The chronic malcontent muses while jogging: Don't try this at home

Today for the first time this spring, I put on my jogging togs and headed for Mt. Tabor Park. As I marched up the hill, I tried not to notice how tight my running shorts were or how my belly bulged over the waistband. I plodded up the main staircase, admiring my black polyester (or are they nylon) pants with the modest belled bottoms and racy white stripes, thinking these pants will be around until the apocalypse. I made it to the top of the staircase. I only had to pull the band of my sports bra out to give my lungs some room to expand twice on the way. Progress!

The cloud-filtered early afternoon sunlight was warm, and I was overdressed: long t-shirt, short jacket, long pants, baseball cap. Ready to start trotting. Any moment now.

Finally, I urged my legs to a trot, first trot of the season. Argh. I was aghast at how creaky my ankles and knees felt. The pain reminded me of my vegan debacle, from which I thought I had recovered. Mentally I reviewed my diet. Have I been eating enough protein? I've been doing protein smoothies almost every day, plus my usual eggs... hmmm. I heard Bravadita's voice in my head: Americans eat too much protein, more than they really need (those selfish hogs). So, add in my broccoli and maybe I'm getting 45 grams of protein a day? I don't think that's enough, sorry, Bravadita. My joints are telling me I need more protein. And probably more water, too.

As I trotted down and around the hill, feeling every little sinew between my hips and ankles, feeling every scraping bone and twinging muscle, I lamented the loss of strength, stamina, flexibility...and even as I lamented those prized assets, I knew if I really wanted them badly enough, I could get them back. At that point, gravity sucked my facial skin into a sinkhole somewhere around my knees and my brain along with it. Save that conundrum for a rainy day.

Still, I had to count my blessings: the vertigo was bad this morning, but it calmed down while I was finishing the final edits on a small job, an insubstantial treatise on the casual carpooling phenomenon now occurring in San Francisco. (Who knew! People are so amazing.) My jagged jogging didn't seem to stir the accursed ear rocks up much, I'm happy to say. I'm going to try not to move my head much while I type this and hope for the best.

After my choppy scoot down and around the road, I walked once around one of the reservoirs, admiring the deep green water, noting the occasional floating cup lid and tennis ball, and then headed up one of the dirt trails toward the northeastern flank of the mountain. As I walked, I began to feel sad, and then I remembered why sometimes I don't like to go walking: Walking gives me time to think, and when I have time to think, I feel sad.

First, I grieved the loss of my mother (she's not dead yet, she's actually doing better, but that doesn't stop me from indulging in the wreckage of the future). Then I grieved for the plight of people suffering at the hands of terrorists. Next, I grieved for the plight of animals suffering at the hands of mean people. Finally, I grieved for the plight of the planet, weighed down by humanity's greed and selfishness. All this grief I felt as I sauntered along the dirt paths wearing polyester (or nylon) pants, listening to an mp3 player that I charged with electricity generated by coal plants (and maybe some hydropower—this is the Pacific Northwest, after all). And now I'm blogging about my sadness while enjoying a cup of tepid coffee (think I'll heat it up in my microwave) and listening to Ultravox's Hiroshima Mon Amour on Window Media Player. Oh, how I suffer.

Pre-worrying solves nothing, but planning and action can help ease my fears about the future. I fear my mother's decline and eventual demise. I fear the impending earthquake and tsunami. I fear my landlord will evict me this summer so he can triple the rent and I'll have to move in with my mother. I fear my crappy car will croak; it's a Ford, after all—found on road dead. I fear I'll never finish my book (I'm almost done). I fear ridicule for my attempt to write a screenplay (but I submitted it to a contest anyway). I fear I'll soon be size extra fat instead of just medium fat (I still went jogging).

Nobody knows the future, except for the one thing we all know and don't want to talk about: We all will die. We don't know when, we don't know how, but we know we can't escape it. The essential, mind-blowing question is (and has always been), how do we want to live until we die? You know what they say: A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. Do I want to get to the end and realize I was a bystander in my own life? How many of us just trudge through our days without letting ourselves feel anything? I know that's what I do. I don't feel much rage anymore—I go straight to sorrow.

I don't like to feel sorrow, so I avoid feeling anything. But I've learned that the sun only comes out after I feel the sorrow, after I acknowledge the pain of living life, after I let myself feel the feelings. Then I can shrug, take a nap, have a blueberry smoothie, and get on with the business of living.

Happy anniversary to my vertigo: a year of imbalance

Just over a year ago, I woke up one morning with a new companion: Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) or just plain old vertigo. I leaned over to pick up a sock. Suddenly I felt like I was being hurled violently toward the ceiling, then back at the floor, then back at the ceiling. I quickly sat down and assessed the situation. Earthquake? No. Bus crash into the Love Shack? Nope. Had I somehow been dumped on a trampoline while I was sleeping? Nope. Conclusion: a localized disturbance has infiltrated my inner ears—aka, vertigo. Bummer!

For most people afflicted with vertigo, the cause is unknown. After doing some research online, I hypothesized that the ear crystals (ocotonia) in my middle ear canals had somehow come loose from their usual location (possibly from banging my head against the door jamb of my mother's car) and were now freely gallivanting around the canals on an extended sightseeing tour. Fun for my ear crystals, I presume; not so fun for me. As the ear rocks swirled, my sensitive ear nerves told me that up was down and down was up. The floor was spongy like a trampoline. I was flying!

Walking without falling over became a challenge. The inside of my head quivered constantly. In the beginning, before I learned how to live with the vertigo, I felt shaky and weak. People who saw me said I looked pale and ill.

Of course, I scoured the web resources for information. I read some disheartening tales: vertigo could last days, weeks, months, or years. Luckily, the type I had was subjective BPPV, not objective. That meant I felt like I was doing the moving, rather than feeling like the world was doing the moving. (The difference between the two is profound.) I learned about the Epley Maneuver, which uses head positions and gravity to entice the crystals to return to their proper location. I started treating myself in an amateur fashion several times an hour, desperately seeking a cure.

During the first month of my affliction, I visited a doctor, who said there were some exercises I could do to desensitize my ear nerves and gave me a referral to an ENT. The ENT put me in a space chair, twirled me over and around, and sent me out dizzier than I'd come in. Clearly, there would be no easy cure for me. I've come to believe I actually have roving ear rocks in both ears, which makes it more difficulty to treat with a gravity-based maneuver.

Sleeping was a challenge. Lying flat on my back caused waves of pressure to roil through my head. I could map the ocean of fluid in my ears as the waves sloshed slowly back and forth, front and back. I was on a boat, but the boat was in my head, rocking on waves that scraped the inside of my forehead like surf on a rocky coastline. The waves felt loud, but were silent, like a wall of soundless air pressure lacking actual decibels. I couldn't make out any noise, but I was bludgeoned every time I tilted my head back even slightly. (No more crying to heaven for me.) Sleeping on my side after performing the Epley on my head seemed to help. I confess, I wasn't willing to sleep sitting upright for the 48 hours recommended by some practitioners.

Over the summer, I fought the vertigo by staying active, determined to outlast it. I went running to spite it. I found out jogging was more comfortable than walking. I guessed that jogging kept the crystals floating above the nerves; they came back down with a vengeance soon after I slowed to a walk. As fall swept in, I stopped running, and then stopped walking. As the air got colder, I didn't want to move much, because movement stirred the sludge in my ears.

Winter came; my vertigo and I reached an uneasy truce. I agreed not to move, and it subsided to a dull but silent roar. There were a few good days interspersed with the tedious unbalanced days. The trampoline walk gradually calmed. As the months went by, I gained some weight, but I began to think maybe the vertigo was starting to fade.

Enter this spring. Almost a year to the day I first felt the vertigo symptoms, I suddenly was back in the rocking boat. Surfs up!

The ocean in my head has been active these past few weeks. My hope is that this activity means the winter sludge in my ears has finally broken up, like Arctic ice in the spring, and the crystalline icebergs in my ears are on the move. I do the Epley whenever the symptoms threaten to swamp me. I hope the waves are starting to calm. They are intense, but don't last as long, leading me to imagine fewer crystals are touring my ear canals. I wish the cruise would finally end, but like any cruise, you get on and you don't get off till it's over.

I've tried to frame this year as a metaphor for the imbalance of my life, but after a while, day after day, it's hard to buy in to the notion that things are any more precarious than usual. The same conundrums plague me; maybe by now they've lost their capsizing potential. Mom lives. I struggle. Life goes on, tra la la. If my metaphysical imbalance were responsible for my vertigo, it ought to have dissipated by now, because after a while imbalance becomes the new normal.

