute, I'm having one long continuous stroke, I've got a pinched nerve (not sure what that is), or I'm enjoying some sciatica.

I attended an event in Salem last weekend. Salem is an hour drive south of Portland. I attend this event every year. I look forward to the hypnotic drive down I-5 to our state's capital. The drive there and back is better than the event itself, mainly because I get to be alone and out of my house. This year, a member of the group texted me to ask if she could ride with me. Caught off guard, I discarded my first thought (no fricking way, eew) and texted back, okay. She gave me her address, which I recognized as being in the heart of what we for many years have disparagingly called Skid Row, long before our entire city has become one heartbreaking Skid Row of houseless, homeless, sad, cold, tired, hungry, messed up people.

“Just cross the Burnside Bridge and turn right,” she texted.

“I'll pick you up at 8:30,” I responded, wondering if I would be able to walk by the time I arrived in Salem.

Despite the fact that the Burnside Bridge was closed for repairs that weekend, I managed to be ten minutes early, because besides being chronically malcontented, I am chronically early. I sat outside a decrepit apartment building in the loading zone, watching men and women shuffle by with backpacks and shopping carts. I perused their attire and demeanor. I saw their social interactions. I'm learning through observation—in my precarious world, homelessness is always lurking around the corner. I'm lucky, though: I have a car.

Eventually, my passenger appeared. Let's call her Lee. Lee hopped into my car and off we went.

From the time we left her door until the time we arrived at the event venue, Lee talked incessantly. I found out she is a poet. She works as a caregiver for an obese woman, often taking her client to the opera. She told me things I would never have dreamed of asking, stories of childhood trauma and abandonment. She shared about unsuccessful marriages and relationships. I heard about her mother, her father, her siblings, and the siblings from her father's multiple extramarital escapades, some of whom she'd recently met.

I kept my eyes on the road, nodding occasionally, grunting a few times, reluctant to say anything substantive. Lee didn't mind. In fact, I don't think she noticed.  The angst in her voice began to grate on my nerves. It took me a while to figure out that she is drama junkie. I cannot match that level of excitement. By the time we reached the event venue, I was thoroughly blockaded behind my personal bubble, determined to ignore her as much as possible during the day until it was time to make the return trek to Portland.

At 4:30, we were on the road home. I was hoping she would be tired, inclined to doze off, maybe, but no, she seemed as energetic as ever. At one point, Lee said, “I know I talk a lot.”

I took the opening. “Are you afraid of silence? Some people don't like too much silence.”

She was silent for a couple breaths. I thought, oh, yay, is she going to finally shut up? Then, oh yay, did I insult her enough to get her to shut up? Less than twenty seconds later, she said, “I wanted to show you that I was thinking about your question.” Oh, no. Thinking too much traps even drama junkie poets. No one is immune to thinking overload. I can claim no superiority: There's nothing special about me falling into the thinking sinkhole.

A less self-obsessed person would have realized my passive aggressive question was really a cry for relief, a desperate plea for silence. I'm the fool. It wasn't worth the battle. I dropped my passenger at her front door, avoided the hugging ritual, and said I'd see her around. I drove slowly home to feed my hungry angry lonely cat.

An hour later, I dragged myself to my mother's and collapsed on her couch.

“What's wrong with you?” she said. “You look beat.”

I told my mother about my passenger from hell. “She never shut up,” I moaned. “She kept staring at me while I was driving. The entire time, she stared at me. And she kept leaning over and tapping me on the arm.”

“Oh, I hate that,” my mother commiserated, and just like that, I felt the heaviness lift. After all these years, a kind word from Mom takes all the pain away.

Service is the path to happiness, she says [cue eye roll]

I'm taking a break between sneezes to record yesterday's networking adventure. (My sinuses are combusting from ragweed pollen. Welcome to allergy hell.) As part of my endeavor to trick the universe into rewarding me for my paltry attempts to be of service, I applied to join a nonprofit organization that helps small business owners succeed in business. I figure, why not. If I'm going to live on air, I might as well be of some use to someone.

Yesterday was my first opportunity to meet other members of the organization. Let's call this organization the Oldsters. I drove to Tigard in lovely sunny, windy, cold fall weather, puttering in the slow lane while trucks and SUVs dodged around me. As a former school bus driver, I have learned highway patience. When some large vehicle is snuffling up my tailpipe, I try not to make any sudden moves. Eventually if I slow down slowly, they will dart around me and floor it. I'm happy to see their dust. I don't compete while driving.

I arrived calm and intact thirty minutes early for the 11:00 a.m. meeting. I try to find the balance between being too early (pathetically overeager) and just early enough (casually confident). Achieving this balance sometimes requires sitting in my car watching the clock. It's a skill I have gained after years of fine-tuning. I'll send you the syllabus if you are interested.

Anyway, at the precise moment, I skittered to the front door, buffeted by blowing leaves. First stop, the restroom, of course, because, you know. I found the meeting room around the corner. The tables were set up lecture-style, with a clear space in the center for the speaker. A generic PowerPoint title slide glowed on the screen at the front of the room. A dozen or so oldsters, mostly men, milled around chatting.

