Not feeling so OK at the OK Corral

I keep returning to a theme—the idea that life is neither all good nor all bad. After trying to weigh the good stuff against the bad stuff, I find myself stumbling over definitions. What is good? What is bad? In the end, it's all just life. We muddle along and then we die. Some of the events in my life I classified as bad in retrospect might have been exactly what I needed. Like when I asked my mother for money and her telling me to get a job. Not that I did her bidding, but looking back, I admit, perhaps I was a wee bit self-centered? And that time when a certain someone chose me as a temporary mate. Didn't I feel special! And didn't I discover in short order that we weren't made for each other after all, darn it. Curses! Foiled again.

So, I repeat:  good? bad? It's so dang hard to tell! 

I am tempted to put my battle with the cockroaches on the negative side of this week's ledger. Cockroaches bad, right? Always bad? But perhaps the presence of a smashed cockroach in my sheets is just the motivation I need to change my housekeeping approach, which has tended to be somewhat lax in recent years. In the Love Shack, my former toxic mold-infested hazardous waste dump of an apartment, there wasn't much point. The place was so old and decrepit. On the down side, I had ants but on the plus side, no cockroaches. Mold but no annoying neighbors with booming car stereos. See what I'm saying? Good? Bad? Here, I have seen no ants indoors. I had a fly problem for a while, but the flies abated with the end of monsoon. And I think now that I've gone nuclear in the kitchen, I will start to get the upper hand on the little dudes. If I get cancer from roach spray, oh well. I've lived my life. 

On Tuesday night, I tore the bed apart after finding the smashed carcass of one roach. I'm guessing I probably rolled on him during the night in blissful oblivion. (Had I known! Armageddon! World War III!) I changed my sheets and decided to sleep with the light on, working on the theory that roaches tend to avoid lighted areas. I always wear a stocking cap to bed, pulled over my ears and eyes, so sleeping with the light on isn't so hard. 

A few minutes after midnight, as I was dozing with one eye open, I heard pop pop pop pop, like a string of pops. Fewer than a dozen but more than five. Not firecrackers, not cars backfiring, there was only one thing it could be and it was right outside my window. 

I laid there frozen, wondering if I should turn out the light. I turned out the light and looked out the window. I only have one window. It's big but it's covered by a seriously dense security screen so even during broad daylight, I can't see much. In the dark, I can barely see the front of my car, ten feet from my door, and that's it.

I heard a man's voice muttering something as he moved from west to east under my window. Yipes. He sounded anxious or scared. I waited for a bit, wondering what had happened. A couple minutes later, a large man walked by very quickly going in the other direction. Was it the same guy? No clue. I didn't recognize him but I don't know all the tenants here in the back forty. He looked angry, or drugged, hard to say. Definitely agitated. Things were quiet for a few minutes, so I went back to bed, after checking for bugs, and lay there with my eyes wide open. 

A few minutes later, I heard voices of several people a few doors to the east of my apartment. Next thing I know I hear large engines. That could only be one thing. I got up and looked out the window. Yep. Flashing blue and red lights. I could see the back end of an ambulance. A Tucson police car pulled up, followed by another, lit by the emergency lights flashing. It was really quite festive in my front room. I took some photos so I would remember that intense flashing blue color. 

In short order the EMTs loaded a large man into the ambulance. He was groaning, with pain or anger, hard to say, and off they went. In another ten minutes, all the vehicles were gone. I guess no shooter was on the loose. I checked the news over the next few days but apparently the incident didn't rate any mention. I finally found it on a police blotter page: someone shot in the back, transported to hospital. That's it. Ho hum. Welcome to Tucson.

Bad that someone got shot, right? Yeah. I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone, no matter how annoying his car stereo. The silver lining in this incident is if I had any doubt that I might not stay in this apartment after this year lease is up, that doubt is gone. I just hope I survive.

In other (good? bad?) news, I had the notion to look up the property management company in the Better Business Bureau website. Oh man, why didn't I do this sooner? Because I was desperate for a place to live, that's why. I responded to an approval to rent an apartment in this sleazebag property the way I used to say yes to my love interests. Oh, you want me? Okay, then I guess I want you. I'll figure out how to like you as we go along. Maybe I'll even love you, who knows. The main thing is, you want me. So, no, I didn't think to look up this pesky property management company's BBB rating because if I had, I would have seen they have earned a big fat solid F. What's more they addressed none of the complaints against them. 

It's indicative of Arizona landlord-tenant laws that tenants have few rights. After I realized I willingly got into bed with a snake, I started to feel pretty bad. Foolish, resentful, anxious, scared. Bad, right? Well, after walking around the block a few times, avoiding the cracked asphalt while trying to soak up the wide open blue sky, I realize that here is another opportunity to downsize and get ready for my next adventure. I wanted to see Tucson's seasons. I wanted a full year here, to decide if this is the place for me. Assuming I don't get shot or run over by a speeding SUV, I have time to pare my possessions down some more and figure out where I might want to go next. For now my car seems to be working. I don't have to stay here.

Gaslit by a gas cap

I talked with a friend on the phone tonight. It's a welcome distraction to listen to someone else's problems so I don't have to think about mine. Is that selfish? Immersing myself into someone else's story to avoid reading my own? Today was one of those days I would rather have been someone else. Not because anything bad happened. I accomplished the things on my list. By my usual standards, today was a good day. So why did I feel like crap?

Today I got gobsmacked by grief.  

The morning started out normal enough. I was thinking about getting things done. Tomorrow I have my first appointment with a doctor under the Medicare regime. I'm going to a new clinic to meet a new doctor at a new healthcare provider system managed by a new insurance company. As I fixed my breakfast, I found myself telling my story aloud, rehearsing, you know how you do that? You don't? Hmm, I guess it's just me then. Embarrassing. As if I'm going to be allotted a couple hours with the new doctor to describe what the past year has been like. As if the poor doctor has time or interest. I have to remember to be especially animated with my eyes and hands, because I'm sure I'll be wearing a mask the entire time. 

As I chopped zucchini, I started to feel sad. I haven't told the story for a while. I'd forgotten what I might feel when I remembered the day Mom died. Remembering that day hurt, remembering the look in the nurse's eyes when she gave me the news, how shocked I felt, but what hurt worst of all was remembering the last few months of Mom's life, sitting outside the care home in the cold, trying to keep her with me just a little longer. We bundled her up in fleece. I have photos. She looked like fleece-wrapped bug, six feet away from me, still smiling. We talked about people we used to know, places we used to go. I remember her smiling a lot. She couldn't see me smiling because I was hidden behind my plaid cotton mask. 

Today I chopped broccoli and told the story to my empty apartment, rehearsing. 

Oh man. Time out to cry. I can't tell you the story of me telling my story to myself without feeling things I don't want to feel. I've been so busy moving here. Now I've stopped moving, there's no place left to go, I'm here, it's time to stop running, which means it must be time to start feeling.

I miss her. I miss those few months when she was alive and happy and I still had a mother. I had a purpose, I had a place, even though I itched for it to be over so I could go live some other life. Now I'm in that other life and it hasn't coalesced yet into something I recognize. I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going. 

Does anyone, really? We pretend like we are the masters of our fates, the grand designers of our lives. We don't know anything. 

Yesterday I ran an errand for a friend. As I was driving to the pharmacy, I heard that dreaded sound, the ding my car makes when it is trying to get my attention to tell me something is wrong. Ding. That horrible ding has meant the car is about to siphon $500 more dollars out of my dwindling bank account. Fingernails on a blackboard. 

I stopped at a light and peered at the dashboard. I didn't see any lights, so I was like, what is up with this car? Is it a existential cry for help? A bit of automotive angst expressed through a plaintive ding? Then I saw in the little odometer window a word had replaced the mileage number. It looked like the message was 9ASCAP. 

You probably see it right away. I did not. After hearing that sound, my brain cells had gone into freefall. ASCAP! Nine of them! Have I violated musicians' rights somehow? 

When I got to the pharmacy, I dug out my phone, Googled 9ASCAP, and started laughing. Right on! Gascap. The 9 was actually a lowercase g. My brain had failed to parse the letters correctly. I blame grief, old age, early dementia, and fear of economic insecurity. Any or all, take your pick. 

I went into the pharmacy and picked up the thing for my friend. When I came out, I checked my gas cap, and sure enough, it was loose. My beast! I screwed it back into place. The light didn't go off right away, but I drove gamely forward, and it went off somewhere between the pharmacy and home.

 

Dragged into the future

Do you ever wish you could freeze time? Shut off the clock, silence the calendar, you know, take a vacation from the daily detritus of life for a while? Before things get worse? I know it isn't possible. I'm just frustrated at stumbling over an endless stream of stupid obstacles. I want things to be easier. Or at least, not any worse. I realize life isn't so great now for most people on this planet. Life is precarious for all but a handful of humans. I'm not one of them, but still, I know I'm lucky. Born in the right place, right epoch, right skin color. Wrong gender, but I cope. My complaints are luxury problems, compared to what some people are facing. Recognizing that fact doesn't stop me from complaining, but it does put my trivial concerns into perspective. 

What are you complaining about this week, Carol? I'm so glad you asked. Some of my recent challenges are easing up a bit. For example, I've just about got the problem with the street address debacle straightened out. No one was making mistakes with malicious intent. It's good to remember, most humans just bumble along doing the best they can in any given moment, which means in the case of the site manager here at the apartment, little snafus like COVID can put a crimp in performance. That's understandable. No point in getting angry.

