Covering one mask with another

Every now and then I get a Facebook friend request from someone who knows someone I know. I check out their profile, and if they seem interesting, I will accept their request. It's like putting your hand in a grab bag. Do you remember grab bags? We had them at school fairs when I was a kid. You pay for the privilege of jamming your hand into a bag of supposed goodies. You feel around among the wrapped objects and make your choice, hoping you chose the treasure and not the trash. I have yet to find treasure on Facebook, but the good news is, I can always unfriend the person after I see their true colors.

Today I accepted a friend request from a man (I presume he is a man, gosh, you can't tell from photos, can you?). A FB friend of a FB friend who is the brother of someone I went to high school with. That should be okay, right? I clicked accept and forgot about it. An hour later, a message popped up on my computer alerts.

"Hello, how are you doing?"

Oh, boy. Here we go. The last time I corresponded with a FB "friend," he tried to sell me insurance. Today, I'm bored and looking for some distraction. I have to take my entertainment where I can find it in the new age of COVID. I limber up my chit-chat fingers.

"Great, how are you? Why did you want to be FB friends with me?" I believe in the direct approach.

I wait and pretty soon the little dancing dots start burbling. And burbling. Either we have a slow connection or this person is a very slow typist.

While I'm waiting, I have some time to ponder the new world of grocery shopping in a pandemic. Yesterday I ventured out for my weekly foray to the store. As usual, I brought a cloth mask and a pair of purple gloves (meant to be disposable, but I'm recycling them with soap and water.) I carefully donned mask and gloves before grabbing my shopping bags (yes, they are plastic, and I bag my own groceries, so back off) and headed into the store, vigilantly maintaining distance and avoiding eye contact. I'm still a little anxious, but not as anxious as I was a few weeks ago. I'm starting to get the hang of it. Although I always forget to wipe down my plastic shopping bags, darn it. Well, whatever. Good news: I'm still alive, so whatever I'm doing (or not doing) must be working. It's hard to know, though, because my two-week-old actions might kill me tomorrow.

Eventually another message pops up on the FB messenger feed. My new FB friend has finally finished typing his missive.

"Well, you were among my suggested friends and I decided to add you up, sure you are not at me?"

I have to read the message a couple times to parse the bad grammar. Add me up, yeah, okay, I get that. Sure you are not at me? Hmm. Let me dodge around that hole in the sidewalk.

I write, "You are FB friends with [So-and-So], brother of [Other Guy], who I went to high school with many years ago. Are you a local person?" See what I'm doing there? First, I ignored his plaintive inquiry about me being mad at him. Don't really care about his codependency issues. Instead, I mention our shared connection (to build good will) and then I add the all-important words—many years ago—that signal I'm old and why are you wasting your time talking to me? Then I click send and sit back to wait, thinking about masks both actual and virtual.

As an older white woman, I'm used to being mostly invisible wherever I go. Wearing a face mask escalates my invisibility to a new transparency. People see my shopping cart, but I think they wonder, how is that shopping cart going by itself? I'm not sure, though, because I don't make eye contact.

Have you noticed: Avoiding eye contact is a thing now that so many people are wearing masks. On my morose days, it's always been my default mode to avoid eye contact. Making eye contact is excruciating sometimes. Now it's totally de rigeur to let my eyes skitter away, to glance at people sideways so I can take evasive action if they seem to be lingering near me or blocking my path. It's as if now that I can't see mouths and noses, I can't see eyes. And even better, they can't see me at all! I'm completely not there!

As I was cruising along the aisle hoping to score some facial tissue (allergy season continues to progress at roughly a box a week), I realized I felt more relaxed than usual. Invisibility means it doesn't matter what my face looks like. My expression was neutral under my mask. I wasn't walking around with an inane smile that I hoped said I'm harmless, please don't kill me. Nobody could see my mouth! It didn't matter if I smiled or not. Oh, the relief, I must tell you. I felt ten feet tall as I muscled my cart past the picnic supplies to the paper goods. Who cares if I can only buy one box. I'll sneak an extra box into Mom's order. That will make up for the loaf of gluten-free bread-like substance I bought her last week. No more slinking along the edges of the aisles, making room, grinning like a fool, giving way, hoping people won't be offended by my . . . oh, I don't know, you name it, my weirdness, my fatness, my whiteness, my obviously healthy diet of vegetables (just look in my cart).

Ding! My new FB friend responds, "Not really, we are just friends quite a while now. Where are you? Sure you're not mad at em?"

Seriously? Should I cut this guy loose or keep going? Anyone who can't write a grammatically correct message in FB messenger will never become a close friend of mine. Just saying. Politically incorrect, maybe, but grammatically incorrect, never. Still, I keep going.

I write, "Portland. What are you asking? I'm not understanding you, are you asking if I am mad at you?" I click send and sit back again.

