Fight for your right to be stupid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intermittently deteriorating

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

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

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

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

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

There’s possibly not a moment to waste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The human Roomba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A not-so-modest proposal

Happy Mother's Day. If you aren't one, you had one, and even if you hated her guts, you can't deny you got birthed. It's not for me to say whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is, I exist, thanks to my mother. 

I got lucky in the mother department. As moms go, she was a pretty good egg. She had a challenge raising four kids who barged into her life in stairstep fashion and destroyed her independence and autonomy. A product of her times, she had little choice. In her day, after you got married, the job was all about cooking dinner and birthing babies. She did what she could to eke out a life in the thin spaces around ours, but it's no wonder she was a cranky resentful person most of my childhood. 

Which could be why I opted to remain childless. I saw the physical and psychological damage four self-centered kids could do. 

Later, after we all left home, she got busy joining book clubs, leading knitting groups, volunteering at the library, and growing green beans. For such a shrimp, she had strength in abundance. In nursing school, they called her Mighty Mouse. I used to be proud of her muscles, like, my mom, the superhero. 

Now she's gone, and I'm old, tracking in her footsteps, seeing her face in the mirror. I realize how lucky I was to be born in that time and place. To suddenly appear in that place, in that time, with that skin color—man, how lucky could a fetus get? It could have been so much worse. I grimace to see people acting all entitled, as if they somehow had any control over being born in a particular place and time. Stupid sods.

Speaking of stupid sods, you know what I'm going to say, so I'm not going to say it. Instead, I'm going to go out on a probably somewhat distasteful limb here and wave at you from the short branches as I state my support for a new policy, sort of my version of a modern-day modest proposal. I call it Mandatory Abortions. 

Yes, it is what it sounds like. No more babies. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone. I've come to the conclusion that humans are too stupid to reproduce, and it's time to shut the whole thing down. 

I once tried to give a speech in front of a large audience, a long time ago, like, in the early 1990s, when I was in college (the second time around). It would have been a funny speech. It made me laugh, anyway. Unfortunately, I arrogantly assumed I didn't need any notes. Thus, I forgot my speech partway through the delivery. I don't remember much of the speech, but I do remember the feeling of utter, abject, stomach-dropping horror at the realization that my memory had failed me and my words were gone. I still get cold sweats when I think about it, proving the adage that fear of public speaking is possibly the worst of all human fears.

The opening line of the speech, though, was something about babies being a plague upon the land.

Besides a surfeit of babies, I could point to a few other plagues upon the land, but I don't want to get too nuanced. My brain is pretty much locked in an either/or mode these days. I'm either alive or I'm dead. People are either good or they're bad. I'm half-blind and not seeing shades of gray very well, and shades of gray aren't safe anymore anyway, or so I have heard, not that I would know. One of the plagues, I can't help but notice, is men. I read something from a historian about the origins of Mother's Day. I had no idea that the day was originally proposed as a response to the stupidity of men killing each other off in the Civil War. Unfortunately, that was before women's suffrage, so . . . back to the kitchen.

For some of us, it's the kitchen, for some of us, it's the burqa. It never seems to end. My mother didn't get to create her own life until after us kids grew up and went away. I witnessed her anger and frustration—I was partly to blame for it. As a young adult, I was observant, and far too selfish, to fall into the trap of birthing babies. And how lucky I was to be able to cavort through my child-bearing years under the kindly umbrella of Roe v. Wade! 

In case you find my not-so-modest proposal appalling, remember, I'm old, this is my blog, I'm a smartass, and I can say what I want to. I've done my part to end my line of DNA. If it is any comfort to you, nobody will follow me on the family tree. The bud stops here.

Going in circles

Howdy Blogbots. I'm a day late on this post and utterly shocked that anyone noticed. I am grateful to all six-sometimes-seven of you for caring enough to read this self-centered miasmic pile of palaver. Blogspot doesn't know what to make of me. I used to write about career college education. Then I wrote diatribes on dissertating. Then I fell into the black hole created by the baby planet nucleus I fondly called my maternal parental unit. I wasn't sure we would make it out of that black hole alive. Mom didn't, but I did. In fact, 2021 ejected me from my humdrum life like shooting a clown out of a cannon. Whoosh. Suddenly I plopped down in Tucson. A year later, I'm still dizzy and going in circles.

I really do go in circles. I have a cosmic hitch in my git-along. Walking, thinking, driving, navigating, it seems I frequently retrace my steps. Is this an artifact of aging? The glitch is most obvious when I'm driving. I've completely given up the idea that I can get anywhere in a straight line. I would like to say I'm a lazy bumblebee, wandering from flower to flower, immersed in the beauty of the present, but the truth is, I'm always half-sure I'm going to drive off a cliff at any moment, that the road will suddenly end in a great big sign—Road Closed—and I'll be miles up a dirt road with no place to turn around.

I've accepted that I'm not a brave person. Notwithstanding the fact that twice I've packed up and moved everything I own to a new town, sight unseen. That isn't exactly a wimpy thing to do, I have to admit. Maybe it's more a continuous case of mild terror while I'm doing that risky thing. Driving in circles, certain I will end up in Tijuana when I was aiming for Tucson, muttering the Serenity Prayer constantly under my breath, and squinting at a map I screenshot and printed from Google Maps (won't ever do that again; I almost ended up in Salt Lake City). 

The funny thing is, it doesn't seem to matter how many detours I take along the way, I always seem to arrive at my destination in the end, and almost always on time if not early. I have no idea how it happens. It's like my brain is in an alternate universe, bracing for disaster, but my body (and car) are chugging along, homing in on the end of the journey, one mile at a time.

The circles in my brain are a little different but no less confounding. I am aware that my brain goes in circles but there's no destination and I seem to be orbiting nothing. There's nothing in the middle. I keep trying to imagine what giant gas planet, what amazing project, what essential person will appear to inspire me to jumpstart my mojo with some ambition. I come up empty.

That doesn't mean I sit around moping. I have a list of tasks and I get them done. For the past couple days, I've been editing a dissertation for a candidate at the education college I ostensibly work for . . . I'm more like a contract editor. I still haven't figured out how the workflow flows. It's very similar to working for the editing agency, which I still do from time to time. Projects appear in my inbox. I work on them and send them back. Money eventually appears. Magic. I don't know yet how much I will be paid for the 30,000 word dissertation I submitted last night. It's good to have some surprises once in a while, don't you think? Daily life can get so stale when you think everything is planned out.