An older gal with glasses and fluffy gray hair rushed over to me and introduced herself as Veronica. I extended my hand and she took it and kept it. I tried to get it back, but she had a firm grip. I grinned and nodded as she looked deeply into my eyes and told me how nice it was to meet me, so nice, awfully nice, great, in fact, so great. Later, after her plaintive pitch for volunteers to help on understaffed committees, I realized her enthusiasm wasn't about me specifically but about the prospect of having more help.

Another young woman came in immediately after me. I'd like to think I qualify as a young woman, but actually, I was probably old enough to be her mother. Since I turned fifty, I rarely look in the mirror. Humor my delusion. I found a spot in the front row and she took the seat next to my right.

“Hi, I'm Jane,” she said loudly. I introduced myself. She said, “I'm a business banker at the downtown branch of [Bank]. What do you do?”

Gah! That dreaded tell me about yourself question gets me every time.

A super-old oldster shuffled in the narrow space between desks to claim the seat to my left. I noticed he wore hearing aids like the ones my mother wears. He parked his cane against the desk and took off his plaid newsboy cap. He turned his entire body to smile at me. The banker reached across me to shake his hand. “Hi, I'm Jane!”

“What?” said the oldster, whose name we learned later was Lenny.

True to my nature as an overachiever, a few days earlier, I had found my way to the group's local Google Drive and downloaded the day's agenda, after reformatting it to fit on one page. I was the only person with a printed agenda. Thus, I was ready for the moment when the five new members were to be granted one minute each to introduce themselves. In my car, while watching the clock, I had tested different approaches, remembering my Toastmaster days. Should I write it out? Tell three things about me? Tell a joke?

When the moment came, though, I did what the two women ahead of me did: I stumbled through a brief biography and warbled about how glad I was to be there. Marty the co-chair was apparently timing our responses. I got a thumbs-up for coming in at fifty-seven seconds. Thanks, Toastmasters. Everyone else introduced themselves and reported how many years they had volunteered with the Oldsters. The years of service ranged from zero (us newbies) to over twenty-five years.

Minutes later, about twenty-five people swarmed two tables of food. One table displayed pizza, the other stacked boxes of Panera sandwiches. My preferred lunch time is about three o'clock, but I can eat anytime, especially when stressed, although in company, I tend toward the ascetic side. I hide my binges. Accordingly, I swarmed with the rest and grabbed a veggie sandwich box, but ate only the potato chips, saving the hideously decorated cookie and mysterious wrapped sandwich for later when I could pig out in private.

Someone fetched a sandwich box for Lenny so he didn't have to get up. On both sides of me, my seat mates ate noisily. My misophonia kicked in big time when the presenter had to compete with crunching potato chips and crackling sandwich wrappers. To remain calm (and to prove my status as a self-proclaimed artist), I doodled stupid caricatures in my journal.

Eventually the two-hour meeting dragged to a close with Veronica's plea for more hands to help on committees. If I stay with this group, I predict within two years, I will be running it. Not because I can do a better job, not because I'm so desperate to be in charge, but because everyone else who qualifies to lead will be either burned out, retired, or dead. Leader by default. Last sucker standing.

I escaped into the breezy afternoon sun, feeling a lot more depleted than when I walked in the door. My people alert had been blaring silently since I got swallowed up by Veronica's iron grip. The first thing I did when I got into my nice warm car, you guessed it, was to open up that cookie. It didn't make me feel better, and I knew later I would regret it, but the combination of butter, sugar, and flour took the edge off so I could drive home with some semblance of serenity.

The Chronic Malcontent attempts to teach artists not to hate business

As an artist and marketer, I have a foot in both art and business. Sometimes I feel like the anti-Christ of marketing, but still, with a Ph.D. in marketing, I have a lot of book knowledge, not to mention valuable personal experience making marketing mistakes and a sincere desire to be of service, all of which qualify me to act as an interpreter for struggling artists who want to bring their art into the world.

Yesterday I led six adult students through the horrific intersection of art and business, also known as the Art & Business class. Art and business is like oil and water to artists. (What is it about artists that makes us want to hurl at the thought of mixing art and money?)

Seven people were registered for the class. The table arrangement accommodated eight in a horseshoe shape. My homemade comb-bound workbooks were placed in front of each chair. Pens were scattered around. Table tents of white card stock were folded at each seat, waiting for students to print their names.

I never know who will sign up for six hours of this rare form of hell. As usual, the group of so-called artists was a mixed bag. The first to arrive was an older gentleman, maybe a few years older than me (I just turned 63), with wispy white hair and glasses. The next to arrive was a younger woman with olive skin and lovely black-framed glasses. I greeted them both.

In the ensuing silence, they perused their workbooks while I stared out the window, starting to sweat as the clock ticked toward the start time. At three minutes to ten, I poked my head out the door and saw two young women sitting on a bench across the hall. They ignored me. At ten o'clock exactly, they strolled into the classroom and sat next to one another at the table nearest the door, chattering in a foreign language.

A minute after ten, I moved to my first PowerPoint slide and began my introduction. About ten sentences later, the door opened and a handsome bearded man in a knit cap entered, followed by a blonde woman wearing some sort of poncho-like garment. They took seats opposite the two young ladies. The tables were almost full. I welcomed the newcomers and finished up my introduction.

