Unfeathering my moldy nest

In my preparation for leaving the Love Shack, I'm unfeathering my nest in circles, the same way I feathered it, adding a wall of shelves here, a set of bookcases there, all designed to accommodate my growing collection of paper products. I've shredded almost all the paper in the place; thus, I no longer need all these homemade shelves. Taking these things off the walls has been a sweaty chore. I build to last. However, my trusty drill and I have beaten the screaming screws into submission. Only a few more to go. 

Now my living room looks like a lumberyard. Seriously, I have designated a 10 foot by 10 foot space next to my TV-watching chair (used to be Eddie's chair) as wood storage. The space is already jam-stacked with planks and sticks and unusable constructs that used to be furniture. I've become a woodchuck! Well, maybe a reverse woodchuck. All I know is all this wood is going to get chucked. Actually, woodchucks don't chuck wood, but whatever. 

I was tidying up my desk tonight when I was suddenly blindsided by a fit of sobbing. It didn't last long. Weeping makes my nose drip and clogs my throat. If I wail too long, I'll barf. I hate to cry but I hate barfing more, so that works pretty well to keep the histrionics to a minimum. It's my loss and I'll cry if I want to, but not for long. Moving on.

I picked up ashes and death certificates on Monday. Next up on the list, getting Mom's taxes done, learning about probate, and sending copies of death certificates where they need to go. Just a bunch of busywork. It's okay. I need a sense of purpose. When I get done with my tasks, I continue going through drawers and cupboards, sorting and tossing. So far, I have eight boxes ready to go to the thrift store. I hate to give them my vintage cardboard boxes. Those things came with me from California in 1997. I see labels pasted upon labels, showing me the trail of possessions I thought were too precious to leave behind. Mostly paper. What can I say, I've always loved paper. 

You know who else loves paper? Mold. 

By the time you see mold, it's too late. Spraying with bleach is a feeble remedy, a sad desperate grab at temporary relief. Within minutes the mold is growing back, like alien spores on an episode of Star Trek. The original Star Trek, I mean—that's all I get on broadcast TV. I hope I'm gone before my landlord has a chance to see the job ahead of him. He's going to have to tear the entire east side of the apartment down to the studs. That means kitchen and bathroom. I really don't want to be around when he rips down the beige speckled Formica tub surround, which bulges with whatever is growing in the walls. Alien life, here on earth. I think about it sometimes as I'm soaking in the tub.

It is good I'm leaving this place. To those of you who think I'm crazy to leave during Covid, I invite you to consider that staying here would not be healthy for anyone. Even I have my limit. I can put up with a lot of discomfort because I really don't care where I live, as long as I'm warm enough and have hot water in the tub. And internet, of course. Dust, spiders, and cat hair, who cares. Rust stains and missing porcelain in the kitchen sink, no problem. No hot water in the bathroom sink? No worries, as long as there is hot water in the tub. 

This is why I'm hopeful I will find new digs somewhere in a warmer drier place without much problem. My standards are more than reasonable—you might say they are low, compared to most white Americans. This means I have more options. And less disappointment. I recommend it. 

I'm seeking the balance between living like a woodchuck in a grubby burrow and living like an entitled melodramatic demanding whiny white American. Somewhere in the middle of America there must be a place in the sun for me. 

Waiting for the next episode

I miss her. I miss the routine, my sense of purpose, my north star. I knew this would happen, that I would be lost for a while. It’s different knowing something will happen and feeling it when it finally does. You can’t predict what it will feel like with certainty. You can say, I’ll feel sad, or I’ll feel scared, but until it happens, you don’t feel anything and when it happens, you are like, wow, this is different than what I imagined, this is murkier and ickier and I want to go back to where I was, imagining how the feelings would feel but not actually feeling them.

I've started packing stuff into boxes I've stored in a locked basement cupboard for seventeen years. No reason to keep them locked up. No reason to keep them at all, really. When I moved here to the Love Shack in 2003, moving on was my normal M.O. I don't remember now but I'm guessing I didn't expect to live here long. Then life ensued. I got a job, I got a cat, I went to graduate school, I got laid off and fell into self-employment. I peaked around 2013, I think. After that, my normal sense of confusion began to reassert itself. Regressing to the mean, as it were.

Until Mom got dementia. What a strange blessing. Once again my life had meaning and purpose. She needed me, I needed her. Of course, we knew that couldn't last forever. But it could have. I was prepared for her to live to one hundred. As it happened, I spent five wonderful but terrible years spinning in a tightening orbit around her. Then the cat died, then Covid, and you know the rest. Bam. Slow motion train wreck.

It's good I'm leaving this apartment. It's hard to stay warm in the winter. The heaters in the main room and kitchen have been nonfunctional for several years. The landlord attempted to replace the thermostat and almost set the place on fire. The wall around the thermostat is still singed black, a reminder that electricity can keep you warm or it can burn your house down. A small space heater works pretty well for maintaining a livable temperature around my work table. (The bedroom has heat, thank god, or I would have dragged up a long time ago.) The bathroom has never had heat, and in the winter, the room is both cold and damp. I've been doing laundry by hand at night and hanging the wet things to drip over the tub. The colder it gets outside, the longer the things take to dry. Last week I made the mistake of handwashing a small load of kitchen towels. Not a good idea. After five days of hanging on the shower rod, they are still damp, and judging by the smell, they are now starting to molder. No wonder my nose is trying to kill me.

Circumstances seem to be shoving me out the door. I'm going with the flow, hence, the packing. At some point, we will receive ashes and death certificates. All the tasks will be done. All the possessions will be distributed. All I need is a map and the open road. I'm ready to be reborn into some warmer, drier life, even if it means becoming temporarily homeless. I'm finding, though, that even though I'm happily letting go of furniture, the detritus of seventeen years is rapidly filling up all my boxes. Do I let more things go? Or do I get more boxes? The answer will depend on what kind of vehicle I find and how much it can carry. It's simple, really, just a matter of cubic feet.

Packing gives my hands something to do while my mind rummages around in a fog of shock and confusion. I have a plan, but it's in the ether. I haven't assimilated my new situation so I can't see a path clear to my next situation. I'm running on autopilot, just doing the next thing in front of me.

Last week I left four bags of her clothes at a thrift store. I donated her furniture to a second-hand shop. Today I tossed her upper denture in the trash, ew, I know. So weird. It all feels surreal. I still can't believe she's gone. Three weeks ago, in five minutes I would be bundling up to walk out to my car and drive over to the care home, wondering how much longer will this go on? I always knew this moment would come, but now that it is here, I feel no sense of peace. I have an intention, and I'm taking action, but it's like I'm a character in a movie. What will she do next? Is this a tragedy or a comedy? Or (most likely) is it the apocalyptic story of the end of the world? Stay tuned for the next episode.

Mom was home and home is gone

I decided that packing up all the clutter would make me feel better so I dug my flattened spider-infested boxes out of my basement storage cupboard and started with my books. Including the few academic books I would like to keep, I managed to fill three boxes. You might think, wow, that is a lot of books, Carol. If you think that, however, you clearly never knew me. Books were kind of like my thing. 

I don't know where I'm going. I just know that as soon as is reasonably possible with a minimum of impulsive insanity, I am leaving Portland. Home was Mom, and Mom is gone, so this is no longer home. I need a new conception of home. Maybe something with blue sky above it. 

My friend the astrologer would credit the arrangement of the planets with this upheaval that sends me on a new trajectory. I don't want to make this entirely about me. I would guess Mars is retrograding in Uranus for most of the world right now. I know I'm not the only one reeling from events. 

Sometimes radical upheaval brings blessings. It depends on how I decide to frame my experience. Lately I'm just going with it. Trying to figure things out so I can finally manage and control circumstances has never worked for me. 

For the past five years, I watched dementia constrain my mother's world into a narrowing circle. She shed interests, activities, possessions, friends, and even family, until after five years, all that was left was her couch, her clothes, and me. I learned the lesson: Nothing is permanent, everyone dies, and all I have is the present moment. Mom was the Zen master of being present—I'm nowhere near her level, but in my defense, she had the advantage of being demented and I only have my self-centered determination, which is the antithesis of being present in the moment. Well, I'm trying. 

So back to packing. 

Mom left behind her blue plaid wool blanket, a scratchy old ugly thing. I don't want it but I made the mistake of smelling it. It smelled like laundry detergent and Mom. My mother had a smell. After she stopped smoking, her smell was a combination of old lady and Tide Fresh. Not something I'd want in a bottle, but the scent of her brought me to my knees. I'll see if my brother wants that blanket. Maybe he needs a good cry.