A few nights ago, I went walking after I returned from my two-minute visit outside my mother's window at the nursing home. Spring is here, but warm weather isn't yet. It's good to get outside. I don't bother going into the park anymore, though—too many people. I wander up and down the hills in the neighborhood, crossing streets to avoid fellow wanderers. I guess I'm not totally invisible when I'm out on the streets. I admit, I feel just a twinge of rejection when the party coming toward me crosses to the other side of the street before I do. Like, darn, they rejected me before I could reject them.

Ding! There he is again: "About sending you a request. I'm from Austin Texas but presently in Copenhagen Denmark."

Wow! Copenhagen. That could be an interesting discussion topic. Later, it occurred to me to wonder what time it was in Denmark. Nine hours ahead, right? So about 2:00 a.m.? Insert heavy sigh here. Drunk? Sleepless? Up all night coughing with COVID?

"Why would I be mad?" I respond. "I didn't have to accept. I like [So-and-So] so I thought I might like you. Are you going to try to sell me something?" Might as well get it out in the open now. Insert long pause here. FB messages take a while to cross an ocean and several time zones.

His message appears: "No I'm not. I'm an independent rig engineer working with [Company Name] and also a teacher to the trainee down here." [Pause, new message] "What's your profession?"

Oh, darn. I should make up something really cool, like, underwater photographer or retired botanist. Penguin manager. Bluegrass fiddler. I'm not much of a fibber. Or a fiddler. I can't help but tell the truth, but not all the truth, of course, just the part of the truth that might make me seem really cool.

I write, "I'm an author and an artist." Then in the same message, I immediately deflect. If he is really interested in what I do, he'll pursue it. Meanwhile, I shove the focus back in his direction. I add, "What is Copenhagen like?"

After some moments, he writes, "Pretty, good entertainment, and beautiful morning when the sunrise."

"Is it cold there in the spring?" I know, dumb question. It's a conversational gambit to assess the willingness of the other party to be forthcoming. To bridge the gap. To extend the branch. You could do so much with that, really, if you think about it. Like, what is cold, in your opinion, and how cold is it, and do they have spring there, and what does one wear in the spring in Copenhagen?

"Yes it is."

Right. Okay. I guess I wouldn't be all that coherent at 2:00 a.m. either. Waxing poetic about spring in Copenhagen is clearly not something you can easily do in the middle of the night. Time to wrap this up.

I write, "Okay. I'm going back to work now. Thanks for the interesting chat. Stay warm, stay safe. Bye for now."

Might as well leave it on a pleasant note. I will probably unfriend him when I get home later. Then again, maybe not. In this strange new world, you can't have too many friends.

Looking for the new normal

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Sing it with me. Come on, Blobgots, I mean Blogbots, you know you want to, let me hear you bellow it out from your Zoom rooms. All you tiny squares, you. Dance too, if you feel like it, because I guarantee you, few of us are watching. It's too hard to see you against all your household detritus. You might consider noticing all the knick-knacks and gewgaws on the shelves behind you. Because we are. Oh, and please, some of you should dust off that ceiling fan, because that is all we can see of you when you Zoom on your smartphone.

I Zoom in front of a black curtain, because, well, you know, it's basically curtains for the human species from here on out. I don't know about you, but I am finding out a pandemic definitely complicates the chore of living. Everything seems more difficult. Maybe because everything is. I deserve a medal for just getting out of bed.

Being stuck at home means I'm excruciatingly aware of my physical presence in relation to the outside world. Did I bring the virus home with me today from the grocery store? Are my surfaces clean? Did something come in on my shoes, besides the usual bird poop and pollen? Did I scoop some of the virus into my lungs this week? Is this violent set of ten sneezes from breathing in birch tree pollen or COVID19? Did I transmit a tiny bit of virus to my mother's hearing aids, even though I wore a mask and gloves and sat outside the nursing home on a hard wooden bench when I swapped out the batteries last Sunday?

This stupid virus has made me ultra-conscious of my body. I'm experiencing corporeal disintegration  in real time. I can't point to any specific injury or illness. Rather, I'm riding a slow decline. The changes I see and feel are so gradual, I hardly notice them, until suddenly I realize it hurts to stand up, it hurts to bend over, it hurts to stretch, it hurts to breathe. Every damn thing hurts but not enough to take a pill and not enough to conclude it's the end. It's so odd to witness my activities become more and more constrained, like I'm standing outside myself watching the erosion of a shaky earthen dam. Do I try to patch the holes? What would that look like? People much older than I am push back against age. I doubt if I'm one of them. One marathon was enough for me.

Life as I knew it ended in January when my cat died. Already reeling from shock, it didn't really feel much more shocking when the virus came to town. First my cat, and then the pandemic. My response was, right, that makes sense. Total catastrophe is the only logical outcome. Finally, the chronic malcontent is vindicated. Since COVID19, it seems as if the world has joined me in my grief. My sadness is magnified a thousand fold everywhere I look. Even the stories of heroes, supposed to be uplifting, make me weep with despair. Nothing will ever be the same, not for me, not for any of us. I'm grieving a loss of innocence—I guess it is the illusion that the world was safe, that I was in control of my life, that I could predict what would happen next.

