Dog days

Now that the maternal parental unit is ensconced in her new digs, I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It would be too easy if all the stress was over. Finally, on Wednesday the family grapevine lit up: Mom thinks she's had a stroke. Naturally, my first thought is, after all we've done for you, you go and strokes out? True to form, I can make anything, even someone else's disastrous health problem, all about me.

Being carless, I waited on the phone rather than rushing (which would consist of walking or riding a bus) over to the retirement community, as if my presence would solve anything. It sounded like a crowded bus station through the phone: my brother's wife Deanna, a family friend Shirlene who is a nurse, and in the background, my mother's voice, loud and clear. That is not the voice of a stroke victim, I thought to myself, as Shirlene offered to come get me and drive me over to Mom's. Because somehow it was assumed I would want to be there to add my two cents to the pandemonium.

I declined the ride and walked over after I finished eating my breakfast. You can't tackle old senile mothers on an empty stomach. When I got there, everyone else was gone and Mom was snoozing on the couch. She woke up when I opened the door (I have a key).

“Shirlene said I was dehydrated,” she said with a little smirk.

I did my typical eye roll.

“I'm waiting for the cable guy,” she said. “I've been waiting all afternoon!”

“It's not even 1:00,” I said.

“Wake me up when he comes.” She laid back down on the couch, on her side with one elbow bent and her hand in the air. That can't be comfortable, I thought, but hell, for all I know she usually sleeps standing on her head. This might be a down day for her.

She woke from time to time, whenever there was a noise. The dryer buzzing. A car alarm echoing somewhere across the quad. Each time she was irate to find the cable guy had not yet arrived.

To be fair, she wasn't interested in watching television. She wanted her landline phone. The apartment building uses the cable company for telephone service. She'd been without a proper phone for four days, and she was ready to toss her little pay-as-you-go burner cell phone out the window. No matter how many times I reminded her, she couldn't seem to remember that to hear me talking on the other end, she had to hold the cell phone to her ear. I don't know, you figure it out. Maybe if they made cell phones look like brick-size cordless phones, she would get it.

Eventually the cable guy showed up and installed her phones. When I left, at her bequest, I took her car. Wheels! Zoom, zoom.... but I didn't need anything. Nowhere to go, really, nothing to buy. I drove home and parked it. The car sat on the street outside my apartment all day Thursday.

Friday morning, she called. “Can I have my car back?” she said, just a tiny bit belligerently, as if daring me to keep her key.

“Of course you can have your car back,” I said. I drove the car over and parked it outside the driveway at her building. She was outside on a park bench having a cigarette. I watched her walking toward me, a diminutive stick of a woman bearing no resemblance to the mother I used to know.

She took the car key happily, and didn't offer me a ride home. I didn't ask for one. I walked home under partly sunny skies.

The maternal parental unit goes AWOL

On Saturday, my brothers and I got our 86-year-old mother moved into her new retirement apartment. With an eye on the clock, we scrambled to assemble one disorganized load, drive it four miles, and offload it before 4:00 pm when the truck turned into a pumpkin ($39 for another day).

We filled the big yellow truck with Mom's full-size bed, headboard, and frame; dresser and mirror; rolltop desk; computer desk, chair, computer, and monitor; frenetically flowered multicolored living room rug; flowered (and stained) sofa; wingback chair (also flowered); coffee table; round kitchen table and four chairs; TV stand and TV; plant stand and plants; about a dozen framed photos of my brother's cats and dogs; about a hundred framed photos of my niece and her 2-year-old son; a half-dozen or so acrylic paintings painted by yours truly when I was 18 to 20 years old (neither improved with time); 30 boxes of miscellaneous crap, mostly paper, collected over a lifetime; several armloads of tiny red, fuchsia, turquoise, white, and black polyester knit tops and slacks; a box of dingy white Easy Spirit sneakers; two boxes of half-used lotions and shampoos; a brimming box of vitamins, herbal remedies, and pill bottles; four boxes of paperback books; and a box or two of half-used cleaning sprays, bottles, and cans.

The new building uses the cable company rather than the local phone company for telephone service, so Mom's landline will not work in the new apartment. This means until she gets connected via cable, Mom has only her cell phone to communicate with us. Her cell is a cheap burner phone, fueled by phone cards. And she isn't all that clear on how to use it. (“Mom, hold the phone to your ear!”)

As it turned out, her cell phone skills didn't matter. The morning after the move, my younger brother called me to say that Mom was not answering a knock on her door. Apparently, she had set her cell phone down on a little display ledge outside her new apartment (next to a tiny green frog figurine) and walked away.

“Uh-oh,” I said. With no cell phone, Mom was incommunicado. I pictured my scrawny mother doing a fist-pump in the air, saying to herself, Free at last, finally, free at last! 

My brother searched the dining room: No mother. He went back and pounded on the door: no answer. I texted him: She's probably at the condo. He drove over to her condo and found her packing some kitchen stuff (half-used bottles of condiments and spices). Apparently, she hadn't missed her cell phone at all. Later, when we told her she'd left it outside her apartment door, she said, “That's what everyone keeps saying,” in a skeptical voice that suggested to me that she thought we were all trying to gaslight her.

For the past two days, I've been going over to her place, taking her car to the condo, loading up boxes, and driving stuff to her new place, unloading boxes up the recalcitrant elevator, and parking them in her living room and kitchen. One trip a day is all we can handle. Three trips waiting to go up and down the elevator with my hand-truck precariously loaded with boxes—and dodging scooters, walkers, and shopping carts—has not turned me into a paragon of patience.

I guess I moved some things she didn't want moved (hey, how was I supposed to know!?) Yesterday, we hit our limit. Luckily her neighbor across the hall came over at that moment to introduce herself. Coincidentally, they both have the same first name. I stood by and watched the two pint-sized old ladies move close together so they could see and hear each other. As I gazed down at the top of their heads, I thought, she's bonding. She's making friends with the other kids at boarding school. That's my cue to exit, stage right. I murmured my good-byes. They barely responded. I faded down the hallway, smelling my own freedom just steps away.

Moving the maternal parental unit

Last week I was volunteering at a business conference for a nonprofit group of which I am a member. When you volunteer, you meet the members behind the curtain, the ones that help and the ones that hinder. I hope I did more helping than hindering. I was accused of rolling my eyes. You can interpret that any way you want. Of course, I would bet you would have a similar response if most of the comments you heard from the attendees went something like this: This is a great conference, where's the Diet Coke?

After four days of hospitality hell, I was ready for some downtime. But it's time to move the maternal parental unit into her new apartment at the retirement community. This morning she was supposed to call me when she got up, but she forgot. I called her at 11:00 am. “What are you doing?” I asked as soon as I was sure she knew who was calling her. (Who else but me says “Hello, Mudder” when she answers the phone? I dread the day she doesn't know me.)

“I'm putting things in boxes,” she replied.

“You were supposed to call me when you woke up.”

“I forgot to write it down,” she replied.

“I'm coming over.”

“Let me come get you!”

“No, I need the exercise!”

Now that I am carless, we have this conversation at least once a week. I've stopped trying to explain my actions. My explanations don't stick. Although her memory seems to be selective. Today we met a nice man named Bill who held the elevator for us. Mom told my younger brother about Bill. She apparently remembered everything Bill had told us about himself (moved in last week with his wife, lived in a condo downtown for eleven years, still living out of boxes).

Back to the story. I dressed in lightweight gear, shouldered my backpack, and walked over to her house (roughly a mile and a half) in muggy heat. My plan was to help her pack and take a load over in her old Toyota Camry.

When I arrived, she was gamely stuffing things into boxes with not much care for what was in each box. I watched her for a minute and then pulled her car out of the garage, backed it up to the back patio, and loaded a few boxes into the trunk. When I went back inside, she was in the dim bedroom, peering into a shoe box, muttering something about having shoes she's never seen before. I looked at her shoes. They all looked the same: black leather slip-on loafers from Naturalizer. I opened up a dusty box: well-worn 50s-style black suede pumps.

“I'll never wear those again,” she said firmly, shoving the shoes into the box with the slip-ons.

“Then why are we moving them to your new apartment?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

We drove over to her new place, a few miles away, and she told me where to park. I unloaded the trunk and the back seat. She held the door open. Then she held the inside door. Then Bill showed up and held the elevator door. All the doors started pinging at us for holding them open.

“They ought to have a freight elevator!” my mother said for the millionth time.

“It's unlikely they will put one in now, just for you, Ma,” I said.

She opened the door to her new apartment and found something to hold the door open. I loaded bags and boxes, walking back and forth from the elevator lobby to her apartment. I said hello to two different old ladies who were strolling the hall, one with a wheeled walker and one with a wheeled shopping cart of the smaller variety, the kind I had intended but failed to purchase.

Back in the apartment, I set a couple small shelves in the walk-in closet and started unpacking the sheets that had been stored on them back at the condo, until my mother stopped me.

“Those sheets are for the twin bed,” she said.

“Then why did we move them?” I said. “Your bed is a full-size bed.”

“Well, I still have a twin bed at the condo!”