She's gone

The day I have both dreaded and longed for arrived last Thursday. After an hour of terrible pain in her gut, my mother shuffled off the mortal coil somewhere between her care home and the hospital. By the time I got there, she was all laid out (sans dentures) under a white blanket. Luckily I have seen her sunken face when her teeth are out, so I wasn't completely horrified. If you've ever seen your mother without her teeth, you know what I mean. She was strangely still, eyes closed, mouth open a little, like she was about to sing.

Even though I've had a few days to process the experience, I don't think it has hit me yet. It happened so fast. When my cat died a year ago, I had time to say goodbye and shed my guilty tears all over his fur while the vet gave him the drugs that would take him away from me forever. I didn't see that part happen with my mother. It happened in the ambulance, I'm guessing somewhere near Glisan and 60th. I don't know. Covid prohibited me from riding with her, not that I would have, because I had my car, and who wants to get stuck in the ER for four hours without a car to bring her back to the care home in, right? That is what I was thinking. Dang, another four-hour ordeal in the ER, and me without coffee! Oh, the horror. 

In the family "waiting room" where they put the folks who are about to be blindsided with the haymaker of their lives, the nurse put her hand on my arm, probably to make sure I wouldn't launch into orbit, and said, "Your mother has passed." For a moment, I couldn't believe what I heard. She had a festively decorated head wrap and mask, I think there were colorful balloons and stars, I can't really remember. She said after the EMTs gave her fentanyl, Mom was resting comfortably, and she died peacefully. I want me some of that stuff when my turn comes. 

So how does this roll out? I wasn't in town when my father kicked off, so this is all new to me. My brother and I visited the funeral home on Friday, masked and dazed, well, I was sort of dazed, not having slept well. We figured it out, paid the money, and went our ways. Mom is probably in a cold box in a basement as she waits her turn to get trucked to Seattle for cremation (the local furnace is busted). Eventually we will get death certificates but the wheels of government are moving at a glacial pace, thanks to Covid, so the nice compassionate caring lady said expect them maybe in three weeks if we are lucky. A month or so from now, our mother will be shipped back to Portland in a box, minus hip replacement hardware. 

My sister graciously consented to write an obituary, which is a thing of beauty, although we seem to be doing a Groundhog Day dance trying to wordsmith one line:  granddaughter and two great-grandchildren. There, I think I got it, finally. I can tell my brain is not tracking. When I reread this before posting, I will be appalled at how many words I left out. It's like there are holes in my brain. They were there before Mom died, though, so I can't blame grief. 

My older brother will rise to his role as executor of the estate. We'll see how that goes. Oh boy, I think I'm getting a migraine. 

I always knew this day would come, if I lived long enough, and I wondered how it would feel and how I would respond. I'm still wondering. The mother I knew left me a long time ago. It's been a strange four years taking care of the changeling mother that dementia left in her place. I grew fond of this changeling. In one minute, I would be walking out the door to visit her. What am I going to do with all this empty space? 

I mean that metaphorically. I have less space here than ever. I've cleared most of her stuff out of the care home. You would not believe how many clothes she had. Thirty-two tops (long- and short-sleeved) in various colors and some stripes, seventeen sweatshirts (most with some sort of embroidery on the chest: my favorite: Hugs - One size fits all). Nine jackets, most pockmarked with cigarette burns. We've downsized her three times now. The last two times, the excess has ended up in my living room. There is a lot less now compared to the previous time, but the place still looks like a thrift store. I had to bag it all up again after counting because the smell of laundry detergent gave me a coughing fit. I'm okay now, thanks for asking. 

Yesterday the family had a video call. After many technological glitches and hurdles, we finally got my older brother connected via speaker phone. Tensions were high at times, but we also saw the humor in the situation. Off and on, we coalesced as a family, something we haven't done in a long time. 

Someday, after Covid, my sister and her husband will come out from Boston. We will all drive down to the Oregon coast to find the secret beach where we scattered Dad's ashes in 2005. If it all works out, we'll send Mom off over the Columbia River Bar to the Pacific Ocean. That is if we aren't occupied by China or dead from Covid. I am taking nothing for granted. 

Bon voyage, Mom. Enjoy your trip to Seattle. I'll miss you forever. 

How to train your spider

For the past couple months, I've shared my bathroom with a house spider. I told my mother about the spider, and Mom named it Esmeralda. I presume Esmeralda was a female. I say was, because, yes, my pet spider and I had to part ways this week. She crossed a line, that line being the thin silk thread by which she hovered over my head just inside the bathroom door. If I hadn't disrupted her descent when I swung the door open, she would have landed on my neck. I like all creatures but we each have our place, and I admit, humans don't usually stay where they belong, but spiders on my neck is not acceptable. 

I captured Esmeralda in a plastic tub, carried her through the house to the back door, and put her in a dirt-filled flower pot on the back porch, where I hope she will be very happy. 

I miss her. Now I really feel alone. 

It's been almost a year since my cat Eddie died. I miss him everyday. A spider is not a substitute for a cat. Still, Esmeralda was a presence. When I entered the bathroom, I always checked to see if she was there in her spot, either clinging to the wall by the shower stall or hanging a foot below the ceiling nearby. Only once or twice did she make the trek across the ceiling to hang near the doorway. (I can't actually be sure it was Esmeralda, because, you know, house spider identification is not my strong suit.) Everyday I told her, "You stay in your space, I'll stay in mine." During nocturnal visits, though, just to be sure, I waved my hands over my head when I passed through the doorway. Just in case. 

I did my best to care for her. I put a piece of mango in a dish near the window to attract flies. I'm not sure my strategy worked. I never saw any flies hovering over the mango. It wasn't fresh—it was frozen, and it thawed to a remarkable gooey consistency that I found a bit off-putting. Maybe flies did too. It's winter, anyhow, so not that many flies are around the Love Shack, just a few little ones that zoom around the light above my computer monitor. 

I'm sure Esmeralda got enough water. I take a bath nightly. The bathroom has no heat, but it gets pretty steamy in there, especially when it is cold outside. The steam rises and condenses on the ceiling. Water, water everywhere, I'm pretty sure, for a thirsty house spider. (And for a fine crop of mold, but that is a different type of pet.) I read that house spiders can live for a year or more if they get enough to eat and drink. I'm sure Esmeralda and I would have continued on as roommates, wary but amicable enough, if she hadn't crossed the line.

I wonder how she is doing. When I enter the bathroom, I look up at the spot where she used to hang out, almost hoping she perhaps has found her way back inside the house. So far, her perch is empty. I see a few flies hanging around the monitor but flies don't make good pets. That is my opinion based on many years of observation and experience. 

Tonight I visited Mom at the care home. We sat outside under the shelter, me in a mask, her wrapped in fleece blankets. It was unseasonably warm for the time of year and the time of evening. We are enjoying intermittent rainstorms courtesy of the Pineapple Express, the subtropical firehose that occasionally points directly at Oregon. 

Mom seemed inordinately sleepy tonight, for the third night in a row. I cast around for something to keep her engaged and entertained. 

"Esmeralda and I have parted ways," I said. 

"Who is Esmeralda?"

"She's the spider that used to live in my bathroom. You named her Esmeralda." 

"I did?"

"She made the mistake of hanging over the doorway into the bathroom." Mom looked confused. "I didn't want her on my neck."

"Ah." She got it. 

We looked at each other. 

"I'm tired," she said.

"Tired today or tired in general?" Leading question, I know. I dig for facts so I don't have to feel my feelings.

"Tired in general," she replied. "It's all a puzzle."

I think the caregivers keep her busy working on puzzles so she will stay awake during the day and sleep through the night. Mom is weary of puzzles, but I think it's deeper than just puzzles. She's bored with the whole thing, the showing up for life thing. She's like a fine old watch that is winding down. 

Of course, I could be reading it all wrong. Come spring, she might revive with the light and decide it's time to plant a garden. I'll be ready. Whatever comes, I'll be ready.

Top to toe in taillights, red lights all around

 

Howdy, all you Blogbots, merry ho ho. I hope you are celebrating the season safely, pandemic-style. I'm doing fine in the Love Shack, thanks for asking. Isolation is nothing new for me. I've had almost a year to get used to living with a cat ghost. I have a new song for the season, which some kind soul looped in an hour-long YouTube, so I'm immersed in a repetitive ditty with an insipid soothing rhythm and bland lyrics that remind me that yes, I used to drive home for Christmas. Every now and then, I see a shadow and think it's Eddie, a spirit from Christmases past. 

I didn't feel sad or lonely until I read comments on the YouTube page under the static picture of a decorated tree. I'm not the only one finding refuge in a soothing song with a catchy beat. People from around the world are posting comments. Some rave about the song and wonder why they haven't heard it before, even though it was written in the late 1980s. Some are reminiscing about past holidays being with loved ones now gone. Some send well wishes from lockdown and hope wistfully for better times coming soon. Stay safe, they say, the standard greeting of 2020. Who knew? Nobody says "Have a great day" anymore, do they? Illness and death lurk outside our doors. 