Vertigo doesn't have to mean anything, symbolically speaking. Last year, I hit my head on a car door jamb, which probably knocked loose some ocotonia, which settled into sludge in my inner ear over the winter. Gradually, my body will assimilate the annoying little travelers. Eventually, most likely, the cruise will end. The ocotonia will head back to port and stay there, and I'll be able to do things other people do, like lean forward and backward. Like sleeping flat on my back. Like dancing (when no one is watching, of course) and jogging and walking... things I used to take for granted, not realizing how precious they were.

A life in the day of the maternal parental unit

Earlier this week, I took my maternal parental unit to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Maybe I should say tooth cleaning. I think she only has one or two still holding down the fort in her jaw. (She reminds me a lot of Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies.) When we walked in the door at the clinic, a horde of white-haired old ladies sat around the waiting room, attended by walkers and canes. My mother marched up to the window, muscled one old gal aside, and pulled a wad of knitted blanket out of a paper shopping bag.

“Here's what I've been working on!” she declared in her foghorn smoker's voice. For a second, I got a glimpse of what my mother used to be like before dementia started to narrow her world.

The two receptionists and a hygienist rushed over to admire her work. A few patients toddled over to look, too. Mom has been knitting lap robes (or baby blankets?) out of leftover yarn. She donates her handiwork to a charity. Her color sense is unique. I have a particular garish blanket I'm rather fond of: orange and red stripes. Whatever you are picturing, it's worse. Today's blanket was tame by comparison: lavender, purple, turquoise, plus a variegated yarn that mixed all three colors. Stripes, of course. I think that's all she can remember how to knit.

“It's beautiful,” gushed Amy, the receptionist. Then she winked at me. I wasn't sure what that meant: It's ugly? Your mom is the bomb? I shrugged my shoulders, as if to say: I know? I don't know, this nonverbal body language is like Greek sometimes.

The door to the inner sanctum opened. The smiling young hygienist was ready to take Mom back for her cleaning. I was astounded: With all these people waiting, she walks in the front door, and the entire place rolls out the red carpet for her? No waiting, plus heaps of praise...I guess there are a few benefits to being 86.

While Mom was having her two teeth polished, I went to the store nearby to forage for food for myself. I bought my usual four vegetables: onions, zucchini, broccoli, and mushrooms. I got some cauliflower for good measure, and then, because I was feeling peaked and stressed, I got some organic chicken breast and a package of organic beef chunks. I don't eat beef very often, maybe once or twice a year. I heard Dr. Tony's maniacal laughter in my head: eat beef, it's good for you! This is the same guy who thought back-to-back colonics was the answer to all life's problems. (I'm here to tell you, it's not.) Beef, though, might have some nutrients I could use. I loaded up my bag of groceries and went back to the dental clinic to pick up Mom.

I was early, or she was late, so I had time to sit in the empty waiting room and wonder how long my groceries could survive in a closed car in intermittent sunshine. Eventually I heard my mother's voice coming closer. I pulled out her checkbook and paid her bill. As I wrote the check for $151 (with the discount), I thought, they should charge her by the tooth. By rights, the bill ought to be about $44. But dental school loans are massive, I know. And all those dental hygienists who went to those nasty for-profit career colleges will be paying on their loans for the rest of their lives. Someone's gotta help them, I guess. Might as well be the elderly... let 'em feel useful.

She lollygagged, saying goodbye to everyone. Who knows if she'll still be alive in six months? Hugs all around. As we were strolling out the door, she turned and said, “Let's stop at Bi-Mart. I need some bath soap.”

At Bi-Mart, she was waylaid by the displays of flowering annuals, arranged enticingly in the sun along the path to the door. She told me to grab a cart. I followed her along the wall of flowers, thinking about the $30 worth of chicken and beef sweltering in the trunk of my car and looking at her scrawny backside, noticing her thrift store denim jeans were at least two sizes too big for her tiny frame. Her pant legs seemed to be two different lengths. Her butt, hidden in folds of faded blue denim, looked like a little round rock. Suddenly, trundling after my scrawny pepperjack mother seemed hysterically funny. For a moment, everything aligned and life was good.

Boring story short, eventually I dropped her off and made it home. The meat was fine. I made beef stew and ate it with mixed feelings: I wish my health did not depend on occasionally eating the cooked flesh of dead animals. And boy, did that stew taste good.

The chronic malcontent is starting to drool

This evening I was sitting in a meeting, reading out loud to a small group from a list on a piece of paper, and I found myself slurring some words. As I was reading, my mind was galloping along a well-worn path: Am I having a stroke? Are my teeth falling out? Is my hind-brain dragging? Have I gotten so lazy I can't be bothered to enunciate anymore?

My mouth suddenly felt uncommonly soupy. My dental hygienist, Debbie, often praises me on the amount of saliva I manage to generate, so it could be I was feeling overly energetic in the saliva department. Should I surreptitiously attempt to wipe the spit off my lip with my mittened hand? No, that would be gross. Like anyone is watching... is anyone watching?

In a split second, my brain had split in three: one part was reading, one part was observing me reading, and the third part was wondering if I was going to burst into hysterical laughter at any moment. I managed to make it through the reading with a semblance of a Mona Lisa smile. Finally, it was someone else's turn to read. I settled back in my chair and bent my head to my notebook. I started sketching furiously. A face, a drooping mouth...What the heck was going on?

Sometimes I stammer when I get self-conscious. It sometimes occurs when I listen to myself reading out loud. My level of self-awareness rises to such a pitch, I begin to pay excruciatingly close attention to my voice. The usual ticker tape of self-judgment begins to roll through the screen at the bottom of my mind: Do I sound like an idiot? I hate my voice. Am I mumbling? My lips are falling off! I can't breathe! Invariably, when I get to that point, I fumble the reading because I'm turning blue from lack of oxygen.

This rant reminds me of the time I entered a Toastmaster's contest during finals week in college. In front of 100 people, I bungled my speech. It was without a doubt the most humiliating moment of my life, still guaranteed to break me out in a cold sweat if I think too deeply about it.

I'm beginning to see a common thread here. It's my old enemy, self. Not the good guy self, as in self-care and self-realization, but the bad guy self, as in self-obsession, self-recrimination, and self-centeredness. Oh, those pesky selves. Wherever you go, there they are. There's no escaping them! I picture them as fleabitten little monkeys, wearing ratty red vests and fezzes, bashing cymbals in my eardrums at all hours. Hey, maybe that's where this vertigo is coming from. (I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary of the first time I felt the vertigo, in case you are tracking. Which I'm not.)

Speaking of things there is no escaping: The ants are back. After a relatively ant-free winter, the hordes have returned. Luckily, I am not unprepared, thanks to the advice of my good friend, Carlita. I laid down my defenses some weeks ago (anti-ant spray). The desiccated carcasses of dead ant soldiers litter the counter under the window. Ha ha. But the scouts are somehow finding a way through my defenses and onto my shirt, where they make a run for the top of the hill (my head). They rarely get further than the back of my neck. Although last night one spent a few minutes speeding round the rim of my eyeglasses before I caught him and flung him in the brig.

Hey, I wonder if there is a spray to eliminate the overwhelming sense of self I'm sometimes feeling? Some kind of anti-self spray. Guaranteed to relieve you of the bondage of self. Wow, if I could bottle that, I bet I could make a fortune. Hey, you heard it here first!

For those who say they can't...

If you've read my blog before, you know I spend a lot of time whining about stuff. As a self-obsessed chronic malcontent, it doesn't matter what it is, I can whine about it. I can whine about how my mother's dementia is turning her brain to mush, I can whine about the crummy Ford Focus I bought because I didn't want to shop anymore, I can whine about editing the papers of dissertators who have clearly balked at reading the style manual. Really, everything is a candidate for whining in my world. Lately, I've been whining a mantra along the lines of I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.

What does it refer to? Hey, thanks for asking. When I whine that I can't do it, I mean I've come to the end of my rope, I've hit the wall, the camel's back is shattered, and the fat lady is singing. It's a cry to heaven: I can't do it! Fill in the blank, whatever it is, I can't do it! Maybe I used to be able to do it, but no more. No can do.

I found myself whining this mantra today when my maternal parental unit (which really needs to go back to the factory on Clelldor for servicing) invited herself along on a shopping trip I hadn't planned.

“I need some baking soda,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“And some other things. Do you think we could go to Freddy's?”

Normally, I would be quite willing, but today I was scrambling to finish editing two chapters of a challenging dissertation, and I wasn't entirely certain I would be able to submit the file by the 6 PM deadline. My first thought was to cry, I can't do it! But Mom comes first, so I said okay and picked her up at 10:30. I took time to make some coffee and swallow a few gulps, but no time to make breakfast or eat it.

“You're late,” she said, assembling her going-out gear: cigarette case, lighters, gloves, cell phone case. “I thought I got the day wrong.”

“Sorry, Mom. Got your list?”