Another little snafu. My former landlord sent me some mail from Portland, consisting of three pieces of junk mail (Medicare, Carol, the sky will fall if you don't take action!) and two pieces from the IRS addressed to my mother. The IRS letters were duplicates sent a month apart. For some reason, the good people at the IRS thought they needed to tell me twice that they needed more time to figure out how to respond to the letter I sent them in January. Looking back at my files, I believe the letter I sent them was to inform them of her death. Maybe their computers are locked up trying to parse the impossible task of communicating with a dead person. I don't know what their issue is. I communicate with my mother all the time. I told her the IRS is after her. She didn't seem to care, not enough to respond, anyway.

Now the next thing pulling at me is the horrible prospect of upgrading to Windows 11. I still remember the trauma of upgrading to Windows 10. I had to get help from some professionals, who augmented my old computer so it could receive the gift of new operating system software. This time, Windows Update informed me my computer would not be able to handle an upgrade to Windows 11. They weren't particularly gentle about giving me the news. They have no idea the pain they are potentially unleashing in my technological life. I will dig in my heels for as long as I can. Eventually I will need to get a new computer. It seems like I get one problem ironed out and a new wrinkle appears. I really hate to iron.

Last week I took my car in to a repair shop recommended to me by a Tucson friend I trust. The mechanics at this shop are really nice, which somehow made it hurt a little less when they handed me the estimate. I won't tell you how much I paid to get the fuel injectors cleaned out. Apparently this car was ridden hard and put away wet, not once, but many times. I should have sold it to the Dodge dealer when they offered to buy it from me, but then I would be carless. I've been carless before. I can do it, but it seriously dents my self-esteem. It's one thing to say I'm poor by choice, you know, that old saying about we are volunteers, not victims. After a while, though, it's hard to stave off the waves of self-pity.

All that to say, I'm all in on this car. It's a touchy, sensitive beast, but it's my touchy, sensitive beast. I'll keep throwing money at it and when the money is gone, I'll park it somewhere and live in it. No worries. That was always going to be my backup plan if things here in Tucson go gunnysack. I'm the queen of contingency plans.

In other good news, I'm getting ready to publish my second novel. Too bad I can't tell you what it is, this being an anonymous blog and all. In other bad news, I saw my second adult-sized cockroach in my apartment today. Welcome to Tucson. In other bad news, the vertigo continues to pound my head into a sloshy pulp. In other good news, Medicare!

After a while, it's obvious nothing is all good or all bad. It's just life, dragging me into the future, one day at a time.

Growing a pear

The old suburban farmhouse in which I did most of my growing up had a Bartlett pear tree just outside the back door. Every few years we collected bumper crops in cardboard boxes and fought the fruit flies to see who would get to eat the pears first. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and the neighborhood women, paring and cutting slippery pears and soaking pieces in lemon juice in preparation for canning. To this day, nothing says summer is over, prepare for hell to me like the taste of a perfect ripe Bartlett pear. 

I'm doing a lot of remembering this week, probably because I can. Now that most of the obstacles associated with moving are resolved or being addressed, I have the luxury of letting my mind roam, and it seems drawn toward the past. I'm thinking about my cat. I'm remembering my mother. I'm missing the tooth I lost. And it's pear season, so I'm remembering pears.

There might be another reason I am looking backward. I'm reaching a milestone in a few days: I'm turning sixty-five. 

Yep, thanks for noticing. I'm coming of age—again. This coming-of-age marker isn't quite as appealing as turning twenty-one, or forty, or even fifty. This time I'm crossing the threshold into early old age or whatever they call it. I'm entering the neopleisticine dumpy sagtime epoch. If I'm lucky enough to somehow fall into a pit of tar and gradually be encased in amber, future anthropologists (if there are any in the future) will peruse my DNA, rub their depilatoried chins, and say, "Hola, she seems a bit droopy for someone who clearly subsisted on yogurt, nuts, raisins, and twigs."

Turning sixty-five reminds me of an anxious time when my elderly Mom fainted and fell on her condo patio and didn't tell me for a few days. (She was much older than sixty-five then, more like eighty-five, and I was her sometime caregiver with no idea of what was coming.) Mom mopped up the blood and went to bed with a couple cracked ribs, a banged up ankle, and a scraped elbow. She knew what would happen if she told anyone about her fall: An endless, tedious round of visits to various specialists, which is exactly what happened. She couldn't hide her injuries for long. A heart doctor, a heart monitor, an ankle doctor, and the usual EKG and MRI and CT scans all had a go at diagnosing her problem. The outcome: no obvious cause was found for her syncope. It was just one of those things.

The upshot is now I understand why she left her sliding glass patio door unlocked whenever she was home. She prioritized her fears. She might worry that drug addicts would sneak in and steal her television, but she was more worried that no one would be able to get inside to save her should she fall in the bathroom. 

I get it. Without a key, there is no easy way to break into the Bat Cave. That's good, if I want to be secure, but not if I want to be saved. Now I'm officially old, and coincidentally, I happen to have the luxury to think about such things. Time for another round of Swedish death cleaning.

Speaking of death cleaning, is it fall where you are? Fall has fallen here, I think. I'm not sure. I'm learning the desert seasons in real time. The night-time temps are forecasted to descend to the mid-forties. I hope the sky will settle into a steady blue dome. If it's sunny all the time, maybe the air pressure will stop fluctuating wildly up and down the barometric scale. Monsoon has been hard on my head. The ear crystals in my inner ear canals crash hither and thither, unable to figure out which way is up, or out, or whatever. It's near-constant ocotonia upset in the vestibular maze, which means I'm staggering the decks of the USS Vertigo day and night, under near-constant assault from the salt shaker in my right ear. It's very distracting.

Luckily, turning sixty-five means Medicare, here I come! Meanwhile, I'm eating fresh pears and thinking of home. 

Living a life sublime

Howdy Blogbots. You’ll be happy to hear I finally have fast internet. Fast enough, anyway. What a relief. Being on the wrong side of the digital divide is debilitating in all kinds of ways. I’m sure you are greatly relieved as well. Now you can hope I will stop complaining about it.

Here's the story, thanks for asking. After a massive fail by Century Link, I am now a customer of their Tucson competitor, Cox Communications. I’ve learned so much. For example, I now understand what the Century Link technician meant when he said “Cox uses a different system.” It’s cable, dude! Cox uses cable, Century Link uses DSL phone lines. You are probably thinking, duh, Carol, everyone knows that, it’s like the battle between the evil titans Comcast and Century Link in Portland, have you been living under a rock? In my defense, I say, yes, I have been living under a rock of sorts. A rock I fondly called Mom.

Anyway, after a long trek across Tucson to f*ckall woebegone, I found the only Cox store in town, waited in line, paid a $50.00 deposit, and was granted the privilege of renting a cheap plastic modem to take home and self-install.

If you know me, you know that any word with self in front of it makes me quail.

“Will I be able to figure this out?” I asked the rep who took my money and handed me a white box with a handy built-in plastic handle. 

She stared at me over her mask. I could see her mentally shift gears. She opened the box and quickly described the attachment process. I felt like one of those cartoon dogs listening to their owner, where the dialog balloon is nothing but bla bla bla bacon bla bla walk bla bla, except minus the cue words bacon and walk.

I went outside with my little box. I put the box gently on the seat and took a minute to pour a dinky bottle of mechanic-in-a-can into my car’s gas tank. The beast threw a shoe, I mean, a code, that morning. Ding, the familiar check engine light came on, indicating a problem in the exhaust system. Anything from a bad gas cap to an expensive oxygen sensor problem or an even more expensive catalytic converter fail. The light does not identify the exact problem. It’s like when your property manager texts you there’s a gas leak in the building, get out now. It helps to have specifics, like, which apartment do I really live in? So now I have the fun job of trying to discern whether the check engine light problem stems from the work that I had the dealer do on May 19. It’s unlikely that their work is under warranty but it would be stupid not to ask. If they say bring it in, I know what will happen. I have some alternative recommendations for car repair places, none of which is within easy walking distance of the Bat Cave.

My father told me never to fall in love with a car. That is still good advice.

Two steps forward, two or three steps back, then one step forward, then fall in a hole for a while. That is my life in Tucson. I finally get an apartment, but can’t get internet. I finally get internet, but the car goes gunnysack. The neighbors with quiet car stereos have loud car engines and vice versa. The property manager returns from a three-week COVID-19 vacation (yay, she lives!) but fails to respond (again) to my emails. Meanwhile, the waves of vertigo in my head are a constant reminder that I control nothing and nobody.

After a while, does it do any good to use the words good or bad to describe what happens? It’s all just life. Maybe the word stupid would be more apropos. I could equally use the word sublime. Ridiculous and rapturous. Absurd and . . . hmm, I’m having trouble coming up with opposites that express my dichotomous brain. I found some fun words, though: cockamamie, dunderheaded, doltish, nutty. Humans have many words to express their displeasure with circumstance. Absurd, ridiculous, and nutty have a lot of company in the thesaurus. Synonyms for triumphant and celebratory are sparse.