Covid has given new resonance to the term Swedish Death Cleaning. In the interest of leaving life with minimal mess for my brother to shovel into a dumpster, I've destroyed almost twenty-five years' worth of my journals. I tore out a few drawings from each, most of which you've seen in this blog, and cut up the rejects. I'm trying to say so long to my past creativity. I'm making room for something new, which might actually be a vacant space, depending on how things go with Covid and Mom. However, the stack of drawings is two feet tall—thus, I admit, I have more culling to do. 

The past two nights have been cold and windy, so no outside visit with the maternal parental unit. We visited through her window using the baby monitor. I pressed the button and spoke into the tiny hole: How's it going, Mom, over. Ha. No, I don't say over, that would just be confusing. We're two feet apart, separated by a pane of glass. She reads lips and so do I. It isn't hard to have a conversation. We sang Let it Snow, as many lines as we could remember, which took us to Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We grinned at each other. She looked happy. 

There's no Christmas for me here anymore, at least, for me, no day deserves any special celebration or attention. If no day is Christmas, then every day can be Christmas. Every day she lives, breathes, sings,  and smiles is a gift.  

Welcome to another stupid cold holiday season

 Hello, happy holidays to my seven blog readers. You sly anonymous folks, you know who you are. I've been anonymously writing this blog for some years now, hiding behind the moniker of The Chronic Malcontent (like about a hundred other bloggers). Now we are all living anonymous lives, hidden behind plaid and paisley masks, or tasteful cotton chambray, perhaps. Or maybe you use one of those disposable things I see lying on the ground in the Winco parking lot. Whatever we are covering our faces with, we are all hiding, waiting for this stupid cold Covid season to be over. 

I'm done trying to figure things out. I'm taking things as they come. You want to be stupid? Go right ahead. You want to complain? Right on, go for it. I support your right to be loud, stupid, and annoying. 

I'm taking my cue from my mother, living in the moment, not looking behind me, not peering ahead. She's the Zen Master of the Senior Vista Villa, or whatever the place is called. 

"How are your fellow inmates?" I asked a few nights ago as we sat outside the back door under the porte-cochère, six feet apart, me masked (plaid), her bundled in fleece blankets against the December chill.

"Those idiots are so dense!" she said with disgust. 

"Why, what are they doing?" 

"They do it all wrong," she complained. "The contract gets moved, and then everything goes haywire." I nod in agreement, even though I have no idea what she is talking about. 

"Are they messing with your puzzles?"

"You have to keep your eye on Vivian," she said. "She will try to get out the door if you aren't careful."

"You mean, she'll try to make a run for it?" 

"Yeah, she's a real pistol. Sometimes she tries to sit in my place." 

"At the table?"

She nodded, lips pressed tight. Clearly, the drama does not fade once we hit the nursing home stage. It's just like junior high all over again, only the mean girls are toothless and wear house slippers. 

"Well, if she takes a swing at you, you scream bloody murder. Erin won't stand for it."

"Yeah, she runs a tight ship." High praise. Moving Mom to this care home was traumatic for everyone but almost three months later, she's doing better than fine. She's happy and thriving. 

So, what about me? Thanks for asking. My life is no more precarious than it has ever been, hence my strategy of living in the moment. Nobody controls the future, nobody can determine outcomes. I try not to be stupid but hey, I'm human. Sometimes I don't wait as long as I should for the vents to clear the fog off my windshield before I tentatively drive the eight blocks to the care home. 

Every day brings new opportunities to remember that the Universe does not care what I think or feel. Gosh. I wish I could go back in time and have a little do-over. All the energy I have wasted whining about things over the years could have been spent writing ten novels or painting fifty portraits of my cat or planting a garden or waxing my car or my upper lip. Combined! I've been operating as if my complaining about how unfair life is and how mean people are and how stupid everything is has one tiny bit of influence on the Universe. The Universe does not care. Now I know. It's not about me. It's never been about me. I'm glad I figured that out before I catch Covid and die gasping in my bed.

The great benefit of living in the moment is that I'm free to pursue what interests me. I wish I'd done that back when I was eighteen, instead of doing what everyone else thought I should do. Oh well. All those choices brought me here. What a long strange trip it's been. 

Tubbing it with my laundry

 

Howdy Blogbots. Feeling like giving thanks yet? Yeah, me neither, although I should. I'm alive, after all. I hesitate to admit things are going well but I can't honestly claim it's all bad. For a chronic malcontent, that is some admission. I pride myself on my ability—it's an art, really—to look on the dark side. Little Mary Sunshine, I am not. And yet, I persist.

Last night I was multitasking by taking a bath and doing laundry at the same time. I can hear you asking, what? Laundry must be done, and washing skivvies in the tub means I can save my quarters for the sheets and towels. So, rub-a-dub-dub. Nobody gets close enough to smell me anyway, so who cares if I reek slightly? Anyway, I often think while I'm tubbing, and last night as I was squeezing water out of my socks, I was thinking, should I feel guilty that my life hasn't really changed all that much since Covid? 

Sometimes I think I should be suffering more. It feels like my inner empathy machine is just a click or two out of alignment. Before I can get the empathy machine to lurch into gear and flood my system with angst, I have to nudge my brain into having a thought, oh hey, people are suffering, I should feel compassion. I should suffer too. Then the sluicegate opens, the wave of empathy and angst washes through me, and I cry a little. Then I wonder, were those tears artificial? Am I crying for others, or am I crying for myself?

For me, the great tragedy happened on January 9 when my cat died in my arms. Since then, I have felt frozen in amber, mired two heartbeats from feeling much in real time. I'm responding to life, I'm taking action, I'm talking, and showing up, but I always feel a step behind, like, did I say the right thing? Am I feeling the right thing? There's a long moment in which I feel suspended in freefall. I can name the abyss. It's uncertainty. The dark hole yawning beneath me used to be hidden by the fog of my mundanities but no longer. Yowza. Life is damn precarious! I bet you feel it too.

After a remarkably smooth trip to the dermatologist on Friday, we learned my mother has a pressure sore on her right ear. (Yay, not skin cancer.) After researching ear-hole pillows on the Internet, I leaped into gear, determined to use materials on hand to create a pillow remedy. A few hours of cursing later, after repeatedly remembering how much I despise sewing, I proudly presented my accomplishment to Mom's caregiver: A pillow with a hole in it and a pillowcase to match. Essentially, it looks like I took a pillow and shot it with a small cannon. I'm still picking up the stuffing scattered around the Love Shack, but Mom has her ear-hole pillow.

Tonight I finally conquered the problem of foggy glasses. It's difficult to drive with fogged up glasses, have you noticed? During the day, okay, but at night, impossible. With or without glasses, not good, I can't see a thing. That reminds me of a time my former boyfriend and I got stranded hiking in an arroyo near the Colorado River after dark. I had only my prescription sunglasses. After dark, I was blind with them and without them. I tied a bandanna to his beltloop and stumbled after him along the sandy riverbed, sure our bones would be washing out somewhere down onto the plain below after the next thunderstorm. Well, driving with foggy glasses at night is like that, without the bandanna and the boyfriend.

In an earlier blogpost I reported that I had discovered my ears were not in a good location for wearing a face mask. Now I can report that my nose also presents a prominent issue. That is to say, the bridge of my nose is quite prominent, which makes it difficult to get a face mask to cover that bony curve. Has my nose always been so bony? Big, yes, since my teens, but gosh, so bony? Why is all the meat on my body migrating away from my wrists and nose and going straight to my ass? Well, a question for the ages. Anyway, today I took a dust mask and stapled a rolled up strip of fabric along the inside top edge. I sprayed the strip of cloth with a little water (I read it on the Internet so it must work, right?) I donned the dust mask and pressed the metal band tight into my skin. Then I took two cotton balls and stuffed them into the two gaps on either side of my nose. Then I covered the whole mess with my faded plaid cotton pleated mask. 

Feeling well barricaded, I expelled some experimental breaths. Eureka! Success. No fog! Special added bonus: Tonight the rain stopped long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the half moon in the southern sky. See what you miss when your glasses are fogged up?

My bathroom is festooned with drying t-shirts, tank-tops, underpants, and socks. Because the bathroom is cold and damp, each load of laundry takes about five days to dry. I've got a nightly routine. After I am done with my bath, I dump the clothes into the tub with me. No, I don't try to wash them while I am wearing them, although that did occur to me. Even though washing them while wearing them might be more efficient, wet clothes are not comfortable. I won't do it, even in the name of efficiency. 