“Yes, but you are giving that bed to Reggie,” I reminded her. Reggie (not his real name) is my 60-year-old brother, who apparently got dibs on the twin bed in the guest room. I looked at the stack of flowered sheets, pale green and pastel pink, thinking, yes, Reggie will enjoy sleeping on those.

“I'm going to unpack the bathroom stuff,” Mom said, disappearing around the corner.

I repacked the sheets and took the box to the door, along with the boxes we'd emptied.

“I'll sort this all out later,” Mom said as I watched her shovel lotions and bandages and deodorant and toothpaste into cabinet drawers. I turned and admired the perfect white tub.

When she was done with the bathroom, we unloaded the one box of kitchen gear and food she had packed. I set it all on the counter, thinking it was impossible to organize the kitchen with one box of miscellaneous utensils, five half-opened bags of cereal, a can of water chestnuts, and some bread crumbs. As I shoved it against the wall, I realized I had moved all these cans and bags after the mouse meltdown last June. (See a previous blog post.) When the box was empty, we went down the elevator and out to the car.

“Shall we make another trip?” I asked as we were heading away.

“No, I don't think so,” she replied. I drove us to my apartment, and she took my place in the driver's seat. She fiddled with the mirrors, although I'd left everything the way it was.

She blew me a kiss and took off down the gravel road, sideswiping a yellow recycling bin and an empty green yard debris garbage can on wheels. Bam. They rattled but didn't fall over or get dragged, so it's all good, right? She didn't slow down. I'm not sure she realized she'd hit them. I stood watching her go.

“Drive safe,” I muttered to her tail lights. Tomorrow I expect we'll do it again. Hopefully sans recycling bin abuse. Saturday my younger brother plans to rent a truck so we can load up some furniture. Then the fun will really begin. Stay tuned.

The chronic malcontent flirts with terminal uniqueness

I'm sitting in the Love Shack, hunkered down under the ceiling fan with my feet in a bucket of cold water. The temperature outside is 96 °F. cooling down from something higher than that. It's about 90 in here, still not time to open the doors and windows. Hence, the bucket of water. Aaaah.

It's Friday. Now that I am living a carless summer, this is the day I typically take a 40-minute walk to meet a small but dedicated group of people to talk over some stuff. It's really too hot to hike the city sidewalks, but I am willing to go to any lengths. And the bus doesn't go there. So I walk.

Walking is good, because I am in a contemplative mood. What am I contemplating? Thanks for asking. My friend Bravadita is facing the challenge of her life—cancer. I don't understand it. I can't figure out how to think about it. I want to figure out how to deal with it. Stupid reaction, especially because it isn't me on the firing line. It's so typical of my brain to try to make everything about me.

What does one say to a friend who got blindsided with a diagnosis of cancer? To answer that question, I turned to the higher power: Google, of course. Type in what to say to friend with cancer... bam! About a billion webpages on the topic. See, never fear, the Internet is here. Here is what to say to a friend who has cancer:

I'm here for you. 
What can I do to help you today? 

Boring.

There's a much longer list of what not to say. Here are a few:

You just need some omega-3s and a few hours in a sweat lodge. 
How long do you have? 
Can I have your Gucci pumps when you are gone? 

Yeah, I can see how those responses might be a bit gauche.

Time out. My feet are numb. This plastic bucket (formerly a kitty litter container) isn't quite big enough for my size sevens. Ouch. Toe cramp. Sorry, I shouldn't be complaining about a tiny thing like a toe cramp.

That's one of the problems with my life. I want to pretend I'm the sickest, saddest, most decrepit human on the planet, but there's always some sad sack whose life is sadder than mine. What's up with that? I can't complain about losing my memory because my 86-year-old scrawny twig of a mother really is losing her memory: so not fun. I can't complain about a toe cramp, because Bravadita has frigging cancer. I can't complain about anything really, because I'm not dead. I'm alive, much as I try to pretend otherwise. And, as far as I know, I will probably be alive tomorrow. Argh!

Don't misunderstand me: I don't want to be dead. I just want to be special. Special would lend some meaning to my humdrum boring life. But only a certain kind of special, mind you. I don't want the reverse lottery kind of special: you know: cancer, amputation, brain amoebas, bus bandits. I don't want to be special enough to get hit by a car while I'm crossing Burnside, or to die in a plane crash that is never found, or to be pancaked into my basement by a 9.0 earthquake (all things I worry about, no matter how unlikely). No, if that is what comes from being special, I'm okay with ordinary. Let me hide out in the masses, a drop in the ocean of life, a worker among workers. Uniqueness can be terminal.

The chronic malcontent tries to avoid the consequences of living

Today I cried. Just a little, not for long, but it was an unexpected shock, to find myself sobbing into my hands. I haven't cried, really sobbed, since 2004 when my father was dying. Since then, I've felt sad, angry, and frustrated, but I haven't cried. Until today. The sudden storm of tears left me wondering if there's a limit to the number of calamities that people can handle. After I reassured my cat that I hadn't gone insane, I thought about what can make people cry.

Here's how I think it works: when we are preadolescent, we can handle one problem and that's it. Some problems are bigger than others, of course, but one that confounded me as a child was being denied access to something I wanted. Like a cookie, for example, or a Monkee magazine. Must have cookie! Must read about Monkees! Or losing something I possessed, like when my bratty brother would encroach upon my territory, bashing through the door to steal my stuff because he knew it made me crazy.

If our poor little child selves were confronted with more than one simple problem, we experienced total meltdown, and if problems piled up and lasted a long time, the repeated meltdowns eventually turned us into neurotic candidates for multiple Twelve Step programs. Well, I'll speak for myself.

However, by the time we are adults, we are pretty good at pretending we can handle whatever life throws at us, which is baloney, of course, though few of us will admit it. That's that whole admitting powerlessness thing... yeesh, too creepy, who wants to admit powerlessness? Not me.

Hey, ponder this! Somewhere around age 80, I think we revert to our younger self's strategy of tackling one problem at a time. It's not even like tackling. It's more like...all other problems cease to exist. No, that's not right. It's not that they don't exist, it's that they don't register on the radar. They simply don't appear on the to-do list. When our brains get to a certain stage of deterioration (or is it simply a case of old-age-related stubbornness?), we choose to address only one problem at a time, and it better not be a super big one, like downsizing to move into a one-bedroom apartment at a retirement place.

My mother reached that moment a few years ago when she found her brain wasn't retaining the instructions for sending and receiving email. Her world started closing in on her, and she recognized it as it was happening. In fact, she embraced it. “I'm not learning one more darn thing!” she declared and thus achieved independence from the little bit of modern technology her children had managed to thrust upon her (computer, cell phone, email, Facebook). Tomorrow my mother turns 86, and coincidentally (or not), she will be picking up the keys to her new apartment at the retirement community. Let the moving commence! Said the weary elder daughter.

I'm only 58 (only!), but today I had had enough. Too much! Too much sadness, too much anger, too much frustration, not enough serenity, not enough surrender. Life comes at all of us, but my stupid stubborn well-educated brain keeps trying to convince me that I'm exempt somehow from the consequences of living. My response to realizing I'm not exempt was to burst into tears. Real classy.

My eyes are gritty. My nose is clogged. The cat is demanding I stop typing. It's late. The paper I'm editing will be waiting for me tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

Two shank's mares walk into a bar

A friend dropped by briefly today. He laughed when he saw me. I thought that was odd, but didn't say anything. We concluded our business. Later I happened by a mirror and saw that my hair was sticking straight up. I looked like Don King. Or a shocked Bride of Frankenstein. Since I stopped coloring my hair (brown), it's now reverted to it's natural color (mottled grayscale). Not only is the color different than it used to be, but the texture has also changed, which accounts for its vertical tendency. There was a time when I would have killed for hair with the ability to stand up and salute. I guess it just proves the maxim that if you wait long enough, all your desires will eventually come to you.

Take climate change, for instance. Hot, is all I can say. Hot, hot, hot. I'm loving it, although I admit that I start to wilt a bit when the thermometer nears 100°, especially if I'm outside hiking from store to bus stop with a heavy sack of groceries. Oh, woe is me, I have to walk. Alas, alackaday, and all that folderol.

Speaking of odd idioms, I called my mother on the phone tonight to tell her I would like to borrow her car on Wednesday. “Shall I come pick you up?” she asked. Part of me would like nothing better than to have my mother drive over to loan me her car. Part of me thinks walking might be beneficial for my butt.

“I'll walk over,” I said.

“You'll use your shank's mare?” she said playfully.

I was like, what? My what? I'd never heard that expression before. I Googled it while we were on the phone and read some background on the term. Ha! Shank's mare! I love language. I should probably have studied English. But then I'd be unemployed. Hey, wait! ...well, whatever. I still love words.