“Now it's your turn to talk,” I said. “Please introduce yourself and tell us what kind of art you make. And then please tell me what you hope to learn in this class today, so I can write it on the board.” I parked myself at the whiteboard, blue pen poised.

The woman in the poncho introduced herself as Jackie. “I'm not an artist,” she said. She motioned with her head toward the young man next to her. “I'm here to learn how to support Miller.” She efficiently opened her laptop and got ready to take notes. “I want to learn more about marketing.” I wrote marketing on the whiteboard.

I looked at Miller, who sort of folded in on himself, covering his face with his hand. “I hate anything to do with business,” he groaned dramatically. “That's why I brought my partner.”

“What kind of art do you make?” I asked politely.

“I paint. With oils. On paper. It's archival paper from France. It comes in rolls. It's perfectly legit, you can look it up. You know what I mean?” He rubbed his face with his hand and squirmed in his chair. I thought, what is up with this guy.

“What do you hope to get from this class today?” I asked.

He groaned and bent over like he was going to be sick. “I don't know!” he moaned. “How to make people buy my stuff?” I wrote how to make people buy my stuff on the board. For veracity, I like to use the students' actual words whenever I do the needs assessment.

Next up was the older guy, Dan. He sat up straight and introduced himself. “I'm retired. I like to draw figures. I try to get the most emotion into the fewest lines.”

“What do you hope to get from today's class?”

“Some tips on marketing, I guess,” he replied. “I'm not sure.” I wrote tips on marketing on the whiteboard.

Next to him sat the woman with the black glasses. “My name is Betty. I have my own studio,” she said nervously. “I used to teach art to children but I stopped doing that a couple years ago. Now I want to make signs. I need to make some money. I'm hoping to . . . I don't know what to focus on. I've got so many ideas, I don't know what to do.”

“I can relate to that,” I reassured her. “What do you hope to learn today?”

“I'm not sure, I don't know what I need. Help with marketing, I guess. I don't know.” I wrote marketing on the board.

I looked at the young woman to Betty's right and smiled encouragingly, noting her curly brown hair, perfect eyebrows, and flawless makeup. She smiled back.

“My name is Tina,” she said with an accent I couldn't place. “I am a cosmetic tattoist.”

“Tattoo artist?” I said. I pictured body tattoos.

“Cosmetic tattoos?” Dan clarified. “Like when people need . . . ?”

“Eyebrows,” Tina said.

“What would you like to get from this class today, Tina?” I asked.

“I'm not sure, marketing, maybe?”

The last person in the class was a young woman with long brown hair and glasses.

“I'm not an artist,” she said. “My son is in high school. He likes to draw.”

“So, you are here to get some information for your son?”

She nodded. “He wants to go to an art school in California, I don't know the name, very expensive. I want to help him make a good choice.”

On the whiteboard I wrote help loved one make a good choice.

And away we went. When I've recuperated, I'll tell you more.

Put a frame on it and call it art

I have spent most of my life trying to define art. Before you scoff, I challenge you to define art. Go on, try it, I dare you. Is it beauty to you? Is it something that evokes an emotional response? Is it line, shape, color, composition? Is it materials, texture, dimension? Is it sound, movement, light, the absence of light? Do you need any of those things to call something art?

What would you say if you drove around a curve and saw an entire mountain wrapped in orange silk? What if you heard someone singing opera in a subway station? What if you heard of someone who shot himself in the arm in front of an audience? Are those things art?

Does it have to be old to be art? If so, how old? Can it be two seconds old and be art? Do you have to be able to hold it in your hand or hang it on a wall or put it on a pedestal? Does it have to look like something you recognize, such as a man's face, a rearing horse, a naked woman? Is it art if you listen to it from the bleacher seats in a huge stadium with sixty-thousand screaming fans instead of on a vinyl record in your living room? Is it art if it self-destructs ten minutes after you bought it for a million dollars?

See what I mean? It's not that easy to define art. Art is what you say it is. What you say is art might be different from what I say is art.

I have my personal definition of art. Art is what I want to make. What is not art is what other people want me to make. For example, if you say, Hey, Carol, I really like your drawings. Can you draw me a cartoon of my mother riding a unicorn that I can print on a t-shirt to give her for her birthday? Or, maybe, Hey, Carol, you write funny stories. Maybe you should write a story about a specific topic for a magazine. You might even get paid.

I could say yes to both scenarios, but they would be jobs, not art. I'm not against jobs, but at my age, I'm just not that interested. I have chased money with my half-baked art ideas many times in my life and ended up poor and dissatisfied. Now when I make art, I may end up poor, but I am never dissatisfied. Some artists have a clear alignment between the art they make and the art the market wants. I envy them. They are the lucky ones. I have not yet been that lucky.

I'm tired, not thinking clearly. Summer came and went; I blinked and missed it. Tomorrow is the final day of September. The early onset of fall has prompted me to revive my rice-filled foot warmer. My next chore is to put plastic on the inside of all my east-facing windows. It's time to batten down the S.A.D. hatches with the therapeutic light box. The vertigo is ramping up as the temperature drops. I can't quit now, just because the days are growing shorter. My mother still needs me. Here we go into the dark tunnel, going to hell in a hand-basket.