I drove the few blocks to the supermarket and parked. The wind was chilly; it was raining, but not hard. Just a typical crappy spring day in Portland. I let her manage her own exit from the car while I grabbed two grocery bags from the back seat, thinking to myself, it's good for her to maneuver independently for as long as possible, right? And wondering how I would explain to my siblings if she accidentally slammed the door on one of her twig-like legs.

We made it into the store without mishap. I pulled a small grocery cart from the stack of carts and let her go before me so I could pick up whatever detritus fell from her pockets as she walked. (I've learned that one the hard way.) Slowly we trundled through the aisles: baking soda, applesauce, chicken, ice cream, fresh fruit, one potato. I thought, no problem, we'll be out of here in 20 minutes.

In the produce department, I tried not to recognize Marge and Linda, relatives from my father's side of the family, shopping for broccoli. Marge is 94. Her daughter Linda is 66. I didn't know that, but as our two old mothers stood bleating at each other, Linda and I commiserated about the care of elderly maternal parental units and the prospects for our own futures, and in the course of the conversation, we both disclosed our ages.

Linda didn't sound like she's that worried about her old age. I figured it out: Linda has a husband, children, and grandchildren. In the struggle to beat old age, she'll be in the winner's circle. Me, I'll be working till I die penniless and alone. That's my health plan and retirement plan, conveniently packaged into one.

You can't rush two old ladies who are trying to touch base even though they can't hear what the other one is saying. I remarked at how similar the two looked: shrunken, tiny, wrinkled, bright-eyed skeletons. I didn't try to listen to their conversation, but I have an inkling of what it was probably about on Mom's side. For years, Marge has lived at the big retirement community Mom moved to temporarily over the summer—the “warehouse for old people”—so I'm pretty sure Mom was explaining to Marge why she didn't stay for long at that retirement village, opting instead to move back to her condo. That's the move that precipitated the steep mental decline, as you may recall, leaving me and my siblings with a strangely different mother.

Eventually I scanned and bagged the eight items in the basket and paid for them with my mother's debit card. Then we went over to the in-store jewelry department to get her watchband repaired. That only took five minutes, and Mom fretted impatiently on my behalf so I didn't have to. Then she complained about having to pay $10.00 to the guy for the repair. I wanted to scream, I can't do this anymore, but I didn't. We got the watch. I let her lead the way out of the store.

Here's the thing about whining that I can't do it anymore. It's bulls--t. Clearly, I can do it, because I keep on doing it, despite my whining. Until I'm unconscious or dead, or until I choose something different, I am doing this. That is irrefutable evidence that I can.

You know what they say about those who can't, right? Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Besides sounding a bit snarky, that saying might not really be accurate. Doing and teaching are sometimes the same thing, and the line between can and can't isn't always clear.

The chronic malcontent circles the drain

My sister is in town this week from Boston. She's staying at our mother's condo. We ordered Chinese food from a local favorite restaurant, and I picked up the food on my way over to visit and have another “family discussion” about the maternal parental unit who is the center of our orbit.

Darkness is especially dark when it's raining. I suppose it doesn't help that my eyes don't work as well after dark. Still, I managed to avoid hitting the pedestrians who scrambled across 82nd Avenue in pitch black night, heading for the bus stop. Victory for me. And them.

At the restaurant, the woman behind the counter said she'd be right back with my order. While I waited, a young Chinese man handed me a nickel and pointed at the tabletop fountain on the counter.

“Make a wish,” he said.

“What? A wish?” I said in confusion.

“Yeah, make a wish for me.”

I studied him. It occurred to me that perhaps he was a slow thinker. His voice sounded a bit slurred. But his smile was open and genuine, despite some broken teeth. He looked mid-20s, not very tall, and pretty well dressed. He didn't smell. He looked like someone's goofy kid brother.

“Okay,” I said. I took the nickel from his fingers and held it poised over the fountain. I said the first thing that came into my mind. “May you have many friends.”

He smiled. “Then what do I do?” he asked.

“Be a good friend,” I said and dropped the coin into the fountain. I sat down on the bench by the door. He grinned and sat down next to me, maybe just a little too close. It occurred to me, maybe he's not mentally slow, maybe he's on drugs.

“Is he bothering you?” The woman behind the counter sounded concerned. “Your order's almost ready.”

“Thanks, no, he's fine,” I said.

“She doesn't like me,” the kid said to me.

“Why? Are you making trouble?” I asked him.

“She doesn't want to talk to you,” said the woman, looking angrily at the kid.

“Maybe you ought to move on,” I suggested gently to the kid.

“Your order's ready,” the woman said, holding up a white plastic bag.

“I just want something to eat,” the kid said.

I thought, uh-oh, homeless, hungry, and on drugs. I thought of the money I had on me, wondered if I should give him some money to buy food. Then I thought, no, the woman would probably not appreciate my altruistic gesture if it meant he wouldn't go away. I sat paralyzed for probably a full 10 seconds, staring at the smiling Buddha sitting smugly on a shelf behind the counter, thinking through the scenarios. Finally, I stood up and handed the woman my mother's debit card to pay for the order. The kid stood up and went back to the fountain.

I did nothing. I paid for the order, turned my back on the whole thing, and went out into the rain.

Later, after dinner, after cigarettes, my brother and I were getting antsy to be gone. My sister got the drift. She wrangled Mom from her bat cave and computer games and enticed her to sit on the couch. Time for the family discussion. Oh boy, said the pot stirrer.

“We want to get a sense of where you are at in your plans to stay in the condo or move to a care home,” I said loudly, speaking at my mother across my brother. She's conveniently hard of hearing sometimes. From a certain angle, I noticed her head looked like a skull with very little skin, an animated skull. Weird.

“I want to stay here at least for the summer,” Mom said. “You can check out the places and if we find one we like, I might consider moving in the fall.”

Of course, it took many more words, shrugs, interruptions, questions, comments, and eye rolls (on my part) to arrive at that conclusion. I'm giving you the abridged version to protect your delicate sensibilities. You are welcome. So, that was the gist of the discussion. No surprise. Nothing's changed. Essentially, she wants to stay put until she can't function anymore.

It's all good, right? I think it's good for her to speak her decision out loud, so she can hear that it's her decision, not ours. It's good for her to feel that her children are actually listening to her. It's good for her children to get a sense of how her world is shrinking inward, narrowing in scope and depth, like a baby planet nucleus imploding on itself.

There probably will be less and less flexibility, less tolerance for ambiguity, less willingness to learn new skills. I expect to see her desire to manage and control increase as she tries to keep things from unraveling. I expect to feel increased frustration and fear, which I predict I will mostly manage to keep hidden from my mother as I dump on my siblings to relieve the pressure.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. I could get hit by a garbage truck tomorrow. Unlikely, but possible. You know what they say: Don't count your chickens... until they tear your lips off.

The chronic malcontent has an epiphany about mindfulness

I have epiphanies about as often as I vacuum my carpet, which is to say, about once or twice a year, so when they happen, I try to milk them for all they are worth. Ditto when I vacuum. I roll around on the floor for months afterward, reveling in the absence of cat barf. Lately I've had a spate of little revelations related to the meaning of life and death, nothing really earth shattering, you know, just realizations along the lines of you can't take it with you, so you might as well dump it all now.

In certain circles (of which I am on the periphery, like when I was a barely tolerated 15-year-old lurking among the fringe loonies orbiting the center hall socialites), it seems I hear words like mindfulness with some frequency. Mindful seems to toddle along with words like right thinking, right livelihood, that sort of thing. It's very Zen. I don't know much about all that meditation yoga chi chi hoohaw, so I won't offer an opinion. But my epiphany is related to mindfulness, so if I'm going to write about it, it's quite likely you'll see me roll an eye or two, if you happen to be watching. Which I hope you aren't, because the place is a mess. I need to vacuum.

I've been worrying lately that I'm not mindful enough. What does that even mean? Thanks for asking. I'm not really sure. Suddenly I'm dumbfounded: I have been stewing and fretting, wondering if I should be pursuing mindfulness without fully knowing what it actually is. That's just nuts, when I think about it. That's like saying yes, please, I'd like a full glass of retsina without sipping someone else's first.

What does mindfulness mean to you? What words come to mind when you are feeling mindful? (Har har.) The word mind is starting to look odd as I'm typing it. Am I misspelling mind? (Would you mind?) Whoa. Suddenly I'm feeling a wave of vertigo. What is going on? My mind is trying to kill me. Let's assume it's a hot flash of creativity and move on, shall we?

Back to mindfulness. At first, I thought mindful meant being hyper self-aware. I've heard people say, “When I swim [or run or dance or make art], I'm fully present.” I think they are referring to a type of mindfulness, a feeling of being aware of being in one's skin. Wow, that's so meta. They swear they feel one with the universe, whatever that means. Even though they look like nerds with their goofy swim goggles. We are all just tiny specks, how can we be one with the universe? The universe is really big. Whatever. Anyway, I thought, it's one of those Zen things. After meditating for an hour, eat some rice cakes with soy butter and wash it down with wheat grass. Like that.