Speaking of words, I've spent the past four days editing a train wreck of a dissertation proposal. At first pass, I despaired. I didn't think there was much hope. The structure was there, thanks to the institution's template, but the content was fractured and bent, with huge gaps (the theoretical framework is completely missing!). A plague of perplexing grammar gaffes sent my brain grasping for meaning... every paragraph had some sort of bizarre arrangement of words, kind of like those magnetic word games you seen on your friends refrigerators, where people before you have spelled out cryptic sentences like closet cats pee dark secrets. I've seen this kind of language abuse before from native English speakers who somehow absorbed just enough in high school to produce phrases like “On the same token,” and “as it relates to them being able to hit the ground running; hence being prepared.”

I am starting to develop a systematic process. First I wrestle the format into submission. If you've ever used Word styles and section breaks, you know what I'm talking about. Once I've got the styles, headings, and pagination nailed down, I generate a Table of Contents to reveal the bones and help me navigate the paper. Then I scan the paragraphs for main ideas and shuffle them around so they fall in line with the subheadings. Next, I take paragraphs apart to nudge ideas next to their buddies. And then I go word by word, semi-colon by misplaced comma by missing bracket, to wrench meaning out of each sentence. I go round and round in circles, finding statements that are repeated, or should be repeated but don't agree, shoving things hither and thither, sometimes working with the paper zoomed out to 30% so I can see two pages on the screen.

I highlight all the 4 billion instances where she should have cited a source (can we say plagiarism?). When I've combed the paper for dead commas and excessive spaces, I save the wreck as a pdf file and get down to the task of digging for meaning. I check my edits as I go—I always find errors, some of them egregious. Argh. As I work, I add comments in the margin, berating the hapless would-be scholar for thinking her feeble research question is going to pass muster with her reviewers.

Then again, she's attending an online for-profit university not unlike the one I attended, so all bets are off. Maybe her reviewers will be inexperienced and lackadaisical and wave her on through to the IRB review. Or maybe she'll get the Nazi mentor who blocks progress because of misplaced commas. I will probably eventually find out what happened: This is her proposal. If she's satisfied with my edits, she'll likely submit the dissertation. I can hardly wait.

Gains and losses, but sometimes it's hard to tell which is which

Yesterday Mom and I went to the retirement village (more like a small city) to look at a one-bedroom apartment. After a long walk through the maze, the marketing coordinator Helen unlocked the door of apartment 305. We went inside. Full-sized kitchen to the left, bathroom to the right. Living room with a bay window straight ahead. I walked across to the windows and peered down. The apartment was on the third floor, overlooking a parking lot. I saw two pigeons resting on the roof of a sky bridge below.

The air conditioning was on full blast. I turned it off. I noticed the brownish plaid rug sported the dents left by the previous tenant's furniture.

“They are in the process of cleaning the apartment, should be ready in about a week,” Helen said.

We went into the bedroom. Plenty big enough for Mom's bed and computer gear. I've lived in less space. The room was light, but not in direct sun. I went into the bathroom and stopped short in disbelief. There was a tub! And next to the bathroom, a washer and dryer! Mom and I looked at each other in shock. She had pretty much resigned herself to living without her beloved bathtub. And no way did we ever expect to have a washer/dryer unit inside the apartment! Score!

“Tub!” I shouted, grinning like a maniac.

“Washer and dryer!” she responded.

“Space for your dining room table!”

“And chairs!”

Helen probably thought we were insane. After some milling around, we went down the elevator and out the back door of the building.

“That is the path to the garden area.” Helen pointed across a narrow private street to a sidewalk going up a gently sloping hill.

“And there is your smoking area,” I said, pointing to a lone bench in a patch of dried-up grass by a chain link fence.

After we saw the underground parking, Helen led us along the path to the main dining area. As we walked, I could feel my spirits lifting. Inside me, a cranky old monkey wearing a fez and a hair shirt was jumping up and down yelling take it, take it, take it, take it!

The three of us stood outside the building in the sunshine. I kept my mouth zipped and watched Mom for signs of freak-out. Drawn brows, shifty eyes, hands reaching for cigarettes. I didn't see anything.

“You have 24 hours to decide,” Helen told Mom. Mom looked at me. I looked at her. In her eyes was the abyss. She took a deep breath... and jumped.

“I'll take it,” she said.

Right on, Mom, I thought. Good to know, just because we get old doesn't mean we automatically lose our nerve. My mother is nothing if not courageous. Eighty-six years on the planet can kill you but it can also make you stronger. Ditto having four kids, I suppose. And a precarious life with intermittent employment and a crappy car. But let's not make this about me.

Mom gave Helen a big hug, or as big a hug as a shrinking underweight old lady with bones like twigs can give. While we were bubbling with bonhomie, a young woman wearing a housekeeping badge that identified her as Tiffany came over and introduced herself to us, welcoming Mom to the place. Soon, I thought to myself, soon there will be others looking out for her. Already she's making friends.

When we got back to the Love Shack, I saw that the tow truck had come and towed my dead Focus away to its new life as someone else's problem, leaving an empty space in the area where the neighbors fight to park their cars. I don't think I'll be filling that space with another vehicle anytime soon.

You know it's hot when the cat sleeps in the tub

During the spring, winter, and fall, I often try to remember how it feels to swelter in 90°+ heat. I never can. I know for my friends in Arizona, 90° is practically sweater weather. We aren't used to it so much, here in Stumptown. This year is unusual. June was a record breaker: nine days over 90, 21 days over 80, and 25 consecutive days with no rain. We joke around here that summer starts July 5: not this year. Summer arrived early and brought the fire season with it. The fireworks show at Fort Vancouver just about burned down the fort! WTF, you guys in The Couv!

I'm hunkered in front of the computer, waiting for the sun to stop scorching my front windows: To pass the time, I poured cold water on my head. The cat is dozing stoically in the bathtub. I wonder what he would do if I turned on the cold water. Yowwww!

This heat has slowed me down a bit. So has my new pedestrian lifestyle. I'm still managing to maneuver around, though, more or less. On Thursday I hopped on the #15 bus to join Bravadita in the Pearl District in NW Portland for the monthly First Thursday gallery walk. We met first at Powell's Books in 90°+ heat and sat in the AC for a while, talking, postponing the moment when we would enter the furnace outside to find our first gallery. Finally, we could postpone no longer. Water bottles in hand, we plunged into the heat.

Did you know sweaty feet and sandal leather combine to make blisters? Argh. I hobbled gamely from gallery to gallery, looking for something, I'm not sure what. Inspiration? A place to sit down? Affirmation that I'm still an artist? Huh. I don't see my art hanging on any walls except the Love Shack's. We were swinging with the young and hip crowd, wandering from painting to photograph. I took surreptitious photos of Bravadita when I thought she was ignoring me.

Sometimes I wonder where my acrylic paints are (what box, buried in what closet). I wonder if the ultramarine blue is moldy, or if the cadmium red is crusty and desiccated. I wonder where my good paintbrushes are (what drawer, what box). I wonder what it would be like to paint something. Anything. And then I think, where would I put it when it's finished? Every inch of wall space is covered with shelves or art.

I remember in art class years ago, we had an assignment to paint on a 11 x 14 panel, photograph the image, and paint a new image over the old image, over and over. I painted about 50 images in the space of several hours. I still have the slides somewhere (what box, what drawer). I could repeat that assignment again. Paint, photograph, and repaint, over and over. In a year, I would have one painting and 365 photographs of paintings that existed for one day. Oh, art, how transient thou art.

I'm running out of food. The heat wave has conspired to keep me housebound. Walking in this heat is not healthy, and I'm not a morning person. I won't starve, no worries. I don't feel like eating much in this heat, anyway. If I get really hungry, I can always order online and get stuff delivered. In a few more days, the heat will break, we'll be back to our usual cloudy damp gray skies, and I'll try once again to remember what it felt like to be sweltering in my cave.

Hunting and gathering in the heat of the day

This morning I had a choice: take a bus to buy groceries at Gateway, or walk a mile to the big store on Glisan. Choices, choices. Waiting for a bus would be boring, especially in the blazing hot mid-day sun. The bus would be air-conditioned, though. Tempting. Plus, I like the store at Gateway. I've shopped there for years; I know where everything is, which is reassuring. Waiting for a bus to take me home, somewhat boring. But at least I wouldn't have to lug groceries home on foot.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? Well, besides saving the $2.50 bus fare, the main factor that swayed me toward walking was the depressing spread of my ass. I need exercise. The only way I would be inclined to get moving is if I had a purpose: the hunting and gathering of food, or what passes for that activity in the modern age of Western civilization in East Portland. Plus, oddly enough, the vertigo seems to be better when I'm walking. So, at a little after high noon, I embarked upon the approximately one-mile journey to the store on Glisan Street.

Are you wondering if I was pushing my shiny new red shopping cart? Thanks for remembering. No, I did not, and I'll tell you why: The thing is huge. And heavy. I might as well steal a shopping cart from the store. It's quite a device, though, I must say. It folds up flat for storage (although the only place left to store things in the Love Shack is on the walls). It's quite sturdy. It's impressively shiny and red. Did I mention it is huge?