I wash each "load" cursorily with bath soap. I rinse the items in the bathwater and hang them on hangers to drip dry from the windowsill. That's the nightly routine. Every day I take one load of cold but mostly dry, wrinkled stiff clothes, fold them like cardboard, and put them away in my drawers. This is an odd way to live but I don't mind. I conserve quarters, which saves me a scary trip into the bank. 

Tomorrow I get to make a scary trip to get a mammogram. After that I'll do my weekly scary trip to the grocery store, masked and gloved. In and out, like a burglar. It's a scary time but I feel oddly well-equipped to handle it. I don't let the pesky holiday season get in my way. My family stopped celebrating years ago. This is a piece of cake. You stay over there, and I'll stay over here. If you want me, you'll find me on the Zoom. 

 

The Chronic Malcontent tries to settle down

Is it time to exhale yet? I'm not sure. I keep telling myself, wait until this class is over, wait until this event is done, wait until that election outcome comes to pass. I'm very busy waiting. I'm waiting until it is safe to breathe but forgetting that life is happening now, daily, moment by moment whether I'm breathing or not. I am no longer a bystander in my own life, which is probably a good thing, but I'm tethered to my calendar, gritting my pearlies as I attempt to do the next thing on my list, wondering when it's all going to finally be done so I can stop running and start breathing. Aren't you tired? I'm exhausted. 

Life is just a habit of showing up. Some days showing up is just getting out of bed, but most days I'm an action-oriented dynamo. I fear I've come to believe that I'll only be safe if I accomplish everything on my list. I get an inordinate sense of satisfaction from checking things off. For example, the only reason I'm writing this blogpost is because a week ago I put it on my list. Dang it. If it is on the list, I have to do it. That is the rule. The upside is I get a lot done. The downside is I am my own cruel taskmaster. 

The schedule holds me together. The structure of my day orbits my evening visits to my mother. I don't want to go out after dark, especially if it is raining, but I do because I've set an alert on my phone—5:50 pm, visit Mom, bring gizmo. I bundle up in many layers of polyester fleece and fill my pockets with the baby monitor, a small flashlight, hanky, and gloves. I pull up my hood and venture out into the cold. For my reader in Minnesota, sorry. It's not Minnesota cold—40°F tonight, but I'm not built for cold, just saying. 

As part of my personal kindness campaign, I've been eschewing the parking spaces close to the Love Shack, leaving them for my neighbors who of course are oblivious to my sacrifice. Instead I park about one hundred yards down the street. Every night I wonder if my car will still be there. Every night, so far, it has been. On Halloween night, someone broke into my car and took my cell phone charger and spare change. The contents of the glove box were on the floor. The intruder rifled through the crates of car gear in the trunk but rejected the jumper cables and tire iron. Even though the thief was no doubt disappointed, in exchange, they left me a little bag of Halloween candy, wasn't that nice? And in spite of their disappointment, they didn't trash the car. They could have, but they didn't. So I still have a car that works. Maybe there is a god. 

Every evening when it is time to visit Mom, I take a little flashlight and stumble down the street to my car, masked up, wary of pedestrians. Even if they are walking a dog, you never know if they are wackos pretending to be dogwalkers. People with dogs are everywhere up here on the hill. They could all be wackos. With everyone masked, you can't see their faces. Luckily, they always give me a wide berth. Maybe they think I'm a wacko. Like, why would I choose to be out here walking in the cold dark if I didn't have to walk a dog? 

It's fall. That means my car is buried in golden leaves. I scrape them off the windshield with the wipers so I can see but I ignore the piles on the roof and hood. The soggy leaves will disintegrate and dissolve the paint but the car will be long dead by the time that is a problem. I might be too, who knows. 

You may remember Mom moved into a small care home in my neighborhood. It takes about four minutes to drive there. The streets up on this hill seem darker year by year. I'd like to blame the old streetlights but I'm pretty sure it's my eyes. My eyes are old. Everything else on me is old, no reason to think my eyes would escape the ravages of time. I don't really care except I get a little nervous when I drive in the dark. I am learning to drive by feel. By the way, you might want to avoid the east side of Mt. Tabor if you are driving after dark. 

Yesterday the caregiver at the care home sent me a two-minute video of Mom. She was sitting at the dining room table talking with two other white-haired women. The big screen television played football on the wall behind them. The audio wasn't great but I gathered that they were discussing books. The conversation was slow as Mom struggled to find her words. It emerged that the newest resident at the care home had worked in a library somewhere. Mom remarked with some excitement that she used to be a librarian herself. Common ground! I felt proud, like I was watching my kindergartener behaving appropriately during milk and cookies. 

Tonight Mom bundled up to visit with me outside the care home. The sky was black and filled with stars. We sat in the patio chairs six feet apart. Her breath billowed out in front of her face; mine was blocked by my face mask.

"Guess what?" Mom said. "We have a new president!" 

We congratulated each other. 

"Maybe now things will calm down," she said. She has no idea. 

Shortly after that she packed it in. Too cold. We visited through the bedroom window for a few minutes, using the baby monitor system. I pulled my mask down so she could see my entire face as I chatted through the walkie-talkie. She hasn't seen my face in weeks. For some reason, that mattered to me.

I drove home slowly like the aging person that I am, conscious that one careless mistake could result in tragedy. In keeping with my personal desire to do no harm, running over a dogwalker (or a dog) would blow my good karma to smithereens. Don't want that. It's cold and dark, and I'm old and tired. I need all the good karma I can get. 

Living in the present

Happy fall!? What was I thinking? More like happy winter here in the Rose City. We bypassed fall and went straight to misery. I am ramping up my whining a bit earlier than normal this year, thanks to a cold front and some gusty east winds. Only a few weeks ago I removed the sunshades from my front windows. Now it's already time to hang the plastic on the back windows. Fall was barely three weeks long. Why am I surprised? It's 2020. You'd think I'd be all ho hum by now but sometimes I can't believe this is real. This, meaning, like, everything.  

After I moved Mom into the care home last month, many of her possessions ended up in my living room. Over the past month I've made a pretty good dent in the stacks of boxes and bags. I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters, bundling up clothes, and organizing stuff into boxes for the thrift store. All the yarn disappeared from my front porch, thanks to two happy Freecyclers (I assume they were happy, I didn't actually see them in the world of contactless donating). Some things I don't know what to do with.  . . . the $40+ toilet seat riser, for one, which we purchased to add to her toilet at the retirement home. It's the kind of thing you wonder, like, will I need this any time soon or should I . . . donate it on Freecycle? Yeesh. I think I can give it to the new care home. Still, I wonder, like, should I stash this away, just in case? You never know when you might suddenly realize your toilet is too low. It's 2020, after all.

When I packed Mom's stuff last month, I had little time to decide what would go with her to the new care home. For example, for many years, Mom kept a small basket filled with pastel-colored guest soaps on the back of her toilet. I assumed it was to gently combat the bathroom smells with pleasant scents of lavender, rose, lilac, and lemon. On moving day, I threw many disparate items into one box for later sorting, including the basket of soaps.

Eventually I went through the boxes and bags in my living room and found the basket of soaps. As I lifted the dusty basket, it fell apart in my hands, probably because of rough treatment during packing. I decanted the soaps into an empty yogurt container, maybe a dozen grungy soaps in various shapes and colors. A gray heart, a speckled egg. . . Should I donate them to the thrift store? I sniffed them experimentally. No odor. I examined them with a critical eye. Would anyone I love welcome these objects as a gift? Not a chance. I walked around my apartment with the container of soaps, reminiscing about my boasts about downsizing, and eventually ended up in the bathroom, as we are all wont to do, and there the soaps found a home on the back of my toilet, where they now sit gathering dust and doing nothing to combat the bathroom smells. 

When I went through Mom's castoff clothes, mostly fleece jackets and cotton-poly knit polo shirts, I set aside a navy blue cardigan I thought she might like to wear again. I am not certain but I think it might have belonged to my father. It's nothing fancy, acrylic, I'd guess, loosely woven and unraveling in a couple places near the neckline. I hung it on a hanger and left it on a doorknob where I noticed it from time to time and thought, hey, I should mend that thing. 

Tonight I looked at the sweater more closely. Mending is not a favorite chore. For Mom, I would tackle the job, but would she be glad to see Dad's old sweater? Or would it make her feel sad? What would the new caregivers think of Mom wearing a decrepit unraveling cardigan? Would they think Mom is a slob? Or would they blame the family (me) for not getting her some new sweaters? All this was going through my mind as I fingered the holes and wondered how I would mend the thing given that I have no navy blue thread, and I hate to mend. In the end, I hung it in my closet. It's getting cold in the Love Shack. Maybe I'll wear it for Zoom meetings; maybe people will think I look professional if they don't look too close.