Maybe that is why I go in circles. My brain is subconsciously trying to entertain me. Would I wither from boredom if I always knew the correct route to my destination? Hm. I always assume my mind is trying to kill me. 

The doves are once again wandering around and proclaiming "Hang up and drive!" and "Live and let live!" Outside my window, lizards soak up the sun and then vanish so fast, I am not even sure they were there. The neighbors bring their boombox outside and enjoy the warm evening air. Someone told me that is a cultural thing—meaning, that is a Hispanic cultural thing. I would feel more tolerant if they were playing mariachi or Banda music. I like that stuff. I am getting really sick of hearing top-40 rap songs. Yet I smile and wave and say hello to their little girl as she pedals unsteadily under my window on her pink two-wheeler. Then I go back to hunting my skittish little roommates with a spray bottle of alcohol. 

Four more months in the Bat Cave. 

One year in Tucson

Happy Sunday, Blogbots. Another gorgeous day in Tucson, marred only by gusty winds. Yes, the same winds that are blowing wildfires around the Southwest. Thankfully, the smoke is going the other direction. I am in more danger from tree pollen than I am from wildfire smoke. I feel guilty enjoying the 80°F heat when homes are burning and bombs are falling. I guess I'd feel less guilty if I were curled up in a ball in the closet, but sooner or later, I would have to get up and use the bathroom. The mundanities of life really detract from the drama.

Speaking of drama, my friend E got Covid! I'm bummed, but only a fraction as bummed as E is. It sounds like utter misery. Vaccinated and boosted! Is there no god? E is in California. There's nothing I can do except pick up the mail, flush the toilets, and pray for a speedy recovery.

I was dismayed at the images of (mostly) happy airline passengers ripping off their face masks with joy after the announcement that the mask mandate was over. I felt for the passengers who clearly weren't happy. It's like they'd been warily riding in a safari jeep among a pride of tigers when most of their fellow tourists suddenly pulled squirt guns out of their pockets and shot everyone up with meat juice. 

How could a virus say no?

I think it is dumb luck I have somehow managed to evade this disease. Luck and the fact that I don't have any friends. I mean, people I see in person. I cannot count the people working at Sprouts as my friends. Especially because most of them are not wearing masks anymore. Sigh. Don't get me started.

Have we all just given up? If so, then why not bomb the crap out of Russia? If we are all going to hell in a handbasket, might as well go out with a bang. If all we are afraid of is a few nuclear bombs on some major cities most of us don't care about anyway, well, why worry? We've already destroyed a third of the species on the planet. It would be fitting if we destroyed ourselves as well.

I probably wouldn't be writing this if I had kids. No, I would be swinging wildly back and forth between apologizing for ruining the planet and begging them to use their nimble young minds to come up with a magic solution. 

Speaking of magic solution, do you have one for vertigo? The ENT thought I might have vestibular migraines, rather than BPPV. I started doing some digging, and turns out, it is possible the little pipsqueak was right. Actually, I'm starting to think I might have both! Well, it would be typical of me. My usual M.O. is to never do things halfway. For example, if you are going to move to a new city, just pack up the car and go, don't bother to scout the place first. Just hit the road or board that train, and see what happens. I've done it twice; so far, I'm still alive.

Excuse me a moment while I go out and murder one of my neighbors who is sitting in his car with his car stereo bass turned up so loud, his car speakers are shuddering. My stomach is shuddering in time to the beat. There is no actual beat, just that juddery sound you get when you know you've just blown out your stereo speakers.

Okay, I'm back. He turned it off just as I got off my chair. I probably wouldn't actually have murdered him. You know, Covid, and I don't have much in the way of weapons or an army. Just a couple of forks and a little herd of badly trained cockroaches. I'm all talk and no action, as you can see.

Spring is over in Tucson. Summer starts tomorrow, sounds like. Upper 90s are in the forecast. Once it warms up that much, I believe it really won't cool off significantly until November. It's a good thing I got the  beast's air conditioning fixed. Living in the desert without AC is foolhardy. I repeated that to myself a few times as the car repair guys efficiently sucked $441.32 out of my bank account. Apparently the price of Freon has gone up, too, just like the prices of everything else. What is the deal with Freon? Is this a case of if you love something and want to keep it, you have to be willing to let it go?

Oh, hey, I almost forgot, happy one year anniversary to me. I moved to Tucson exactly one year ago. 

Living the five seasons in Tucson

This week I spent an hour driving eleven miles across town to a shoe store to pick up a pair of walking shoes I ordered online. That's not news, everyone is doing it. Look at me go, contributing to the economy. I'm a dynamo.

I could have opted for curbside pickup but I'm not as leery as I once was of being around other people indoors. I wore a mask, as I always do when I go shopping. It was weird, though. I was one of the few. I mean, I was one of two. There were two of us wearing masks, and one was the cashier. I felt the pressure, I have to admit. 

Should I get a t-shirt that says something like immuno-compromised or preexisting conditions on board, as an excuse, basically, a reason why I'm not buckling to peer pressure? I'd like a t-shirt that says what are you staring at? or mind your own effing business. But that is my fleeting need for self-righteous vindication talking. I try not to let that part of me out of the cage if I can help it. It only gets me into trouble.

About the reluctance to mask up, I don't get it. Isn't there another variant making the rounds? Maybe everyone in Tucson has had COVID-19 already, except for that cashier and me. It's like an invasion of body snatchers. Except I can't win. If I take my mask off, I might be able to hide my bleeding-heart liberal presence among the herd, but taking my mask off puts me at risk of breathing in COVID. I might think I'm laying low but end up coughing my brains out with long COVID. 

I didn't plan to write about that. 

Metro Tucson has just over a million inhabitants, and I think I met all of them on my drive across town. I'm guessing citizens have more than one vehicle and they drive them both at the same time whenever possible, as if we get points for how many square feet we occupy at any moment. And how fast we are going. I fail on both counts. The speed limit on most east-to-west city streets is 45 mph, which means many drivers go much faster. The beast can manage a trot if I apply the spurs, but we are really most content clopping along at a mild 35 mph. Drivers wave and toot their horns as they speed around me. So nice.

Tucson is a large basin surrounded by mountain ranges on all four sides. The mountains have turned into a bit of a constraint. The city has sprawled up into the foothills of its mountainous boundaries. That's where the rich people live. 