As I walked in the hot morning sun today, eyes on the cracked asphalt to avoid stumbles, I had time to think about what it means to be alone. No one depends on me, not a cat, not a mother, not a sibling, not a friend. Nobody really knows where I am. A few people have my street address, but no one could rush to my rescue, or ask me to rush to theirs. I no longer live my life in the context of someone else’s. I’m effectively alone.

I can hear you, you know. You are thinking, oh, no, there she goes again. She’s going to do that off-putting grieving thing. She’s fallen into that sorrow-shaped hole in the sidewalk. Now the whining will begin and it will take meeting another horny lonely eighty-two-year-old to get her mind off it so she can find the humor in her nutty, absurd, confounding, ridiculously sublime existence.

In my defense—do I seem to be writing that phrase more than usual lately? Argh. I’ll let you decide if grief is a defense for wackiness. Everything has happened so fast (she whined). Ten months ago, Mom went and died, setting off a cascade of actions and events that propelled me to another state. Bam, in slow motion, I'm thrown into a new life. Wait, let's be clear: I threw myself.

I wake up at night confused. I don’t know where I am. What bed, what room, what city, what year. I hope it is grief and not early-stage Alzheimer’s. Nothing makes sense except for the veneer of meaning I paint onto my experiences, and my mental paintbrush lags a disturbing two or more seconds behind reality. (Hence my confusion when I opened the Cox box and saw a coaxial cable instead of a DSL phone line.)

One of my favorite Monkees songs (yes, I’m still a fan) has a grammatically incorrect line that resonates: Where my foot steps down is where is home. Every time I go walking, I look at the blue sky and think, oh my god, how gorgeous, is this my home? It’s a real question with as yet no answer. I don’t know if this is home. And yes, the sky is sublime.

Welcome to my slo-mo life

Welcome to the slow motion life of inadequate internet. Haven’t we become accustomed to a certain pace when we surf the Web? Pages load. Maps function. Emails appear. Buttons work. I thought my happy day had arrived when I saw the box containing the modem outside my door. Within minutes I was connected and jockeying for my place on the World Wide Web. However, there’s a kink in the line somewhere, probably right outside my door, judging by the bent cable that comes from somewhere and disappears into a hole into my apartment. After several days complaining via slow-motion chat to the internet provider reps, they finally broke down and agreed the problem was on their end and a technician will arrive next Friday.

I’m not complaining, really. I didn’t think I would get internet here until mid-October. The schedule got moved up when I got the address problem straightened out. Apparently, it takes longer to get internet installed in an apartment occupied by another tenant who already has internet. Who knew.

Well, actually, the address error has not been entirely resolved. The internet provider and the utility company seem to have accepted the new address and adjusted their records accordingly. The property management company, however, hasn’t shown any willingness to make an address correction. I’m trying to be patient. Perhaps they are still working from home. Perhaps they use a third-party vendor to manage their online content. Perhaps they are kind-hearted simple folk who move at a pace different from my own.

I’m expecting in about six months to get a notice saying, well, Carol, it was really nice of you to pay rent for that other tenant all this time, but when are you going to pay yours? It seems like such a simple thing, to acknowledge the error and resolve it. They may be well-meaning, but from my one-sided perspective, this property management company looks like it is run by a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. I’ve recently noticed a desire to use that word nincompoop in my writing. What do you think? Did I choose the right word?

Just when I seem to be circling the drain, the universe brings me something to chew on, something to occupy my mind and my time so I don’t completely implode. Last week, it was the address error. This week it was getting online. In addition, I’ve had a sizeable editing project, which has kept my mind out of the tailspin and helped me focus on being helpful. It is good to focus on something other than myself. I admit, I have wanted to tear my hair a few times.

I dreamed I was hanging out with Mom at her condo, helping her get organized. She sure had a lot of stuff, in real life, and in the dream. Accumulating stuff seems to be a favorite pastime among some Americans. Having just downsized and moved long distance, I am loathe to accumulate more stuff. Nevertheless, I went to Home Depot and Target and got some things to organize my space. My personal rule is never to buy anything I cannot lift and carry myself, so the things I bought fall into one or more of these three categories: they are small, they are plastic, or they can be disassembled into manageable pieces.

After I got my new shelves set up, I sorted through the contents in the boxes and plastic bins I brought with me in my minivan and shipped in the shipping box. Almost all of my clothes fall into one or more of these three categories: they are torn, they are stained, or they are fleece.

I have distilled my options to one of the following mutually exclusive categories: keep it, donate it, or toss it. I guess I left out a fourth category: set it on fire. In fact, I’m starting to realize that burning it down and starting over is metaphorically pretty much what I’ve done over the past six months. If you strip out the emotion, what I did was efficiently and effectively execute on an action plan I’ve had in place for about five years. No room for grief, no room for fear and anxiety, just sort it out, pack it up, move ‘em out, get it done.

If you are human, though, you know that emotions are sort of like your old dog Sam. It is easy to banish Sam to the backyard and tell him to go pee, but it’s very hard to keep him out there once he remembers that being inside is where the food is. All I can say is, I’ve been dealing with Sam this week.

After muddling through some weepy moments, I eventually reached a point of grace, in which I realized nothing is all bad or all good, that life happens to us all, and whiners never prosper. Once again I have the opportunity to embrace my life philosophy that emotions don’t matter all that much. Only actions actually have some influence on outcomes. Screaming because the property management company has failed to meet my expectations doesn’t hurt them. They clearly don’t care about customer service. Screaming only makes my voice hoarse.

I will continue my action plan: to nudge, poke, prod, remind, and cajole, all the while doing my best to be friendly, courteous, and reasonable.

I don’t need to burn it all down to start over in this new city.

Two minutes or less

Sunday mornings are a good time to drive around Tucson. I like to combine errands, so in addition to learning the city, this morning I planned my trip so I could drop off my recycling. I found the police station at Miracle Mile and discovered they only recycle glass there, not paper and plastic, so I headed east on Grant, which turns into Kolb, then left on Speedway and remembered the address of the East Tucson City Hall from my previous trip a few weeks ago. I dumped the contents of my two little wastebaskets into a humongous dumpster, making my tiny contribution to the delusion that I’m somehow doing my part to keep a few scraps of paper and cardboard out of a landfill.

If I wanted to be in a booming business, I think the trash disposal business would be the place to invest. There won’t be a lack of business for the foreseeable future, and even if the entire marketing machine comes to a standstill because of a global catastrophe, the landfills will be full of useful items, some of which will never disintegrate. If I had some vacant land away from a bunch of neighbors, I would glean useable items from the waste stream, sell them to artists and home decorators now (before the apocalypse), and sock the essential items away for later—I’m thinking of the tools, the sturdy plastic containers, the building materials, all the stuff you would need to survive without electricity, internet, and Starbucks.

You need a lot of space for a landfill and a space to sort and glean. A warehouse. An aircraft hanger, maybe. After the apocalypse, planes won’t be flying. We’ll strip them for parts and use the fuselages for shelter. After we clear out the dead bodies. That’s assuming it was a plague that decimated the population. Ha. I read too much science fiction. This scenario also assumes I will be one of those left standing. Human history repeats until there are no more humans: I’m referring to the continual bloody fight over scarce resources. We think we are so civilized, so polite, but really, the ones with the power and resources want more power and resources and they don’t care much who they trample to get them. There’s never enough when the mission is to safeguard your genes, your tribe, and your way of life. As usual, those of us without will always be struggling to get a little more than our fair share.

Last week, the theme of my life was, where the heck am I, really? No, literally, I mean, what the heck is my address? Apparently I signed a lease to rent an apartment that was already occupied. I remember I questioned the address on the lease, back in August, but the apartment manager swore it was the right address. You’d think they would know their property address, right? It’s the address on the lease and on the payment portal where I sign in to pay my rent. A month and a half later, I now have discovered I’ve been paying rent, utilities, and renter’s insurance on someone else’s apartment. How surreal is that?

Action is the magic word. I got busy to keep from screaming and tearing what little hair I have left out by the roots. As far as utilities go, I think I’ve got the problem straightened out with the power company. I’ve called the insurance company and updated my renter’s insurance. The internet provider might be coming next week to install internet in the actual apartment I’m living in, assuming the modem actually arrives in the mail and I’m able somehow to retrieve it. I’ve sent an email to the property management company advising them of the situation and requesting they update my lease with the proper address. I don’t think that is too much to ask, do you?

Meanwhile, if I recently gave you a street address, please discard that information.

This weekend I’ve been organizing the Bat Cave to suit my lifestyle. I can’t make holes in the walls or ceiling, but I have managed to hang some things using that blue sticky gunk that peels off without leaving a mark. Last night I hung up the plastic strips of photos I made for Mom when she was on lockdown at the retirement home. If you’ll recall, I hung strips of photos outside her window until there was barely room to peer inside to see if she was awake on the couch or dead on the floor. When we moved her to the care home, I transferred all the photostrips to her new room. She enjoyed looking at the pictures of her friends and family, evidence of a long life well lived. She laughed when she spotted Radar and Klinger among the family photos.

Now I have the photostrips on my wall. It’s bittersweet to see the photos and remember how and why they were created. It’s been a tough time, for everyone.