Unless I can figure out how to put a motor and a steering mechanism on the thing, I can't see myself wheeling the red shopping cart up hill and down dale to the store. I parked the red cart next to the other rarely used appliance in my bedroom, the vacuum cleaner. I've ordered a folding handtruck from Sears (I know, I'm insane). Until the new device arrives, I'm relying on my new backpack and two cloth grocery bags. I don't know how Bravadita does it: Despite being a pedestrian (by choice), she always seems so stylish, carrying the most lovely, functional bags while hiking the city in designer shoes. Sigh.

After making sure I had a bottle of water and my straw hat, I set out into brilliant 80° sunshine. Most of the trek to the store is downhill. It's not bad, walking downhill. Moving at the speed of walking, you can see things. I noticed used cars parked along the curb (none for sale). Now I know what a Pontiac Vibe looks like: just like a Toyota Matrix. Huh. I noticed lots of people grow vegetables in their front yards. The gardens are glorious, a direct contrast to the lawns, which are already crumbly gold fields of straw, even though it's barely summer. A long hedge of honeysuckle filled the air with a sweet delicate scent, blending interestingly with someone's crappy perfume and the smell of a decaying squirrel carcass.

I paced along, measuring my progress from shade patch to shade patch, winding through the hilly neighborhood down to Stark, then quick like a bug across Stark, then over to Burnside, and finally a few more long blocks to Glisan (our blocks are rectangular here on the Eastside). A few short blocks up the hill is the big store, on the other side of the street. A fancy pedestrian crossing, complete with flashing lights, gives the pedestrian the illusion that she is safe if she steps out into the street. There is no stoplight. I gave a special WTF, jackass! wave to the driver of an SUV, who waved back as she barreled through the crosswalk mere feet from my toes. I can see how pedestrians, especially those older than about 30, get killed while crossing wide boulevards: Once you step off the curb, you've got nowhere to go if someone doesn't stop. One little hitch in your gitalong and bam! you are flying into the gutter, a broken mess.

Luckily, that did not happen to me. I made it across the wide boulevard with no mishaps and entered the store from the parking lot, looking like all the other shoppers who came in cars to shop for groceries. I sank into air conditioned comfort. I don't know where things are in this store, so it seems bigger than it really is. Wandering the aisles, I saw lots of things I thought I needed and wanted. I limited myself, however, to what would fit in a tote basket, knowing I would have to carry it all back home.

Shopping as a pedestrian is different now. I'm making new choices. I have a list. I can't afford to forget anything; it's not like I can just hop in the car and zip back to the store if I forget eggs. Today I bought smaller versions of things, and fewer of them. Where I used to buy three cans of organic garbanzo beans, now just one. Instead of the large size olive oil, the half size. The smallest cabbage. Two onions instead of four. One dozen eggs, instead of two (I eat a lot of eggs).

I always go through self-checkout so I can avoid interacting with others. I also like to pack my own bags. As a pedestrian, I need to devise a new packing system. I put some heavy stuff into the backpack and distributed the produce between the two cloth bags, one for each shoulder. Apples, onions, broccoli, zucchini, carrots. Heavy but evenly balanced. I took a long swig of water, put on my sunglasses, and headed for the door.

The heat of the day hit me like a fist in the face. For a long moment, as I crossed the shimmering parking lot, the thought occurred to me that I may have taken on more than I could handle. I trudged slowly back up the hill, well aware that my next conscious thought might be from a hospital bed. But the heat was just tolerable. The space between pools of shade was just doable. The weight of the two bags was just about balanced. The sweat rolling down my back was soaked up by the backpack. My feet were hot, but the soles weren't melting, quite. I stopped once to drain my water bottle and let the sweat roll down my butt crack. Then I hoisted the load and plodded the last three blocks to the Love Shack. I guess I'll have to do it all again in about four days, or when the zucchini runs out. Bright side: I can always take the bus.

Feeling the heat? Let's all scream like babies!

When I got home from a walk in 98° sunshine, I saw a strange shadow on the drape that hangs across my front door to shield my living room from the brutal rays of southwest summer sun. I pulled aside the drape and saw a large, flat box on my front porch. I knew what was inside. Although it is exactly what I ordered, I am not jumping for joy. What is in the box? It's my ticket to the old folks' home. It's my invitation to finally surrender and join AARP. It's the realization that life as I know it is over. It's related to the sinking feeling that comes over me when I realize I should have started saving when I was 22. Yep. It's my brand new, shiny, red wheely cart, ordered online and delivered by some sneaky delivery person while I was out. It's official: I'm old.

I took the contraption out of the box (heavy!), but I'm blogging to delay the moment of assembly. I dislike those instruction sheets that show exploded views of nameless gizmos that seem to fly under the desk as soon as I open the plastic baggy. I'm not that great at assembling things. I once took an aptitude test at a temp agency. The nice lady set me up with a small piece of wood drilled with holes. In each hole was a bolt with a wingnut on the other side, holding it in place.

“Just undo the wingnut from this side, take out the bolt and put it through the other way. Then screw the wingnut back on.” She left me to it. Within moments, I had two wingnuts and a bolt flying across the floor. On my hands and knees in a pleated skirt and blazer, I rescued the pieces and eventually got them inserted and partnered up. I held up the wooden torture device triumphantly. Other people in the waiting room avoided making eye contact. As you probably can guess, I didn't get sent on any assembly line jobs. Too bad. I could have had a great career over at the sheet metal plant. Seriously.

Now that my eyesight has gone south, I don't expect putting together this cart to be any easier. I predict at least one washer will make it under the baseboard heater before I'm through. Truthfully, I'm postponing the task because it's 90° in the Love Shack. Because it's only 89° outside the Love Shack, I have opened the windows and the back door. Two old tired fans labor to shift air around the room. One is wheezing rhythmically in time to my music.

I got the wheely cart so I can pack my groceries home from the store. I'm carless now, remember? It's the carless summer. How is it going? Thanks for asking. So far, not too bad. Twice, no three times, I have made navigation errors that added many extra steps to my hikes. For example, a couple streets between the Love Shack and the store don't go all the way through. Hey, how was I supposed to know that? I can't pull out my dumb phone with an armful of groceries! I ended up walking around a block back to where I started. People watering their lawns or weeding their roses probably thought I was nuts when they saw me stomping by, carrying a bag of groceries in my arms like it was a baby, alternately cursing and laughing.

Today I walked a long way out of my way because I didn't know there was a pedestrian footpath across the freeway. In my quest to seek the shady route, I avoided the desert-like bicycle path, which would have taken me over the freeway almost straight to my destination. Instead, I walked several long, hot blocks to another street that crossed over the freeway. From there, I looked out over the parked cars heading in both directions (rush hour), saw the pedestrian bridge off in the distance, and started once again cursing and laughing. Luckily, no one could hear me, although some drivers probably worried I might be planning to take a header onto their overheating Ford Focus. No wait, that's a different story...

So. A whole lotta walking, that is my new reality. I got a new backpack and an insulated tote bag to keep my frozen food frozen (although I found out it doesn't work that great in 98° weather). As soon as I admit I'm too old for anything, I'll assembly my wheely cart and join the throngs of gray-hairs riding the bus in the middle of the day. I'm all set.

All together now, let's scream like babies!

It's official: The chronic malcontent is old

Welcome to the summer of carlessness. Mine, that is, I hope not yours (unless you want to be carless). I spent time this week embracing my new status as a professional pedestrian. It's all about framing the experience. Instead of bemoaning the fact that my car is a heap of metal and plastic sitting on four rubber tires and gathering dust, I'm saying, I'm doing something good for the environment. I'm shrinking my carbon footprint to the size of sweat droplets on the pavement. Look at me go! I'm a walking, bus-hopping, train-riding dynamo!

I could also say it's the fashionable thing to do. All the coolest people (my sister, Bravadita) are carless by choice. Both have been supportive, giving me tips on how to travel, what to carry, how to pack stuff...it's quite complicated, the pedestrian lifestyle. Suddenly I'm very conscious of the weight of my shoulder bag. Big questions: plastic water bottle or stainless steel?

How committed am I? Today my mother offered me a ride home from her place (we live maybe 2 miles apart). I was adamant: I had come prepared to walk: sneakers, hat, backpack, bottle of water... I was ready. For a moment, I thought, oh man, I could be home in ten minutes, well, five the way my mother drives. I shook my head. “No, thanks, I'll walk,” I said and set off on my journey.

What could go wrong? Heat exhaustion, strained knees, twisted ankle, upset stomach...I was sweating by the time I reached the end of her street, but I kept going, thinking, if it really gets rough, I can catch a bus part way.

I wandered through Montavilla Park, taking pictures with my old digital camera. The park has changed since I was a kid. The trees are bigger. The swings are gone, replaced by a fancy plastic structure swarming with screaming children. The outdoor pool was still there, not quite as big as I remembered it, crowded with splashing kids and parents. The sun was hot. The grass was green, dotted with little white flowers we used to string into bracelets and necklaces.

The world looks different at street-level. Walking offers time to think about what I'm seeing. It also gives me time to think about my mother and her recent declaration that life is no longer worth living and she wishes she were dead. I responded by making an appointment for her to see her doctor. Now she has a prescription for an anti-depressant. I hope she'll be willing to move into the retirement community in a few months.