You need a helicopter to get around this place. There's only one freeway, the I-10 going west to Phoenix or east to Albuquerque. The entire city of Tucson is a crowded grid of surface streets coopted by trucks and SUVs, which seem hellbent on mowing down all pedestrians and bicyclists with the audacity to try to share the roadway. 

I lived in Los Angeles for twenty years so I know how cities can sprawl. Tucson reminds me of L.A. Los Angeles had the ocean, though. Tucson's ocean equivalent is the desert beyond the mountain cage that traps the city. In L.A., I could take a bus and eventually put my toes in the Pacific Ocean. In Tucson, putting your toes in desert sand will give you third-degree burns. 

It's been almost one year since I made the drive from Portland to Tucson. Now I've experienced all five seasons. I understand the weather cycle now. Right now, it's spring. The doves are cooing in the trees, on the days when the wind isn't howling. The tiny lizards are sunning themselves on the concrete steps. The neighbors are enjoying their rap music outdoors with the bass cranked to brain death levels. Winter is over. The thermometer will be in the low 90s all week. 

Spring is short here. We'll have a few nice weeks, followed by months of mind-boggling heat and drenching monsoons. I'm going to enjoy my new walking shoes before summer peels the skin from my bones. 

The Chronic Malcontent achieves serenity, or something like it

Howdy Blogbots. This might be a short post. Nothing much happened this week. I'm tempted to make something up, just to keep you entertained. Like the six of you care. I admit, I often spin the content on the Hellish Handbasket blog, but I don't make content up. I leave out stuff (mostly because I can't remember anything anymore) but I don't add stuff. I pretty much tell it straight on, with few embellishments. So when I say nothing much happened this week, that means I went about my business in a nondramatic fashion. I visited my friend E at the trailer. I talked with my friend S on the Zoom. I walked around the neighborhood last night in the balmy spring gloaming. I wrote a couple chapters in my next book project and edited a disaster that appeared in my inbox on Thursday. I can hear you already—boring! Where's the drama?

No drama. What is drama, anyway, when you live in this place and time? Even when I'm dramatic, it's all fake. Bombs are not falling on my head. I'm not running for my life. 

Nondrama for me means I'm no longer reacting to the day-to-day minutiae of my mundane existence. So what, I have a few pests now and then in my kitchen, ho hum. Bugs gotta live, too. Wind in the trees, spinning trash out of the dumpster, right on, seen that before. Weather is a stupid thing to complain about. How many years (and geographicals) has it taken me to figure that out? Yeah, my beast of a minivan has a few hiccups once in a while. What car doesn't? Money pit misery makers on four wheels. Every morning I look out my window and say, huh, you are still here.

The best stories have some sort of conflict. That's what I've heard. Maybe I'm sunk so deep in my messy bog of ho-hum-ness that I can't sniff out the conflict in my life anymore. I think it's more likely I'm just plain worn out. It's exhausting caring about things. My tiny boring life deserves no drama.

 The only thing that riles me up these days is news that animals, especially pets, have suffered or died because of human cruelty. I don't want to write about that. Thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball and die. Humans, it seems to me, are too stupid and mean to live. Then I read a fun book or see some good art and think, well . . .

Other than the occasional meltdown on behalf of abused pets, this week I'm feeling serene. I'm tempted to dig into other people's dramas, just so I have something with which to entertain you. However, it's not easy to generate a strong sense of excitement over another person's drama, no matter how dramatic it is. You know what I mean? It's just hard to get into someone else's shoes. I try, though, I really do. I think I am an empathetic person, in general, despite my self-centeredness. I don't like to see anyone or anything suffer. Not even the little dudes in my kitchen. I'm not a cat. 

Conversely, I do like to celebrate the successes and triumphs of others. My boat really floats when other people's dreams come true. If I can help you get your boat down the ramp and into the water, I'm your person. Except if your dream is to invade another country, but that would be a special case of an insane crackhead. Generally, I love people (but not too close), and I want them to thrive and be happy (but not at the expense of others). 

Drama has its place, but maybe not near me. I just don't have the energy anymore to be on the firing line of life.

Another week on the Zoom

I drive so rarely, my car decided it couldn't be bothered to start. I know the feeling. I often feel that way myself, like, what is the point? On Monday I forked over some money to the place up the street for a new battery. When I got my car back, it seemed to exhibit a new resolve, although the clock indicated it had somehow entered a different time zone. Being time-zone-challenged, I plan to use my usual approach: wait and see what happens. Perhaps the clock will reset itself. It's happened before. It's like when socks, or gloves, or keys go missing. They quite often reappear.

Speaking of things disappearing and reappearing, one of my friends has a poltergeist. My friend has had it for years. A thing goes missing. A needle and thread. A document. My friend searches like a mad person, can't find the thing. Eventually my friend gives up. Then the thing mysteriously returns, sometimes days later, suddenly appearing in plain sight. 

I don't have spirits following me around. Far as I know. I am glad about that. If you see a spirit following me, don't tell me.

So Monday's quest was to replace my car battery. Tuesday it rained (with thunder, lightning, and wind). I've already forgotten how that felt. It's a little preview of what comes in July. Wednesday I led a workshop to help artists figure out what art products they should sell. That was fun. A futile endeavor. It's always fun trying to herd cats. Mm, cats. Much rather be herding cats than teaching artists. 

On Thursday I decided I'd better get out of the Bat Cave. I walked to the local Goodwill. It was a twenty minute walk, mostly through a neighborhood of desert houses. Desert houses in the poor part of town are made of cinderblocks. The roofs are flat. Of course I can't see inside, but I imagine everyone is lying on the floor to escape the heat that pools under the low ceilings. Goodwill was small and moderately crowded. I was one of a few shoppers wearing a mask. Every time I go around others, I think, is it my turn? I've been careful, I've been lucky, I've dodged this thing for two years. Is my luck going to run out?

Friday was April 1, another good day for a walk. Does walking help? (Help with what, you might ask.) Who can say. Saturday was a day of phone calls. I praise the TV gods for SNL. Sunday was a day of Zoom meetings. The week is over. I am done.

My life seems to be a frayed slogfest of loose ends. I complete everything on my list, but the outcomes are unknown. For all those Zoom meetings, did I help anyone? I don't know. All that spraying of the insecticide in my kitchen, is it going to keep me safe? I doubt it. The new car battery, will it guarantee my car will start next time I turn the key? Can't be sure. I learned more about time zones last week, namely that Arizona is in its own private Idaho when it comes to time. Does anyone really know what time it is? Today I led a workshop on Zoom. People from multiple time zones attended. I am embarrassed to tell you how many tries it took me to get the correct time zones on the flyer.