For some reason, I woke up the other night at exactly 3:45 a.m. and saw the final super moon of the year at its apogee, blazing brighter than a streetlight through the trees over the shoulder of the mountain. During the four-hour lull when the buses stop running, nights are dead silent up here on the hill. It's so loud I can hardly think. I am both alive and dead, like Schrodinger's cat, hunkered in a box originally of my own making but perpetuated by obligation, circumstance, and COVID19. I can't fully live until the maternal parental unit dies. But once she's gone, the box is open. I'm set free (assuming I outlast her), but the price is her death. And where would I go, how would I move, in a pandemic?

She's having a harder time getting up from her couch to visit me at the window. She shifts her fanny , then leans forward until she's got both hands flat on her coffee table. Slowly she gets her feet under her. I say, “Use your walker!” She pretends not to hear me. Bent at ninety degrees, she shuffles toward the window by hanging onto to her coffee table, then along the top of her flat-screen TV (pausing to read the sticky note I put there many months ago: Turn the TV on and off here, with an arrow pointing to the button), and finally, reaching the window. Clutching the window sill, she straightens up to look at me and smiles. She knows me. I'm never sure, until she smiles.

I remember when she used to walk me to the back door and we sang She'll be coming round the mountain together, me the thready alto, her the raspy tenor. The past two nights, she hasn't felt inclined to come to the window. I don't know if two data points make a pattern. Maybe we have a new normal. Every damn day is a new normal. After a while, normal ceases to have any meaning.

Manifesting introversion

The world has gone mad. Blogger has zeroed out all my view counts. It's official. I have ceased to exist. I always suspected I wasn't real. Now I know. All sound and fury, signifying a failed attempt to garner attention. Clearly, no one cares. I guess we all have better things to do with our time now, right? Like worry about our unkempt hair. I have to laugh when I see shaggy-headed women carrying placards reading Open up the country. I need a haircut. Poor dears. It's moments like these I am grateful I am so self-contained. Not only to I do my own nails but I also do my own hair. I have the photos to prove it.

There's only one thing I want and I can't have it, so as a second choice, I have decided to see if I can practice my visualization technique to manifest something. I'm willing to start small. Manifesting stuff hasn't really worked before but I'm feeling lucky. Today, I would like to manifest some glow-in-the-dark paint. I'm not sure why, exactly. I just think it might be entertaining to have arrows to guide me around my dark apartment at night when I am wandering with insomnia.

I often wake up thinking about my mother. Usually I have a playlist running in my head, whatever I listened to before taking my nightly bath and going to bed. Last night I watched a YouTube video of the life of Cher so I woke up humming If I could turn back time. I'm not a big Cher fan; as a former fashionista, I was more focused on Bob Mackie. Still, that song seems like a good theme for an insomniac during a pandemic.

The news is not all bad. I'm heartened to see images of wild animals taking over empty roads, city streets, and yards, raiding refrigerators and busting into cars. Right on! I read that birds are altering their songs now that the world is quieter. I saw video of jellyfish in a Venetian canal. If we humans all just go away, the world will be fine. I'm willing to consider going away.

Then again, half the population would be delighted to kill off everyone over sixty. I reconsider my willingness to consider going away. I won't go willingly, I just decided. You'll have to take me out back and shoot me.

I did my part to tickle the economy by replenishing some footwear I have needed for several years. I didn't want to buy from the big mean online megastore so I bought from a different online megastore I hoped was less mean. How can you tell? I heard some American brands aren't paying their overseas contractors. This is not a good time to be poor. Hmm. Is there ever a good time, I wonder? Before I clicked the button, I gave some thought to the plight of the workers who would pick and wrap my package and the delivery driver who would drop the box on my porch, pound on the door, and run. Then I clicked the button. I could almost hear the funds draining out of my bank account into the pockets of the big online megastore.

I wonder how much my insurance rates would go up if I decided to become a delivery driver? Several months ago, I applied to be a Census taker, just for the experience. That so far has tanked; for me, I think that ship sailed over the edge of the earth. I could probably be a candidate for contact tracing training. You know, calling people to ask them where they went and who they talked to before they got sick. Ugh. Yeah, probably delivering footwear would be a better fit for me. I don't really like people up close, and I really dislike them on the phone.

Speaking of phones and people, I video chatted twice today, once with a friend and an hour later with my sister. I told my friend I thought that over the next several years, families with children (and resources, of course) would start migrating out of cities into rural farmland, seeking safety, space, and sustenance from the land. My friend listened thoughtfully and said, wow. We discussed the possibility that red counties could start turning purple. In contrast, my sister said she didn't think that would ever happen. I get the feeling she doesn't like to think about the possibilities of large cultural change. I mentioned my belief that we'd soon have robots doing personal care. She rolled her eyes. (Don't you love video chat?) I didn't tell her my other predictions about how children will learn to distrust people from outside their family tribe, or how there will likely be less personal privacy, or how new houses will be built with self-contained quarantine units.

I admit, I don't like change either. I'm still pissed off that all the hair on my legs has migrated to my eyebrows, nostrils, and upper lip. But like I said last time, what is fair to the cat is not always fair to the mouse. Or the other cat.