The chronic malcontent plays hooky to go to school

Last night I took a night off from daughter duty to attend an in-service (teacher training) at the local community college for which I occasionally teach business courses for artists. The in-service was conveniently located at the campus at which I'd taught, so I knew how to get there and where to park. The college's Community Education program has locations all over the city. I was grateful I did not have to find my way to the west side of town in the dark.

The invitation indicated the event started with networking at 5:30 pm. The presentation was scheduled to begin at 6:00 pm. As usual, I arrived early, as did many others. People were already gathering in the lobby when I arrived at 5:20. They sat on fluffy square chairs in a small area, ignoring each other, looking at their phones. Networking in the new age.

Like any practicing introvert, I found a corner and wandered to it. An older woman with wild dark hair joined me.

“Hi, what do you teach?” she asked.

“I teach a business course for artists,” I replied, stammering a little. “How about you?”

“I teach juggling.”

Intrigued, I asked her some questions. Soon we were discussing the amazing activity of juggling—how it's mostly men who want to learn to juggle but kids like it too, how women think they won't be any good at it so they don't try, how she does no promotion, how enthusiasts hold juggling festivals and associations all over the world, how tens of thousands of members juggle socially here in the local Portland juggling community, how Reed College has had a juggling class for thirty years... I was, like, how come I've never heard of this?

“Have you considered creating a juggling class just for women?” I asked.

“I don't do any marketing, I don't know how,” she said.

“Maybe you should take my class!” I laughed, dead serious.

“Maybe you should take mine!” Bam. She got me back.

The assembled group trooped into the auditorium. I lost track of the juggler. I found a seat in the back row behind a young woman with fluffy dark hair. What is it with all these frizzy coifs, I wondered. My hair is typically five-eighths of an inch long. Tall. Whatever. I of course kept my hat on the entire evening, decorated tastefully with my adhesive name tag.

“What do you teach?” The young woman turned around to address me. I told her and asked her the same question.

“I give chocolate tasting tours,” she replied.

The director began introducing the program directors and the chocolate expert turned around in her seat to face the front. I looked her up in the course catalog we'd been given with our in-service packet. Ah, there she was, with a photo and everything, a course about chocolate. Wow, who knew.

Soon we exited and joined a line of teachers leading up the stairs. I smelled food. I got in line behind the chocolate woman, who ignored me. Eventually, her conversation partner asked me what I taught. I told him and found out he taught ceramics.

“I sell tea services at the Saturday Market,” he said. “I'm building a place for groups to rent space to have traditional tea ceremonies.”

We got in the buffet line (catered by local eatery Laughing Planet). I grabbed a white china plate and eyeballed the white rice, black beans, and unidentifiable options in the big stainless steel serving dishes. I spread a small corn tortilla on my plate and heaped it with tofu and salad stuff, a few beans, a little bit of rice, a glob of bright green guacamole. I found some small round corn chippy things but ignored the various sauces and salsa.

The in-service agenda required us to take our plates of food to breakout rooms, where we would sit with the teachers from our department and hear the news from our program director. I parted company with the ceramicist and went downstairs to locate my tribe.

Several old (older than me) white men sat eating silently at long tables in a classroom. I sat in the front row near the wall so no one could sneak up on me. A couple guys nodded as I pulled up a chair to the end of the table. I noticed one woman, an older gal with flyaway gray hair.

“This is my first in-service,” I said into awkward silence, “so pardon me if I stare.”

The man sitting nearest me smiled so I asked him what he taught.

“Electrical certification,” he replied, wiping his mouth with a black paper napkin. Everyone else kept eating in silence.

Luckily the program director, Dawn, entered with a colleague, a youngish woman with a ponytail, a neck tattoo, and big teeth. Both women carried plates of food. They sat down in the front, facing the rows of tables.

Dawn asked us to introduce ourselves and say what we taught. She pointed at me. I said my name and stuttered a bit as I tried to explain what I taught: Business course for artists. I always feel like I'm spouting a pathetic fallacy when I put business and artist in the same sentence. Or is it an oxymoron? I don't know. A pathetic oxymoron. Is that a thing? Or is it a laundry detergent? I can never remember. Anyway, we went around the room. A gray-haired man taught a class on how to start a business. Competition, I thought. A bald man taught a class on maximizing social security benefits. A guy with dark skin and an accent taught computer programming classes. The woman and the gray-haired man sitting next to her taught courses based on neuro-linguistic programming.

Two people strolled in late. One was a tiny older woman with dark hair (a twenty-six year veteran teacher), the other a younger man with creamy skin who told a story of being a student and then becoming a teacher. Both taught Spanish. The last person, in the back corner, was an ancient man who taught computer classes, one of which was Excel. I had to be impressed. I used to teach Excel, back in the day. I wonder what version Microsoft is up to now. I'm stuck in amber when it comes to computer programs. I don't even have Windows 10 yet, that's how far behind I am.

Dawn pulled out a notebook, ignoring her plate of food. First, she reminded us that we aren't allowed to promote our own businesses when we are teaching classes for the college. I thought, have I promoted my business? Then I thought, no, artists are not dissertators. No fear. I don't have anything they could buy from me, even if they wanted to. Whew.

After the breakout session, we reconvened in the auditorium for the main event, the keynote speaker. The ceramicist appeared behind me.