I may not know what time it is, but I show up for life, that's the best I can say. I've just about given up on the idea that my life has meaning and purpose. It does if I say it does, but I'm sort of over it. Maybe it's just the vertigo. Maybe it's the high pressure building in, inviting me to get lost in blue sky. Today is over. Tomorrow will bring its own set of tasks and unknown outcomes. Sooner or later, I will be done.

 

Searching for stability

I have been ruled by weather and climate all my life. Even as a kid in Portland, I clung to summer. I dreaded fall because it led to winter. I despised clouds. I wrote poems with gushing titles like Ode to Spring. I hated being cold. I used to stare in confusion at people who said they enjoyed Portland's cloudy moist days, people who actually reveled in rain, people who went up to Mt. Hood to—gah!—play in the snow. Even after chasing the sun to Tucson, I get cranky on cloudy days. Most of my adult life, unless the temperature tops 90°F, wherever I have gone, I have worn a hat on my head and socks on my hands. People are sometimes shocked to see I actually have hair. 

Weather is ruling me here in Tucson, just as it did in Portland, and I suspect it is influencing my vertigo. One day when my frustration with the rattling in my ear turned into action, I searched Dr. Google for information and found some articles that linked vertigo to migraines and barometric pressure. One helpful Netizen offered a ton of great information about migraines and air pressure. The place in the U.S. with the most stable air pressure, this amateur scientist said, was San Diego.

I continue to search for home. Is San Diego or environs the place for me? I don't think San Diego is within my budget, but who knows. I could live on the beach in the Beast. People are doing it. 

To help me make my decision, I wanted to find out if what I read was true, that San Diego barometric pressure is most stable, and further, I wanted to know if San Diego barometric pressure was different from Tucson barometric pressure. To answer my questions, I downloaded three days of air pressure data from the NOAA website. I used the altimeter data because it has been adjusted to account for elevation. Tucson is at 2,389 feet, compared to San Diego, which sits at just 62 feet above sea level. Air pressure changes with elevation, and that is what the altimeter readings account for.

I used the same three days for four locations: Portland, San Diego, Tucson, and Yuma. Weather on the west coast tends to move from west to east, so weather happening along the coastline might take a day or more to reach Tucson, but the days I chose didn't seem to be particularly dramatic in terms of storms or high pressure, so to keep it simple, I just used those data. 

I calculated the minimums and maximums for each city and subtracted to get the range, which is one measure of variation. The range (difference between maximum and minimum) for Tucson and Yuma were similar at 0.26 and 0.28, respectively. Portland was higher at 0.37. San Diego came in the lowest at 0.10, indicating that city showed the least amount of fluctuation in barometric pressure over that three-day period.

THREE DAYS	YUMA	TUCSON	SAN DIEGO	PORTLAND
MAX	30.06	30.11	30.09	30.22
MIN	29.80	29.83	29.99	29.85
DIFF	0.26	0.28	0.10	0.37

The data seem to support the idea that San Diego has stable air pressure. San Diego had less than half the variation in air pressure that Tucson and Yuma showed for this three-day period. Tucson had just barely more variation compared to Yuma. 

Portland had a lot more variation, but the waves were very slow, not choppy. You might like a chart.



What does this tell me? It might be true. In terms of my vertigo, San Diego might be better than Tucson. 

Next, I am considering the possible effects of my diet on my vertigo. I personally am not convinced that my vertigo relates to migraine headaches, but the spunky little ENT I visited earlier this month seemed to think I don't have garden-variety BPPV, that maybe it has something to do with a type of migraine. I think she's wrong, but what do I know, I'm just the ignorant person living inside this out-of-balance body.

In my experience, six things affect vertigo:  movement, gravity, sound, temperature, air pressure changes, and stress. I've lived with this condition since 2015. You can go back in this blog and read about it. I've complained a lot over the years. It's what I do.

Anyway, diet. My nemesis. I blame food for everything, even as I whine to the gods about how unfair it is that I can't eat like so-called normal people. If I could subsist on pancakes and ice cream without blowing up like a balloon, you better believe I would. Just looking at pancakes is good for a two-pound weight gain. My problem is I don't know how to stop once I start. I'm such an addict. But what if some of the foods I'm eating—and there are only, like, a dozen of them—are contributing to my vertigo? That would be sad, if I'd had the solution all along. Just click your heels three times, nibble on this root vegetable, and all your balance problems will be gone. Right.

According to the info sheet the ENT gave me, to head off migraines, I should avoid, reduce, or limit these foods: chocolate, nuts, peanut butter, coffee and caffeinated tea, many cheeses, eggs, yogurt, fresh bread, green beans, lentils, onions, raisins, and avocado. 

I don't eat all of those things regularly, but many are staples in my diet. Eggs, for instance. Yogurt. I don't eat meat, so eggs and yogurt are my protein sources. I am not sure what I would eat instead. I tried the soy/tofu diet, back in, like, 2010, during my vegan meltdown. Been there, done that, almost killed me. 

Guess what foods are supposedly "safe": American cheese, ice cream, pudding, milk, white bread, potatoes, rice, oatmeal, fresh meat/fish/poultry, many root vegetables, and apples. Basically white things, dead things, and sugar. Bright side: Pancakes would be on this list, as long as they have no yeast in them. 

I am left with so many questions. Why is milk okay but not yogurt? Is it the probiotics? Why is American cheese okay but not Swiss? What do we have against the Swiss? I'm so confused. 

Nothing makes sense. I keep trying to order the thoughts in my head. It's like herding lizards. I shake my snow globe head almost constantly, trying to keep the ear rocks suspended. I'm sure these stupid ocotonia have wandered far and wide since they started their journey in 2015. Now they are exploring all the ear canals, far from home, going on their endless river cruise. I wish the spunky ENT could shoot some dye into my ears, put me under a scope, and see where the crystals are actually gathering. I bet my ear canals would light up like a playroom full of kindergarteners. 

Speaking of little dudes, good news. After repeated sprayings of insecticide around the Bat Cave, I believe I have secured the perimeter. For the past few days, I've seen only tiny stupid babies, easily dispatched with no compassion. I am sure my cockroach dreams will eventually subside. 

I wonder if the bug spray has an effect on my vertigo. Hmm. More to be revealed.