I wonder, why would anyone want to be that self-aware? Isn't life excruciating enough as it is? I do all I can to avoid feeling fully present. A normal person can't take a lot of self-awareness. That's what pork rinds and Pepsi are for, to dull the roar, so you can function. Am I right? Maybe that's why most Americans are getting fat. They are rebelling against being mindful.

Back to my epiphany. Here's what I think about mindfulness. I think mindfulness is just another form of self-obsession. Yep. I said it. It's out there now. What do I mean? Well, take mindful eating. People who don't read novels or newspapers while they eat are sneaks. They could interrupt you at any second with some inane comment about how delicious their organic potatoes are. Like I care. I'm reading, for god's sake!

They count their chews, they count their steps, they count their pennies, maybe all that weighing and measuring is all just self-obsession, masquerading as self-awareness. Whoa, am I going to get it from my Zen yoga junkie friends. I just basically called them all self-obsessed wackjobs.

There's another part to my epiphany. I can't share it with you, though, because if I do, it will lose its magic. When you have a really great idea, you should nurture it for awhile before you share it. That's how you help the magic grow. But I will say this: It's the opposite of being mindful, and it does not involve pork rinds.

The chronic malcontent goes up the country

Today I drove my mother out into the country for Cousin Dave's memorial gathering. I took I-84 to US 30 and cut up Newberry Road just past the little town of Linnton. We expected rain, but it was intermittently sunny. I wore sunglasses. The roads were dry. The car ran fine. I found the Grange Hall without getting lost. As we came around the bend, I could see we were late. Cars and huge trucks lined the gravel road in front of the building.

“I'll drop you off,” I said to Mom and pulled up in front. She maneuvered out of the car and almost fell over as she tried to slam the car door. “Slippery,” she said. She wobbled toward the building.

I crossed my fingers, drove back onto Skyline, and found a spot a couple hundred yards along in a pullout. I parked, spent a moment hoping nobody would come round the curve and wipe out into my car, and walked back along the gravel road to the hall. The air was refreshingly brisk. I smelled spring. I pulled out my camera as I walked. Water gurgled in a gully but I couldn't see anything beneath the lush greenery. An open meadow past the row of parked cars glistened brilliant green, soggy wet against a backdrop of fir trees.

A group of unfamiliar men stood near the door, chatting. One guy said something about Dave elk hunting in eastern Oregon. I didn't linger to introduce myself. I am not a hunter. I gave them a weak finger wave and one of those smiles that I hope said, I don't know you, we share a loss, but not a huge loss, because I was only a cousin, and I'm guessing you guys are work buddies, and the sun is shining so how bad could it be?

Inside the grange hall, people milled about, talking loudly and carrying paper plates of food. Cookies, crock pot meatballs bristling with toothpicks. Across a big open space of beige linoleum, I spotted both my brothers and my sister-in-law. My mother was lost in the crush. About five long folding tables covered with blue paper tablecloths had been set up in a row, blocking access to a display of photos. Children of all sizes and genders, mostly blonde, ran screaming among the adults.

Someone had created a huge photo poster of Dave's life, pasting photos on multiple sheets of poster board, captioning each one by hand. I recognized none of the photos. Dave was a stranger to me, I realized. There were no photos of family Christmases that included my family (although I have some from our elementary school days). I felt sad to realize that I grew up distant from my cousins, even though we lived in the same city. For a tiny second, I blamed my mother. Then I realized that we all lived full, busy lives. Across the city might as well be on another planet when you are a kid. Even after we grew up, the only time I saw my cousins was on rare occasions when I was visiting from California and they happened to be visiting my parents. Once, maybe twice. The next generation of cousins once-removed appeared and grew up without me. Now there are twice-removed cousins running around.

Some people are close to their cousins. Not me. Much as I adore my girl cousin, our lives rarely intersect. She's busy with a full-time job, traveling, a relationship, and I'm busy in my cave doing this. I don't even know my boy cousins.

I wandered and took pictures. Two framed paintings perched on table easels, one of a country cabin and one of an elk standing on a ridge. A set of antlers took up most of a side table, elk presumably. I wouldn't know. I do know the owner of those antlers is almost certainly deceased. A large flat-screen computer monitor showed a slideshow of photos of Dave and his kids and grand-kids. His eldest daughter sat on a bench by the wall, watching the slides and weeping.

I was ready to go when my mother gave me the high sign.

“I would use the restroom, but I don't like the look of those stairs,” she said. The restrooms were in the basement. The stairs were steep and many. Carpeted, though, which might save old bones from ruin. Still, I didn't argue.

“Just as long as you don't mess up my car.”

I walked out into the sunshine to fetch my car. The sons and daughters of my cousins were standing around in groups. My cousins once-removed. I waved and pointed to my car, which I'm sure was perfectly translatable as I'm going to fetch my car because my mother can't walk that far. I walked on, breathing in the spring air. It could be fake spring; we get that a lot here in February. Crocuses bloom, and then bam!—snowstorm. But it's an el nino year and the hottest on record besides. I think winter is over.

As we pulled out of the parking area, I noticed my mother digging through her many pockets. She does this frequently. It usually means something got lost: a glove, sunglasses, cell phone.

“What are you looking for?”

“I thought I saved my cigarette butts,” she said. “But now I can't find them. Guess I threw them away.” My mother, the perfect guest: she packs 'em in, she smokes 'em, she packs 'em out.

I smelled burned ash and started coughing.

“You aren't on fire, are you? I don't have a fire extinguisher.”

She laughed. I wasn't joking; no fire extinguisher. I let it go, figuring if she were on fire, we'd find out soon enough.

On the way back, the smell of burned cigarettes was overpowering. I rolled my window down a bit and tried to breathe through my mouth.

The chronic malcontent takes a philosophical view

I've been dreaming lately of escape. Hitting the road, leaving it all behind, taking a geographical. Even though I know that wherever I go, there I'll be, I still want to take myself someplace else. I'm not sure where exactly. I haven't done more than choose a direction: south.

My friend Bravadita has used her recent brush with death as a metaphysical platform from which to launch a tiny house. She's collecting sinks and things, immersed in the process of crafting a new life from the inside out, from the ground up. I'm guessing the actions she takes toward building her pint-sized dream house help her tolerate her crappy day job. I want to get some of that.

The maternal parental unit has now declared her intention to stay in her condo as long as possible. I interpret that to mean until she falls, breaks a hip, has to go into rehab, and from there, into an adult care home. I don't say that to her. I say, I support you in your desire to stay independent as long as possible. I work daily at being a good daughter.

She changes her mind weekly. I try to keep up.

Today Mom took a cab to a doctor's appointment about two miles from her home. She arranged it by phone ahead of time. I kept my fingers crossed this morning, as I waited by the phone, in case she needed a ride home. I was fretting a little bit. I was acting like a parent whose child had gone to school on the school bus for the first time.

I called her around noon, wondering what I would do if she'd gone AWOL. Wanted! Scrawny old lady wandering in NE Portland. If seen, do not approach. Call authorities. I imagined my tiny twig mother getting into the cab of a semi-truck, bound for Ojai with a load of lettuce. Breaker, breaker in a deep smoker's voice.

She answered the phone. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“How did it go?” I asked (on your first day on the school bus).

“The driver who took me home was quite nice,” she said. “A lot nicer than the one who picked me up.” The customer has spoken. Are you listening, cab company? I doubt it. Nobody cares what old ladies think.

“I'm glad you made it home safe,” I said.

“I'm going to eat lunch and take a nap,” she said and hung up the phone. I felt some of my tension ease. Maybe this is a good sign. Mom can take a cab.

My brother is adamant that Mom should move into a care home, the sooner the better.

“You want her to be safe,” I said with compassion.

“Yes!”

“Even if that means she's not happy.”

“Yes!” Well, he didn't actually say that, but he meant it.

I felt the same way up until a few weeks ago, when I started to shift more toward the happy camp. I'm sensing my family is trapped in a four-quadrant decision window. What's that, you wonder? Thanks for asking. It's a quadrant with four choices: safe but not happy, happy but not safe, not happy and not safe, or happy AND safe. Of course, we say we want happy AND safe, but truthfully, Mom prefers happy not safe, and the children lean toward safe not happy. As long as Mom is competent, she can do what she wants. Up to and including getting into semi-trucks with strange truckers.

I don't trust my feelings on any of this. It's like when I hear someone who clearly has an eating disorder declare, “I can have bread everyday. I just have to manage it.” Like when an alcoholic says, “I can have a beer once in a while. I can handle it.”

It used to be I would see family at weddings. I stopped getting wedding invitations years ago, after the cousins of my generation had kids and then grand-kids. Now I can see what's coming: I'll be seeing my cousins at funerals. What's left of us, that is. On Saturday I'm taking Mom to a grange hall in the country for Cousin Dave's memorial service. I imagine it will feel as bleak as the graveside service did, except for indoors.