I visit Mom at the new care home every evening after dinner. As you may recall, the first week was rough. The second week she was morose. By the third week, she and the main caregiver Erin were old chums. For the past week or so, we've visited outside on the patio. One evening I sat six feet away, making a face under my plaid mask while I watched Mom hug Erin like a . . . well, like a daughter. 

The people at the care home are her family now. Anyone who prepares Mom's sandwiches and wipes her nether regions deserves family designation. I'm just the peripheral person who visits outside and pays the bills. It's okay. A month in and I am grateful daily that the move didn't kill her. Her life might actually be better. She sounds calm. She's doing puzzles. She looks clean. She's making more sense. She voted. Did you hear me? She voted. 

This week my mission is to cover the east-facing windows with layers of plastic and drape my work desk in a booth of drop cloths hung from the ceiling. I hope this bit of crude remodeling will retain heat in my work area, where I spend most of my time. The heat comes from the $14.00 heater I wrested from Home Depot during a three-month slow-motion curbside pickup. Now I'm toasty warm while I doom-scroll, attend online webinars, mentor clients, and endure Zoom crashes. I'm glad 2020 is almost over but I don't expect much from 2021. Maybe spring will come again, who knows. I'm doing my best to bundle up and live in the present, one day at a time. 

Happy fall from the Hellish Hand-basket

Howdy Blogbots. How's it going? I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. Oh, I have the usual challenges, like anyone in these strange times. Life during Covid kind of sucks. I have Zoom fatigue. Fall started, that's a drag. I mourn the end of summer. I hear some folks are dealing with venomous caterpillars. Jiminy crickets. I have yet to see any Murder Hornets, though, so that's good. I try to stay out of the wreckage of the future, especially about the rather consequential election coming up next month. Got your voting plan? I got mine: Vote early and pray for peace.   

All in all, situation seems normal, that is, in general, all effed up, but I have to say, I'm doing fine. Why so cheerful, you ask? It's out of character for a chronic malcontent, I know. I'll tell you why I'm chipper. In only two short weeks, my maternal parental unit has adapted to the new care home. It's a miracle, proof of god. I was amazed. I credit the dementia and a really awesome caregiver. Mom now seems to like the saintly, endlessly patient, wonderful Eren. 

Things are looking up. I've almost but not quite forgotten the heart-stopping stomach-dropping moment when Mom glared at me and demanded, "Why did you do this to me?" That memory lingers because of the heavy emotional load I unintentionally attached to it. It will fade. Like all my memories now, it will fade. It's the curse of age, but it's also a blessing. I've forgotten most of the stupid things I've done and said. All that lingers is a frisson of humiliation and a desire to immerse myself in Time-Life Midnight Special music infomercials. I imagine Mom feels somewhat the same, except for the urge to sing along to Aretha and the O'Jays.

I'm slowly regaining floor space in my living room as I redistribute Mom's unwanted gear to the local thrift store, mostly old clothes pockmarked with cigarette burns. Some things I incorporated into my habitat—for example, staples, paper clips, sticky notes. Some I tossed—three little boxes of gummed reinforcements, for instance. Maybe I could have sold those on eBay as antique office supplies. Hmm. My former couch now turned writing desk is littered with stacks of old cards and letters sent to her from friends and family over the three and a half years she was at the retirement home. I need to go through all those, scan the ones that are meaningful (not the dozens of cards that say "Love and hugs, Dorothy"), and fill up the recycle bin. It's a task made for winter weather so I'll save it for a few more weeks.

Almost every evening since she moved, I've been walking the ten or so blocks from my place to Mom's place. I set my phone to alert me at 5:45. I don my walking gear and head out into the neighborhood. It takes thirteen minutes going (mostly downhill) and about seventeen minutes returning. Most nights Mom comes outside and we sit in chairs six feet apart, me wearing a mask, and discuss the meaning of life. Well, sometimes the topic is, Who is that walking a dog out there past the gate? Her memory is still stuttering but I think her ability to be in the conversational moment has improved. She sounds like my mother. It is beyond thrilling to see her in person. 

Tonight a windstorm blew up from the south, bringing some tepid rain. My rain gear isn't great, but I brought an umbrella (bright blue, a gift from Mom's health insurance company), which snapped inside-out after a block. I turned around, popped it back open, and kept going, peeking up once in a while to make sure nobody with Covid was coming toward me. Oddly, I was the only person out walking. 

I made it to the care home without mishap, slightly unsettled by the tall fir trees whipping in the wind and rain. I wasn't expecting Mom to come outside, but there she was, in her black fleece jacket and knit cap. It was a short visit. Even though our patio chairs are under cover of a large porch, Mom didn't want to sit out in the chilly wind for long. Still, she was glad to see me. She wanted to hug me. She seems to barely come up to my waist now, so strange how old people shrink, so I turned my face away and patted her on the back. It's a great relief to know she no longer hates me. 

Things in the mirror are closer than they appear

Moving day came and went last Thursday, sandwiched between two days of heavy rain, and nobody died. In the morning, I spent two hours feverishly packing acres of knick-knacks, worn out clothes, and well-loved books no one reads anymore into boxes and garbage bags and tagging furniture for the movers while my mother reclined on her bare mattress, snoozing under a layer of fleece jackets. Right on time, the movers arrived, masked, eyes neutral, hands gloved. Within minutes, they loaded up the big red truck. The last thing to go was the bed. I rousted Mom and parked her outside in a patio chair. A few minutes later, the movers were on their way to drop half the load at my brother's garage. I fetched my car, loaded up the precious cargo, and off we went to the new place.

For weeks, Mom had been saying to me through the baby monitor, "Get me out of here. I want out of this place." I counted down the days with her, taping notes to her window every night. Five more days, four more days. The night before moving day, I took down the photo collage and all the notes. I thought, whew, finally she can grow old in a place that won't kick her out when she runs out of money. 

When we got to the new care home, Mom sat at the marble dining room table with another old lady, displaying her best social skills, while the movers traipsed around the corner with her couch, coffee table, end table, armchair, end table, and a little round table to go next to the armchair. I directed them where to place things in this new room, a quarter of the size of her old apartment. The new care home care manager, Eren, helped me make the couch into a bed, laying down a foam rubber slab over the old couch cushions and covering the mess with a king-size dark gray cotton sheet. I thought it looked pretty good.

Eren invited Mom in, and she entered, looking shell-shocked. Soon she was prone on the couch with her head under a blanket. I went back to the retirement place to fetch her clothes, lamps, and more hygiene gear. She was still sacked out on the couch when I returned to the care home. I thought, okay, is that a good sign or a bad sign? I went home and ate dinner. At 5:45 pm I walked over from my place for my usual after-dinner outside the window visit, now at a new location, through a new window. 

Mom was sitting on the couch, awake and cranky.

"How is it going, Mom?" I asked through the baby monitor. Eren hovered near the closet, putting away clothes.

"She ate a good dinner," Eren said, coming through loud and clear over the baby monitor.

Mom glared. She looked like a two-year-old woken up too soon from a nap. 

"I just want to sleep," she said.

"Okay, Mom, I love you, I'll see you tomorrow," I said and hiked home, enjoying the fresh air, thinking, okay, maybe this will work. She'll settle in, start enjoying all the attention . . . right?

The next day just after lunch, my phone rang.  

"Your mother wants to talk to you."

"Hi Mom, what's up?"

"Carol? Come and get me out of here!" The desperation in her voice made my heart fall into my stomach. 

"Why, what is happening?"

"How soon can you come and get me? I want to go home."

"But Mom . . . we can't go back to retirement home. We had to get you out of there."

"No . . . I don't know. I just want to go home." Terrifying visions of taking her to my house passed before my eyes. 

"Mom, take it easy, you need to give it a little time."

"I don't like this place."

"Okay, let's see how it goes. Everything is new, it's scary. It will take time to get used to it. It's like going from grade school into high school, right? Remember how scary that was? Take a nap and things will get better."

Poor old Mom. Nothing is going to get better. Dementia is a terrible disease that kills in excruciating slow motion. I look at her and wonder how anything that decrepit can still be walking and talking. But clearly I have no clue what her world is like on the inside. My mother lost more essential brain cells in that move, and it's all my fault. Over the past few weeks, when she begged me to "get her out of there," I thought she meant out of the retirement home. What she meant was, get me out of here, this horrible present where nothing makes sense and I can't control anything. 

I visited her later in the afternoon and she didn't remember anything about her tantrum. Eren told me Mom had bolted out the front door, heading for the gate. Where would she go? She has no idea where she is. In the evening, I brought her a map and traced the route from her new place to my place. It's all uphill, she'd never make it. We would find her expired in juniper bushes.