An acquaintance who works in the alternative wellness industry called me last week. As we were talking, I coughed. A short dry cough. Twice. Sounding alarmed, she asked me if I was sick. I said no, I just have allergies. Later in the conversation, I told her that I would be disinclined to sit in a small meeting room with a group of people anytime in the near future. Sounding amazed, she asked me why. I said because I would feel bad if I unknowingly spread the virus to someone in the group and they got sick or died. She had no response. I chalked it up to her youth.

Since then, I have asked several people how comfortable they would be going back to the old way of gathering in groups. Even my older friends are itching to hug their friends. I seem to be the only one reluctant. I guess in my case, introversion is sort of like a disease. Too bad it's not contagious. It could save your life.

What's fair to the cat

It's a great time to be a microbe. Seven billion humans on the planet means lots of moist juicy lungs to explore, conveniently crowded into densely populated cities. All you can eat, always open, never closed! It's spring break on the beach for COVID-19. The umbrella in the drink is humans' confounded propensity to move from place to place even when told to stay put—free mass transit, bring your family! Over eons, microbes always win the day, mostly by stealthily being too tiny for humans to see. However, humans are crafty, too, so I wouldn't count us out just yet.

It's hard for one person to eradicate the invisible. Just because I can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, lurking on my doorknobs, infesting my gear shift, congregating on my gaudy tatty plastic shopping bags. I should invent a bug bomb for humans, like we have for buildings. Just zip yourself into this here plastic body bag, hold your breath for a minute or so, and (if you don't suffocate), you will emerge sparkling clean, disinfected of every germ, even the ones you need, whoops. Well, I'll let you know when I have a working prototype. Maybe it shouldn't look like a body bag. The images I'm seeing daily on the news would probably not do much to boost sales. 

This pandemic is a slow-moving tornado, scouring the entire world. All we need now are a few real tornadoes to really put paid to the futility of human existence. The terrible choice is to find shelter together or die alone. Maybe more like, die now or die later. What are we surviving for? Does it matter? The U.S. economy is bleeding commerce, cash, workers, and customers . . . seeing a tornado kick a dead carcass isn't exactly a top headline. I hope no one dies, but well, like I said, die now or die later. 

Just a few long months ago, I used to drive the back road to my mother's nursing home. As I drove, I often said to myself, someday I won't have to do this anymore. I won't park under this tree. I won't stroll to the back door and enter the code. I won't stride along the hallway past the dining room, greeting the same people everyday heading painstakingly back to their rooms. I won't stop and check my mother's mailbox. I won't enter her room, saying howdy, howdy, Slacker if she's sacked out on her couch. I used to think, someday all this will be in my rear view mirror, a blur blending with all the other actions I've repeatedly taken and then suddenly stopped. Jobs. Schools. Relationships. The habit of participation seems forever engraved in my behavior until suddenly it's not. I'm amazed at how quickly I can let those old “habits” go, yet how stubbornly my compulsions live on.  

I expected my nightly ritual would end when my mother died. I did not anticipate that the ritual would end because of a pandemic. Now my ritual has shifted. Now I park in front, in the near-empty parking lot. I put on a mask. I gather a few items into my pocket and head past the front door, along the side of the building to my mother's window, where I peer into the gloom. I want to say, this is so unfair (to me). Then I remember, what's fair to the cat is not fair to the mouse. Right now, I'm the mouse. I have the whiskers to prove it.

She's always on the couch. Sometimes she's sitting up, eating her dinner or watching TV. Sometimes she's stretched out under her blue plaid blanket, eyes slitted, mouth open. When I tap on the window, she jerks to awareness like a wind-up doll. In slow motion, she gets to her feet, bent over at a right angle, and totters to the window, holding onto the coffee table, then the arm of the couch, then the top of the TV (I know!), and then the windowsill. She's a fall risk, a disaster waiting to happen. But aren't we all, these days.

The spring weather means her window is ajar just an inch, enough for her to hear my voice if the TV is not too loud. Some days, she doesn't seem inclined to engage. Other days, she's alert and talkative. I don't know why. I show her whatever little photo I have brought to add to her window collage. I tape it into an empty space. So far the one she seems to like best is an old photo of her as a child with her older brother and their dog, Tippy. She didn't mention her brother, but she murmured Tippy a couple times. 

A few days ago, one of the nursing home residents was sent to the ER where he/she/they tested positive for COVID-19. The nursing home administrator sent out an emotional email to family. Kudos to her for keeping us informed; bad news is better than no news. I'm doing a pretty good job of staying out of the wreckage of the future. Everything depends on how vigilant the staff have been. It's out of my hands. Symptoms take time to appear. So now we wait to see if a few wild viruses will make the leap to party in my mother's fragile lungs. 

Alone. Alone, alone, alone

Foraging for food has taken on a new tension in this surreal new world order. Never my favorite chore, now going to the grocery store means venturing into an enclosed space that could be swarming with hungry viruses. Certainly, the store is swarming with tense, anxious, fretting, hungry humans, all bent on cornering just slightly more than their fair share of the last box of whatever. Fear and greed make a frightening combination.