A pollster called me this evening from a 555 number. Is that even possible? I thought it was Windows Technical Support again. I started preparing my strategy as soon as I heard a young woman speaking with a clipped British-Indian accent.

“I'm not trying to sell you anything and I won't ask for a contribution or a donation,” she reassured me. It was almost time for iZombie, but I sighed and agreed to be polled.

Most of the survey was about two bond measures, one to raise money for schools and the other to raise money to build affordable housing for seniors. As I struggled to translate her accent, I thought to myself, it's pretty silly to expect people to quickly come up with thoughtful responses on such important issues. I did my best to answer, though. Definitely yes, somewhat yes, undecided lean yes, not at all convincing. It was entertaining to hear her pronounce Oregon Orreezhjan. I almost stopped her to ask where she was calling from. Deepest darkest Atlanta, probably. Or Austin. The heart of call center country.

Mostly I was grateful that that wasn't my job, to call weary people at 8:30 at night. 10:30 central time zone. In the background was the buzz of many voices. It sounded a lot like the buzzy background of the Windows Technical Support cretins who've been calling me three times a day for the past month.

Today the scammers left me alone. I can hardly believe it. Maybe it's because I asked the young man how he could live with himself, knowing he was breaking the law, taking advantage of people with a heartless scam. Probably not. One can hope.

Fool on a hill

I've only been to Skyline Memorial Cemetery once, with Mom to direct me, some years ago, so I wasn't sure I would find the place. The clouds were low over the West hills of Portland. The road was socked in with fog. I almost missed the sign. Luckily, I had viewed the place from satellite the night before (Google Earth!), so I knew that the funeral home office was just off the second driveway. I was 20 minutes early on purpose. I figured I'd use the restroom, get a map, and sneak into the periphery of the group somewhere near the grave site, if I could find it.

As it turned out, the family was gathering in the lobby of the funeral home office. The former wife of my youngest cousin was already there. We recognized each other, which for me is a big deal, for her, probably not so much. Still, she seemed glad to see me, and I was glad to see her. I like her. When I came out of the candlelit restroom, I greeted her with a hug. I was conscious of the degree of my social enthusiasm and wondered if I should dial it back a bit. Not that I'm so flamboyantly social, I've met her what, five times in 30 years? But it was a funeral. Well, at least I wore black.

People I didn't recognize came in out of the damp fog. In my cloud of social anxiety, I was just barely conscious of my awareness that most of them in my generation were overweight and obviously colored their hair. And they all looked so old. What happened to us? Dave was only 61; that seems so young to me. It occurred to me as I was standing awkwardly trying to keep an appropriately sad but welcoming look on my face, that I probably looked just as old and decrepit to them as they did to me. WTF.

I realized that some of the strangers were actually grownup children of my cousins, towing their own young daughters and sons. Some of the faces I may have seen once at a barbecue a few years back, at my aunt's 75th birthday. Seems like ancient history now. My memory fails me daily. Names and faces... like my mother, I am learning to fake it.

The funeral home assistant, a tall heavy young woman dressed in a parka and black leggings, perked up as soon as Cousin Dave's wife arrived. I could see her move into a brisk-but-sympathetic let's-get-this-show-on-the-road mode. I tried to model my face after her expression. Nobody noticed.

“If you want to drive your car to the site, just follow the truck.” She didn't have to say which truck. We all knew: The truck with the casket hanging out the back. I can only imagine what it was like to drive that truck from the house to the cemetery. Did they hang a festive red flag on the end of the casket? Would any nearby drivers realize that there was an embalmed body, sans a few organs, resting in the box? Now there's a plot for a story...

Someone murmured something about walking. That sounded good to me, and apparently to many others. We swarmed out the door into the drippy fog and walked in small groups out to the parking lot. My aunt came over, a tiny shred of an old woman wearing an eye-watering hot fuchsia windbreaker. I think my mother might actually have a pound or two over my aunt. (My aunt has always competed to be thinnest.)

She gave me a long, uncomfortable hug. Her eyebrows barely reached my chest. I'm not sure where she was looking—at my jacket, I guess. I stared off across the parking lot, patting her back, realizing belatedly that I was actually holding her up. I waited for her weight to transfer back onto her tiny feet and extricated myself from her embrace.

An exotic long-haired young woman came over and gave me a hug. Who...?

“I'm Julie,” she said in a choked voice. Oh, right. Julie. My brain scrambled, trying to unravel the family tree on the spot. Dave's second daughter. Oh, right. She just lost her father. Bummer.

My brother and his girlfriend were there, two familiar faces. The small crowd walked in groups up a small rise. As we crested the hill, a cold wind attacked. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical 40° damp wind we all know as Portland winter. We all huddled into our scarves and trudged onward.

Not far along the road was the mausoleum wall. About 20 yards below the road, a backhoe and a little pickup filled with gravel were parked on the muddy grass. An empty bier stood waiting for the casket. I presumed the bier hid the open grave beneath. Hey, I've seen funerals on TV, I know what's what. Pretty soon, six men of varying ages struggled into view, carrying the wooden casket across the slippery grass. I recognized Dave's two brothers and Dave's son. I thought of all the things that could go wrong, but they settled the box on the bier without mishap. 

I hovered on the periphery as about 30 people clustered around, facing a bearded guy wearing black and holding a book. Minister, pastor? Four members of the grounds crew waited respectfully nearby. One was a blond woman wearing enormous black gloves. I imagined they were itching to get back to backhoeing and spreading gravel.

As if on cue, as the minister led the crowd in the first of several prayers, the fog began to lift. The view was impressive. Far across the valley, sunlit glimmered on a section of the Willamette River. Dave's other daughter stood up to make some brief remarks. Fifteen minutes later, the wind was cutting through my jacket. Small children were crying out loud, the adults were sniffling into tissues, partly from grief, partly from the biting wind, and I was ready to bail.

After another prayer, a young girl stood by the box and faced the assembled group to sing an a capella hymn. The first stanza had everyone moaning and sobbing. So cute! So sweet. By the third stanza, people were starting to shift around in the mud and pull their scarves around their necks. By the fifth stanza, she was still going strong. Where's Monty Python when you need him? I gazed off over the open fields of the cemetery below, inching away from the mourners (prayer and hymns have that effect on me), and watched a crow fight off a hawk over our heads. The hawk kept circling, aloft on the wind, and lazily drifted away toward some distant trees. The crow returned to a tree near the mausoleum, the winner, for now.

The story should end here for effect, but life is so strange. The grounds crew lifted a white plastic cover and placed it over the casket. Unfortunately, the cover did not fit over the box. My youngest cousin, Dave's younger brother, had built the box himself with the assistance of Dave's son. He was standing next to me as we watched the dilemma unfold.

“Twenty-four inches tall and twenty-eight inches wide,” my cousin said. “That's what they told me. It better fit.”

People milled around for a few minutes, churning up the grass, then most retired to the shelter of the mausoleum wall, where the cemetery people had set up two rows of folding chairs covered in dark green fake fur (I kid you not). The cousins and sibling gathered in groups according to their age brackets, waiting for the cemetery crew to find a cover that would fit. I wandered a dozen yards away to see the grave marker for my grandparents, who both died in 1985. My girl cousin came over with her daughter.

“When Grandpa came to stay with my mother, after Grandma died, he was so sad,” my cousin said, glaring bleakly at her twig of a mother who was holding court by the mausoleum wall. “My mother had no compassion at all for him and what he was going through.”

She looked at me. “You know my mother.”

“I do know your mother,” I agreed. I thought about mothers. I decided that even as much as I'm struggling with my own mother, I would not want to trade. I know her mother.

The wind felt like it was coming straight off the ocean. At that point, I hit my limit. I didn't know I had a limit on graveside services, but apparently I do. I decided I didn't need to see my cousin's coffin lowered into the dirt. I said goodbye to my girl cousin and her daughter, and to my brother and headed away from the group to get up to the road. The grass in places was pure mud, which made walking treacherous. My brother's wife walked back to the parking lot with me. The hem of her long dress was wet from trailing in sodden grass. We talked about aging parents, but didn't figure anything out.

Cousin Dave is on the roof

I dreamed a mildly romantic dream last night. Sadly, though, no tongues to report; I rarely progress that far in dreams anymore. Don't know what that means, and it doesn't matter. I didn't regret the loss. I was more interested in the fact that, in my dream, I was ageless. I mean, I wasn't any specific age, as far as I could tell. I wasn't old or young. I just was. My perception of me existed outside time.

Sure, my dreams have changed over the years, whose haven't? When I was 6, I dreamed creatures from outer space were taking over the earth in flying saucers. That was the year the city adopted oscillating sirens on their police cars. I was sure invasion was imminent. When I was young, I used to fly a lot in my dreams. I don't fly anymore. I don't even run. Now all I do is stomp repeatedly on nonfunctional brakes. Or I lose my car altogether in some part of the city I've never seen before.