This morning I organized my hokey pokey closet space (put your right foot in and shake it all about). It’s actually pretty good sized, for a studio apartment. Bigger than the bathroom. When I look at the bins, boxes, and hanging clothes (most of which are acrylic fleece), I feel some regret and chagrin that I spent so much sweat and money moving that stuff from Portland to Tucson. Even now, after some rest and reflection, it’s overwhelming to imagine getting rid of anything. Four pillows, crammed in a plastic bin. What if I need them to, I don’t know, make a bigger pillow? Do I need these four sets of flannel sheets? I hear it gets cold here. And that lovely rarely used turquoise polyester “down” comforter given to me by a work friend--what if I have to live in my minivan? I will surely rue the day I gave that comforter to Goodwill when I’m shivering in the trunk.

Nope, stop. Have you heard of the concept of sunk costs? All the time, energy, sweat, angst, and money have already been spent and cannot be retrieved. Keeping stuff I don’t need, won’t need, or might need some unknown day in the future goes against the circulatory nature of good living. Rainy days do come, we can’t deny it, but I have plenty of gear for the downpours, and in a flash flood, the less I have to carry, the better. Four pillows and a plush turquoise comforter won’t float me downstream.

I went through the hanging clothes, boxes, and bins and starting culling. Now I have five small cardboard boxes of stuff to donate to a thrift store. I balked a little when I realized I paid money for those cardboard boxes, but then I reminded myself of the principle of sunk costs and the law of circulation. It’s never too soon to lighten my material burden. Call it Swedish death cleaning.

If you had two minutes or less to evacuate, what would you grab on your way out the door? Last week I had occasion to consider that question for myself. A text appeared on my phone from an unfamiliar number, telling me to evacuate the apartment because of a gas leak in the building. Alarmed, I poked my head out the door and sniffed. I smelled no gas. I didn’t see anyone milling around, and I didn’t hear any voices. Given the apartments are all electric, you can imagine my skepticism. I texted back to the unknown person, “Can you be more specific?”

The texter responded with a street address and range of apartment numbers that included mine. I looked around and wondered what I would be sad to lose if the place suddenly exploded. I put my laptop and gear in my backpack and put it in my car, hoping the car would not blow up along with the building. Then I grabbed my phone and fanny pack and keys and started walking around to see what I could find out.

The apartment property here is divided into two sections. The managers refer to them as “complexes,” although I think that is a pretentious label for eight buildings that look like parts of a Motel 6. Nothing against Motel 6, just saying. Eight units per building, four up, four down, with external staircases. Both “east and “west” complexes have four buildings each. Both have dinky pools in between a couple of the buildings. Each building has its own set of mailboxes. Each has its own trash dumpster, although ours is slightly larger than theirs (and neither side recycles or composts). The parking area wraps across the back of both apartments and surrounds three sides of the west complex. You drive in on the east side of the west complex and are supposed to drive out on the west side, although nobody does. People drive in and out both driveways to get to the street. So far, I’m following the arrows on the pavement, but I’m sure at some point, I will cave and seek the shortest path to the exit. Both entrance and exit are guarded by electronic gates that don’t work.

What’s really odd is that a tall cinderblock wall divides east from west, breached only by the back parking area and a walkway from the parking lot to the west pool. I don’t know how this came to be. The buildings were clearly built at the same time by the same developer. I surmise there was a family feud among the owners at some point, inspiring them to split the entire group of buildings into two compounds, east and west.

After locking my door, I walked along the parking lot in the back, came around the corner of the west complex, and saw a modestly sized truck with the words “So and So Gas Service” on the side door parked outside a laundry room I’ve never used. Ah, gas dryers, I guessed. Some guy was sitting in the truck, looking bored. I didn’t see any tenants milling around. A man and woman came out of Building B and sauntered to their car.

And that, my dear Blog Readers, is how I came to learn that after living in this apartment for a month and a half, I didn’t know my own address.

I have since learned the name of the texter. I’ll call her K. She’s the new manager of this property—both sides, I assume. I wanted to ask her about the weird two-complex thing so I ventured into her tiny air-conditioned office and introduced myself. I didn’t stay to chat. She was clearly harried.

“You aren’t the only tenant this happened to!” she said. Apparently the address error had propagated across other leases signed since this property management company assumed management of this place. Now a lot of things need to be unraveled and repaired.

On the bright side, now I know which meter is mine. I know where the power breaker is. I think I’m reasonably certain now of my street address. I mean, how certain are we, ever, really? I’m glad I didn’t get letterhead printed. Not that I would, but you know.

I’m curious about something. I have yet to meet my alter ego in the west complex. Should I walk over there and introduce myself, ask if they perhaps have seen a modem addressed to me? Should I reassure them that the power company has reinstated their account and express my hope that the temporary disconnect didn’t cause a hit on their credit score?

Life trundles on, until it stops. Meanwhile, I’m giving some serious thought to what I would take with me if I had two minutes or less to evacuate. I encourage you to do the same. Not to make you crazy. Just as an exercise in self-analysis. It's always good to know what we value. 

The Chronic Malcontent tries to work a program

Last night the power in my apartment went off just after 3 a.m. I woke up when my fan stopped. Dead-of-night silence is inordinately loud. I wandered around in my dark apartment with a flashlight, peered out the window, and soon realized the power was out in the neighborhood. I woke up my phone and looked up a power outage map. Yep. A red square in the center of Tucson for some reason had no power, and me smack dab in it.

Not having power is similar to not having internet. Both feel indispensable when I don’t have them. However, during summer in the desert, you really need power more than you need internet. I went back to bed—or what serves as my bed, call it foam rubber pad on wood platform, bed for short. When I woke up in the morning, I was glad to see my digital clock blinking red. Like magic, the power had been restored.

If I had internet, I would do some sleuthing to discover the cause, just because it would be interesting, just because losing myself in surfing the Web is a delicious distraction from reality. The cause of the power outage was probably some drunk driver downing a utility pole. It happens here a lot. On Saturday nights, drunk drivers crash into all sorts of things—trees, fences, power poles, bicyclists. My friend likened Tucson to a third-world country. I am inclined to agree. We could blame the vortices swirling around the Santa Catalina Mountains. Whatever the cause, the energy in this place on weekends reminds me of being eighteen on a summer night, drunk out of my mind, riding in the car of my handsome boss, also quite drunk, and laughing hysterically as we narrowly avoided ramming a parked car. That’s Tucson. Needless to say, I am not eighteen anymore.

Speaking of distractions, I drove up to Phoenix this week for a visit to IKEA. I thought I might feel anxious about driving. I haven’t done any distance driving since April when I drove the 1,500 miles from Portland to Tucson. However, once I got on the I-10 freeway headed east, I could feel my limbs relax. I was glad to be on my way out of the city, any city. For a few minutes, I daydreamed about what it would be like to have a bedroom, kitchen, living area, and bathroom neatly tucked into the cargo space of my Dodge Grand Caravan. Then I immediately started fretting about how difficult it would be to actually live the van life in the desert southwest. I’ve seen all the videos. The daydream dissolved as reality returned.

IKEA was big and blue, sitting in an enormous flat parking lot under a sizzling sun. Cars nuzzled tightly around the building, leaving the outer reaches empty except for the spaces sheltered by the shade of a few scrawny trees. All taken, of course. I parked in the open so I could find my car again, covered the steering wheel and driver’s seat with my reflectix windshield cover, and hiked to the enormous blue building in 111°F heat. At the entrance, I passed through a veil of water mist, a failed attempt to provide some cooling, and then I was inside.

In the bright atrium, I paused to get my bearings. I pulled out my list. The wide staircase to the showrooms rose in front of me. Should I ascend to dreamland? Not this time. Already overwhelmed, I decided to bypass the showroom and go straight for the crack cocaine, that is to say, the so-called marketplace, hidden behind a generic door under the stairs.

Within two minutes, I was hyperventilating under my facemask. I haven’t shopped like that in many years—I mean, intentional, purposeful hunting and gathering for non-essential items. Shopping frenzies are an artifact of my past. Instead of feeling energized at the endeavor, I felt sapped. Pillows, textiles, bedding, rugs, lamps, argh. Too much. I kept my eyes on my list and navigated the arrows on the floor, keeping my distance from other shoppers, many of whom were maskless.

I used to shop at IKEA once in a while when I lived in Los Angeles. I remember being enchanted with the place, all the myriad décor possibilities, the potential for self-expression everywhere, color, shape, and function, the intersection of everything I loved. As I shuffled around IKEA this time, I wondered what had changed. Was it IKEA or was it me?

Today’s IKEA seemed darker, dustier, smaller, and less enchanting than I remembered. I blame Covid-19. Nothing seems good anymore. The place seemed dingy, dimly lit in some corners. Displays seemed half-hearted, noncommittal. Many shelves were empty. I soldiered onward, finding everything on my list, or reasonable substitutes. I wasn’t all that choosy. A couple rugs, not my preferred color, but good enough. A few bathmats. A little square rug for the closet. A couple cheap floor lamps. A coat rack. A bar stool for my breakfast bar. I didn’t spend much and felt pretty satisfied with my haul. I would have bought more if shelves had been stocked.

Of course, I have changed too in thirty years. I’m wearier, mentally and physically. Plus I’m sort of done with accumulating stuff. I just got done doing some serious downsizing, so buying more stuff seems like a major slip in my downsizing recovery program. Did I tell you, I’m a founding member of Accumulators Anonymous. I’d been doing so well. Sleeping on a foam rubber pad on a wood platform is part of the recovery plan. Beds are so forever. Until they aren’t; then they are so hard to get rid of. Although, now that I think of it, tenants in my apartment building have been dumping mattresses out by the dumpster. Every week, there’s a different mattress, along with the random vacuum cleaner, ripped recliner, and broken big-screen TV. Someone comes and removes them, like elves in the night coming in to do your laundry. Is that a thing? No? Well, we can hope.