Down the boulevard is the elementary school I attended in the late 1960s. The windows are new, but the brick walls are the same red-brown I remember. A tall chimney tethered with guy wires in case of earthquake pokes up into the sky (has that chimney always been there?). I crossed the wide playground in back of the school, snapping photos, and found the three ancient wooden portables still standing. These were supposedly temporary buildings set up to ease the overcrowding of little Baby Boomers. I remember practicing air raid drills in 1962, marching from the portable into the big brick building, sitting cross-legged with my face turned to the wall, one anxious child in a row of anxious children, waiting for the atomic bomb.

The hardest part of the walk was the final stretch, the trek uphill to the Love Shack. It's a long, fairly steep hill, which may account in part for why my old car died an early death: I felt my own internal carburetor overheating as I trudged, one step at a time, fighting gravity, sweltering in the sun, gasping in the shade, stumbling over curbs, until I reached the top, where my dusty dead car sat with its butt against the hedge, nose out, waiting for the tow truck.

In addition to being a professional pedestrian, I'm now officially old. Today I ordered a wheeled cart to pack my groceries home. It's red.

Poverty is not a moral failing

As I nodded off on the bus today on my way across town, I remembered that 40 years ago, I took Portland buses everywhere. Long before the MAX light rail system was a gleam in the eye of some progressive Portland mayor, sweltering or soaking wet with rain, I lugged my blank canvases and tackle box of paint and brushes to Portland State and back to the east side on huge, loud, orange buses and thought nothing of it. I had no intention of getting a car. I didn't need one. Lots of people live perfectly normal, fulfilled lives without cars. My sister, in Boston, for example. Bravadita, in Gladstone. Of course, it's easier when one has the energy, stamina, and naivete of an 18-year-old.

I made one last effort to resuscitate my Ford Focus (mechanic in a can, poured into the radiator, by my mechanic, Mr. What Have You Got to Lose). It didn't work, despite a money-back guarantee. I presume Ping will get his money back. I also presume I will not. It was worth it, though, to know finally, once and for all, that the patient was truly, irrevocably dead.

“Dead!” my older brother protested when I called him to ask his advice about cars. “Head gasket is fixable,” he said, making it sound like it was as easy as topping off the oil or something. “You just need to do a long block rebuild.”

I'm not entirely sure what a long block rebuild is, but the word rebuild implies this activity is outside my expertise. Not that I couldn't learn how to do a long block rebuild... grrl power and all that. But seriously. Not going to happen, not with these old tired gnarled-knuckle hands. Not with this old tired leave-me-alone-so-I-can-die-in-peace brain.

Ping said drive the car around a bit, to see if maybe the stopleak crap would circulate in the system and do what it was supposed to do. No such luck. The car ran fine on the way to the store. I thought, oh, joy, maybe I can get a few more months out of the old buggy. Part way home, the temperature gauge soared dramatically into the red, and the engine began to wheeze. I flogged it up the hill toward home, thinking, yeah, okay, no problem, I could walk from here, no problem. Sweating, I pulled into my parking spot (nose out to make it easier for the tow truck to cart it off to its next incarnation), shut off the engine, and sat back in the seat. Good-bye, old used up Ford Focus. Not quite Found on Road Dead, thank god, but not First on Race Day, either. To tell you the truth, I never expected the thing to last this long. It's totally possible that when I go out tomorrow to catch the bus, all that will be left of the carcass is a pile of dust.

Hey, bright side: Now I can pretend I gave up my car to support the environment. I admit, over the years, I have had twinges of guilt about (a) burning fossil fuel, (b) polluting the air, and (c) dripping oil and coolant wherever I go. Yech, you say? Well, you can only say yech if you walk, ride a bike, own a bus pass, or your car is electric. Which leaves out about 93% of the adult population of Portland. Otherwise, pot, kettle, shut it, if you get my drift.

When I lived in Los Angeles, many years ago, I used to loftily claim I chose not to drive a car because I was doing my share to save the environment. (That was 1980, before global warming was a thing we worried about. Back then, it was the ozone layer and acid rain.) The reality, of course, was that I said that because I couldn't afford a car but I didn't want to admit it. The moment I could, I got a wheezing, gas-guzzling pollute-mobile (1966 Dodge Dart) and drove it till it dropped (which is apparently my pattern... I can't think of any car I've ever owned that I haven't completely used up. Well, maybe the 1974 Toyota Corolla wagon, which was still hobbling gamely on three cylinders when I sold it).

I told my mother I was considering going carless for the summer. She didn't sound impressed. In her defense, she's still coping with the impending prospect of packing up and moving into a retirement community. She's like a freshman during the last week of summer, scared of all the big kids at the big new high school. Where's my home room? How will I make friends? What if I get lost? Can I bring my eldest daughter with me so I won't be alone?

I told my younger brother about going carless; he was appalled. “How can you go without a car?” he exclaimed.

“People live without cars all the time,” I said. “Your other sister lives without a car. She's never had a car. It's not a moral failing, it's a choice.”

“You can borrow my [old Ford] pickup truck any time during the week” he said magnanimously. Or is it a Chevy? Something old and American-made, uh, no thanks.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll keep that in mind.”

Last rites for my four-wheeled friend

I'm sad to report, the Focus is dead. Long live the dusty, dirty, moss-covered, drippy, leaking Focus. On Saturday I flogged the old buggy up the hill in 85° weather, watching the temperature gauge jerk toward hot. We were mere blocks from home when the needle sprung decisively into the red. I sat at a light in a line of traffic, listening to the engine wheeze, praying maniacally and laughing, thinking, if this thing dies here, how will I push it out of traffic? After an eternity, traffic moved. The engine light came on (Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!) The clutch slipped, but I got it going up the last hill. As I parked, I could hear the water bubbling in the coolant reservoir. (Stand back, she's gonna blow!) I backed into my parking space and shut off the engine, fully aware that the next time the car moves, it will be behind a tow truck. Found on Road Dead. What's left of the coolant (or maybe it was the oil) was still burbling as I slunk into my house.

The car gave me good service, considering it's a Ford. But I admit to feeling a bit cheated at getting only 119,000 miles out of it. (Well, I only got 59,000 miles if you consider I bought it used with 60,000 miles on it already). I hear lately the lifespan of a car engine is trending toward 200,000 miles. I guess my old 2001 Focus missed the memo. Sort of like me missing the 60s... darn it. I wanted free love and flower power, but all I got was Peter Max peechees, hot pants, and disco.

As part of my grieving process (denial stage), I've been viewing YouTube videos entitled How to know if you have a cracked block. Cracked block? Blocked crack? Wha–? What is a block, anyway? I think it's part of the engine. Or it could be my head. I'm so confused. It's 90° today, too hot to fret over anything, let alone a broken-down car, and stress is stirring up the vertigo in my middle ear. Sigh. (All these things indicate I'm alive; I should be grateful to have such luxury problems, right?) Anyway, I feel mildly compelled to yank the plug on my oil pan and see if water comes out after the oil has drained away. (Definitely a bad sign). Part of me hopes that my mechanic was wrong and that all I really need is a new, properly pressurized radiator overflow container. Clearly I've been spending too much time on the Internet.

Grasping at straws is futile, I know. I need to get another car. But how does one go car shopping if one doesn't have a car? Lucky me, I happen to live a few blocks from “used car row,” also known as 82nd Boulevard. Despite efforts to beautify, the stretch of boulevard I live near has long hosted a number of seedy car dealerships, along with some derelict motels, unmemorable Chinese food places, and the occasional stray hooker. I'm not so interested in the motels, chow mein, or hookers, but I'm feeling fortunate that I have so many options for buying a used car, just blocks from the Love Shack.

In preparation for shopping, I've been reading online reviews of used car dealers.

• Best dealer ever! ★★★★★
• Worst dealer ever! ★
• Got the greatest deal, so happy! ★★★★★
• Don't go here, you'll be throwing your money away! ★
• Treated like royalty! ★★★★★
• Gave us the bait and switch and didn't care the battery died on the way home!★

What the heck? Can any of these reviews be trusted? I guess I would tend to believe the irate reviewers, if for no other reason than because we all know that if something goes right, we rarely take time to tell the world, but if something goes wrong, we feel righteously obligated to exact revenge by telling the entire world in excruciating detail just how Tony done us wrong.

If you live in a city, you can't escape the fact that the world seems to be full of used cars, jamming freeways and hogging neighborhood streets, polluting the landscape and clogging the air. Every size, shape, make, model, color... so many vehicles! Where did they all come from? Who cares! What matters is, how come everyone seems to have one but me?

Do you drive? How would you choose a car? First, you have to decide, new or used? Macy's or Goodwill? Fresh new undies straight from the package... or someone else's faded gray bloomers? I try to imagine what it would feel like to buy a new car. (I've never done it). Is it like first-time sex? Well, I guess it would feel like this: Prestige, respect, handshakes and promises, double-digit odometer readings, new car smell, posh waiting rooms and free lattes, energetic salespeople in khakis and ties, sweet courtship, and then pow! skittish interest rates, sneaky financing, exorbitant monthly payments, bankruptcy, divorce, repo.... gak! That sound was me upchucking.