Yesterday, I prepared my purple rubber gloves, put a face mask in my pocket just in case I started coughing, and drove to the store, ready for anything. I put the gloves on and trudged to the entrance, keeping a wary distance, thinking to myself, am I six feet from that guy? Does it matter if we are both facing in the same direction, or is it more dangerous if we are facing toward each other? Wait, why is he stopping? Should I stop too, like keeping two car lengths from the guy in front of me?

Oh, no, can I go around this slow guy without getting creamed by cars pulling up to the front door to disgorge a horde of people of all ages who I assume are all part of the same COVID-19 death squad, wait, I mean, family?

I guess if you are all part of one COVID-19 pod, you sink or swim together. That is sort of sweet, in a Three Musketeers kind of way. All for one, one for all, together we die, although we'd have a better chance if we spread out a little. But hey, we're family, and family stick together, right? I wouldn't know. My family has always preferred being far-flung.

Inside the door, the cart arena was almost empty. Most of the carts were apparently out in the parking lot. As I grabbed one of the last carts, praying it didn't have a hitch in its gitalong, I saw the cart wrangler leading a caravan of carts from the hinterlands. Ah, replenishments. Now if only the shelves were equally as replenished.

I donned my purple gloves but left my face mask in my pocket. We don't need the mask unless we are spewing germs, right? I'm not clear on the purpose of the gloves and face mask. Am I trying to keep viruses in or out? This is so confusing. Of course, I don't want to transmit something to someone, especially if I don't know if I'm sick with something gruesome like a killer virus. If I am going to transmit something to someone, it better be for a good reason, you know, because I don't like them and want them to feel as wretched as I do. But I'm not sick. I don't think. At least, before I went to the store, I could say with some certainty that I wasn't sick. But who knows now. I went to the store. Who knows what I touched. All my zucchini and apples could be contaminated with viruses just waiting to jump onto my unprotected hands. From there, it's an easy jump to my mouth. Agh, I rubbed my eyes once or twice yesterday! I washed my hands, multiple times, and I wiped down surfaces inside my car, but did I wash up after transporting the zucchini into the fridge? Oh my god, I'm doomed.

In the store, I observed some shocking behavior, mostly from myself. I drove my shopping cart with purpose, making eye contact sparingly, as if minimizing eye contact equated with minimizing air space. I think I read that the virus needs prolonged contact to make the leap between respiratory tracts, so if I whizz by a shopper in the frozen vegetables aisle, I'm probably okay, right? Especially if I don't make eye contact. I can do this. I quickly filled my cart with all the items on my list. I was especially happy to see there were some boxes of facial tissue on the shelf. Bigger boxes than I would normally buy, but in allergy season, I've been going through tissues like, well, like the virus going through a crowd of drunken teenagers on a Florida beach. I grabbed three boxes because I was running low.

No lollygagging in the produce today, wondering what parsnips taste like. I made it to the checkout line in record time. As I waited my turn, I felt a nudge from behind me. The old guy in line behind me at the checkout, ungloved and unmasked and wiping his dripping nose with a tissue, seemed to be trying to push his cart past me, even though there was no space for two carts.

“Hi, are you okay?” I asked politely, thinking I could get irate, but now is the time for compassion, let's practice your promise of being loving and kind in this challenging new world.

He smiled and mumbled something. I realized English was not his first language. I nodded my head and started putting my vegetables and tissue boxes on the conveyor belt. He backed off.

The customer ahead of me wore a face mask but no gloves. He poked the credit card gizmo with his bare fingers. That strategy was exactly the opposite of my strategy. I wondered if I had got the whole thing wrong, that I should be protecting my lungs rather than my fingers? Oh boy. This apocalypse is confusing.

I did my best to show appreciation to the checker, an older gal who wore her glasses on a string. I wondered if I was old enough to start doing that and if it would help me cope with my trauma.

“I sure do appreciate you being here today,” I said as she started scanning my modest collection of items.

“Essential workers,” she said grimly. “That's what they are calling us.” I got the impression she would rather have been at home. Not much I could say to that.

“Oh, you can only get one paper product per household,” she said after scanning two boxes of tissues. She put two boxes aside. I forlornly bagged the one box that passed the scan, thinking, dang, I hope my allergies will be calm this week or I'll be honking into my fingers over the sink.

When I got home, once again there was no place to park. My neighbors have embraced the shelter-in-place order by taking all the parking spaces. Not only that, they seem to spend all their time doing laundry.

After disinfecting my car, putting away my possibly contaminated apples and zucchini, and washing my hands several times singing the Alphabet Song, I checked my receipt. Of course, I was charged for two boxes of tissue. I now possess a very expensive box of tissue, perhaps the last box of tissue I will ever be allowed to purchase, if the world of paper products implodes along with everything else. I should probably have the box bronzed or encased in resin or something, a testament to a time when we bought expensive products to wipe our noses and then discarded them into the every-growing waste stream that will eventually choke us all to death.