To earn or not to earn

Somehow I've managed to divorce earning money from receiving money. It's as if the hose got disconnected from the faucet or something. No, that's not right. It's as if I'm putting energy into a meatgrinder, cranking the handle for all I'm worth, sweating up a storm, and nothing is coming out the other end. Not meat juice, not water, not air. Then when I go look in my refrigerator, there's meat in there. Like, how did that happen? 

I am not a meat eater, so this is a bad analogy. All I know is, something is wacky with me and money. I'm turning the handle but nothing is coming out the spigot. It's similar to the wackiness between me and time, the challenge I discussed last week. 

What the heck am I talking about? Vertigo is clawing my brain into pieces. My head is reeling from a storm system moving through. Actual rain is coming down from the sky. Moisture. Falling from the sky. So weird. 

Anyway, I can't think very well when the bucket is sloshing in my head. I think what I'm trying to do right now is describe my experience this week of doing work for no pay. I seem to be caught up in swirls and eddies that take me nowhere. Words are failing me.

The past few weeks, I've edited three papers for the for-profit higher education institution that hired me as a part-time dissertation editor. I'm supposed to get paid a certain amount per student per term. It isn't hard work. The hardest part is learning the quirks of the institution's dissertation guidelines, which seriously depart from APA style. 

Enough palaver. What I'm saying is that I've done a bunch of work, the term is over, and I have not been paid. I think I recall the supervisor saying they pay twice per term. It's a paltry amount, minus taxes, so I'm not holding my breath, hoping to have money for bread. What am I saying? I don't eat bread. Okay, milk. I don't drink milk. Money for onions. I don't know. My brain is going sideways. 

The agency guy I sometimes edit for sent me a little paper to edit yesterday. A proposal thing in a weird institutional template. I polished it up and shipped it off. Five hours later, the guy writes back, oh hey, here's the institution's handbook, can you see if what you edited complies with the format in Appendix E? I wanted to yell at him (via email), you idiot, why didn't you send it to me before I edited the paper? But I thought, what would be the point, other than releasing my frustration? So I downloaded the handbook and looked at it. It had some examples of title page, copyright page, you know, all that front matter stuff nobody ever reads, as well as some formatting requirements.

I wrote to the agency guy: You want me to format this paper?

He wrote back: Yes, would you?

I'd already spent over two hours just editing the text. Now I was expected to reformat the paper and add a title page, copyright page, acknowledgments page, and a table of contents. 

Oh, did I tell you how much I am getting paid? Sixty dollars. 

I might as well be paying him for the privilege of being of service. Ditto the institution I supposedly work for. 

I recently decided to stop teaching online Zoom classes for artists who want to learn business. It's not worth the hassles. I'm intrinsically motivated, you know that. I have to be. The pay is $25 per hour to teach a class. Minus taxes. I'm paying transit tax for a county in which I no longer reside. I spend many hours gathering my material and refining it into presentations that I hope artists will enjoy and understand. I don't expect praise, although I get some now and then. I also don't expect to be reamed for using incorrect personal pronouns when students don't turn on their cameras or otherwise give me a clue. 

Have you tried speaking without any personal pronouns at all? It's quite challenging. I have changed all my business emails to "pronouns: any." Honestly, I don't care what you call me. Pronounce it any way you want, make up your own spelling. My sense of well-being does not depend on you using my preferred pronouns. 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah: the meatgrinder. I put in energy and effort, I turn handle, and no meat comes out. It's a metaphor. Not a good one. I have a commitment to self to blog every Sunday, no matter what. Sometimes I can't find the words. I don't even know what I am feeling, other than dizzy.

And yet, my fridge is full. Not of meat, but I have plenty of eggs, yogurt, vegetables, fruit, nuts, twigs, and gravel. I'm not starving. There is gas in my car (I hardly go anywhere, I think gas prices will probably drop by the time I need to fill up). I'm doing fine. 

The disconnect I perceive might not be real. 

If I have to choose between a "real" job that pays a "regular wage" and this weird quasi-freelancing editing gig, which is better for me? If I'm not going to get paid, is it better to be useful? Or is it better to work on my own projects and tell everyone else, no, I can no longer do your projects for a few pennies or no pennies at all? Rain is a suitable mood, and the Bat Cave is a perfect place to excavate the words that escape me.
 

Standing still in the stream of time

Yesterday was the day America sprang forward. I'm talking about clocks, of course. People all over the country were waking up and discovering they had forgotten to change their clocks. A few confused souls had no doubt set their clock back one hour (one of those confused souls called me an hour earlier than they were supposed to today, that is how I know). Some other confused souls had confused cell phones (I was one of those souls), phones that failed to update their location and promptly lost their minds.

One of the benefits of moving to Arizona, so I thought, was the luxury of not having to change my clocks twice a year. Most of Arizona remains on Mountain Standard Time, no matter what. Even in the tiny Bat Cave, I have three battery-powered analog clocks, plus one old-fashioned electric digital clock with glowing red numerals. I thought, what a relief, I won't have to go through the tedious task of adjusting my clocks. Woe is me, what a burden. I assumed my phone and two computers would manage the moment successfully, considering nothing needed to change. Standing still, right?

You'd think. 

As I said, my phone lost its mind and required a reboot to reorient itself regarding it's physical location on the planet. Then I discovered Google Calendar tried to update me to the Mountain Time Zone, probably because I had failed to differentiate between Mountain Standard Time and Mountain Daylight Time in the settings. (New to Arizona!) As the day wore on, my brain wore out, overloaded with numbers and well-meaning people trying to set me straight. My friend E said we are the same time zone as Mountain Time. Yes, but E did not say Mountain Standard Time. Apparently my Google Calendar has been on Mountain Daylight Time. That is my guess. 

Stick a fork in me, I'm done. I have spent the entire day trying to understand time. It doesn't help that my caller today set their clock backward rather than forward. Thus, because my phone lost its mind, the caller was calling two hours before our expected call time, which propelled me instantly into a crisis of confidence. (Who am I? Where am I? Does anyone really know what time it is?) That hissing sound you hear is my brain overheating.

I finally figured it out. 

I've been visualizing time as a round thing, like the face of an analog clock, when I should have been visualizing time as a series of rectangles. It's no wonder I'm having trouble. My brain has never been good with analog time. When I was nine years old, I spent a fair part of one afternoon standing in the hall staring at the huge clock on the wall. I was not allowed to reenter the classroom until I could "tell time." Humiliated and ashamed, I stood there staring, until an adult walked by. I cheated, of course, because what nine year old understands that integrity builds character, and I asked the kind adult to tell me what time it was. With the magic formula in hand, I triumphantly reentered the classroom, told my teacher the time, and resumed my seat, still having no clue what made the big hand different from the little hand. 