Anyway, mattresses. Maybe they aren’t as hard to get rid of as I think. Still, I’m trying to think long and hard before buying more stuff, even cheap plastic stuff. Well, especially cheap plastic stuff, because although cheap is tantalizing, plastic is bad. It’s a depressing thought to realize that the items I purchased from IKEA, and the plastic in which they came packaged, will outlast me by centuries.

Another month to go until internet. Meanwhile, I am enjoying my new IKEA purchases while battling flies in the Bat Cave.

What makes a place home?

I am happy to report I’m starting to feel more settled in my new apartment. My sister texted me to ask if I felt “happy.” She put it in quotation marks, as if it is an unreachable state, something to be aspired to but never attained, like a dress size zero. I wrote back that I felt content. No quotation marks.

It sure is nice to be reunited with my stuff, even if it is in boxes, bins, and bags. Time to get organized! Over the past couple weeks, I’ve spent a chunk of money on shelving of different types. A four-shelf chrome wire rack now organizes all my travel gear behind the door and provides a great place to hang my television antenna. (So far the only broadcast channel I can’t get is CBS.) Another smaller wire rack now holds Mom’s dinky senior-friendly microwave, although I haven’t used the appliance yet. In fact, after living without a microwave for the past four months, I’m not sure I really need one. Maybe when winter comes, if there is such a season here, I will find it useful for heating my coffee.

Most of my home furnishing expenditures have been on wood. I love wood. Using cheap store-bought, assembly-required fake wood laminated cubes and some wood planks, I built a colossal writing desk with overhead shelves to hold all the paper goods I insisted on bringing with me to Tucson. (Ridiculous use of cargo space, but whatever, it’s done now.) I decorated the top shelf with a display of paintings, framed photos, and ceramic creations made by a former high school art teacher, long deceased, bequeathed to me in a roundabout fashion and carefully packed for the trip across the desert.

This studio apartment has a built-in divider separating one large room into two smaller spaces. The “bedroom” area is somewhat larger than the “living room” area. There is one door and one window. The window is large, but screened, so the view onto the parking area is gray and indistinct. However, passersby can see me sitting at the window staring out at them. I know this because my next door neighbor to the east waved at me as she walked by with her little terrier, returning from the dog poop area. That was nice. That she takes her dog to poop in the designated pooping place, I mean, instead of letting it poop anywhere. Also, nice that she waved. I waved back, of course.

The front room is for cooking, eating, and watching TV. The back room is the nerve center, the inner sanctum, the working space. It’s also the sleeping area, but I consider the bed to be an afterthought. The main focus in this area is productivity. There are no windows in this area, which means there are long stretches of blank wall space, perfect for setting up long work tables. There’s no light back here, either. It’s dark, which is why I’m calling my new home the Bat Cave. However, there are plenty of electrical outlets and no shortage of lighting devices.

Abundance! I now have two large work surfaces. The one to my left is for my desktop computer, speakers, and printer. Right now, that computer is not connected to the internet, which means it functions as a really big jukebox.

This new desk is designated for writing and artmaking. Sitting here, I feel at home. My laptop fits perfectly. I have my gizmos and knick-knacks holding my office supplies at my fingertips. Directly in front of me is a photo of my mother from late last summer, before we moved her from the retirement home to the care home. She’s smiling, illuminated by the setting sun, clearly happy to see me. She needs a haircut. I photographed her through the window from my vantage point in the bushes outside her room. Covid was a thing we thought we could outlast, back then.

I sometimes divide my memories into before and after. Before the death of Eddie. Before Covid. Before we moved Mom into the care home. Before she died. Before I moved to Tucson. These milestone moments are ledges on which my brain gets caught as I mentally freefall into the future. It’s easier to look back, I suppose, than it is to imagine something that doesn’t exist yet. Although, my memory being what it is, the past seems as murky as the future.

Speaking of murky, before I forget, let me update you on the story of Bill, my eighty-two-year-old friend at the trailer park. I called him on Friday night and told him I was coming over and wanted to return his CDs and go for a bike ride if he felt like it. He was amenable, so I drove over as the sun was setting. He invited me inside. I politely refused; I said I was allergic to fragrances, which is the truth. I didn’t mention the overpowering stench of his aftershave, recognizable from several feet away, outdoors.

Soon we were riding along the park roads. At his request, I was riding to his right so he could hear me out of his good ear. As usual, the sunset was spectacular. Every sunset in the desert is spectacular. Ho hum.

“I owe you an apology,” Bill said. “When I asked you for a hug, it wasn’t meant to be a romantic hug. We do a lot of hugging in my family, that’s all it was.”

I thanked him for the apology and said my family didn’t do much hugging. I told him he didn’t do anything wrong, that I took no offense, and that I was glad we were friends.

When we returned to his trailer, he said, “I have something for you.” I waited outside under his carport, watching rabbits gallop across the white rock lawn. Pretty soon, Bill came out carrying a large black plastic trash bag.

“My wife bought this for the hallway,” he said. “It’s a rug. She decided she didn’t like it after all, she said it was too much.” I’m guessing the rug has been in a closet for a while. I wondered what he was feeling as he jettisoned his dead wife’s possessions. I didn’t ask. He opened the bag to show me the corner of a low-pile Persian-style rug in earthy colors, mostly rusty red.

“That’s lovely,” I said truthfully.

Now I have an attractive runner rug in my work space. Not that I needed a runner rug, but I like the colors, and it really spruces up the place. When I walk across it, I think of Bill and wish him well. I also think of his wife. Now her legacy will live on in my interior design and color scheme. Good thing I got the rug before I make a trip to the IKEA in Tempe next week.

I think I mentioned I checked the mailbox here at the apartment. It was crammed full of mail, most of it destined for recycling. Some of it needed to be returned to sender, for example, a check from the U.S. Treasury for $300 for the child tax credit payment. I sorted through all the personal mail and counted mail addressed to seven different people. I am not sure if they all lived here at the same time, but I’m guessing a few did. Judging by the number of debt collection notices in the stack, I’m guessing the tenants had made a strategic decision to stop checking their mailbox. Who needs the aggravation, right? Elizabeth H., Danielle B., Christian O., Delores L., Sage A., Rachel G., and Carolina C., I hope you all will find peaceful resolutions with your creditors. Carolina, I would gladly forward you the two issues of Cosmopolitan you missed; however, the stench of the perfume inserts has proved to be too much for my sinuses.

Mostly, this apartment is great. I am continually amazed at how clean and dry everything is. I see and smell no toxic mold. There’s more than enough room for me and my stuff. The water is hot and plentiful. It’s a very civilized place to spend the next year while I figure out whether I should stay or go.

The main problem is flies. House flies come in under the edges of the window screen. No worries. Big flies are easy to shoot down with alcohol. This morning I taped up the edges of the screen with black duct tape, so I expect to see fewer house flies soon. It’s the no-see-ums that are the real problem. I am blotchy with red bites on my hands, arms, and legs. The females are tiny invisible nasty biters, attracted by carbon dioxide, intent on slicing my skin and suctioning my blood so they can perpetuate their abominable species. I can hear them whine sometimes, if they are near my ear, but I rarely see them. They are the epitome of stealth: fast, small, almost silent, and dangerous. I’m setting out cups of apple cider vinegar, hoping to entice them to reveal themselves, and I’ve got fans blowing in hopes of disrupting their flight paths as they are homing in on my breath. I don’t know if a mosquito net would be a tight enough weave to protect my exposed skin while I’m sleeping. I would gladly take mosquitoes any day. Calamine lotion is on my shopping list.

In addition to the annoying indoor neighbors, I have occasional moments of frustration with human neighbors who like to crank up the bass on their music devices. There is something about that visceral vibration that triggers my misophonia. Luckily, the neighbors with massive car stereos don’t hang out in their cars for hours on end—it’s still too hot. I can hear the booming receding into the distance as they navigate the speed bumps on their way out of the parking lot in their sporty loud cars.

The next-door neighbor to my west probably doesn’t realize how high the bass level is on her stereo. In fact, I can’t actually hear her music. I have no idea if she is playing country or rap or Bandera music. Only the bass comes pounding through the wall. I have imagined knocking on her door and asking her to turn the bass down. I’m pretty sure she speaks English. However, the conversation that might follow is more than I want to pursue. I just don’t have the energy to explain my request. It’s less social pressure to just endure. I find relief by passive aggressively bouncing a rubber ball off the wall we share. She can’t hear it, but it lowers my blood pressure a little. My final remedy is earplugs, jammed deep.

Oh, the last thing. I still have no internet here, and I don’t expect to get connected until mid-October. I’m paying extra to my cellphone provider to use my phone as a hotspot, and I’m using the wi-fi at the library for tasks that don’t require a secure connection. I go back to the trailer to do video meetings. It’s inconvenient, but not impossible. However, I’ll be glad to get back online from the comfort and privacy and security of my own space. Once I get internet access here, I think I might be able to call this place home.

Reading the signals

My new friend Bill at the trailer park has taken a shine to me, it seems. Last week, we rode bikes in companionable silence in the gloaming. I knew it wouldn’t last. What is it with guys? Why can’t friendship be enough? Along the ride, Bill invited me on a date to see the Beach Boys in November at some casino thirty minutes south of here. I said I would think about it. When we got back to the trailer, I put the bike into the back of my car.