“Why are you wearing blue glasses?” he asked. I laughed. As I walked ahead, I was reaching in my bag to switch my up-close glasses for the distance glasses I use for driving.

“What! Now they are green!” he said. I laughed and headed to the back row. He went off in another direction.

I'm familiar with in-services from my almost ten years as an instructor at a career college. The next hour was as dreary and useless as any in-service in which the speaker fails to take time to identify the needs of the audience. The topic was student engagement. I don't know why the directors chose that topic for a Community Education in-service—students who sign up for Community Education courses want to be there. They receive no credit, no grades. They really want to learn the material. Engagement is not a problem. Like a good student, however, I gleaned what I could from the talk.

The speaker was a solidly built white woman with long hair that might have been blonde, might have been gray, hard to tell under the lights. She wore a light-colored sack-like dress printed with dots or flowers. The overall impression was white, very white. She started talking about the human brain and what keeps us from engaging. She said “right?” after almost every sentence. And she laughed. A lot. I started tracking how many times she laughed at something she said. In the first fifteen minutes, I counted sixteen times she laughed for no obvious reason. I thought, wow, she sure knows how to keep herself entertained. I stopped tracking after that and started drawing in my notebook. I looked at my neighbor two seats to my right and noticed he was drawing, too. Better than me. Clearly, an artist.

I endured to the end, including the fifteen minute award ceremony given to recognize teachers with five, ten, fifteen, and more than fifteen years of service to the college. I thought, it's unlikely I will be receiving one of those awards.

As I drove home, hunched over the wheel, peering into the dark, I thought about some things. I realized I liked meeting new people. I enjoyed hearing their stories. I liked finding out that I'm part of a larger community. I liked seeing how many creative people are sharing their knowledge and expertise. Maybe I'm not the rabid introvert I thought I was.

Today, my world narrows back to normal. Blog, laundry, lunch. I had one night off from daughter duty. In about an hour, I'll be back on the job.

Routines will not save us

I have fervent appreciation for the power of routines. Life is precarious, and precariousness is stressful. Routines hold us together. Routines give us the illusion that we are in control. These days, I find myself refining my routines, honing my tasks and plans to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. I'm really into it. Just look at my custom-designed, color-coded calendar. Nobody can call me a slacker.

I realize now why Mom beat it back to her condo after moving to a retirement community didn't work for her. It wasn't the big impersonal place or the money or the lack of social interaction—all the reasons she gave for dragging up and moving home. I'm guessing it was the massive disruption of every single routine she had patched together over the years to maintain her life as her brain lost its ability to function.

She knew her brain was stuttering before 2014. In 2015, she moved to the retirement place. She was there a month and a half. Now I see it must have been a particular subtle form of hell. On the surface, it had seemed like a great solution to help her move into the next phase. Instead, it was as if she had voluntarily set off a neutron bomb in her life. Nobody anticipated the consequences, certainly not her. Well, how many of us have actually seen the consequences of a neutron bomb exploding in our kitchen, let's say, or in our home office?

For most of the next two years, she white-knuckled it in the condo, trying to keep it together, with increasing help from me. There were many clues, I realize now, looking back, but I didn't know what I was seeing. The dirty kitchen, the rotten food, the mice, the ants, the misfolded towels . . . all signs of her mental deterioration.

Now I realize how desperately she clung to her routines. Once the routines failed her, she had to let go and admit she couldn't maintain the facade, she couldn't manage the details of her life anymore—the preparation of food, the cleaning of kitchen counters, the washing and folding of clothes. All too much. It was as if she had been clinging to one little branch of a wizened shrub growing at the edge of an abyss. Whether the branch broke or she let go on purpose, she fell.

She came to rest in a retirement home with levels of care. Levels of care means that as long as she can pay for it, they will take care of her until the end, but of course, it will cost more as her care needs increase. She entered in 2017 at a Level 2. Now she's at the top end of Level 5. Soon she'll be a Level 6, out of seven levels.

I cling to my routines. I realize they cannot save me, but they give me comfort, a sense of false security, which helps whenever I reflect on the precarious of life, which I do daily.

As a researcher, I'm always reflecting. Given my current situation, I often reflect on life and death. Before I lose my ability to maintain my routines, I would like to plan my exit strategy. Knowing this about me, a friend gave me an information sheet about the efficacy of suicide methods. I thought that was very thoughtful. In this study, about three hundred people rated twenty-eight suicide methods used in about four thousand cases of attempted suicide according to their perceptions of lethality, time, and agony. You can look it up. I did. Just Google lethality, time, and agony, and it will pop right up. It's a 1995 study published in a journal about suicide behaviors.

If you are shopping around, the most lethal method, not surprisingly, according to this sample, is a shotgun shot to the head. According to this sample, that action would be almost one hundred percent fatal. However, about one percent of the cases would live, probably not too well after such a traumatic incident. Perhaps not even well enough to think, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. I'm guessing. However, if you are in the lucky fatal group, you can enjoy a low amount of agony (5.5 on a 100-point scale) for fewer than two minutes. Not bad, as suffering goes. I know people who suffer a lot more than that just trying to balance their checkbooks.

If you are in a hurry, pointing the shotgun at your chest instead of your head will get you there a fraction of a minute sooner, but your odds of surviving go up a few percentage points. Darn. Not only that, it will hurt more too (16 points compared to 5.5 for the head shot).