I feel like I live life interrupted, daily. I aim in one direction and find myself going in another. I wait in wait-and-see mode, not bothering anymore to wonder what the future holds. I know what it holds. I don't need a magic 8 ball to know where we are all headed. Yep, you got it. Hell in a hand-basket.

Cousin Dave died last week. His mother called me because she was afraid if she called my mother, the news would send her off her rocker. (Oh, sorry, that's a euphemism for lose her mind. No, that's a euphemism too. I mean, she would lose what cognitive ability she still has.) I was the designated bad-news bearer for my immediate family. I took the coward's way out and wrote an email to my siblings. But I called my mother first to give her the sad news.

“Cousin Dave died yesterday,” I said when I got her on the phone. Oh, darn. Should I have used a euphemism to soften the blow? Should I have said Cousin Dave is on the roof? I am a lousy liar. I can't even tell a good joke, because I dread making people wait through the setup. I should probably at least have made sure she was sitting down. Well, in my defense, I did wait until evening so I didn't ruin her afternoon nap.

My mother is a former nurse. And she's a former librarian. That means, to me, that if she hasn't seen death and dying up close in person, she's certainly shelved some books about it. I figured she would say, oh, that's terribly sad, grieve a bit, and move on. Unfortunately, my mother has been replaced by a pod person whom I no longer recognize. This new pod-mom creature was devastated by the news of the loss of Cousin Dave.

“Oh, no. Not Dave. No. Why couldn't it have been me?” she wailed. I cringed. I know it's not my mother anymore, but it's still hard to hear her suffer.

Cousin Dave was my mother's brother's eldest son. A heart attack laid him out. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead. Oh, wait, I should say he had passed. Or passed away? Is that the right euphemism? I can't keep track. I always thought passing was what one did on the two-lane road to the coast when you're stuck behind a log truck. Whatever. So, Dave is gone. We lost him.

Eventually Mom emerged from her blue funk to call my aunt and get the details. She called me the next day and sounded pretty calm as she told me about the casket-building her brother's remaining children and grandchildren were doing. I was impressed. Casket building would never have occurred to me. I'd be more likely to sew a shroud.

“They plan to wrap him in an elk hide,” my mother said bemusedly. “The other kids plan to put in a Native American blanket.” Right. For his trip to the happy hunting ground. I don't know what Dave's idea of heaven was, but I'm pretty sure it involved guns, judging by how many racks he had hanging in his living room. And when I say racks, I mean elk and deer antlers, just so we're clear.

I didn't know Dave well. I am closer to his sister, my only girl cousin. Dave was an enigma, like all older males. He grew a beard, married a Mormon, had a pack of kids and got divorced. He was happily remarried to a woman I met once or twice, who seemed to enjoy hunting as much as Dave did. I'm sad she's a widow. Dave was only 61, the same age as my older brother.

Mom told me today she doesn't feel up to attending the graveside service day after tomorrow. I guess I'll drive up the hill to... I don't even know what that part of the city is called...to Skyline Cemetery, a place I've only visited once, some years ago, to see the graves of my mother's parents. They died the same year, 1985, within months of each other. Dave's grave will be nearby, with a nice view.

When I was maybe 14 or 15, before I got my first boyfriend, I remember a family visit to Cousin Dave's house. I don't know if it was winter or summer, but I remember Dave, my handsome older boy cousin, offering to play some records for me on his record player. (If you don't know what a record player is, it's a device that played vinyl records.) He might have played more than one song, but the only one I remember is Chicago's Colour My World. To this day, I can't hear that song without thinking of Cousin Dave. RIP Cousin Dave. You will be missed.

The chronic malcontent joins the tiny hat movement

Sometimes when I stand at my computer desk, staring morosely at my screen, my cat sneaks silently into the room and sits on the floor behind my feet. Inevitably, eventually, I step backward onto his tail. I think it's a ploy to get sympathy. I thought he wasn't all that bright, but maybe I'm wrong: He's figured out how to get love. That is more than some of us can say.

I'm seeking a hat that will clamp down on the vertigo. Is there such a thing? I have many kinds of hats: berets, cloches, stocking caps, straw hats, watch caps, baseball caps, and hats whose names I do not know. Most are black. None of the hats I have seems to mitigate the vertigo, so I'm hunting for a new hat. Maybe something in tin foil.

I wear a hat pretty much all the time. I wear a hat to the store. I wear a hat to job interviews. I even wear a hat to bed. I'm wearing a hat right now. The only time I don't wear a hat is when the temperature exceeds 90°. Then I'll let my scalp roam free. People are always shocked to find I actually do have hair. I suspect they believe I've been a cancer patient for years. Nope, sorry. I buzz my hair short on purpose.

Somebody should invent a hat that helps old people think. Teachers used to tell students, “Put on your thinking caps!” to imply that they were not thinking to their full potential. Did it inspire students to think harder? Deeper? Clearer? Who knows. All I know is, I want a thinking cap. I want one for my mother, and I want one for me. I don't care what color.

Lately I've been thinking that everyone should start wearing a hijab, the Muslim women's headscarf. If everyone walked around in hijabs, maybe people would get used to seeing them around town. Then they wouldn't be scared of hijabs. It's normal to be scared of things we don't understand. If you were wearing a headscarf on your head, you would understand it's a piece of cloth that wraps around your head. Then you wouldn't be scared of it.

I'm not much of a joiner. Groups make me feel uncomfortable, and the idea of joining a movement in a presidential election year really makes me queasy. (I might accidentally become a Trumpeter or something, and then I'd have to kill myself.) However, I don't think the tiny hat movement is all that well organized. I haven't seen any newsletters. I don't know if there is a website. In fact, I might be the first one in the tiny hat movement. It's hard to tell if I'm part of a movement when life is moving around me. Do you ever have that feeling?

Anyway, if you would like to join the tiny hat movement, leave a comment, and start wearing a hat.

The chronic malcontent experiences ego deflation

Happy effing new year, readers. All 10 or 12 of you. I hope this year all your pleasant dreams come true (and none of the nightmares). Me, I just hope to stay present as the moments sweep me along, if not savoring each treacherous moment, at least, not wishing I were somewhere else doing something else. I'm just hoping to be here now. What else is there? I've spent years trying to fix my past and manage my future, and look where that got me. Broke, flabby, and discontented. Joke's on me.

Once again, it seems whatever mojo I enjoyed over the past few months has evaporated as I've been sinking into my mother's shrinking world. Aspirations of art, writing, doing something with myself, all seem to be misting into nothing. Late middle-aged woman, interrupted. Again. Interruptions in the past I blamed on partners. This time it's my maternal parental unit who has become the baby planet nucleus of my parched existence. I've whined about this before, sorry if it is getting boring. It's boring to me too, and it's my life. I suppose it's hard to sink lower than the realization that I'm bored with myself.

I had an idea for a story today. This is nothing new. I'm a dreamer, ideas are like breathing. The frothy cloud of creativity burbled in my chest. My heart rate accelerated. I suppose my eyes twinkled, although I'm not really sure (they sometimes dance from vertigo). I chortled once. If I remember, I will commit it to a Word doc and save it in a folder that I will rarely look into again. I have enough ideas in there to last a while. Unformed hazy potential.

As I've grown older and less optimistic, I've finally stopped seeing creativity as the antidote to my malcontentedness. My creative life has pretty much shrunk to this blog, the electronic platform from which I whine. I used to paint, but what do you do with a bunch of paintings nobody wants? Build furniture out of the particle board panels. Cut the canvases into strips and weave them into placements. See? An idea a minute. I sit in meetings and draw the images you see on this blog. I have a notebook-a-month going back to 1995. Who wants them, raise your hand.

The excessive-thinking malady brought on by fear of downsizing is cutting the crutches out from under my wobbly creative spirit. Too much stuff is at war with need more stuff. (What's up with stuff, anyway? How did it turn into my higher power? There's a topic for another rant.) The Love Shack is not a big place, but more to the point, I will not last forever. Before I die, if I have the choice, I would like to jettison some of this baggage and abandon myself to the creative spirit. I'm sure it's still in me somewhere, waiting patiently for an invitation to peek around the door.

Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-basket

It boils down to this: Do you want to be safe, or do you want to be free? I always thought this choice referred to civil rights and terrorism, but nope, it actually applies to aging maternal parental units. Who knew?

If Mom had asked me, I would have chosen safe for her. But she didn't ask me. When I asked her what she wanted, she chose freedom.

It's not a huge surprise. After the two moves over the summer (to the retirement home and six weeks later, back to the condo), she's pretty clear now that safe is nice, but free is better.