I eventually caught on, as we often do, we learn to tie our shoes and ride a bike and tell time on a round clock, and since then, time for me has been a round thing. Now, because I moved to Arizona, I know it's a rectangular thing.

Rectangles called time zones divide up the face of the North American continent. You knew this. In the spring, through a magic known as collective agreement (and an illness known as collective inertia), the time zones get off their butts and shift to the right one hour. In the fall, the time zones sigh, heave themselves to their wobbly feet, and move back to the left one hour to settle in for winter.

And what happens to me? I sit still, like a hotspot under the surface of the earth, while the time zones shift above me. Tectonic time zone plates. 

The consequence of standing still as the time zones shift is that I always have to be aware of which time zone is squatting over me. Is it the one to the left of me, or the one to the right? Yesterday it was the time zone to the right of me—those other Mountain Time Zone guys, the ones on Daylight Time, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, those states have been hunkering over the Bat Cave for the past six months. To my confusion, I wake up this morning and find myself squashed by the weight of California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. 

I am awakening to the power of geography! Who knew this would happen from moving to Arizona and gloating about not having to change my clocks. I tell you, I would gladly change my clocks twice a year to avoid having to be hyper-conscious of what the states on either side of me are doing. Yesterday I was on Mountain Daylight Time, now I'm on Pacific Time! All without changing my own clocks. I thought it would be so great to sit still while everyone shifted around me. Instead I discover everyone shifted in unison, like a grand flock of swallows, and I'm the lone scrub quail, grousing in the dust. 

The Hellish Handbasket goes into the hospitality business

The property management company is upping its revenue gathering efforts. The tenants were forewarned. Yesterday, it was my turn. At ten in the morning, as I was cooking my breakfast, two large scruffy men entered the Bat Cave with the intention of installing water meters on the copper pipes going to the upstairs and downstairs apartments. Instead of adding a flat fee to the rent to account for water usage, now through the magic of Wi-fi, we will be accurately charged for our long showers. Yay, accuracy. 

I moved my electric skillet to a safer location while the guy cut a hole in my wall over the sink. My breakfast cooked and sat on the counter, growing bacteria. Eventually during a lull, I put it in the fridge. My kitchen was a disaster zone, insulation, dust, and roaches everywhere. When the guys left two and a half hours later, I had three plastic-covered square holes in my kitchen wall and some mental images I'd really rather forget. 

One of the holes was under the sink. The space under the sink is a deep, dark, roach day-and-night spa, moody with its gray paint and gentle humidity. I don't keep trash under there but I'm sure decades of tenants did, leaving behind a delicious fetid aroma perfect for roach relaxation. Now there is a 12-inch square of white plastic covering a hole that I'm pretty sure leads to hell, with off-ramps to every roach nest along the way. 

The fun started when a grizzled dusty man named David sawed an 8-inch square hole in the dry wall and started yanking out insulation, also known as bed-and-breakfast for the nest of cockroaches I knew were living behind the electrical outlet. I warned him. I will spare you the details. I am still queasy. 

While he waited for one of his compadres to bring him a tool, David pulled out his phone and showed me the view from his property, somewhere out a road I'd heard of but had no idea where it was, up a hill with a fantastic view of mountains and desert. He had a live camera going all the time, and he checked it periodically as he was working. The sound of wind ruffling across a web microphone kept coming out of his shirt pocket. It was like a baby monitor for his property.

"That's where my house used to be," he said, pointing at a flat bare area of dirt. "Burned down last year."

Terrified roaches fled along the counter, making a break for freedom. I shot them with alcohol. 

"There was a tornado out there. Left a wire shorted out under the roof. Six months later, the whole place burned to the ground."

David went outside to get something and have a cigarette. A beefy guy in a neon vest came in and took over, cutting a second hole on the other side of the electrical outlet. 

"Whoa, I found the nest," he said, dancing back and bumping into the Barbie stove, which was sitting in the middle of my 4-foot square kitchen. "I hate roaches," he grinned at me. He was missing one of his front teeth. 

Soon there were cockroaches all over the counter, running for their lives. I gave the insect spray to the worker, and he nuked the vicinity. I shot alcohol at the ones who got past his first line of attack. 

His brother Hector came in and out to fetch and carry things to the apartment next door. I sat in my TV watching chair, watching the guys work. At one point, they moved outside to show their boss something on their phones and to complain about the fourth worker, Jesse, who went AWOL during the afternoon and was not seen again. I looked at the hole in my kitchen wall and realized I was looking through a corresponding hole in my neighbor's wall, straight into their kitchen. I saw the back of a stove, part of a counter, and further away, the edge of a sofa. Their walls are the same color off-white as mine, and just as bare. 

The workers did not bother to put back the pieces of drywall they cut out. Instead, they covered the holes with pieces of shiny white plastic. One is about eight inches square, the other is a foot square. The squares are shiny white. The walls are glossy off white. One of the squares is screwed into the wall at the four corners with black drywall screws. Do you know what it is like to see something black on the wall out of the corner of your eye? Not good. I feel inordinately jumpy whenever I am in my kitchen.

As soon as the workers were gone, I took wide masking tape and taped up all the edges on the two pieces of plastic by the electrical outlet. The electrical outlet was already well taped around the edges; until I put that tape on there, that was the preferred entrance to the roach bed-and-breakfast that was behind the wall. I know that nest is still there. Some got nuked, but eggs are hatching, and orphan babies are coming. I taped the plastic covers to block easy access to my living space. They will have to come in through the hole under the sink. The gateway to and from hell. I'm dusting off my handbasket. 

The lure of the geographic

I grew up on a quiet shady middle class street lined with a mishmash of old farmsteads and ranch-style houses in the armpit of northeast Portland, the largest city in the state of Oregon, which is one of the states in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States of America, which is on the . . . where are we, again? I am trying to orient myself in time and space in order to determine if I have dementia. 

I no longer live on that quiet tree-lined street, and most of the trees are gone, but several of the families I grew up with are still there. My brother lives around the corner, so he keeps up with the latest news about our old neighbors. The news used to be, oh, hey, Fred had a great crop of corn this year, you want some? Lately the news is more like, wow, Bill just turned one hundred, and, did you hear, Dotty and George are moving into assisted living? 