My father never bought a new car. He always bought used, usually from one particular local dealer who still has a small lot on 82nd and SE Stark. We all know Dad got swindled multiple times; it's the stuff of legend. Dad would come home with a new car every year or so. We kids used to be able to name the list of cars: '58 DeSoto, '64 Oldsmobile Delta 88, '60 turquoise blue Caddy, sporty little dark green '74 Malibu... now I can only remember a few, the ones I learned to drive on. In my mind, the cars blend together in a photo album of brandless, leaky, beat up American cars. (No Datsuns or Toyotas for Dad). The stories of breakdowns on Marine Drive or the AlCan Highway are legendary, part of the dusty memories of my childhood, comical gems that glow like dust motes in my mental attic now that he's dead and can't set me straight on the details. The used car lot where he was swindled lives on. I'll probably check it out, just for old time's sake.

The chronic malcontent suffers from a vestibular disturbance

I had to get out of the Love Shack for a while today. Three reasons: The morning clouds dissipated around noon, good time to go out for a sunshine fix. Second, my own personal ocean in my inner ears (vertigo) was relatively calm. I knew it wouldn't last long, no matter how still and level I tried to keep my head. And third, the boots pounding on the roof were too much to bear. Yep, that's right. Today the Love Shack is getting a new roof.

I don't own the Love Shack, in case you were wondering if I had anything to do with it. I've never seen the roof. It's flat, that's all I know. I can only imagine on a wet day it's a sloggy mess of mushy holly berries, never-decaying holly leaves, maple tree whirly seeds, raccoon nests, and bird poop. On a dry day, it's a dusty toxic mix of all that stuff. I feel sad for the three Spanish-speaking men who have been marching around on the roof ripping stuff apart since 8:45 this morning.

My cat is not amused. He spent the morning hunkered under the couch with a concerned look on his face, probably wondering who won't stop pounding at the door. I've been trying to write. Between the pounding, hammering, scraping, and tearing, and the intermittent growl of the compressor parked at the bottom of my back steps, I was somewhat distracted. My head was starting to vibrate, not a good sign. So I abandoned my cat and my writing project to go for a trot in Mt Tabor Park.

On Wednesdays no cars are allowed. The roads are safe for bicyclists, joggers, and dog walkers. The air today was lush with spring. Spring is a special time in Portland. The leaves are a billion shades of green (and purple in some cases, what are those weird trees, anyway?). The smell of newly whacked grass wafted along the trails, cut by... let's call them workers from the county sheriffs office, brought by van to do community service in the park. I can think of worse ways to do penance for one's misdeeds.

Oddly enough, while I was jogging, my head felt fine. It was only after I stopped moving that the waves of vertigo swept through my head. The lesson is, don't stop moving, I guess. But sooner or later, I get tired (sooner, usually), and I must stop. As I'm typing this, the vestibular ocean in my inner ears rises up and falls back, shaking me like a toyboat. I'm ignoring it.

As I walked up the street toward the park, I realized the roofer has roofed three houses in this one block in two days. I guess the mantra this week is make roofs while the sun shines. These guys are efficient: plan, approach, and execution in a matter of hours. I met the roofer (a non-Hispanic White guy) when he knocked on my door asking for access to the basement so he could plug in his infernal compressor. Beyond that one interaction, I haven't seen him. I imagine he's supervising a dozen other roofs in the neighborhood.

These guys aren't super big, but they wield aluminum ladders like swords and then climb up them like ninja warriors. I doubt if these roofers suffer from vertigo. Dehydration, maybe, but not vertigo. My new theory about inner ears is that my ear crystals are clumped somewhere in the vicinity of the ear equivalent of my toes into boulders that sluggishly crash into all the nerve endings in their path. In other words, ear sludge is creating a slow-motion train wreck in my head. That is why the Epley Maneuver is only partially successful. I fear I'm too impatient, advancing through the moves before gravity can budge the sludge. Either that or I'm doing it wrong. Or I have a brain tumor. Whatever.

A ladder has now appeared outside my front window, followed by heavy pounding. Three guys sure can make a lot of noise. I just plugged my mp3 headphones in my ears: Psychedelic Furs. I sail away on my cerebral sea while my cat stoically endures.

The chronic malcontent leans in... and out

As I shake the cat hair and fingernail clippings out of my keyboard, I reflect on the possibility that sometimes vertigo is just vertigo. It doesn't have to be metaphor for anything else in my life. Right? Like, oh, I don't know...balance, maybe?

Yesterday in a fit of frustration, I put on my jogging duds and staggered up the main staircase to the top of Mt. Tabor. From the summit, I trotted down and around the road, marveling at how level-headed I felt but on the lookout in case the ground suddenly turned into an asphalt trampoline. The sun was warm. The park was crowded with Sunday pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, and dogs. I felt happy to be outside, trudging my trails at half-speed while joggers blazed by me on both sides. Balance, I thought smugly. Take that.

A half hour after I got home, wham, the floor suddenly became jello and I was back on the open seas in a tiny boat. Ho hum, said I. I am quite familiar with the nuances of fluid in my head now. I picture my brain awash in a viscous murky muddy sea, but I know that isn't what is really happening. Dinky little ear rocks are meandering around, sightseeing where they shouldn't be, shredding my balance and creating the loudest, most cringe-inducing silent roar I've ever not heard.

I'm becoming a quasi-expert on performing the Epley on myself. Not expert yet, because if I were an expert, I would have effected my own cure, right? No, I'm still practicing. I love YouTube—every ENT in the world has posted a demonstration of how to do the Epley. It's great. They all do it differently, too, which is somewhat perplexing for the novice, but hey, I'm all for creativity, as long as it doesn't break my neck. So far my neck is still intact, although it is somewhat stiff from trying to hold my head level all the time. (No, I don't think it is meningitis, but thanks for asking).

What is the Epley, you ask? It's a maneuver you can perform to make use of gravity to get the ear rocks to float back along the tube into the hole. Yeah, I know those aren't the technical terms, but hey, I'm not an ENT. You can look up the anatomical terms if you really care. Rocks, tube, hole, that's all you really need to know. It's a bit like miniature putt-putt golf, but inside your inner ear, where it's dark so you have to maneuver by feel. Like, how close to barfing am I right now, scale of 1 to 10?

Actually, I haven't barfed yet, I am proud to say. I know pride goeth, etc. etc., but I'm hopeful that as long as I have to put up with this vertigo crap, that it will remain the subjective type rather than morph into the objective type. Subjective vertigo is where I feel like I'm moving. Objective vertigo is where the world seems like it is spinning around me. Like how you feel when the Roundup starts twirling and you realize you've made a terrible mistake by eating your corndog before the ride rather than after.

The Epley is like a slow motion head waggle followed by a half-pirouette, performed horizontally. You can't picture it? Well, like I said, there are multiple methods to execute an Epley, but the one I am finding easiest goes like this: (while lying on your back with your head hanging over a pillow), BAD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then GOOD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then roll on the good shoulder, look down, and SPIT. Hold until the boat stops rocking or you are thoroughly disgusted.

Well, actually the spitting part is optional, I just added that because usually I've found that I'm not miraculously cured when I roll over and that makes me so angry I feel like I could spit. But at that point, my nose is all but buried in my lime green shag rug and I'm thinking as I'm counting the seconds in my head: ants, cat barf, dust mites. I feel obligated to refrain from adding my spit to the mix, mostly because who knows what will rush in if I open my mouth. Besides, according to my older brother, when I was about five, I proclaimed in my sleep, if you turn over and spit, you'll die, and even though that was 50-some years ago, I'm not willing to press my luck.

The thing about the Epley is this: It's not an instantaneous cure. It takes time for the ear rocks to settle in properly, and some of them still seem inclined to go gallivanting. So if you are going to try this at home, you may have to do it more than once. I also read that you should sleep sitting up for two nights afterward, but I haven't been able to accomplish that feat. Maybe that is why I'm still whining about vertigo. Well, hell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. Like, ants on my desk? WTF!?

Slow boat to hell

Last week my family came together to talk about Mom. Mom was there, in case you were wondering. It's not like the kids met in a secret cabal to decide what cliff to throw her over. No, we are good kids, now that we are old and tired. We weren't when we were younger, though. We made her life a living hell. I guess it's payback time. All those years of not cleaning our rooms. All those years of biting, kicking, and punching each other. All those years of ignoring Mom yelling at us. Maybe we collectively recognize our cosmic just desserts are about to smack us in the face.

I say we, but really it's more like me. My sister has escaped back to Boston. My older brother has retreated back to the sleepy beach town on the coast. That leaves me and my little brother, and he's got a full-time job, ten cats, three dogs, a rabbit, a dilapidated house, and a wife. Eldest daughter, self-employed, no kids, close proximity to Mom...I leave it to you to connect the dots.

Mom sat on her beige flowered couch next to my sister. My brothers and I sat in the three battered old armchairs that my parents carried from living room to living room over many years. I noticed, not for the first time, how Mom's noisily patterned couch clashed with her Home Depot oriental rug. I blame myself: I helped her choose that rug.