Tonight, as I've been doing for the past two weeks, I'll drive over to my Mom's nursing home, wave at her through the window, note how the pace of her decline seems to be accelerating, and drive home.

Well, on that happy note, I'm signing off from the Love Shack, wallowing in self-isolation, which for me is pretty much no different than the life I normally lead. That is to say, alone again, naturally.

Don't cry, it's just the end of civilization, not the end of the world

Today was a lovely spring Wednesday in Mt. Tabor Park. With all this extra time on our hands, and all this lovely sunshine after last week's bizarre snow storm, a walk in the park seemed like the thing to do. On Wednesdays, no cars are allowed to drive in the park. Thus, one day a week, the roads are filled with bicyclists, pedestrians, runners, and skateboarders. I walked diffidently along the park roads, rather than along the foot trails where I usually walk, making sure not to spew germs. As I walked, I watched to see if others were maintaining proper social distance.

I wasn't surprised to see families clustered together, walking dogs, riding miniature pink bikes, skipping and singing. I smiled at the little vectors of disease as they pedaled by, giving me sidelong glances. School has been cancelled for what, a week, now? Any moment, some of those little vermin will start to whine and cough. Wonder how that will work out. I have visions of virus sheriffs nailing doors shut, guns at the ready. These families walked near me, not three feet away in some cases, apparently not caring that I myself could be a vector of disease, a carrier, a spreader, a Typhoid Mary.

Lots of couples walked close together, some actually arm in arm! I can't look at television images of people shaking hands or kissing now without feeling queasy. It's the same feeling I have when I see old movies in which people drove without seat belts, smoked like chimneys, and littered without thinking. Eeewww. How could they have done that? I predict in only a few months, movies showing people snuggling and kissing will be X-rated. Images of men shaking hands will elicit groans from the audiences now too freaked out to watch movies with anyone else but still remembering how great it felt, sort of, to be touched by another person. No big surprise, the couples in the park ignored me as if I weren't there. Nobody notices old women.

In fact, the only park goers who stopped, stepped off the trail, or made wide detours near me were old women like me. We came close enough to make eye contact, but just a wary glance, as if we were assessing the risk of a rabid rush, a bite on the leg, a cough in the face. I smiled the thin-lipped smile I reserve for times when I am anxious but determined to acknowledge another person's presence despite my discomfort. I tried not to feel rejected or disappointed that my airspace was no longer tolerable.

The desire to make others feel okay is strong in me. My codependent nature wants everyone to feel safe and happy so they won't kill me. That used to mean smiling, waving, moving closer, patting, touching, shaking hands. Now taking care of others means avoiding them, shunning them, keeping my hands, voice, and breath to myself.

I'm finding some comfort in the stories of earth's ability to bounce back now that we have quit polluting the air and water. We thought it couldn't be done, that pie-in-the-sky climate agreement in which we cut our consumption so the earth can survive. Look at us now, cutting our consumption in half, at least. It's a sad but delicious irony that this pandemic will reduce the world's population and pollution load to the point at which some of humanity might survive.

Mom didn't have a great day today, I heard. She was asleep on the couch when I peered in her window this evening. Her eyes were closed; her mouth was open. Her dinner was untouched on the coffee table. I taped a little photo of a bouquet of daisies to the outside of her window, adding to the growing collection of clippings: flowers, a leprechaun, and my siblings faces taped to pink hearts. Then I just stood there and watched my mother breathe, as if I were watching a movie of a quiet peaceful moment in someone else's life.

The Chronic Malcontent does her part to flatten the curve

Last week I did a stupid thing. I went to the hospital lab to get my blood drawn for a cholesterol test I've been postponing for months. I guess I'm trying to check all the tasks off my list before the virus kills me. As I sat in the waiting room watching people who arrived after me be invited into the inner sanctum, I had some time to reflect (indulge in self-pity). I had some trepidation that a hospital might not be the safest place to be. Now looking back, my fear seems so quaint.

A tall, heavy young man came into the lab and approached the check-in iPad. He might have been Hispanic, Samoan, I don't know. Something slightly darker than pale. He looked like a wrestler. I noted his baggy red shorts and floppy team jersey. I bent my head back to my fingers. I missed the moment when he slapped the tablet, knocking it off its perch and sending the table sign flying onto the floor.

“I can't figure this out,” he said in disgust. One of the check-in staff left his cubicle and hurried to get the young man checked in. In an effort to distance myself from emotional drama, I moved to a chair directly outside the door I was trying to get through and stared at it, willing it to open and admit me so I could move on with my day. The young man took a seat to wait for his turn in the x-ray machine. My back was to what happened next.

“What's the problem?” I turned around briefly and saw two uniformed security officers flanking the young man, who now was on his feet, towering over both of them. I quickly bent my head and pretended I didn't exist.

“What? Why are you hassling me?”

“Let's go into the hall and talk about it.”

“What is your problem?”