If it's agony you want to avoid, overdosing on illegal drugs is the way to go. You can expect about 5.25 worth of agony on the 100-point scale, whatever that means. However, your time to die could be almost two hours, and you'll only succeed half the time. Which means you might live to tell your sad tale of enduring two hours of slight suffering before somebody saved you. However, keep in mind, this study was conducted way back in 1995, which means the opioid epidemic hadn't been invented yet. I'm pretty sure adding fentanyl and its ilk to the list of methods would knock shotgun to the head right out of the top five.

It's helpful to remember that the values are the respondents' perceptions about the lethality, time to die, and amount of suffering. As far as I can tell without paying to download the article, none of them had direct experience with the phenomenon.

Well, I'm off to visit Mom. If we are lucky, some reruns of the Three Stooges will be on MeTV. It's great to hear Mom laugh.

The chronic malcontent gives some payback and gets some payback

Testing, testing. Howdy, Blogbots, are you reading me? How's it going? Having trouble breathing? I am. We had a little smoke from a grass fire in the area yesterday and I thought, oh no! I am inhaling the ashes of the Amazon rain forests. The world is on fire. The world is blowing away. The world is sinking under a rising sea. Seems like it's all going to hell in a hand-basket. Again.

Well, I'm sure little tribes of humans will survive in some out-of-the-way places, on some remote islands tourists can only dream of visiting. I won't make it. I can't even afford to drive to the beach. I won't be a survivor of whatever disaster comes this way, certainly, and that's okay. I don't mind, as long as my end is not too messy.

Speaking of messy ends, hooboy. Last week, I took Mom to the doctor for a case of conjunctivitis. What us normal folks call pink eye. Her eyes were definitely glowing.

“I feel fine,” Mom said. She didn't remember that she'd been scratching her itchy eyes just three minutes earlier.

Getting there was no problem. The doctor's office is about a half-mile away from the care facility. We were there early, carrying our gear, ready for anything. Well, I carried the gear, ready for anything. Extra pull-ups, wet wipes, and an extra pair of pants. Good thing, too. Before we saw the nurse practitioner, Mom had to use the restroom three times. Fortunately, it was right across the hall and plenty big enough for both of us. Mom can no longer use the bathroom by herself. So in we went. Two times, no problem. However, the third time, as they say, is the charm.

“Oh, dear,” said Mom. “There it goes.” It, in this case, was the gusher of you-know-what in her pull-ups. I grabbed her walker and she hustled stiffly into the hall. Wouldn't you know, someone was using the restroom at the moment of meltdown. It wouldn't have mattered, I guess. The damage was well and truly done. The staff pointed me down the hall and around the corner to another restroom.

I won't bore you with details I'm sure are way more interesting in your mind than they are in mine. Let's just say, lucky for me, it was stocked with extra rolls of toilet paper. I did a lot of mopping up. I will never set anything I care about on the floor of a restroom again.

Mom went into the restroom wearing elastic-waist blue jeans and came out wearing bright red sweat pants. Her shoes were on her feet. The blue jeans were rolled up, stinky side in, and stuffed in my bag. She doesn't care anymore how she looks, and I have to admit, I don't either. I would have chosen another pair of blue jeans, but the red pants were the only pants left in her closet. She's been having more meltdowns. At this rate, I need to get her some more jeans.

Oh, how about her eyes? Thanks for asking. The nurse practitioner eventually found us. The eye exam itself took about five minutes. Very shortly, we were out the door. We spent three times as long in the restroom as we did in the doctor's exam room.

Last week, I made the mistake of taking Mom down the hall to visit her former smoking partner, Jane. Jane reported that she has started smoking again. “I only have one a day!” she hastened to reassure Mom. Then she looked at me. “Don't blame me if your Mom wants a cigarette.”

Mom looked at me. “Why can't I have one a day?”

I harrumphed a bit and said, “Let's talk about it in your room.” As we walked back, I crossed my fingers that she would forget about it, and my prayer was answered.

Or so I thought. Last night, Mom said, “I want to go outside for a cigarette.” I was surprised. She can't remember what she had for dinner ten minutes ago. I couldn't believe she remembered visiting Jane.

“I saw Tina walking outside today,” Mom said. Tina is the Med-Aide. Last I heard, Tina had been trying to quit smoking. Wonder how that's going. Maybe not great.

“I'm sorry, Mom. Your brain isn't working so good these days. Remember when Dr. Sho notified the DMV and they rescinded your driver's license? This is sort of like that. We have rescinded your license to smoke.”

Her glare made me queasy. I am biologically programmed to cringe when I see that glare. That evening, I consulted with my siblings and two out of three responses indicated I should man up and be the parent. So, backed by the siblings, I feel confident I can now say, request denied, Mother. No cigarettes for you. Not now, not ever.

Another fresh hell. Going and coming, payback sucks.

The risk of living

When I was a young adult, I dressed to be noticed. Being in the garment industry, I felt I had a professional obligation to experiment with norms of decency. I could design and sew just about anything, and I did. Appearance was everything. The goal was to shock and provoke.