I self-consciously handed around the one-page spreadsheet I had prepared for the discussion and explained my rating system. Before I could start my lecture, my scrawny mother commandeered the floor.

“I hope everyone understands if I want to give Carol a little something to compensate her for being my caregiver,” my mother said to the group. Oh boy. Despite my self-admonition to remain calm, my heart rate increased slightly. A little something could be $1,000. On the other hand, it could be $20 for gas. It's always money, though. It's never a banana cream cake or a slice of tiramisu. Or a trip to the Bahamas. Or enough money to actually make a difference.

I was embarrassed. She could tell. “No, I just mean, you have done so much work!”

“My sister came all the way across the country to help you sort and pack up stuff,” I reminded her, trying to get the focus off me.

“Well, as my designated care-giver, the burden has mostly fallen on you,” she said. “That is why I want to give you something extra.”

Knowing that my sister plans on killing herself when she runs out of money in eight years, I said, “Can we talk about you, Mom? This family meeting is to support you in your decision to move.”

“Okay, okay,” she grumbled. The conversation turned back to evaluating the five retirement communities she and I had toured. My brothers asked rationale questions. We all agreed Mom and I would see a financial planner to talk about the relative advantages of selling or renting her condo. Then we ate Chinese food. My brother left to drive back to the coast. My younger brother went home to his zoo. Mom, my sister, and I sat in a row on the couch and watched a DVD of Singing in the Rain. Then I went home and collapsed.

I'm beginning to see my ongoing vertigo as a metaphor for my out-of-balance life. The vertigo started about the same time Mom made her choice of retirement community. She had told me, even before we all met, which place suited her best. In our family discussion, we all agreed she chose the best deal, but she'd already made up her mind. She chose the least expensive option, which oddly was the one that had the best food. She also chose the one that would allow her to rent a second bedroom in preparation for the time when she might need a live-in caregiver. (All eyes can now swivel toward me.)

The mere possibility that I might choose to give up my sacred sanctuary, AKA The Love Shack, to move in with my scrawny maternal parental unit has been percolating in my brain since she made her choice. Nothing has happened yet, nothing is different, but I think some part of my psyche recognized that the metaphysical rug is quite possibly about to be pulled out from under my feet. Hence, vertigo.

Of course, it could just be I'm more likely to get vertigo because I'm female and in my late 50s. It could have nothing to do with emotional stress and fear of the future. It could have nothing to do with the prospect of leaving my nest to orbit my mother and watch her die. I mean, how can you know if your emotions are killing you? I think we know in general stress has physical consequences, but how do you know that your stress is killing you? Could it just be random chance? Of course it could.

Life is constantly killing us. That's not random chance, that is 100% guaranteed certainty.

The perils of cleaning

Our scrawny maternal parental unit is preparing to move into a retirement place. More on that another time. Earlier today I was sitting in a stuffed armchair in my mother's spare bedroom, riffling through a shoe box of used postcards my mother had saved over the years. Some were from me to my parents, written years ago, sent, and forgotten. It now appears my mother kept everything her children ever gave her, from kindergarten to adulthood. I read the postcards while attempting to keep my head motionless, trying not to rile the evil calcium carbonate crystals roaming like marauders through my inner ear. No easy feat. Suddenly, I heard my sister scream from the kitchen.

“What?” my mother called from the other bedroom. Spider, probably, I thought. I waited. My sister shouted again. Curious now, I got up to check out the ruckus. I found my sister in the living room, pointing at the pantry cupboard in the corner of the kitchen and doing a funny little dance.

“A mouse! A huge mouse!” she gasped. Ah. That explained the dance.

My mother was digging around in a big plastic bag that my sister had dropped on the kitchen floor. Apparently the mouse came out of the bag. I looked gingerly into the pantry cupboard. The dark, dusty floor at the back of the pantry looked like a place a scared mouse might be hiding. My mother kept digging in the plastic bag.

“Do you have a broom and a paper sack?” I asked, shouldering my mother aside. I began unloading a dozen cartons of rice milk from the bottom of the pantry cupboard, keeping an eye out for a large mouse.

My sister handed me a broom and dustpan with surgical precision.

“Can you block the doorway with something?” I asked. My sister quickly assembled a stack of boxes and lids. Wow, I thought. She's good.

It took a minute to move all the rice milk cartons onto the counter. My plan was to offer the mouse a nice cozy place to hide in the paper sack, hopefully with minimal coaxing from the broom. Then I could take the mouse outside and set it free near someone else's condo. I poked behind the old wooden box that had held the rice milk and saw something scuttle into a corner.

“Oh for crying out loud. It's tiny!” I said. Hovering anxiously in the hallway behind her barricade, my sister looked slightly chagrined. While I was standing there chuckling and feeling superior I noticed a stream of ants marching along the edge of one pantry shelf. What the—? Oh no!

Mouse first, then ants. I moved the box out of the way and raised the broom. The mouse ran past my shoe, around the corner of the pantry, and disappeared under the dishwasher. I straightened up.

“He's gone,” I said.

“Back to his family in the crawl space,” my mother muttered darkly.

“Did you know you have an ant problem?” I asked her.

“What?” She didn't sound particularly outraged. About either the ants or the mouse, now that I think about it. What's up with that?

From out of nowhere, Mom produced a spray bottle of insect poison and started spraying it randomly on the various boxes of crackers, cans of soup, and open cookie bags that were stuffed on the pantry shelves.

“What the hell!” I shouted and grabbed her arm. “Are you crazy? Good god, woman, that's your food!”

My mother retreated in a hurry, and I got down to the self-righteous business of clearing everything out of the pantry cupboard. My sister appeared from time to time with cardboard boxes to corral the stuff I pulled from the shelves. Among the items: half-used bags of brown sugar, two bags of loose generic puffed rice cereal, a bag of dusty granola, beat up box of stale graham crackers, half a can of baking powder, unopened jar of Tang (the astronaut's breakfast), and three bottles of corn syrup of various flavors and vintages. Three cans of chunky soup, four cans of tuna, a can of pears in syrup, and a can of water chestnuts. Unopened bag of white flour, unopened box of white sugar. Plus one can of pickled beets.

My sister loaded the boxes of stuff out to the patio, where she and Mom sorted, saved, and tossed. Meanwhile I washed down the shelves with some kind of cleaner, standing on a chair to reach the topmost shelf. I dried the shelves with a paper towel, and then I sprayed all the surfaces with the ant killer and shut the pantry door to let it steep.

We adjourned to the patio for a few minutes to regroup. Mom praised us. I apologized. My sister laughed. Some time later, when the pantry was dry, I laid down newspaper liners and loaded back the stuff they deemed worth saving, which took up about half the space it did before. Mom retired for a nap. My sister and I went out for coffee.

We didn't see the mouse again.

Let's make like squirrels and get flattened

Today the maternal parental unit and I went on our fifth and likely final tour of our local retirement community options. I prepared myself with a banana and a quick Epley maneuver on the floor of my apartment. (I'm getting good at it, after almost three weeks of incessant vertigo. Who knew life would come down to managing the rocking boat in my brain?)

Mom told me she was pretty sure she wouldn't be choosing this place (she didn't say why), but it was the last place on our list, and we aren't quitters. So off we went in unsettled spring weather to search out a parking place and meet the marketing director.

Nicole, a tall young brunette in a knit pantsuit and flat shoes ushered us into an office off the main foyer. First, she gave us the marketing collateral: a folder containing floor plans, pricing, amenities, map of the campus, activities calendar. Typical stuff. I zeroed in on the prices. A one-bedroom ran just over $2,500 a month. No big surprise. Meal credit of $150 per month. Jacuzzi, pool, hair salon, bank, computer room, chapel, weight room... typical stuff. Ho hum.

We sat at the requisite round conference table. “Do you have any questions?” Nicole asked my mother.

“What if I got a two-bedroom and had my daughter live with me?” Mom asked, gesturing in my direction. My heart fluttered a bit.

“We'd have to make an exception if she's under 55.”

I wasn't sure whether to feel flattered that Nicole thought I was under 55, or anxious that it was permissible that I could move into a retirement community, or terrified that my mother was actually considering having me move in with her. Somewhere along the way, something apparently has shifted in my mother's mind. I took a deep breath and tried to imagine living in a retirement community with my mother.

“A two-bedroom is $3,000 a month,” I ventured.

“Yeah, but we would split it,” said Mom.

“That's out of my league, Mom,” I said, laughing a little. Thinking to myself, we've now left earth. Approaching Planet Marjorie, galactic home of magical thinking. Normal rules do not apply.

“I just have one unit open to show you,” said Nicole, standing up. I think she realized then that we were looky-loos. “It's a deluxe one-bedroom apartment.”

“Do any of the one-bedrooms have bathtubs?” asked my mother.

“No, only the two bedrooms,” replied Nicole. That's when I realized, my mother doesn't want me, she wants the tub. Getting a two-bedroom and a roommate (caregiver) is the only way she'll get her coveted bathtub. The pieces clicked into place.