“Whoa, muscles,” he said. I ignored the comment. He continued, “I was wondering, why do you wear your hair so short?”

Part of me suspected Bill was consolidating his possession of me but I didn’t want to acknowledge it openly. Wouldn’t I feel stupid if I came right out and said, “Hey Bill, it seems like you are coming on to me. Is that what is actually happening?” and he said, “What? No, what gave you that idea?” and then I would be like, “Oh, sorry, my mistake.” Instead, flustered, I lamely explained my hair challenges.

“Oh, I thought you might have had cancer.”

“No, no cancer.”

He couldn’t help himself. He had to try again. What is with guys? He said, “Say, have you ever considered wearing glasses with smaller lenses?”

At that point, I began to exit my body. Ever mindful to maintain the polite veneer, I tried to explain my eyeglass and vision challenges. Meanwhile, I regressed to age eighteen, imagining I was hearing my father’s voice suggest in a perfectly reasonable tone, “Why don’t you wear some of those nice Ship ‘n’ Shore slack outfits?” The implication was clear: nobody will love you if you look the way you do.

You probably don’t know this about me. I used to be a fashion designer. I was an artist and a writer from a young age but I also had an interest in clothing as a form of self-expression. In elementary school, I applied the sewing skills I learned in 4-H to make A-line skirts and cotton jumpers. In high school, I adapted Butterick patterns to make hot pants and prom dresses. In college, after my art school friends convinced me painting was an obsolete art form, I switched my major to graphic design, which overlapped into fashion illustration. My interest in clothing design led me to Los Angeles in 1977.

I went to fashion design school in Los Angeles and learned to make patterns. I opened a funky custom clothing studio in West Hollywood. Even though I despised the tedium of sewing, for ten years, I made all kinds of clothes for all kinds of people. I made costumes for television commercials and sitcoms. I made costumes for movie characters you have never heard of. I dressed a few stars . . . Alice Cooper, Jon Anderson, Madeline Kahn. I made suits and hats. As Rome was burning, I made prom dresses, wedding dresses, and bridesmaid dresses, and then in 1989 it all imploded in a fireball of unsecured debt.

You would not know it to look at me now but I once had style. Oh sure, most of the time I dressed like a slob. I hate to sew, remember? However, when I needed some fancy outfit for an event hosted by my nouveau riche quasi-inlaws, I somehow managed to conjure up outfits that garnered surprised compliments. Oy, that goyim can really sew!

Now that I’m older, I don’t care how I look, which is a much more peaceful way to live. In addition, I am used to living alone, taming my hair with hedge clippers and eschewing bras. Nobody cares. My friends appreciate me as I am. That is why Bill’s comment caught me off guard.

Now I face a dilemma. How much do I want Bill’s friendship? Should I laugh at his jokes, listen to his stories, and gaze at his overbite with charmed admiration? Should I ride in his car to the Beach Boys concert, throwing Covid caution to the wind and ignoring the fact that I am in an unfamiliar city with no easy way to get home if the date goes sideways?

Bill talks about himself but has yet to express any interest in me. Not once has he asked me who I am or what I believe in. I would have thought his kids would have Googled me by now to let their father know what a creative wackjob I am and if I’m likely to be out to get his money.

I don’t need another friend, not that kind of friend. I’ve had friends like that, the ones who do all the talking and none of the listening. I hate to assume he’s just a lonely horny old man looking for a companion and eventually a caregiver, but it’s a possibility. I hate to say it could just be a guy thing. He’s of a certain generation, almost old enough to be my father’s generation. I don’t think anyone who knew my father well would say he treated women with true respect and equality.

When I was younger, I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I got into some sad situations because I just wanted to be loved. Now I don’t care. I know I’m loved. I also know I was not put on this planet to meet someone else’s needs at the expense of my own. Not my job. And what the heck! I am not in dating mode. Been there, done that, don’t see myself doing that ever again.

Looks like I need to muster my courage for the talk. Let’s see, how should it go? Bill, when you suggested I should consider wearing glasses with smaller lenses . . . I want to say, what the hell were you thinking? Where do you get off, judging my appearance, as if you have jurisdiction over how I look? Bugger off, you and the saggy old horse you rode in on.

Oops, no, I would not say that. Let me try again. I could say . . . gosh, Bill, it sounds like you have an opinion on my appearance. Perhaps you think I would be happier if I looked different in some way? Because of course I know that you want me to be happy, and being different is not the path to happiness, is it? Maybe you think a woman’s place is to . . . No wait, my blood is starting to boil. Dammit, I wish I could say this stuff no longer has power over me, but clearly I would be lying.

No, let me try this again. Bill, when you suggested I should consider wearing glasses with smaller lenses, I may have missed an opportunity to tell you about myself. It’s true I wear short hair because it is convenient and I wear these glasses because they are what I have. But Bill, if you want to be friends with me, you will need to accept me as I am. I like to be different sometimes. Tomorrow I may show up bald with even bigger glasses. If you want to be my friend, you need to be okay with that. Because true friendship is not based on appearances. And oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, I’m a lousy cook and housekeeper, I hate to be touched, I eat onions and broccoli for breakfast, and I pick my teeth with toothpicks. Just so you know.

Something like that. What do you think? I’ll work on it.

Here’s an update from tonight. I just got home. I’m a bit peeved. First, I am chagrined to report, I failed to have the talk. Bill invited me into his trailer to receive more CDs. I sat hostage at his breakfast bar and slowly suffocated from the smell of laundry detergent as he told me story after story about his experiences being anti-racist and pro-Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the army back in the 1990s. The overpowering stench assaulted my nose and clogged my lungs. Outside the wind was picking up. I could hear thunder over the Santa Catalina Mountains. Finally after a particularly loud boom, I hopped up and said desperately, “Do you want to ride bikes before it starts raining?”

Mid-story, he stared at me in surprise. I apologized and whined something about being allergic to the smell of laundry detergent.

“That’s Lysol,” he said. I can differentiate the smell of laundry detergent from Lysol. It hardly mattered. Either way, I was busting a gut trying not to cough all over his kitchen. I grabbed my stack of CDs and went outside to find clean air and a fantastic sunset.

We rode bikes once around the park as the wind picked up. My hat stayed on my head. Bill’s went flying. Pedaling into the wind was a challenge. I coughed and laughed and pedaled and admired the sky as the rain began pelting down. Rain doesn’t fall here, it pelts, like the sky is actively trying to nail you with giant orbs of cold water. The storms here never fail to impress.

Back at Bill’s trailer, I loaded his wife’s bike into the back of my car while he put his in the shed. We stood not too close to each other and watched lightning bolts shoot from the tops of the clouds to the ground, seemed like just over the next ridge.

I knew what was coming. I can still read the signals. Even after all these years being single, I know when a guy is making his move. Bill was just unsure enough to give me a warning sign: He started to spread his arms out toward me. And he asked permission.

“Can I give you a hug?”

My body answered for me. Before my brain could engage, I had backed off and put my hands up in front of my chest in a defensive posture. I shook my head babbling, “No, I don’t think so, no, sorry, not for me, no, sorry.”

He is a tall man but he’s thin as a stick. I am sure I could deck him, especially when adrenaline and anger take over my brain. He would be a puddle on the ground before I had a chance to apologize for my unladylike behavior. However, politeness is an insidious disease. When taken to an extreme, politeness—the overwhelming desire to avoid giving offense—can cause me to exit my body and hand over control of it to someone else. I simply float away. This must be avoided. I’ve spent too much time in my life hovering near the ceiling while icky things happen. 

No hugs.

On someone else's memory lane

My new friend Bill at the trailer park called me on the phone. “I have something to show you. Come over sometime. But call first, okay, unless you want to scrub my back in the shower.”

Bill is eighty-two years old. I’ve learned when socializing with old folks, it’s best not to lollygag. They could die before you get around to showing up. Case in point, Bill’s wife Linda died in her sleep. Imagine waking up next to that. Anyway, if you promise to do something for an old person, and you are serious about it, do not delay.

On the day Bill called, I was at the housesit trailer cleaning up the place in anticipation of the return of the homeowner. I wanted to leave the place spic and span, whatever that means, you know, pack it in, pack it out, leave no trace. I don’t want them to realize I slept on my foam rubber mattress on the floor for four months because my back does not appreciate memory foam. I was quite comfortable, thanks for asking. I regret nothing. I consider my four months living out of boxes and bags and sleeping semi-rough to be good preparation for living in my car, should that moment ever come.

After the sun went down, I hauled the bike out of the back of my car and rode over to the clubhouse to mail some letters back to their senders. I’ll tell you the story of those letters some other time, if I remember. Here, I’ll just say that I finally got around to checking the mailbox at my new apartment. That box holds a lot of mail.

From the clubhouse, I called Walt and told him I was around if he wanted me to come over. “I can be there in two minutes.”

Two minutes later, I wobbled around the curve and found him waiting for me on his back porch, delighted to see me. “You look like you are riding more smoothly,” he said.

“Less wobbly,” I agreed. I propped the bike on its kickstand and followed him into the kitchen.