The back-and-forth continued. I thought, this is how it happens. Arrogant people in power make assumptions in the name of public safety. Next thing you know, multiple people are dead. In a few minutes, the encounter was over. I couldn't hear all of it, and I didn't want to. I sat still, adopting a freeze and maybe they won't notice me strategy. We all survived. If that young man had been a few shades darker, it's likely the outcome would have been different.

After the drama ended, I meandered diffidently over to a check-in clerk, who looked up my check-in information and confirmed, yes, I had indeed somehow fallen off the list, so sorry. In a few more tedious minutes, I was invited through the door. Soon, I was punctured, patched, and on my way.

In for a penny. Time to address the next item on my task list. I headed over to the pharmacy nearby to get my second shingles vaccine. The wait wasn't as long.

“Getting it all in one arm, eh?” The pharmacist noted the cotton taped on my elbow. He looked like a young Ben Affleck. I could feel my smile returning.

“Yep. Luckily I have two arms, I can afford to lose one for a while.”

“You probably remember the side effects of this vaccine? Relax your arm. This will burn a little going in.” I looked at the ceiling as the needle went into my shoulder. “It can make you feel like you have the flu.”

I stared at him in dismay. No, I had completely forgotten.

“I think it was just a day,” I said slowly, totally not remembering.

“Hope so. Some people have five miserable days.”

My mother's nursing home instituted a no-visitors policy that afternoon. Despite my increasing muscle aches, I visited with her outside her window, scribbling and holding up notes for her to read. No, I can't come in because of the virus. I got a shingles shot today, ouch! I miss you. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. No, I can't come in. 

Our visit was cut short when she pointed to the bathroom. I waved and walked away, loathe to watch my mother struggle in the bathroom with no way for me to help.

Regular doses of ibuprofen kept me going as the shingles vaccine ravaged my body. I moaned and groaned through two long nights and emerged on the third day feeling refreshed just in time to see the stock market tank. So long, IRA!

Now it's a few days later. The no-visitor policy remains in effect at the nursing home, and the staff are screened and masked. If that virus gets in, all those old frail seniors will drop like flies. I'm staying home from everything but visiting Mom outside her window, doing my part to flatten the curve. The two inches of snow we had yesterday definitely inspired me to lay low. Not to mention my near-constant allergy attacks. My brother says tree pollen, but I suspect indoor mold. The libraries are closed. I hear there are lines outside the grocery store. My sister is flying to Boston from France next week. I hope she makes it. I'm freezing and scared. I miss my cat. Every damn day feels like a snow day.

An acquaintance told me (on the phone) that she wasn't curtailing any of her activities. She gets around on public transportation. I pictured her boarding buses with her wheeled suitcase, spewing germs. Appalled, I said, even if you know you could be spreading the virus? She said she believed the world was coming to an end soon, so it didn't matter. I said lamely, well, at least your behavior is consistent with your beliefs. I wanted to say, I don't care if you are ready to die, but I'd prefer if you didn't take me down with you. But I didn't.

This might be the end of civilization, I don't know. I think we are seeing how fragile the veneer of civilization really is as people yell at Asians and hoard toilet paper. At some point, I'll have to go forage for food at Winco. Meanwhile, I will hunker down in the Love Shack, mopping my dripping nose and compulsively reading the news.

Stay safe, blogbots.

The chronic malcontent reads a book

I would prefer to exist in the realm of the intellect, eschewing all things physical. I don't like remembering I have a body to inhabit and tend. My response to the dilemma of being a biological creature on the physical plane is to either ignore it by sleeping or overeating, or by running at my physicality with a sharp stick—in other words, revel in it by scratching, picking, poking, farting, and belching. To name a few. I won't say my response is logical, except that I can be counted on to ignore the happy moderate medium in favor of the two extremes. In other words, I'm either fully present or fully absent.

I video chat with my sister once a week. She's in France. Her evening is my morning. The Internet connection usually isn't great, but it's good enough that she can see me scratching and picking. Living alone, I'm generally unaware of my fidgeting, but my sister kindly brings it to my attention in order to reform my behavior. I assume it is because she knows someday we will be roommates. I imagine she's hoping by the time we are in our eighties, she will have trained me to sit still.

My sister would be at home at Downton Abbey. I am pretty sure she doesn't wear a corset, but I must say, she's got the posture and demeanor down pat. She's naturally poised. Maybe that comes from being born a blonde with perfect teeth. She's probably never had a dandruff flake in her life.

I on the other hand, would be at home in a cave. Maybe I would have a plank floor, but I probably wouldn't worry too much about housekeeping or hygiene. I mean, I do the basics. I do bathe and brush my teeth. Occasionally I look in a mirror. I don't do a lot of grooming, though, about on the order of how often I vacuum my rugs, which is to say, not often.

Yesterday I took our maternal parental unit to the dermatologist to get some cancer scraped off her forehead. Having learned from our previous visit, I came prepared with the hazmat bag of gloves, wipes, pull-ups, extra pants and socks, toilet paper, and paper towels. This time I brought my own plastic bags so I wouldn't leave a toxic mess in their restroom trash can. (I still feel chagrined at that.)