Three days later, she's still alive, still cranky, and from the good people on the internet, I know that when a demented person asks to go home, they mean back to where they felt safe and in control. Mom hasn't felt "in control" since 2014, when her brain still worked pretty well, she was still smoking and driving and eating what she liked. Now she thinks I moved too, and keeps asking me where I moved to. Good news, a hair stylist came and gave her a haircut. Mom looks like her usual disheveled self, but with less hair. 

In the evenings after I return from my visit outside her window, I sort through the boxes and bags of stuff I moved from her old place to my place. My living room looks like a thrift store. The bedroom is in similar disarray. I'm taking inventory: Boxes full of cards from everywhere, mostly France. A box of Dick Francis paperbacks. A hardback dictionary and a thesaurus. A softbound medical dictionary and pill book, with her maladies and medicines bookmarked. Even as she was losing her mind, she wanted to know the side effects of donezapil and mirtazapine. Open seed packets in a rusted coffee can, pruning shears, three huge plastic bins full of mostly acrylic yarn, Christmas decorations, including the felt stockings my grandmother made for our family when I was a kid. (Do I still have mine, somewhere? I don't know.) Handwritten notes, including instructions for writing a private Facebook message. The birthday of her youngest great-grandchild on a heart-shaped sticky note. I found a diary she started in 2005 . . . not many entries, pretty terse. Fell outside Carol's apartment, broke pelvis, in rehab for three weeks. The final entry was four months before she moved into the retirement home in April 2017.

When we moved Mom from the condo to the retirement home, I remember standing in her derelict condo, looking at the detritus she left behind, thinking this is how it will feel when she dies, but she was still half-alive, like Schrodinger's cat, just downsized to accommodate the loss of her brain. I have the same feeling now, but the clock is closer to midnight. She's slightly less than half-alive. 

I am resigned to a long drawn-out death. I don't know why this is her path or mine. Our paths intersected when I was born, split apart for many years, and then cleaved back together in 2015 when she realized her brain was going gunnysack. Now we are stuck like glue to the end of the ride. Thelma and Louise, frozen in our descent. 

The Chronic Malcontent celebrates clear sky

After nine long days, the stinky brown haze is gone from Portland skies. Nine days of smoking twenty packs of cigarettes a day gives me renewed appreciation for breathing. I promise I will never again take fresh air for granted. If I were truly a good global citizen (which I'm not), I would immediately stop driving my gas-powered combustion-engine automobile. I would stop buying and burning fossil fuel. I would park that Focus at the curb and live in it. I haven't done it yet, but I reserve the right to do that in the future. The time may be coming sooner than I think. 

What would put paid to 2020 so we can be sure without a doubt it was truly the most king hell bummer year of our lifetimes? (It's not over yet, whoops, be careful what I whine about.) Hey, I know. How about an earthquake? L.A. just had one. Or another hundred-year storm like the one that decimated Portland on October 12, 1963? Maybe a fire in the Gorge, like we had in 2017? It's still fire season—more wildfires are likely. More riots? Yeah, that's too easy: Now that the smoke is gone the protests are back. More police shootings? I hope not. How about a long drawn out election night, one that lasts for weeks? Maybe a flood? I know, how about a derecho? Jiminy crickets.

At this point, I would not be surprised to see hordes of locusts swarming over Mt Tabor or armies of ants commandeering my kitchen. I've heard that people are part of nature, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I suspect we severed our claim to that haven back when we invented the internal combustion engine and spawned a bunch of oil tycoons. It's hard to turn your back on prosperity, even when you know it might kill you. So now that we aren't part of nature anymore, we must be against it, and thus we are fair game for anything nature might do to eradicate humans from the planet. It's a good time to be a virus.

Speaking of viruses, so far no Covid at my mother's retirement home. Nevertheless, we are moving her to a smaller place next week. I'm not sure she knows what is happening. I've got a countdown clock going outside her window—a number on a little card indicating how many days to moving day. Tonight it was four. Four days left. Four days until I find out what I'm really made of. I think I can do it. I keep reminding myself I successfully took her for Mohs surgery and got her back safely without turning the clinic restroom into a toxic poop waste dump. I made it through nine days of wildfire smoke, shuffling through the haze to deliver gluten-free bread upon request. I've booked the movers. I've paid the deposit on the new care home. I've made a plan, I've written a list, I've made the proper sacrifices to the gods that care for demented old mothers. My secret fear is that my mother thinks the countdown numbers on her window are the number of days she has left to live, that her internal battery will wind down and when the movers come, we will find her stiff and dead on her stinky old couch.

Speaking of stinky old couches, Mom has decided if she has to choose between taking the bed or the couch to the new place, she'd rather have the couch. It apparently has more "comfort spots." It's hard to argue with comfort spots, even if the couch is ten shades of grime grayer than it was in the Christmas photos from 1998. She doesn't care what it looks like. At 91, she should be able to sleep on whatever she likes, eat whatever she wants, and say what's on her mind, even if it makes no sense.

Tonight she told me she'd been to this new care home before. I wasn't sure what she meant. That seemed unlikely.

"You took me there," she said. I could hear her plainly through the baby monitor. 

"When was that?" I asked. 

"It was a nightclub of some kind."

"Oh, like, dancing?"

"What? I can't understand you." I'd just coached the Sunday night aide on how to replace the batteries in Mom's hearing aids, so I know she could hear me. I didn't think it was the baby monitor. The tall blonde-haired aide seemed to be able to hear and understand me okay as I gave her directions on how to open the hearing aid drawers and peel off the sticky labels on the tiny batteries. I must conclude it was Mom's brain misfiring. 

"Dancing?" I said. "Music?"

"Yes, music."

"Dinner too?"

She looked thoughtful. "No, I don't think there was dinner."

The care home she's going to next week looks a bit like a three-layer cake. It reminds me of the old River Queen, a floating restaurant we used to have near Swan Island in the Willamette River. I went to my high school prom on the River Queen. I made my long two-toned halter dress out of slippery orange and yellow lining satin. It kept coming untied at the waist while I was dancing with my boyfriend Steve. 

I don't know where Mom's memory went but mine definitely went someplace I haven't been in a while. 

The Chronic Malcontent is choked by luxury problems

Off and on over the past three months, people in other parts of the country have asked me if Portland is on fire. Each time, I scoff and say, "Don't believe everything you see on the Internet." I would think of the small areas on the city that have drawn protesters and picture the rest of the city going about its business, peaceful, untroubled, dusty green under summer blue sky. This week was different. This week, with the exurbs on fire, I started thinking about what I would be able to pack into my car if the wildfires marched across the county line toward the Love Shack.

It's great to have the luxury of planning ahead. Not everyone in this west coast conflagration has been so lucky. I didn't seriously think my apartment was in any danger, but . . . well, my sister asked me if I had a bug-out bag ready. I said "yes" but then I thought, hey, when was the last time I checked that bag? There might be a jar of ten-year-old cat kibbles in there, along with some crumbling protein bars. Maybe a roll of toilet paper or two. Hmmm.

This has been a long week, and it's not over yet. I can't believe today that my biggest worry on Tuesday was a power outage. An unusual late summer windstorm blew in from the east on Monday. When I got back from my evening visit to my mother, I saw my neighbors standing in the gravel road in back of my apartment building, properly socially distant, staring up at a transformer on a utility pole. 

"You might not want to walk down this road," a new neighbor said, obviously not recognizing me in my dapper plaid mask. I ignored her and walked on down the road to peer up at the transformer with the other neighbors. 

Roger, our local sage, said with relish, "There was a crash and a pop. Then the power went out."  Great. I went inside and flipped some switches. Yep. No power. Good thing I had closed down all my open Word files before I left. The computer was now a dead dark hunk of metal.

The wind kept howling all night and all day Tuesday. I sat in the dark with a little battery-powered LED lantern, whining in brief texts to my Twelve Step friends about how terrible it was to be without power. Ha ha. Periodically I dialed the power company for an update and watched my phone lose a little more juice. We are aware of an outage in your neighborhood. It is currently affecting one-hundred and thirty-four customers. Because of the scope of the problem, we are unable to estimate a repair time. 

Two huge crane trucks and some other gear arrived at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night. I was so happy I went outside to welcome them with a happy dance. The air was breezy and balmy, clear and delicious. I watched them beep and bang and pound and rumble and three and a half hours later, like a miracle, my power was restored. 

That mighty wind wreaked havoc up and down the west coast, fanning any flames that might have been easily squelched on a normal day. Within hours, it seemed as through the entire world was on fire. Homes were destroyed. Lives have been lost, the tally as yet unknown. Houses, cars, trees, people, and animals have transformed in four days into an enormous smoke cloud that is now choking the air, blocking out the sun. It looks like hell. 