“I have something for you,” he said. He handed me a 5 x 7 color photo of me sitting on his wife’s bike in his driveway. Behind me is a tall block wall and beyond that are the tops of cactuses and trees. Starbucks is just out of view. I am wearing black pants, a white jacket, and my straw hat—my bike-riding uniform. I am smiling self-consciously at the camera. I always prefer to be the one taking the picture.

“Thanks, Bill,” I said with appropriate appreciation and enthusiasm. I assumed he had a photo printer stashed away in the bowels of his trailer, excuse me, mobile home. In one of our conversations, I referred to the homes in the park as trailers. “Trailers have hitches,” Bill had said. “These are mobile homes.”

Bill invited me into the living room. It looked the same as I remembered—altar for Linda’s ashes, comfy seating, baseball game on the big screen television. “Remember those shows I was telling you about? I have them on DVD.” Bill pulled an enormous black zippered disk holder from a cabinet. There must have been three hundred CDs in the thing. He flipped through the sections. “The truth about the war,” he said, meaning Viet Nam. “The truth about Watergate. The truth about the environment.” Most of the DVDs were labeled with the word “Frontline.”

Finally he found the disks he sought. I sat on the marshmallowy loveseat while he queued up a DVD. He stood in front of the big screen, a tall bony man with skinny legs, a slight pot belly, square shoulders, and no neck, pointing the remote at the DVD player, fast-forwarding until he got to the right part. “Here we go,” he said, grinning like an adolescent through his crooked overbite.

The video quality was poor. Someone had set a stationary camera on a table near the open area that served as a stage. In the background, people could be seen moving through a hallway to and from the restrooms. The audio was scratchy, and the images were pixelated, but I got the gist. It was a home movie, amateur documentation of a holiday event of the kind you hope you never have to see again. Bad enough you had to live through it once. Not for Bill. Bill clearly loved reliving his time in the limelight.

It was a holiday-themed party at the clubhouse at the trailer park. MoHo park, excuse me. The year was 2010. A huskier, more limber Bill came onto the stage, recognizable by his overbite and square no-neck shoulders. He was dressed in garish printed pajama pants and a snowman shirt. On his head was a wig made of long stringy black hair. He was joined by three other oddly dressed people. Two women wore tie-dyed t-shirts and the otherman man in the group wore a red plaid sport jacket that looked like it was made from a quilt. This guy introduced the group as the Grandpas and Grandmas. They proceed to lipsync to songs from the 50s and 60s, including Monday Monday, an homage to the Mamas and the Papas. Present-day Bill giggled as he watched his younger self performing. I did my best to be appreciative, although I kept an eye on the clock. It was growing dark outside and I still had to ride the bike back to my car.

“Wait, I have one more to show you,” Bill said, switching out the DVD for another. “This one is a little longer.” I settled back on the loveseat, telling myself if there is a heaven, I’ll have something nice waiting for me there, like maybe some ten percent off coupons to IKEA.

The second event was another holiday party, in the same clubhouse room, three years later. In 2013, Bill looked about the same, wearing the same ridiculous snowman shirt. His associates this year were two women (neither of which was Bill’s wife) and and a younger man. Of course, this is a fifty-five and older mobile home park, so nobody was all that young. I can hardly believe I qualify to live in this place, but whatever.

I was interested to see Bill’s wife on the video. Linda was a short, small-boned woman with narrow hips and heavy breasts. Her gray bubble of hair did not move as she clapped and bounced to the music. She stood offstage by a piano and smiled the whole time. She looked like she had a nice personality. I noticed two things. She had no sense of rhythm, and Bill largely ignored her throughout the forty-minute show.

Bill and his group performed a pantomime to bits of songs from the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. The audience was in good spirits and clapped and sang along, despite the fact that dinner had been delayed because no one had turned on the pilot light to heat up the lasagna.

The video operator was more creative this year, panning around the large crowded room. At least sixty people sat at long tables in the large meeting room, sipping beverages with a minimum of heckling. It’s a large space, with a piano and fireplace and shelves full of books. I’ve seen that room through the windows but never been inside. They’ve been remodeling during my sojurn at the moho park. I peered inside a couple times as I came by every few evenings to borrow and return paperback books at the book exchange boxes placed on the walkway outside the clubhouse door. During Covid and remodeling, the clubhouse was closed. Now the books are back inside on the shelves, and the outdoor book exchange is gone.

Bill was thrilled to have me as a captive audience to witness him relive his memories. He watched the show with obvious glee. “Here comes the good part,” he said several times, or “Let’s see if you recognize this song,” or “Did you see what I did there?” I did my best to be a good audience member, laughing in the right places, clapping once in a while, nodding, asking some relevant questions to show I was paying attention. I tried not to watch the clock, which was directly above the television screen.

I’ve met people like Bill, people who are desperate to be the center of attention, even if their moment of fame comes in a skit at a mobile home trailer park holiday party. He relished being the star. I got the impression he watched this DVD often. He knew all the lines. He echoed his words as he sat on the couch, chuckling, reliving his moments in the limelight, giving me the play-by-play of the show, explaining what was happening, like for example when the two women suddenly crouched down behind a barricade and started putting on vests and neckerchieves.

In fact, the group had props for all their songs. A lot of effort went into creating this production. The group dressed in cowboy hats and western gear to sing “Long Tall Texan.” The younger man “rode” a horsehead attached to a stick. During another number, they tossed armfuls of stuffed skunks into the audience as they sang “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”

“I was singing,” Bill told me. “I wasn’t pantomiming, I was singing. I only listened to the song three or four times to learn it.”

During the closing number, a lively Beach Boys tune, some of the audience members near the stage joined the group to dance to the music, Linda among them. She bounced on stiff knees, clapping off-beat, smiling gamely, while her husband Bill ignored her. Other than introducing her once at the start of the show, he never interacted with her, did not look at her, did not dance with her or touch her, did not stand near her when she joined the group on the stage. She might as well have been one of the props.

After the show was over, Bill motioned me to follow him toward the back of the mobile home. I followed him in sock feet along the plushly carpeted hallway as he showed me the photo gallery of Linda with the grandkids, one every Christmas until the last Christmas, when it was just the grandkids alone. Bill led me into the master bedroom, occupied by a king-sized bed and a couple dressers. I thought, if this goes sideways, I can probably take him. He’s built out of sticks. The overhead light was harsh. He pulled out some things from a dresser drawer.

“You might like to have these,” he said, holding out a navy and white machine-knitted winter scarf with tassles on both ends. “And these,” he said, holding out a plastic pack of footie socks. “And these gloves,” he said, handing me a pair of worn black wool gloves. I accepted the gifts politely, thinking oh lord, not more stuff. I put the scarf around my neck. It smelled of perfume.

Next, Bill led me into a large dressing room area. He pointed at a row of bottles and jars arrayed along a counter in front of a wall of mirrors. “Can you use any of that stuff?” I declined, claiming allergies, which is true. I do not wear cosmetics and use lotions at my peril.

Bill led me to a closet. “These?” he said, pointing to several knitted pullovers that I knew were much too small for me, even if I wore that style of clothing. I shook my head. “How about these shoes?” Bill said, pointing to a shoe caddy holding black slip-ons with low heels. I shook my head regretfully. Back in the hallway, Bill opened a cupboard. The shelves were packed with hardback books, most of which were by the psychic Sylvia Browne. Linda had been enamored with the psychic’s writing and performances. Bill offered to loan me some. I declined.

By now it was 9 pm and solid dark. I felt like I’d just missed meeting Linda, like she was just in the next room, just out of sight. I knew her clothes, I knew her smell. I did not have to ask Bill how much he missed her, even as he was jettisoning the last of her possessions. I did the same with my mother’s things before I left Portland. You can’t keep everything, and it’s better if someone else can use the stuff.

We went outside. Bill got his bike out of his shed and rode with me through the warm night air back to my car. Along the way, under a street light, I saw yet another flat lizard, pulverized into the asphalt by a car tire because it paused when it should have hustled.

Flying through the night

Bill rides a bike around the trailer park in the evening and we occasionally cross paths as I'm out walking my route. A few nights ago, we stopped and had a lengthy conversation about the weather, whether it would rain, what monsoon means, and the phenomenon known as virga. 

The next evening we crossed paths again. Bill told me his wife had died last year and asked me if I would like to have her bicycle. I said yes. He told me the number of his mobile home, and two nights ago, I set out walking in that direction, despite ominous clouds and light sprinkles. I'm an Oregonian—I'm not afraid of rain, even the downpours we have here in Tucson. I marched up the middle of the asphalt road, intent on my destination. I almost didn't see the woman standing on the edge of her gravel lawn waving at me in the deepening twilight.

"You might not want to go that way."

I stopped. She was brown-haired, perhaps somewhat younger than me, who can tell, everyone in Tucson looks ageless to me. She wore a big t-shirt and loose pants. 

"Why, what's going on?" I asked.

"There's two javelinas up there walking around."

I wanted to say javelinas, I'm not afraid of two javelinas, but I didn't want to offend. At that point, the sprinkles intensified. Not quite drops yet. We both looked at the clouds and continued our conversation. 

"I've seen one javelina around," I said. "She seems pretty shy."

"They usually run in packs," she said. "They can be nasty, especially if there are babies around. Oh boy, looks like it might start pouring!"

"That's okay. I'm staying just over there, on the other side of the wash."

"Do you want a ride back home?"