In the late 1970s, I made strapless blouson dresses of gaily flowered cheap poly-cotton, accessorized with chunky beads and a crown of pigeon feathers. I let my artist friend draw circles of purple, white, and black makeup around my eyes and on my cheeks. The outcome was a weird white-girl interpretation of a generic African native dance ensemble. My best audience seemed to be old men at bus stops, who indicated their approval by . . . you know, letting it all hang out. My friend and I rode the bus to dance clubs, so we saw our share of weirdos. We fit right in.

In the early 1980s, jumpsuits made of vinyl with shoulders the size of small turkeys were my favorite for going out. Back then, I was about twenty pounds overweight; thus, I believed the wide shoulders made my waist look smaller. I didn't have money for nice fabric, opting instead for cheap vinyl, cotton chintz, and antique faded rayon crepe excavated from the attic of the fabric store that employed me for $4.75 an hour. With my spiky hennaed hair, I was quite a sight.

Gradually, over time, a few run-ins with crazies motivated me to shift my attitudes about attracting attention. I began to think it might be safer to be invisible. Age did the rest. Now I can go just about anywhere, at least in this white part of America, and be unnoticed. I have grown to prefer anonymity, except when I'm trying to get service at Best Buy or Target.

These days, I pray to outlive my mother. I am well aware that leaving the house is risky. I could slip and die in the tub, I know, but my chances of survival decrease the moment I walk out the door. To avoid incurring the wrath of other drivers, I drive carefully and courteously. I admit I sometimes drive too slowly, and that behavior on occasion has inspired people to honk and speed around me. So far no one has pulled a gun and taken a shot as they roar by, but I am aware it could happen. Hey, guys, I drive an old Focus. It has a top speed of 35 mph.

Getting out of my car in a parking area makes me a target. To avoid attracting negative attention and possibly tipping a passerby into a rage, I paste an inane smile on my face. I dress in shapeless unremarkable clothes. I have no bumper stickers on my car. I try to look harmless. I hope to be invisible. I don't want any random psycho to see me as a threat. I probably look like a nut myself, grinning and talking to myself. If you must know, I'm praying. My prayers are along the lines of please don't let me hurt anyone today and grant me the serenity. You know the rest. This is how I remain calm.

After the sad events of the past weeks, well, really of the past few years, well, really of the entire history of America, I realize I am always walking the moment between life and death. A stray bullet, a wildly swung blade, or a curb-jumping SUV could take me out in a few seconds. I could be a random victim, I could be a target. Wrong place, wrong time. Just another casualty of western civilization. It's not that I want to die. It comes when it comes. I just don't want my family to experience the grief and inconvenience of losing me. Mom would have a harder time getting her gluten-free cookies and cashew milk ice cream.

Last Friday evening I caught the tail end of a documentary on the 1966 Clocktower shooting. Reeling from the recent mass shootings, I found this show both riveting and horrifying. Oddly enough, I have compassion for people who come to believe the only way out of their misery is to take others out with them. From a certain perspective, their actions make sense. They aren't insane. They may have lost touch with the reality we all sort of pretend to agree on, but they aren't nuts. They are hurting.

Fear drives us to see the other as an enemy. Fear drives us to elect leaders who say they can keep us safe from people who don't look and think like us. I doubt if there is much hope for the human species if we don't figure out that love is the only path to peace. It's deliciously ironic though, that our effects on the climate will take us out before we can spread our madness outward into the universe. Maybe there is a god.

I can't leave it there, I suppose. Please don't text me to find out if I'm okay. You know I use this blog as a vehicle to express my feelings. Once expressed, they often dissipate. So weird how that works. Anyway, now that my fears are on the page, I can continue on with my day. For example, I washed some clothes this morning while I was cooking breakfast (multitasking, look at me go!). My next action item is to design a new course to help artists figure out . . . stuff. I don't know. I'm an artist: I haven't figured it out. But I will by end of day, I promise.

I don't subscribe to the idea that life is so precious, I should focus on sucking from it every drop of pleasure. I don't know what the purpose of my life is, but I don't think the end goal is just to be happy. I'd be thrilled if I could unravel the mystery of disappearing socks before I die. Happiness is dandy, but the real challenge is bringing more love and less fear with me as I go about the job of living. What do you do to bring more love and less fear into the world?

Eighty thousand words in thirty days

Next Saturday is my mother's ninetieth birthday. Family is coming. The weather should be good. Not hot, not humid. (I feel for my sister, who is sweltering in Boston right now.) We don't have anything big planned. Mom can't handle a crowd. One balloon, one bunch of flowers, one cupcake, one candle. One or two people at a time. We don't want to disrupt her routine, which is all she has left, besides her television.

M.A.S.H. isn't on on Saturdays so we typically switch between Fixer Upper and the Three Stooges. She laughs at Curly, Moe, and Larry. She can't understand the plots but she understands the slaps, pokes, and punches. If my two brothers come to visit, we can all sit on the couch and marvel at the violence we kids grew up on. No wonder my older brother felt motivated to break my nose once in a while.

On the maternal parental unit front, Mom continues to deteriorate. It's a slow crumbling of mind and body. She's still talking, but not as well. She's still walking, but with more difficulty. She's not walking me to the back door anymore, but she's still walking herself to meals. Sometimes (they tell me), she has to interrupt her meal to hightail it back to her bathroom. Hightailing happens in slow motion, which means she often needs some clean-up assistance before she can come back to dinner. It's chronic and exhausting.