Luck favors the prepared. We only had to make one trip to the restroom. Everything got wiped up and neatly bagged. Mom endured the restroom operation and the skin cancer operation with good cheer. The dermatologist told jokes as he sewed up her forehead. We were on our way in an hour. I couldn't  have asked for a better outcome. And luckily for my sister, I've nothing gross and messy to report. She hates blog posts with certain words (e.g., poop, diarrhea, bwa-ha-ha).

The best part of the long afternoon for me was reading to my mother while we waited for the doctor. Anticipating boredom, I brought a paperback version of Bunchy, a book we both knew from our childhoods. Joyce Lankester Brisley wrote Bunchy in 1937. As a small child, I enhanced Mom's original copy with crayons. Some years ago, I bought a 2005 paperback edition and saved it from the many Love Shack book purges of the past ten years. It's a book about my three favorite things: imagination, creativity, and magic.

“You want to hear some of Bunchy?” I asked, holding up the book. Her eyes lit up.

“Might as well,” she replied, which I know means “yes.”

In my screensaver rotation, I have a black and white photo of us kids clustered around Mom on the couch as she reads Clare Turlay Newberry's April's Kittens. It was October 1961. Mom wears cat eye glasses. My older brother, my sister, and I, all in pajamas, lean in close. My little brother is not pictured. I imagine he's in a bassinet off camera. I assume Dad took the picture, although it could have been Grandma. Mom is reading with a serious expression. Only my sister looks at the camera.

Mom can't read much anymore, but she loved books, and she transferred her love of books to her two daughters. My sister studies medieval manuscripts and books—she's an expert in the field. Me, I love making marks on paper. Even though I do most of my writing on the computer, writing and drawing on paper is my idea of heaven.

I sat in the visitor chair in the dermatologist's exam room with the bag of gear close to hand. Mom perched on the exam table with her feet propped up a bit on a part of the table that could be raised and lowered. I began reading about Bunchy's adventure with the pastry-dough people, holding up the book occasionally to show her the illustrations. Outside the sky was blue with the promise of spring.

Not quite over it, thanks for asking

Life goes on. I'm adapting to living life alone, just me in the Love Shack, bouncing from project to project, moment to moment. Now that I don't have to worry about disturbing a slumbering cat, I've vacuumed more in the last week than I have in the previous year. I can rearrange the furniture. I can pound on things. I can play loud music. I admit, it is nice not scooping poop or sweeping up cat litter. Once I've absorbed the cost of Eddie's demise, I predict I'm going to save a lot of money at the grocery store.

It's been just over a month. I'm not quite over it. That horrible it I'd rather not think about. I divide life into BDE and ADE (Before the death of Eddie and After the death of Eddie). I'm still sleeping with the rice-filled cat pillow. I find it comforting. However, you may be relieved to hear, the grief is lifting. Seeing BDE photos of Eddie and me on my screensaver is becoming less of a stab through the heart.

I used to be such a pot-stirrer, a brazen risk-taker, a leaper into abysses. I was always ready to move on . . . new city, new job, new relationship, one little hiccup and I was packed and gone. Old age has tempered my willingness to explore the unknown. I don't like change now, I realize. When my perception is that I'm hanging on to sanity by a thin thread, change can look a lot like a sharp pair of scissors. Change happens; I know I'm not immune. For instance, losing my mother will be a drastic change. I've wondered if my intense reaction to losing Eddie has been heightened by the slow grinding demise of my mother. She's dying in slow motion. I'm grieving in slow motion. I don't know. I don't live with my mother. Eddie and I were roommates for thirteen years. You get used to something after thirteen years. When it's gone, you miss it, even if it's a cat. I'd miss a ham sandwich if I lived with it for thirteen years.

When I realize most of my life is behind me, what used to seem important no longer interests me. I continue the process of jettisoning stuff from the Love Shack. I'm like a rocket burning off its boosters as it launches into the stratosphere. Why did I think I needed all this stuff? The books and DVDs are almost all gone now, donated to the library. My wardrobe is in tatters; if I ever move to warmer climes, I will consider replacing some clothes, but really, how much does one person need, especially considering the unpleasant consequences of unbridled consumption?

Well, let's be realistic. I guess I'm not ready to let go of everything. I'd miss my bathtub, if I didn't have one. And my coffee maker, can't live without that. I wouldn't miss my television but I'd probably stroke out if I had to go without my computer. So there's that. I still eat food I buy in stores, so I won't be foraging in the fields or making campfires in the near future. I wouldn't call what I do cooking, but I do heat food before I eat it. Although if the big one hits, we may all be pooping in holes and cooking mush over fires made from our broken furniture. Well, I'll help my neighbors in any way I can, if I can extricate myself from the wreckage of the basement.

At least my cat won't have to go through that trauma. A strange kind of blessing, to count up all the terrible things he has avoided by dying. That may someday be my strategy, when dementia scrapes away the rest of my functioning neurons. I hope I'll have a few brain cells left to help me make my escape when it's time to exit, stage right.

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.