Free when you are 86 is not the same as free when you are in your 50s, 60s, or even 70s. Now that her doctor, DMV (and I) have taken away her car keys, her circle of life has narrowed to the condo complex.

She phones in her grocery orders to me. I fetch and carry. I forget things, but I don't complain to her. How can I complain when her brain has gone AWOL? What's my excuse? Just stress. I complain to my younger brother, Chuck.

Mom and Chuck are not talking. When Mom moved out of her condo, she left behind boxes of old photos, cards, letters, and memorabilia. Chuck took the stuff to his house to sort, thinking Mom had abandoned it all, and it was bound for the trash. Chuck sorted out the stuff and found many things he thought were too great to toss: Mom and Dad's wedding announcement, negatives from our childhood, postcards from around the world. Along comes Christmas and suddenly Mom wants some blank holiday cards she is certain were in one of those boxes. She demanded the boxes be returned. She complained to me when the boxes did not arrive immediately. I emailed Chuck: for the love of god, give her the damn boxes. Chuck brought her the boxes. Last time I saw her, she had sorted a bunch of old negatives and photos into the trash can.

“Mom, Chuck wanted all that stuff!” I said, trying not to sound too aghast and failing.

She frowned at me. “What?”

“Chuck spent hours sorting through all those photos,” I said. “He wanted to keep that stuff. He was going to give them to me to scan!”

“Oh.” Her expression was a mix of chagrin and belligerence. Kind of like a two-year-old caught writing on the wall with permanent marker.

I took the paper sack of stuff to the kitchen and wrote in big letters on the side: “Keep for Chuck!”

“Don't throw this away!” I admonished her.

“All right, all right.” She meant get off my back. We silently declared a truce. I hugged her and told her I loved her.

It's New Year's Eve. She had a lunch date today with a bunch of condo ladies. That's good. It's late now. I was busy doing end-of-year stuff and forgot to call her. I'll call her tomorrow. I hope when she's sitting out on her patio tonight, smoking a cigarette in 30° frosty air, that she catches a glimpse of the northern lights and feels free.

Season's greetings from the Hellish Handbasket

'Tis the season for giving. A few minutes ago, the phone rang: Planned Parenthood, calling for donations. Dream on, dude. While I was listening to the telemarketer drone on about the litany of crimes committed by the opposition, there was a persistent knock at my door: another solicitor, seeking donations for some unknown cause.

I waved the phone at her. “I'll come back later,” she promised. I might turn on the porch light: It's pitch dark out there. Then again, I might not.

Bah humbug. I'm not in a giving mood. This week, the wind has been uprooting trees. Rivers are flooding roads and yards and basements in outlying areas. Entire apartment complexes are sliding down muddy hillsides. This morning I wasn't sure it was morning; I thought my clock was wrong, it was so dark outside. I don't have any extra to give—not money, not time, not love. Grrrrrr.

Last week, the family from out of town came and went in the blink of an eye. The long-awaited family discussion to talk about what's next for Mom barely happened. It wouldn't have happened at all, I suspect, if I hadn't started the ball rolling by looking at my mother as we all sat around her condo living room and saying, “So, Mom.... what do you want for the next phase of your life?”

She seemed a bit unsettled to be on the spot, which is unlike her, but possibly the new normal now that her brain seems to be disintegrating. The extroverted woman I used to know is gone, leaving this strange pod person in her place.

“Well, uh, I, uh... I want to just stay here for now,” she said apologetically. She probably knew that wasn't what her children wanted to hear. A few days before, she had mentioned her interest in touring adult care homes in the area. I was like, Yes!

I tried to remain calm.

“I've got my friend Summer to come and clean once in a while,” Mom said. My sister and I looked at each other. The guest bathroom was a mess.

“What about food?” my sister asked.

“The condo ladies go out to lunch every Thursday,” my mother said.

Great. At least she eats on Thursdays.

After driving everyone out to Gresham in pouring rain in my mother's old Camry, eating a rich dinner (including dessert), and driving back to Mom's condo, none of us was in a mood to dig into a compassionate, caring conversation about how Mom wants to live out her remaining days (weeks, months, years... her aunt lived to be 100, for chrissake). My brother wasn't feeling well. He went home.

Woozy from sugar, I drove my jet-lagged sister and her sometime husband to their downtown hotel. The rain had stopped. The lights of the city sparkled. Mom came along, riding shotgun like a sprightly wizened elf.

Joke's on you, cave painters

Does it seem these days like we are all going to hell in a hand-basket? Maybe we've been in the hand-basket for a long time (like a few thousand years, maybe?). But like the proverbial frog sitting in the slowly heating pot of water, we are now too logy to do anything about escaping our imminent demise. Oh, we drop a few bombs here and there, attend a summit or two... but it's all feeling a little like, wheeeee, what's the use! Hell, here we come.

In honor of the end of 2015 (and possibly the end of Western civilization as we know it), I hereby present a compilation of some drawings I don't think I've used before. For your viewing pleasure. Enjoy. This is also in celebration of the fact that I can now drag and drop my jpegs directly into my post. (Thanks, Google. You've shown yourself a true friend, here at the end of the world. You have my gratitude. For as long as my brain holds out, which probably won't be all that much longer.)

When a year stumbles to a close, I sometimes review where I've been and think about where I'm going in the new year. I don't make resolutions anymore because it seems stupid to set intentions I have no intention of keeping. Lose weight, get more exercise, drink more water, read more literary fiction and less science fiction, sleep less, be nicer... yada, yada, yada. If the myriad dried-up pink post-it notes posted on my computer monitor and mirrors haven't convinced me that these are good ideas, then why would I imagine writing up a list of resolutions for 2016 would work any better? Deluded magical thinking. Again.

So, no, no resolutions for me. I can't even resolve to survive, considering that at any moment I could be smashed flat in an earthquake or gunned down by some stupid terrorist. Life has always been precarious, but I guess I had some hope that good could prevail, if not for me than for others. But now I'm thinking good is not a safe haven. Positive thinking is a waste of energy. Fighting for anything is futile. We're all going to hell in a hand-basket.

I used to worry my tiny head about whether I should settle for simply existing, or whether I should strive to thrive. As if I knew what thriving would actually look like. A newer car? Would that be thriving? More money in the bank? How much is more? How much is enough? I am beginning to think there is never enough of anything: love, money, safety, life. It's all impermanent. Uncertainty is the new god. Or maybe it's the old god who has been laughing at us the whole time as we tried to keep civilization together. Har har, joke's on you, cave painters!

I'm just cranky because my mother is declining into dementia and I can't earn enough money to survive. La la la, what else is new? Some people don't have mothers. Some people don't have jobs, or homes, or countries, even. Who am I to complain? But I can't help myself. I'm an American. I have a god-given right to bitch, bestowed upon my by a quirk of geographical fate. Of all the places you could be born, the gods are sending you to.... Oregon! Lucky baby! Yeah, your family is nuts, and you are going to grow up female in the 60s and 70s, but hey, it could be worse. You could have been born in Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Idaho. Stop yer belly-achin!

The holiday season is always fraught with ironies, and never more so than this year, I think. It cracks me up that Americans are rushing around trying to get the perfect gifts for their loved ones when the world is crashing. Is this a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? (I've always loved that image.) I don't think the human race is any more special than, say, polar bears or dolphins or honeybees. I just don't think we humans are constitutionally capable of playing well with others. Greed and self-centered fear creep into every culture, eventually. Is that true? Are there some indigenous cultures in little pockets of rain forest and desert that will survive the religious fanatics swarming the rest of the planet?

You know what else pisses me off? Chronic malcontents large and small are emerging from the woodwork, proclaiming the end of the world and running around like banshees trying to find their little slice of safety. More guns! Arm everyone! Build walls, keep out the invaders! Kill the insects, no, eat the insects, wait, what? So on top of my own little suitcase of troubles, now I have all this competition from other malcontents! What gives?

If I were Little Mary Sunshine, which I'm not, I would say, oh, pish posh, tempest in a teapot, drink some water, and recycle your plastics. Instead I will say, merry ho ho and happy Christmas from the Hellish Hand-basket. Now put down your weapons, back away slowly, and maybe you can have some pie.

The chronic malcontent is stuck in one long slow pratfall

My life is punctuated by drafts of proposals and dissertations that magically appear in my email inbox, demanding my editing skills. Compensation is predetermined (too low). Deadlines are often severe. I immerse myself in each paper like a scuba diver slipping gingerly into mucky water. Eeww. I add Oxford commas and snarky comments exhorting the authors to embrace Word styles instead of manually typing their tables of contents.

In between editing jobs, I fret about my mother and try to keep my nose above the surface of my anticipatory grief. (Yes, there's apparently a name for it.) It's almost two and a half years since I lost my teaching job and two years since I finished my dissertation and earned my degree. In between editing jobs and fretting over my mother, I have time to reflect on the current state of my life. Sadly, I seem to have lost my funnybone, and the loss has manifested in fewer blog posts.