Speaking of clean-up, I'm cleaning the Love Shack. This endeavor happens only once a year when I have visitors (my sister). Today, I vacuumed the two lime green shag rugs in my front room. That shag really stands up and salutes when I run the vacuum cleaner over it. My sneezing fit has subsided, thanks for asking. I moved the cat litter box and scrubbed the bathroom floor. Within minutes after cleaning the box, the cat went in. When he came out, there was once again litter all over the floor. I washed a load of towels and cotton scatter rugs, scrubbed part of the kitchen floor (the white squares), and hunted down tumbleweeds (cat hair, dust, and detritus that coalesce into floating allergy bombs). My sister arrives tomorrow. I'm not ready.

I could have started cleaning sooner. However, as you might remember, I've been doing my own personal NANOWRIMO. I gave myself a timeline of thirty days. My goal was to write a 50,000-word novel. When I committed to doing this insane task, I estimated I would have to write 2,000 words per day. Yesterday was the thirtieth day. Today, I laid down my pen, metaphorically speaking. I don't actually write with a pen anymore. I used to when I was a kid, or pencil, too. I didn't care, as long as I could write. Anyway, I digress.

I'm pleased to report the results of my personal month of self-inflicted torture. Counting the chapter headings, a short blurb, and the title, I just barely exceeded 80,000 words. I now have a first draft of my novel. I wrote an average of 2,760 words per day. During the thirty days, I cooked, ate, slept, did my grocery shopping, visited my mother daily, and attended my weekly meetings, and in between, I wrote. I did bathe a few times, too, in case you were wondering, and I'm sure I did some laundry, although I have no recollection. I immersed myself in a world of fictional characters who now seem more real to me than many people I meet in real life.

It was the best thirty days I can remember. Better than ice cream. Better than sunshine. The best.

I don't know where it goes from here, but if I die tomorrow, I will die satisfied.

Happy Independence Day, if you can stand it

Happy Independence Day, blogbots. I hope your Fourth of July celebration is . . . celebratory. If that is what floats your boat. Laser shows, fireworks, rumbling tanks, sloppy BBQ ribs dripping with carcinogenic sauce . . . whatever works for you. May you enjoy your day. My little leaky boat is floated by peace, quiet, and solitude. I will be hunkered down in the Love Shack, helping my cat ride out the artillery barrage that will begin at dusk. To each her own.

My schedule for tomorrow is unusually busy. I have two entire things planned. I don't know how I will manage. In the morning, I plan to Wire with my sister, who is stateside in Boston. In the evening, I will visit my maternal parental unit, as I do daily at 6:15 pm. After that I would like to bury myself in the bathtub, but I have a self-imposed obligation to write 2,000 words per day. What's that, you say? Thanks for asking.

For the past couple weeks, I have been torturing myself with my own personal NANOWRIMO commitment. If you don't what that is, no fear. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Officially, it happens every November. I tried it once, a few years ago. I did not reach the word count goal of 50,000. I am still working on that book; it's the book of blog posts about my mother. Unfinished. You are reading one more chapter right now. How cool is that.

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, “When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. . . . This idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention. And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, ‘Do you want to work with me?’” (pp. 35-36).

An idea came to me in a dream. I had a choice: say yes or say no. I chose yes. Sorry, I can't tell you what it is about. I can tell you it is a novel. That is all I will say.

My self-imposed commitment is to write (at least) 50,000 words before my sister arrives on July 22. To achieve that goal, I have to write at least 2,000 words per day. I've been writing almost every day for two weeks. Today is Day 14. I have 28,000 words.  I will add, there's not much magic involved in flogging oneself to write 2,000 words per day. This is a classic case of stop whining and just do it.

I work better when the temperature is at least 80°F. It's 71°F and overcast. The sky is gray and gloomy. It's cold in the Love Shack, but I refuse to drag out the space heater. It's July, for garsh sake. Two days ago, we had a tornado a few miles away. Just a little bitty EF0, lasted only six minutes, only managed to go a mile. Tore up a bunch of trees and power lines. How endearing. Summer in Portland officially starts July 5. It can't get here soon enough. I'm so ready to be warm.

When I came strolling down the hall at the retirement place, Mom was still in the dining room, sitting alone at her table. I went in to see what was going on. She said she was late getting out of dinner because she had to run for the bathroom. I use the word run loosely. More like, shuffle along with the walker, squeezing her butt cheeks as she goes. Unsuccessfully, apparently. Luckily, a staff member was there to help clean her up and get her back to the dining room to finish her dinner. Everyone was sympathetic. The Med Aide patted her shoulder when she brought her a little cup of pills.

We watched Property Brothers. I made snide comments about people spending $1.2 million on a house. Mom said she didn't know what was going on. I get the feeling she loses a few more brain cells every time she gets stuck in the bathroom and can't figure out how to leave. Every day I shudder through about five minutes of hell, knowing for certain that I am going to end up just like her, but minus the helpful daughter.

She hasn't walked me to the back door at all this week. I left her sitting on the couch, watching MASH. Tomorrow is my sixteenth anniversary of moving to the Love Shack, the beginning of my personal independence. I dread the day I lose it and so I try to cherish every drop.