I was thinking, who is this troll blocking my way? My destination was close but the rain was coming down harder. I had the feeling I just needed to back off. I was more leery of her than I was of two javelinas. To keep walking forward toward danger after her obvious warning seemed rude, so I turned around and retraced my steps. I walked around the park in circles, waiting for the rain, which didn't arrive until much later in the night, disrupting my sleep by pounding on the metal awnings. 

Last night, the sky was clear. I tried again. The troll was nowhere in sight as I marched up the street past her place. As I came around the corner, there was Bill on his bike coming toward me. I waved. 

Bill is a thin rangy sunbaked man with bad teeth, glasses, and shaky hands. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a beige polo shirt, tan cargo shorts, knee-high socks, and well-worn white sneakers. 

"Come inside, I have something to give you," he said. "Besides the bike."

"Oh, I don't know, with Covid, is that such a good idea, to let a stranger into your home?" I said, standing on his back steps 

"Just for a minute."

He obviously didn't care about Covid. I didn't have my mask with me. I've had my shots. I assume he got his too. The likelihood of us transmitting Covid to each other was probably small. I followed him through his kitchen door, admiring his shiny beige compression socks as he went up the steps. 

"It's all original," he said, pointing proudly to the counters and cupboards. "The floor too." I nodded in appreciation, noting the1970s beige linoleum squares and pale green and white swirl Formica countertops. "My daughter-in-law painted that part," Bill said, pointing to a strip of blood red wall running around the room above the white cupboards. I admired the breakfast bar with its pale swirly Formica surface. "Psychedelic," he grinned.

He led me into the dining room, which was carpeted in plush beige shag. I took off my shoes and left them on the kitchen floor. He told me the story of his dark brown oak dining room table (oak grown in the U.S., shipped to the Netherlands to be made into a dining set, and then shipped back to the U.S.).  Next, we toured the living room. Three big overstuffed pieces of furniture occupied half the space, arranged around a coffee table. The base of the table was wrought iron, and the top was made from squares of desert-colored cut rock. "It took two guys to get that thing in here," Bill said proudly. 

A large dark wood entertainment center dominated the wall opposite the longest sofa. Bill pulled out doors and opened cupboards to display his collection of DVDs and CDs. He asked me what kind of music I like. I mentioned 1980s new wave dance music. I wonder if he's heard of New Order or David Bowie. 

"You'll like this, then," he said, handing me a stack of CDs with hand-written labels. He'd compiled his favorite songs onto CDs. I lifted my glasses so I could read the songs. "Air Supply," I murmured. "Okay." 

"You take those and listen to them." 

I dutifully accepted a small stack of CDs and held them carefully as he led me over to a table against the wall. The table was covered end to end with sympathy cards. In the center of the table was a wooden box with an engraved tree on the front. I read the inscription about losing a limb from the family tree. Bill started to read it and choked up. I finished reading it for him. 

"Everyone here loved her so much," he said. "She was the nicest person you could ever hope to meet."

I did my best to be a good listener. When it was time to go, Bill put the CDs in a plastic bag along with an extra inner tube for the bike tires. I slipped my shoes back on and followed him out to the carport. He got a little bike out of a shed and wheeled it to me. It was a sturdy girl's bike with tall handle bars, no gears, and old-fashioned foot brakes, a lot like the bikes I rode as a child. I got onboard. 

"You have changed my life today, Bill," I said, thinking about the rides I could take on the bike path and around the mobile home park. He grinned. 

"I hope I remember how to do this," I said. I hung the plastic bag on the handlebar and off I went into the darkness. 

I rode back to the trailer, reveling in the warm darkness. When I pulled up next to my car, I heard a voice.

"I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."

I knew right away who it was. I turned and saw Bill on his bike. 

When javelinas fly

I came face-to-face with a rotund javelina a few nights ago. I think it might be one lonely female who wanders the trailer park nibbling on weeds. She moves slowly. I don't think I could call it a saunter, after getting a better look at her. I think she's moping. She is always alone, and javelina normally travel in packs. I think she's lost her family.

Her preferred weeds might soon be gone too. A man in boots carrying a two-gallon jug of some liquid I suspect I would not want to get on my hands came around a couple days ago. I am guessing it was a man. All I saw were hairy legs and large shoes. 

I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of my laptop reading the online news in order to avoid preparing for my Zoom class when I heard a strange rhythmic groaning sound outside. Through the window blinds, I saw a pair of hairy legs and booted feet walking on the rocks between the trailers. Every few moments, the boots would stop. One human hand holding a spray wand would appear and shoot a clear liquid onto patches of green weeds that had enthusiastically emerged after the first rains. Every now and then, the other hand would appear and push a plunger into the jug to prime the pump on the sprayer. That priming motion was the source of the noise. After jamming the plunger a few times, the spray wand was ready to attack more little green weeds. I never saw the man's face; however, I noticed he was not wearing gloves. Or long pants. And it was mid-day, easily 105°F. Wouldn't want that guy's job.

A few days later, the green weeds are looking peaked, but that could be because we haven't had rain for a week or so. Or it could be because they were murdered with herbicide. 

Speaking of murder, on Thursday, after two long months of wanting to strangle the leasing staff at the apartment that supposedly had approved me to rent, I finally signed the lease. A link to the lease agreement had arrived in my email inbox on Tuesday. The lease agreement email came from a no-reply email address, not a strong signifier of good faith. Luckily, another email arrived from an email address I could reply to, telling me about an option to get renters' insurance. I quickly saved that email address into my contacts list.

I went through the lease's many pages and addenda, jotting a list of my questions. The main problems I saw had to do with the lack of specificity about the unit I would be renting and how the electricity charges would be calculated. Signing a lease without knowing which unit I was renting seemed wildly risky, similar to packing everything you own in a minivan and driving 1,500 miles to an unfamiliar city. I certainly didn't want to rent one of the units that fronted on the busy street. I practiced deep breathing. I was ready to accept the possibility that these two months of waiting might have been for naught. 

I called the leasing office and left a message. No response. I sent a message to the legitimate email address with my list of questions. No response.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I visited the property management company website to find contact information and sent a polite email. Their website touted their fantastic customer-centric service, and proclaimed their desire to build relationships with tenants and property owners (probably more with property owners than with tenants, but I admired their inclusivity). Welcome home, they said. You belong here! Right. They manage many properties throughout Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. I'm a marketing professional (sort of, sometimes). I know how it works. 

Because they recently took over managing this apartment complex, I had hopes. Almost immediately, I received a response. Miracle! We will forward your email to the leasing staff. Oh, and what are your questions, maybe we can help. Even though the email was not signed, I was heartened to receive a response from what I'm mostly certain was a live human.

I tidied up my list of laments, sent it off, and waited. No response. I wondered, are my expectations out of line? Marketing is all about communication. I know how it should work. I can recognize when it doesn't.

It occurred me to call the leasing agent again to leave yet another message. Maybe the property management company had succeeded in lighting a fire. Miracle! She answered the phone! The first time in two months, a real person answered the phone! I know it sounds silly, but I'd forgotten how low my expectations had fallen. I was so excited, I could barely speak. I stumbled through my questions, and she gave me acceptable answers! I asked if I could come and see the unit before I signed the lease. Twenty minutes later I had parked my beast outside the leasing office and met the leasing agent for the first time. I felt like I was in the presence of a unicorn. I wore my face mask (she did not), and I treaded softly, not wanting to scare her back into the jungle. After some tries, she found the proper key and opened the door into what I think will be my digs for the next year.

Even though I'm basically moving into a motel with a kitchenette, I signed the lease. The next day, I drove over there to get the keys. I was told I needed to procure a money order first. Would have been nice to know that first, but oh well. Off I went to get a money order, and returned, money order in hand. The hoop appears. I jump through. 

Upon receiving the keys, I inspected the apartment (can you really call it an apartment, maybe postage stamp would be a better descriptor). I took lots of photos and made a list of issues. Compared to the Love Shack, this new place is clean and dry and free of mold. It's got a tub. It's got a full-size refrigerator and a Barbie-size four-burner stove that might accommodate one loaf of bread, not that I plan to do any baking. It has a walk-partway-in closet. The floors throughout are gray woodgrain vinyl planks—not hardwood, but I've seen worse. At least, the kitchen floor isn't a black and white checkerboard of poorly adhered, chipping, paint-stained linoleum tiles. The walls are off white textured, no holes allowed. Perfect Zoom background. It's going to be fine. 

I just returned from my evening walk around the trailer park. I met the usual residents. For some reason, their tiny dogs decided not to bark at me. I discovered why, I think, thirty seconds later. As I came around the corner, the man in their dog-walking party appeared and said, "There's a javelina crossing the street down there. William in 65 feeds it."

Well, how about that. I'm sure now one sad lonely overweight female javelina wanders the park. We make our rounds at about the same time, just as the sun is setting. I'm walking to keep my blood pressure down, and she's walking to get handouts, which no doubt keep her from getting depressed. As I went along the street, I kept my eyes peeled, and there she was. I was a good hundred feet away. We had a standoff for a minute. She wanted to get past me, and I wanted to get past her. I went across to the other side of the road and walked very slowly toward her, trying to video the interaction with my phone. There was no interaction, really. She skulked along from driveway to driveway, trying to get past. She could smell me but not see me all that well. She tried to hide behind a bush that didn't have enough room to hide her. She seemed shy, morose, and not inclined to linger or nibble, so I went on my way.