As I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. The wind died and stopped pushing the fires north. I put away my collected bug-out bag gear and battened down all the hatches to keep the smoke out. I thought I did a pretty good job. I didn't go out of the apartment for two days. I didn't even go visit Mom. Then I talked on the phone today and realized my place is not the hermetically sealed sanctuary I thought it was. I'd been coping with the bad air quality by shallow breathing. 

Today I got the dreaded text: Your mother needs bread. 

I knew it wouldn't be fun going outside, but I thought, how bad could it be? Lots of people are outside. Lots of people smoke cigarettes. Mom smoked for seventy-five years and look at her. Apart from dementia, she's in pretty good shape, for a ninety-one year old smoker. An hour in the smoke would probably not kill me. I checked the air quality. Hey, just barely into the Hazardous zone. Come on, Carol. Quit whining.

The stench of smoke hit me like a wall when I opened the door. My plaid face mask was just for show. It did nothing to keep out the smoke, of course—it's made from old cotton pajama pants, for crimony sake. The air sat white and heavy, like the worst L.A. smog I'd ever seen, and I lived there in the 1980s, so I've seen my share of smog. I trudged to my car. It was covered with a fine ashy dust, but that's normal for my car, since I only wash it once a year. I turned on my headlights to be safe and trundled off to Mom's with two loaves of frozen gluten-free whole wheat bread and the baby monitor. 

I left the bread outside the kitchen door. Mom was just back from dinner. We chatted through the baby monitor. Half of what I said she said she couldn't understand but it was still nice to see her. I started coughing. She told me to get going. I gave her the peace sign and headed for home. Driving up the hill I passed a bicyclist wearing a face mask. I had to be impressed. Not sure if it was supreme courage or colossal stupidity. I didn't linger to see if he passed out at the top.

Now I know I can go out into the smoke and make the trek to see Mom. However, I now know I must differentiate indoor clothes and outdoor clothes. The smell of smoke followed me into the Love Shack, and not that sweet campfire smell that used to cling to my brother's Boy Scout uniform when he came home from camping. This smell is terrible, maybe because I know what is in it. I breathed in a lot of horror and grief and even after a bath, I can still feel it in my lungs. 

Blood on the keyboard

Oregon gave away free money earlier this month. I didn't find out I qualified for some until a couple days ago, long after the funds ran out. I don't care. My main concern is laundry. I haven't been able to get near the bank to replenish my stash of quarters for two weeks because of that free money giveaway. Long lines of unsocially distant desperate people wrapped around the bank every time I trolled through the parking lot. No way am I going to stand in line for quarters. So I'm doing my laundry by hand in the tub.

I guess in a pandemic I need to make some allowances for comfort. Wearing cardboard underpants is one of those allowances. My skivvies are stiff and ripply like crepe paper but I'm getting used to it. Once I've broken them in, it's really not much like wearing hair shirts. I'm not suffering. It's like being back in college. Back then I was oblivious because of substance abuse. Washing clothes in the sink was part of the adventure. Now I'm oblivious because of exhaustion and old age.

Speaking of self-flagellation, I am hopeful that my family and I have found a new facility to receive our maternal parental unit. With the expert help of a placement advisor, we have located a care home in my neighborhood. We haven't signed anything yet. We have some questions to ask. But I'm hopeful that the search is successfully ended and in about thirty days, the chore of moving the old lady and her stuff can begin. I wish I could just put her into storage. I wonder if my vertigo will ease up when this task is finally done. 

Speaking of exhaustion, Portland is coming undone. It is unsettling to see Portland in the national news for so many weeks. My first thought is, ha, the joke is on you, to all the people who moved to Portland for its mellow laid-back vibe. Then I remember violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need, and I feel sad. I can't unravel all the needs entangled in the nightly riots I see on the news. I can't stop picking at my cuticles. Yesterday I felt something weird while I was typing and saw blood on my keyboard. 

I'm starting to create conspiracy theories in my head to explain the madness. Unsubstantiated theories comfort in times of distress. Maybe liberals are a little behind in the production of creative conspiracy theories, but I'm sure if we do a little brainstorming, we could catch up. Like, for instance, what if the rioters who are looting and breaking things are really minions of Mordor out to make the peaceful protesters look bad? Yeesh! Would humans actually do something so cunning and cruel? Today my brain wandered into the bizarre possibility that they sacrificed one of their own for the cause. How insane is that? But, I ask you, is there evidence to the contrary? I mean, can you prove the moon isn't made of green cheese? 

My protection is to hide in my burrow, keep my head down, and attract as little attention as possible. I wash a few pairs of socks and a couple t-shirts every night, marveling at how everything I wear is some shade of gray, even when it started out white or black. After I wring out the water and hang things to dry on hangers from the window sill over the tub, I watch the news and cringe when the Eye of Sauron looks our way. I feel sick when I realize how many wackjobs live in this city, possibly just yards away from my doorstep. My illusory bubble is evaporating. I wear my pastel plaid face mask and imagine I have a target on my back.

Summer is ending and I haven't properly sweated yet. I've cried some, though. I miss my cat. I miss my mom. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss being around people. 

Making a contribution

 I've come to believe that my purpose in life is transporting ants and spiders from one place to another. The ants prefer to travel by shirt. The elites like the view from my neck. The spiders, adventurous risk-takers, prefer traveling by automobile. They cling to both my side mirrors on tiny strands of broken webs. If I could read their tiny lips, I'm sure they are shouting "woo-hoo" into the wind. 

I'm glad to be of service. After all, the future belongs to whatever tiny critters can survive global climate change. I'm doing my part to keep life alive. Ants, spiders, and cockroaches should do well in rising heat. And don't forget the bacteria and viruses, rapidly ascending the food chain. Being human isn't looking like the privilege it seemed to be a few short months ago. It's great to be a Covid virus right now. Seven billion or so lungs, yum, what should I eat first?

Speaking of downers, there are few things more anxiety producing than turning on your parental baby monitor and hearing your maternal parental unit (Mom) yelling "Help. Somebody help me." 

I always turn on the baby monitor before I get to her window so the device has time to link to the monitor in her room. I never know what I will hear when I turn on the monitor. Sometimes she's not back from dinner yet, so I pace and mill around on the sidewalk, staring at my decrepit reflection in her window. Sometimes she's already prone on the couch. Sometimes she wakes, sometimes she doesn't. 

Hearing her yell for help really gets the heart rate up. Mine, I mean. I'm programmed to jump when my mother yells but there's nowhere to jump when I'm on the outside of the window looking in. 

I pressed the button on the monitor and yelled back, "Someone will be here in just a minute!" Then I set the monitor on the clattering air conditioning unit and frantically texted the Med-Aide Mom needs help. 

"Help! Somebody!" Mom kept shouting. She forgets she has a button on a necklace around her neck. She doesn't realize that catching the attention of an aide passing along her open door at just the right moment is a long shot akin to winning a $1,000 lottery scratcher. Leaning into the window screen, I could make out Mom's blurry figure sitting on the toilet in the dark. I'm pretty sure what I would have seen if the light had been on: Mom staring at a big mess wondering what to do next.

This all happened a couple weeks ago. Tonight the problem was her hearing aids. 

"These things are falling out," she complained, pointing to her ears. I wanted her to get up and come to the window so I could see if they were in wrong, but what would I do then? She probably wouldn't be able to figure it out. Luckily an aide was passing along the hallway. A tall blonde woman in flowered scrubs and a face mask came into Mom's room.

"Will you see if her hearing aids are in right?" I asked through the baby monitor. 

"I'll get someone who knows how they work," she said and went out the door.

"Go get someone who knows what they are doing," Mom said, smoothing her blue and white plaid wool blanket.

We waited.

In a minute, another aide, Anne, came in. She peered at Mom's ears.

"The red goes on the right and the blue goes on the left," I said helpfully. 

Anne took them both out of Mom's ears and studied them in the lamplight. She switched them and put them into the proper ears.

"Can you hear me now?" I said into the monitor.

"Can you hear me now?" Mom echoed. I gave Anne a thumbs up. She went out the door. I assumed she was smiling but who knows. My mask certainly hides a multitude of smirks and thinned lips.

"Mom, do you want to move to a smaller place?" I asked Mom. 

"Should we move to a smaller place?" she said.

"Better food, more outdoors?"

"Are we going to move me tomorrow?"

"No, not that fast. We'll let you know. We'll take care of everything, don't worry," I said, thinking I'll do enough worrying for both of us.

"I won't worry," she said. She looked down at her blanket and pulled it across her lap. "It's time to put this thing into orbit."

"Yes," I agreed. "Put that thing into orbit."

She laid down on the couch and pulled the blanket across her stomach. She gave me a peace sign. I gave it back and sang Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow. When I have the button pressed, I can't hear her but I saw her lips moving so I knew she was singing along. 