Moving to assisted living would be a traumatic experience at any age, but especially if you have dementia. Dotty and George moved last week into a place just down the street from the retirement home where my mother used to live before we moved her to the care home. When I heard the news about Dotty and George, I thought, oh, that's sad, but now they will get the care they need. Well, the news today was when Dotty got home from the store, George had taken the car and disappeared. Some time later, the sheriffs found him at a Bimart in Damascus, which is south on the freeway from Portland some twenty miles. George got lost and couldn't find his way home.

I get it. I bet he was wondering, where's home? What is home now? Not my shabby chic ranch house on the modest street where I lived for so many years with all my wonderful neighbors and friends. No, now it's some weird cottage with people coming and going at all hours, regimented meal times, and food that comes out of an industrial-size can. Home? No thanks, not for me. 

If I had been George, I would have kept on driving. 

I worry about getting dementia. For quite a while, I pictured my dementia response as a stroll into the desert with a shovel. Wrapped in a fashionable linen coat-shroud ensemble, I would pick a spot with a view and soft sand, dig myself a narrow trench, and recline comfortably in it as the sun went down. A few shots of tequila and a handful of pills and I'd be sailing into the sunset. That seemed like a plan, if I could find some U of A student to sell me some fentanyl. Then I read some blogs about car camping and van life and learned about a concept known as pack-it-in-pack-it-out. Oh, man.

Apparently wet things don't compost in the desert! Argh. I'm a Willamette Valley girl, where people's skin grows moss and mold if they stop moving. I had no idea that when you leave organic litter behind in a desert campground, it doesn't compost. It desiccates. That means the moisture evaporates but the orange peels, French fries, apple cores, and bread crusts never disappear. The parched ground does not harbor the insects needed to turn organic waste into nice loamy compost. That means my dead body will linger on forever, like King Tut, until someone stumbles upon my peaceful overlook and discovers a gross mummy half-buried in sand clutching an empty bottle of tequila. Ick, you say? I agree. I would not want to leave that for someone to find. 

Hearing about George's story has resurrected some memories of my mother as she declined further into dementia. It's been over a year, but I don't think I'm over it yet. I wonder sometimes if I should seek professional help. Some of my friends are worried about me. I can imagine sitting across from some therapist in a Zoom room, trying to describe the past couple years. I can hear the young therapist saying, well, Carol, sounds like you have suffered some losses, but welcome to the club. You are not the only one suffering. Like, would that be helpful to hear? I don't think so. I say that to myself every day and it hasn't seemed to have improved my mental outlook. On the other hand, what if the therapist said, wow, Carol, you have really suffered some significant losses, it's amazing you are still able to function. If she said that, I would probably disintegrate into separate parts and completely cease to exist. I can't handle empathy, any more than I can handle gifts and hugs. I know. So self-centered. 

I am starting to realize that life after sixty-five for me looks like a process of coming to terms with my mortality and the mortality of others. For me, I don't weep. As my body betrays me, I muddle along from day to day with my usual grouchiness. However, I weep for other creatures near and far. I can't find the philosophical balance, that neutral spot where I can see suffering and not be devastated by it. I can't look at injustice and say, well, dictators will be dictators, let's all pray for their sorry-ass souls and keep on trucking. I can't accept that half the people in the U.S.A. would like the other half to die. Now I see that I was born and raised in a special place and time, in an oasis of peace and good health, insulated from reality. 

Getting in the car and driving until you get back home seems like a completely logical response. But if home no longer exists, where do you go?

The general dissatisfaction of being alive

Nothing is truly wrong, but nothing is right, either. The space in-between has captured me like a sticky bait trap. I’m mired up to my knees in malcontentedness, waving my dead bug arms at the sky: Curse you! What am I cursing? I don't know. Life? When I curse, I curse at everything, just like when I cry, I cry for everything. I’m sensing that the time for whining and grieving is over, like, move on, Carol, and yet when I hear about others’ losses, it refreshes my own grief and I crash all over again.

On the bright side, the sticky in-between place traps my brain but it doesn’t trap my body. I still get out of bed in the morning. I still get busy tackling my to-do list for the day. I show up for my commitments. Even though most of the time, everything I do seems pointless, I still do my best under the circumstances of the day. I don’t expect much from myself or anyone else, and I don’t berate myself or anyone else if outcomes fall short. Expectations are part of the sticky trap.

Sometimes I look in the mirror, see my mother, and laugh. Sometimes I look in the mirror, see how my shape resembles what I remember of her shape, and a sense of rage washes over me. I don't want to be my mother, yet my body seems compelled to mimic hers, five sizes bigger. I hope my brain will fall further from the tree, but the odds aren't in my favor.   

Since I’ve been taking the bisphosphonate for osteoporosis, I am regaining weight I lost over the past year. I hope my bones are rebuilding, knitting back the framework that holds me upright so I don’t fracture a hip the next time I trip on a curb while gazing at the Tucson sky. I’d rather not regain the flab that drags me down, but aging is a neutral phenomenon that does not consider my desires or feelings. I was thrilled that I was able to fit into my old blue jeans, the two pairs I’ve kept in a drawer for twenty years, waiting for the magical day I would be able to wear them again. The day came here in Tucson. Oh joy. After wearing them a few times, I realized, hey, they make denim with spandex now, for a scoche more give in the thighs and butt. I'm not into being restricted by my clothes anymore. Now that I can fit into the jeans, I no longer want to. What is the lesson of this story? Sometimes you get what you ask for, and it’s not what you want after all? Change happens? It doesn't matter how you look, it only matters how you feel? I don’t know, you figure it out.

For the most part, in real life, I don’t care what I look like. I wear men’s pajama pants to the store. I don’t care what I smell like, either. In the past two years, I’ve worn deodorant exactly one time, when I went to the ENT last week. Now that my life is on Zoom, though, I care about what people see on their screen, for those brief moments they are actually looking at me and not at themselves. What is my background, am I tastefully blurred (can they see I live in a basement?), what are my colors (do I blend artistically with the blurred background?), am I wearing my “public” hat (fleece beanie) or my “private” hat (old stocking cap)? I don’t care what they think of me, but I like to enhance their Zoom viewing experience if possible.

Nobody else cares. I’ve “visited” so many homes over the past couple years, and seen umpteen screens showing people’s cluttered dining rooms, unwashed dishes, disorganized home offices, unmade beds, dusty ceilling fans, annoying pets, and prominent nose hairs. Besides me, only the PBS Newshour crew seems to pay attention to their backdrops.