Back when all I had to fret about was resenting my job at the career college and finishing my massive wretched tome of a dissertation, I didn't know how lucky I was. Pre-vertigo, pre-dementia, pre-summer of carlessness... ah, the good old days. My attention was riveted on the PhD and the job. As I steamed and stewed in my self-righteous messy little bog, I could always find something funny in the experience. Students! Ha, ha! Dissertation chair! Har har! The jokes were low-hanging, shiny baubles just above my head. So I picked them. Who wouldn't? I didn't name names; nobody was hurt in the making of this blog.

I mean, admit it, it's hilarious when someone does a pratfall into a hole in the sidewalk (especially when they are texting). Come on, don't tell me you haven't laughed at someone else's misfortune, as long as they were only humiliated and not hurt. That's how I felt most of the time, back in 2013, like I was watching myself taking one long slowmo pratfall. So funny, look at her clutch and cling to her expectations and resentments—what could be more comical? ROFLMAO.

So what's the problem? Thanks for asking. Lately, the jokes seem to be harder to find. I'm sure they are still there, somewhere, peeking out from under my scowl. I feel so weary. Who knew a 90-pound, 86-year-old scrawny twig of an old lady could be so heavy?

Maybe I'm caring too much. Everything seems overly complicated. I fear I'm descending into dementia along with my mother; we'll probably end up roommates in the same adult foster care home, yelling at each other and drooling on our bibs.

Hey! That joke snuck up on me! It's not a great one, I know, but it has potential. It's a chuckle, not a guffaw. But I bet there's more where that came from. There's not much funnier than demented old people who don't know how funny they are. I imagine a sitcom about a mother stuck in adult daycare and her recalcitrant, unwilling, resentful caregiver of a daughter. Well, maybe that's a little close to home. Still, there's a joke in here somewhere. I could go in after it, but maybe it's better to just let it gently percolate to the surface, like a stinky gas bubble.

The chronic malcontent comes up for air

Humble apologies to all four of my blog readers, who all reached out to me to find out if I was getting ready to jump off a bridge. We have a lot of bridges here in Portland, so their concern was not entirely unfounded. If I had to choose the bridge of my demise, I think I would choose the St. Johns Bridge. It's tall enough that odds are I'd die upon impact, so no chance of slow drowning. Plus it's in an area some distance from the main city waterfront, so I wouldn't upset tourists, and bicyclists and joggers wouldn't feel compelled to stop and watch me flail. (I'm not much of a swimmer.) And what's more, I hate to be cold and wet (I know, why am I in Portland?) So a quick exit would be the best for me. But I'm not planning on doing that, jumping, exiting, or swimming. You all can simmer down: I'm hunkered in the Love Shack, getting on with life.

The bane of my trouble, the source of all that is, of course, is the maternal parental unit, who has gone somewhat mentally offline in recent months. I fear her double move over the summer gummed up her mental gears. This once vibrant and energetic dynamo (her nickname used to be “Mighty Mouse”) is now a shadow, physically and mentally. She's a fragile twig, tottering on tiny Merrell-encased feet. Indoors or out, she bundles in previously worn fleece jackets, usually bright red, which are pockmarked down the front with cigarette ash burns. (It's a wonder she hasn't spontaneously combusted.) Things fall out of her pockets. She carries her cellphone in a little case attached to a wrist bracelet, like an oversized life alert. It's painful to see her like this. Sometime over the summer, she lost her mojo.

She is well aware that her mind is failing. She is anxious about it, but growing resigned to the muddle. Her world is shrinking. Yesterday some estate sale people came to wrap up and remove decades of collected china, glassware, dishes, and knickknacks. Some of the stuff was probably 100 years old. What do you do with all that stuff, if your adult children don't want it? Dump it on the solitary grandchild, who has her own life and family in Sacramento? Mom is detaching from life, and that means, for her, emptying the china cabinet is a victory. One more thing to check off the checklist.

My victory came when (after a long overdue flurry of tears), I realized that this transition, rather than being a tragedy, could be an opportunity to welcome in a hurricane of love.

Mom had four kids. In essence, she created a small troop of willing and stalwart (but somewhat unskilled) laborers, and we lift and tote and schlep and reassure as best we can—four hearts and minds to support her as she eases out of this world. What else are children for? She and my father apparently did a good job parenting us, if we are all willing to hang around and help her. That is, if caring for the aging parent is the job of the children.

That question is the bug up my dark place, as you may have guessed. As Bravadita pointed out, the logical next step would be for me to offer to give up my apartment and move in with my mother. (Not going to happen.) If I had a big home with a sunny spare room, I'd invite her to live with me, no hesitation, well, not much hesitation. But I live in the Love Shack, which is barely big enough for me, the cat, and a thousand or so books. Steps. Uneven rugs. Cat toys. Dust. Detritus. Squalor. Nobody should be living here in these conditions, not even me. There's definitely no way Mom could move in here.

Mom's condo is a dark cave, darker even than the Love Shack. Only one window faces east, and she keeps that barricaded against the light. The living room window faces west, receiving golden sunsets in the summer, but not much light in the winter, thanks to the angle of the sun and the corner of her garage. Being the hothouse flower that I am, I would not survive long in that cave. However, long before I withered from lack of light, she (being an energy vampire, aka an extravert) would have sucked the life from my bones and tossed my desiccated carcass into the spare bedroom. No, moving in with my mother would not be a good idea for either one of us.

The alternatives are two: move someone else into the condo to live with her, or move her out to someplace else.

I can feel the will to live draining away as I write this. Hokay. Maybe this is enough for today. Now I need to find some ironic yet poignant silly drawing to go with this half-baked post. The world is crumbling. I should stop whining. Eventually I will, but not today.

Untethered

For the past three years or so, I turned to this blog for comfort and solace, the way desperate people siphon the will to go on from therapists, counselors, and friends. I could almost always find the rain cloud of black humor floating above my head, even in my darkest moments. Rarely was I at a loss for words. However, over the past year, as my focus has dissipated, my reading audience has dwindled to a handful of stalwart fans and some spammers who slap me with encouraging comments (keep up the good work!) as they squat and deposit stinky links leading back to their nefarious products. For the first time ever, I removed some comments! I don't know what that signifies. I don't really care. I'm depressed.

I'm in free fall. Slo mo free fall. I'm detached from everything except my distaste for life. I know things are bad when I take myself so seriously I can't find the joke. I've lost my mojo and now it's slow mo free fall to an as yet unknown destination that probably resembles something flat like a sidewalk. Ugh. Too messy. No, I'm not suicidal, but I definitely want out of this messy bog.

I feel like I'm on yet another annoying precarious edge overlooking yet another stupid abyss. I'm cranky as hell. Why? Thanks for asking. My friend Bravadita is fighting breast cancer, battling insurance companies and doctors with her bare hands. My brilliant sister is on the verge of financial ruin, even as she treads the rues of Paris. My mother is disintegrating, shedding her sense of self, a few memory cells at a time. I can't fix any of it.

I'm trapped in self-centered fear. My inability to earn enough to cover my expenses makes the last 20 years of recovery seem like a stupid pointless mirage. I suspect I should have turned left (into finance and accounting or maybe computer programming) instead of right (into art and teaching). That crossroads came and went years ago, no use in whining now, I know. Alas, alackaday.

To top it all off, it's fall, which always brings me closer to the edge of despair. The slant of the watery sun prods me toward hibernation, as if that were actually a solution. Is it possible to go to ground until spring? Perhaps, through the magic of the Internet and UPS. Everything is harder in winter: the frosty ground, the wind-whipped air, my blue-tinged cuticles, my sluggish blood. Okay, now I'm starting to really wallow. Look at me, I'm rolling in it from side to side. Ahhhhhh.

I admit, I miss this, this self-centered whining. Where else can one say the ridiculously egotistical, embarrassingly selfish things that need to said? I guess it's good my audience has dwindled to mostly auto-bot spammers. I would feel just slightly less inclined to whine if I thought people were reading this drivel. I feel fortunate my mother cannot find her way to this blog.

I was challenged this week to honor my creativity. Somewhere in me an artist still lurks, but she's been hibernating, mostly, for about 15 years. She surfaces now and then, in this blog, for example. She sleepwalked through graduate school. She dreams of days when creating was a compulsion, as essential as food. These days, creativity is a dry-bones memory of a once-verdant shelter. Parched. Hemmed in by clutter and white-knuckled fear.

I'm waiting. Waiting to find out if Bravadita will survive. Waiting to see what solution my sister will conjure out of the rich European ether. Waiting for my mother to decide how she wants to live until she dies. Waiting for spring. Waiting for the miracle to inspire me to stop the self-seeking long enough to feel something besides despair and resignation. Hope is a real thing, I know this in my brain. But my heart is disconnected. Untethered. Falling.