Future cloudy, try again later

 You ever have one of those days when it seems like nothing goes quite right, and then you suddenly realize you have your shirt on backwards? Then you are like, wow, that totally explains everything. That pretty much sums up the week for me. Well, let's be honest. So far, the entire first half of 2020 has had its shirt on backwards. From January 9, the day my cat died, it's felt like two seconds to midnight. I'm sure you can relate. 

So many times this week, I thought, I need to blog about this! And now that I'm actually sitting in front of my computer, all I can think of is, I wonder if the statin I just started taking for my cholesterol will kill me before I can finally enjoy some cheese. The week is a blur so I will take this interlude to wax philosophical while I wait for memories to emerge from the fog.

At points in my life, I've stood on the edge of a chasm, staring across to the green pastures on the other side. (Metaphorically speaking, of course—I am not one of those foolish tourists who take selfies on the edge of the Grand Canyon.) I'm sure you have experienced the longing that comes from being able to imagine the paradise that lies just out of reach and wishing you had something—a glider, a parachute, a large cannon—something that could launch you out of your current misery into the bright future you know you deserve. No? Maybe it's just me. For some reason, I seem to find myself standing on metaphorical precipices quite often. I don't really like heights, but I seem compelled to find them. 

The current precipice has to do with the maternal parental unit. She's running out of money. The retirement barracks in which she is currently incarcerated has done a great job of keeping her alive, no doubt a nefarious plot to extend their ability to generate revenue. The cost of her upkeep has escalated with the increasing demands of her care. We, the family, knew this was a possibility back in 2015 when we had a family discussion about Mom's finances. Mom participated in the discussion. You've read all this before in previous blog posts. We all thought, what are the odds that Mom, a dedicated smoker with COPD and dementia, would outlast her money?

Never underestimate genetics. Or the power of quitting smoking. Now the family is revving up the hunt for a Medicaid facility, never an easy task even without a pandemic. How the hell is this going to work? That is a rhetorical question, but if you have suggestions, I'm open to feedback.

My sister has volunteered to help me qualify adult foster homes in the area. We did this back in 2016, before Mom chose the place she's in now. My sister came to town and we drove around, looking at houses, and making appointments for tours. We tiptoed gingerly on shag rug, grimaced at bad decorating choices, peered into bathrooms, and met some interesting inmates, I mean, residents. It was a lesson in what life can look like if you have money when you get old.

Now that my sister is confined to Boston, our care home search must roll out by phone and video. I have a short list of places. My next task is to plot them on a map and then scout out the locations, maybe take some surreptitious photos, like a weary gray-haired private eye. I hope no one calls the police to investigate the suspicious Ford Focus lurking in their neighborhood. Now is not the time to tangle with Portland police.

My sister and I will call each place and ask some questions. The first one will be, do you accept Medicaid after some period of private pay? If the answer is no, we will cross them off the list. I suppose the second question should be, does your facility have or has it ever had a case of Covid? One question for sure has to be, can I stand outside Mom's window and talk to her through the baby monitor? If the answer is no, I will cross them off the list. If Mom goes into a place that won't give me eyes on, I will most likely never see her again except as dust in a cardboard box. Window view is a deal breaker for me. If we could ask for the moon, it would be great if the food was a little better and she could get to keep her couch and TV. Not that she remembers how to turn it on, but still.

We have to do something. If she outlives her money, she'll end up in my bedroom, yelling for ice cream. That is not acceptable. She might graciously decide to die. If she really was thinking of our welfare, she would keel over soon, before we go through all this searching and questioning. You know how it feels when a car blocks the sidewalk where you are walking and you have to detour around the back end of the car, only to have the driver pull out into the street just as you pass their sputtering tailpipe, leaving you feeling foolish for taking unnecessary steps? Like that. If she could turn off the switch, I know she would. That's another chasm I don't care to contemplate.

I read an article about a rain forest community whose members patiently train tree roots and branches to form bridges across ravines. I wonder if I could do that—metaphorically speaking, of course. What would a metaphorical bridge look like that could lead us from here to there? And I can't help asking the question I always ask when I'm peering into the fog toward the promised land: Would there be any better than here? Where is that dang Magic 8 Ball when you need it? Future cloudy, try again later.

Getting things done

It was one hundred degrees today and I feel like a new person. The ear hissing is still digging into my skull every twenty seconds but I don't care. It feels so great to be warm. Like a cold-blooded lizard, I'm reveling in the heat. I was born to die in the desert. Someday maybe I'll get my wish. Meanwhile, here in Portland, if the city doesn't burn down first, we'll have a few days of heat, and being warm always makes me feel like getting things done.

To that end, tonight I ambitiously embarked on a new project: making a new face mask. The two masks I made back in March from old plaid cotton pajamas are holding up well, but I feel so . . . what's the opposite of possessing style and panache? That. You know, like, oh, plaid? That's so early curve. I really want one of those jet black masks that suck all the light from the room. Besides, a 2020 accessory wardrobe really should rock a selection of stylish face coverings. So I got busy.

I pawed through my box of old fabric scraps and found some black cotton knit containing liberal spandex . . . just the thing to cling but still let in a little air. I held two layers up to the light. No light seeped through. Perfect! I found the pattern my sister sent me a couple months ago. I arranged and pinned, snipped and clipped and sat down on Grandma's old sewing chair to start sewing.

If you've ever sewn on something stretchy with a twenty-year-old plastic Singer that cost $79.99 new, you know that it's all about pushing and pulling at the right moment to coax the weak tired machine over the lumps. The cool thing about this stretchy jersey is if you cut long strips, the strips automatically roll into skinny tubes that make perfect ear loops or ties. First I sewed the mask pieces together. Then along the top edge I inserted one of those wire gizmos that close the top of coffee bags. You can shape them to fit the bridge of your nose! How cool is that. To really put paid to the whole thing, I sewed it in purple thread. 

I used to be a professional seamstress in one of my former lives, no lie, but you wouldn't know it by what came out of my machine tonight. Jet black it was, there's that. Can't deny it. The purple thread looked ridiculous but when have I cared how I looked? I stopped caring when I turned fifty, which was a long time ago. The cotton knit was thick and bulky but the nose piece really held its shape. I took the mask to the mirror for the fitting.

I took off my glasses and looped the loops over my ears. I stared at my reflection. Something didn't seem quite right. The thing seemed to droop. I couldn't keep the loops around my ears. My ears seemed to be bending forward. Were the loops too big? Too stretchy? It seemed to me that the arch over the bridge of my nose was too high, which made the ear loops positioned too low. I folded over the top edge of the mask, making it four times as bulky and peered over the top of it into the mirror. Better, but still not quite right. 

I fussed in front of the mirror, tugging and pulling, huffing and puffing, and finally figured out what was wrong (besides the fact that I was hyperventilating because the fabric was too tightly knitted to make a good mask): My ears were simply too high. It's my damn ears. They are like elf ears without the points. When did that happen? 

Apparently my ears sit too high on my head, compared to my eyes. If I looped the mask over my ears, my eyes were covered. (This would not be an ideal mask design. We all know it is hard to drive without being able to see—hard, but not impossible.) On the other hand, could it be my nose? I don't know. I do have quite a large nose. Maybe if my nose were smaller, the mask wouldn't need such a pronounced arch. My ears are Lilliputian compared to my proboscis. I'm feeling out of balance. 

It's so embarrassing that my sewing skills are so rusty. I used to sew clothes for a living. No kidding. I really did know how to sew once. I never really enjoyed it, well, let me be honest: I have despised sewing since I learned at age nine in 4-H. Still, you'd think I could figure out how to make a workable face mask. 

In my defense, I do have some challenges. The vertigo and ear hissing are distracting, but I hope that will someday resolve. In addition, now that I'm well north of sixty, I can't see up close, with or without my glasses (hence the purple thread). On the bright side, my fingers still work okay, especially when it's ninety in the Love Shack. But now my darn ears have migrated upward. I really can't imagine how that happened. 

Speaking of getting things done, tomorrow is my mother's ninety-first birthday. I'm ready. I plan to hang some colorful balloons outside her window while she is in the dining room eating dinner. If I can find something chocolate and gluten-free that resembles a cupcake, I will put a candle on it and ask the nursing home staff to present it to Mom as she finishes her dinner. Whether they light the candle will be up to them. I have already notified the owner of the facility that I will be parading outside the dining room holding a Happy Birthday Mom sign. I think I can figure out how to attach some balloons to my straw hat. I'm guessing I'll do a little dancing. Maybe the other residents will think I'm a clown or something. If I can make them smile, that would be great, even if they think I'm a nut. I can think of worse things.