We took the tour, saw the one bedroom (spacious, airy, open, lots of storage). However, now that I've seen five places, I have developed some expectations. This place we toured today met most, exceeded a few (great location and village atmosphere), and fell short in one, namely, Nicole, after graciously explaining the options and showing us one apartment, failed to offer us a free lunch in the dining room. Mom and I were both surprised, but we decided to stay and pay for our own lunches, just to find out the quality of the food. Their dining room is open to the public, like a restaurant. We took a four-top near some other diners, clearly residents. A young Asian kid in a white shirt and tight black pants served us black coffee, and then we waited patiently for our server to take our order.

Mom looked perky in a red fleece jacket. She took off her white knit cap and multicolored knit gloves to eat. Don't get the wrong impression. Ladies in the 1940s, maybe even into the 50s, used to wear hats and gloves to lunch with friends at Yaws and Meier and Frank's tea room. My grandmother, maybe, but not my mother. She's not a tea room kind of gal.

I ate a cheese sandwich. She had a half a turkey sandwich and took a piece of cherry cobbler home with her in a bag. As we ate, I managed my vertigo and watched my mother eat her fruit with a knife and fork, thinking, I don't know anymore what kind of gal my mother is. She doesn't look like the mother I grew up with. This person is much smaller and thinner. Even her face looks different since the new teeth. She now has an endearing overbite. Actually, with her knit cap covering her wiry gray hair, she looks like a wrinkled 12-year-old with dentures. She's an adolescent who loses emails, phones, and car keys, an adolescent who assertively wrangles her old green Camry around corners even though she can barely reach the pedals.

She's upset that she's forgetting stuff and losing things. My mother, saddled early on with four kids and a domestically helpless husband, learned to be a master organizer. She managed all the schedules, made the lunches, albeit scowling resentfully, but the trains ran on time at our house. What I am saying is, her standards are high. You can imagine how she feels when she fails to meet her unreasonable standard now she's almost 86. She is scared. Her world is unraveling.

Old age is like riding a roller coaster in the dark (think Space Mountain). You can't get off. You can't see the track as it plunges into the abyss until you are screaming and falling. You are definitely not in control. You are along for the ride, hanging on for dear life, hoping that when the thing stops, they can pry your cold dead hands off the omigod bar. You don't get a do-over, and you can't go back even one inch, the only way out is forward full speed ahead. It does no good to drag your feet. All that means is you are a bystander as your life passes you by.

When we got back to her condo, I cleaned up Mom's cluttered computer desktop at her request, and explained that if she trashes an email, it's gone forever. She handed me the stack of marketing folders from all the places we've toured. “You won't lose them. I will,” she said. “Oh, and take this stuff with you, too.” She's jettisoning the extra clutter in her life. Her life is shrinking along with her spine. Meanwhile, the piles of clutter at my place continue to grow, a problem for another day.

As I drove away in the rain, a squirrel ran across the street in front of my car, straight under the wheels of the car coming toward me. Bam. It happened fast. I looked back in the mirror: the little body was in the street, not moving. The other driver had no idea he just crunched a squirrel. For a brief moment I imagined going back. What could I do for an injured or dead squirrel? The heavens opened up in a massive downpour. I kept going and finally made it back to the Love Shack. Fifteen minutes later, the sun came out.

I'm back... in the land of the upright, that is

Maybe my throbbing right inner ear knew that I meant business when I made a doctor's appointment. Maybe my ear decided to cooperate, knowing the gig was up. Whatever the reason, today I am gently swaying rather than violently swirling. That is a good thing. What am I talking about? Vertigo, baby. The silent dismemberer of intentions, the invisible destroyer of brain capacity, the soul-sucking energy vampire that overwhelms your brain with sneaky waves of fog and water. Ugh. It sounds horrible, doesn't it. It is horrible. I hear it's pretty common. I wonder how many people are laying on their kitchen floor tiles, puking into buckets, and hoping death will come for them soon.

Today, at last, the happy day of my doctor's appointment, and as all happy days do, this day dawned bright and clear. My main concern was that I should make it to the doctor's office without driving my car up on a curb or taking out someone's brand new Prius. My mother was supposed to be on standby to give me a ride if the ocean in my head turned stormy.

Luckily, I felt pretty okay, calm inner seas. I called my mother to notify her that her chauffeur services would not be required. She wasn't home. Later I found out she was out getting her hair cut.

I talk to myself a lot. Do you do that? For the past almost two weeks, I've been talking to my inner ear, berating it, begging it to behave, threatening to send it to the doctor. My ear, like all minor-league demi-gods, has responded by laughing. And then swamping my mental boat with 30-foot waves.

I know I'm giving free-agent characteristics to my inner ear, but I've spent so much time talking to it, I'm fairly sure it now has a rudimentary intelligence. If I listen very closely, I can hear it muttering something. Sounds like redrum, redrum. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't say that. I am officially hard of hearing in my right ear, according to the doctor's tuning fork. (I haven't seen a tuning fork since grade school. How cool are tuning forks?) If my ear said anything, I didn't hear it.

The doctor directed me to pinch my nose shut and blow, ten times a day. Apparently, I have a case of airplane ear, my sister says, who is the expert on world travel by plane. Who knew there was a name for that icky pressurized pain? As a special bonus gift from the universe, I also have chronic ear crackling, kind of a soapsuds-in-your-ear sound, which I can hear just fine, oddly enough, considering I'm almost deaf in that ear. I've had that for over a year.

“And you didn't see anybody for it?” the doctor asked, gazing at me quizzically. Subtext: WTF?

“No, I thought I would handle it the way my father handled his physical ailments: by eating 10 maple bars and doing bicep curls with 20-pound dumbbells.”

“And how well did that work out for him?”

“Not so good. He died from a heart problem he could have had fixed.”

I didn't really say that. I thought it, though. I did tell her that my father's cure for everything was to lift weights. She didn't look impressed. No doubt she could tell that I wasn't really following that regimen very closely. She prescribed an antihistamine. Take it for a month, she said. And she wrote a referral to an ENT specialist. I left feeling no less dizzy, but for some reason, much, much better.

I managed to glide through the grocery store, hanging onto the cart like an old lady with a walker, before going home and crashing into bed. In about 30 seconds, the tsunami flooded my brain. The elevator floor fell out, and down I went, going with the flow. Bring it on, I moaned. I waggled my head this way and that, trying the Epley Maneuver in a last ditch effort to wrest control back from my evil inner ear. Let 'er rip, I groaned. Do your worst. I waited until the waves receded to a gentle rocking. Then I went to sleep for two hours.

When I woke up, the fog was lifted. The waves had calmed. The mental boat is still gently rocking while I write this, but now I seem to have found my sea legs. I don't know what happened. Timing, probably. The evil little calcium crystals in my inner ear probably finally dissolved, or moved, or settled down, or whatever the hell they do when they are behaving, and I'm returned to my full upright and locked position. I have no idea what happened today. Any mystery with a happy outcome seems like a miracle. I'm not complaining. Yesterday sucked, and tomorrow may be a repeat of yesterday, but today I won the battle for my equilibrium. Yay me.

Sail on, sailor

This just in: getting old sucks. Where do I start? Well, let's start with the reason I haven't blogged this week. I'm sailing rough seas in a tiny boat. I'm on an elevator that sometimes goes sideways. What am I talking about? I've got one word for you: vertigo.

That's right. My right ear is infected, somewhere deep in darkest Africa. Tiny calcium crystals have shaken loose from their moorings and they are wreaking havoc among the delicate and sensitive and completely blameless little hairs and nerve endings that tell my brain that we are upright in a crazy world. I'm swaying, I'm staggering, I'm flailing from doorpost to chair back. This is a righteous drag. Although, looking on the bright side, I haven't puked yet.

I'm not going to write much today, because sitting at the keyboard makes it worse. Who knew typing was such a balancing act? Tiny motions, little movements of my head, my hands, and I'm swirling again. I can't find my place in time and space. I can feel my blood, though, crashing in my head. It's loud in here. Once again I discover the truth: my mind is trying to kill me.

I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, if I can last that long. And I have a 55,000-word paper between me and freedom. I almost turned it down, but it will pay my rent. Beggars, choosers. This is a torture I never imagined, editing with vertigo. I'd cry, but I need to hold my head still.

I have so much to catch you up on: At the top of the list is the ongoing saga of finding my mother a place to live. My sister is coming to town in two weeks. The siblings are going to be together, all four us, to discuss the situation with Mom. My poor old scrawny mother will probably feel like it's an intervention. Luckily, she is still a free agent: it's her money, her life, her last years. I hope she goes out fighting. But not with me, I don't want to be the caregiver she gifts with a black eye. Just so we are clear.

Meanwhile, my car is still going, my cat is still operational, the weather alternates between awesome and abysmal (it's spring in Portland). Everything has a new uncertainty these days, when vertical is no longer something to be taken for granted. A symptom of old age, so I read. I'd like to see this experience as a sign of my increasing wisdom, but I'm pretty sure I peaked in my 40s. Downhill from here, folks, in a hellish hand-basket.