I had two and a half weeks of relief from the vertigo. The bucket in my head stopped sloshing day and night, just gently rippled now and then, and the hissing in my right ear was mostly silent. My mood lifted. I felt reborn. Amazing how everything seems better when you feel good, even though nothing is different.

Then I went to the ENT.

The day after the ENT appointment, the vertigo poured over me like a tidal wave, and I was back to life on the boat. I can’t blame the ENT. All she did was clean the wax out of my ears. I blame the fluctuating air pressure. The day of the ENT appointment, we had a storm. Low pressure. The next day, clouds, the next day, sunshine as high pressure swept down from the north. Then low pressure returned. Then high pressure, and now we’re in for another rain storm. You get the picture. I’m a creature of the barometer, it seems. I can’t figure out what else it could be. I have lived my life the same way, every day, month after month, eating more or less the same thing, going to bed at the same time, watching the same late-night TV shows, spending half my days on Zoom, trying to write my next novel. Same old, same old. As far as I can tell, the only thing changing is the air around me.

Speaking of stuck in a loop, I’m still searching for meaning and purpose. I guess I’m living proof that it is possible to have a functional, productive life without having a purpose. I get a lot done. I’m the only one who decides if what I do has meaning and value. Is it all pointless? Perhaps. In the big cosmic picture, life has one purpose: to persist. In that sense, I’m fulfilling my purpose, although I have failed to procreate, so this line of DNA dies with me. I don’t believe my manifest destiny is to pass on my genetic code to a new generation, so why do I believe I need to believe in some sort of higher purpose to give my life meaning and value?

I would go nuts without this blog. Even if no one reads it, this blog is the one place where I can say what I want, spin my experience into something that makes sense to me, make fun of myself (and others, sometimes), and reveal my absurdities and foibles. I could pay a therapist to perform this function, but I can just imagine how that might go. Tell me about your childhood. I don’t want a solution, I want a witness, and this blog is that for me. Sometimes I have to stay stuck in the in-betweenies until I’m ready to lift my feet out of the muck and move on.

A day of miracles and it's not over yet

Today was a day of multiple miracles. I call them miracles. I don't know if they emanate from a divine source—unlikely, in my human opinion—but these occurrences weren't orchestrated by me, that much I know. All I did was say yes. 

First miracle. A friend from Minneapolis flew into Tucson to join the rabid rock and mineral fanatics for a gem show now happening at the Convention Center. Gems shows are a thing, apparently. I am not part of the gem show cult. That's not the miracle. Well, maybe it's sort of a miracle that I'm not a member of a cult. I reserve the right, though: There's still time. Anyway, I the miracle is my MSP friend came to Tucson! 

Second miracle. I found my way to the Tucson Convention Center. I know what you are thinking: Carol, really? In this era of GPS, you probably would not classify that as a miracle. I do. First, I barely know how to use my phone. I use this amazing device called a roadmap. It's actually paper. I know! Crazy. The upside to using a roadmap is it uses no data while I'm sitting in my car trying to figure out where I am. The downside is I forget the map as soon as I close the atlas.  

I do know how to use Google Maps. How do you think I got to Tucson? Well, I did get lost on the way once or twice, but I'm here now, no arguing with that. Whenever I need to find something, I check Google Maps. Yesterday on my laptop I Google Mapped the locations of parking meters near the Convention Center. I wrote a few notes to take with me, otherwise I would be, like, wait, what was it again, do I turn right off Stone Avenue or left? As it turned out, the parking meters I had mapped myself to had been removed. No parking on Ochoa! 

Third miracle. After driving around downtown Tucson in circles for a few minutes, I found a metered parking space. Meters are free on Sunday, which is why I was determined to find a spot. The hotel wanted $16.00 per day to park there. The Convention Center was definitely not an option: the line to get into the almost full parking lot was a half-mile long (and $10.00 per day). No thanks. 

Fourth miracle. I parked the Beast in the spot. More or less. I mean, I was within eighteen inches of the curb and almost parallel with the curb. Honestly, it was a very small spot, even for a small car. I was parking a Dodge Caravan, which if you know minivans is not a sleek little soccer-mom car. The Beast is a box, a mini-box truck. And, oh, did I mention, the parking spot was on the left side of the one-way street? Not my favorite side of the street to park on, even in a Ford Focus. I've been known to botch the parking process when I'm parking on the left side of the street. That parking disability probably has disturbing implications about the condition of the right side of my brain. 

Anyway! 

Fifth miracle. After a lovely visit, I agreed to give my friend a ride to one of the many gem shows happening around town. Even while we talked, I was able to retrace my steps back to my car without having to refer to the many photos I snapped on my walk over to the hotel. Multitasking! 

Sixth miracle. I drove my friend to the Kino Sports Center, a couple miles south of downtown Tucson, where she was meeting the other members of her party. Now, I admit, I was guided by the GPS Google Gal on my friend's iPhone. Given enough warning, I can usually follow directions, even from a robot. We found the place with no wrong turns, no detours, no backtracks. The giant dusty parking lot was packed. I double-parked outside some tents, where we said our goodbyes. The miracle is that I realized I could easily hop on the I-10 freeway and find my way back to the Bat Cave. I did not have to wander in circles. As long as I can see the Santa Catalina Mountains, I know which way to go. I admit, the fact that it was broad daylight and bright sunshine helped. At night, I would have been hopelessly lost until I happened to come across a familiar street name. Even then, I have a better than fifty-fifty chance of heading in the wrong direction. 

That's a lot of miracles in one day! I'm not done!

Seventh miracle. Eighty-plus degrees Fahrenheit. Need I say more? Crystal clear postcard-blue sky. No wind, not a hint in the air to indicate that by Wednesday the temperature is forecast to be ten degrees below our average high of 68°F-ish. Bundle up, the forecasters are saying. It's going to be below 60°F! Some outlying areas might see rain. Mt. Lemmon might get a little snow. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, it is 8°F below zero. That's minus eight. I would not survive in MSP. I shiver when the temperature drops below 50°F. I'm such a hothouse flower. 

I suppose every day could be a day full of miracles, if I just shift my perception. Miracle I haven't caught COVID. Miracle I haven't been killed by a neighbor with a gripe and a gun. Miracle I haven't killed anyone with the Beast. It's not hard to find miracles. They are everywhere, all the time.