December 12, 2021

Change my attitude or change my situation

Once again my week overflows with blessings and curses. Among the blessings, I count a quiescent check engine light and the absence of little dudes in my kitchen. I used to take my luck for granted; I hardly noticed when things were going my way. Not anymore. Now every time I start my car, I tense, waiting for that horrible ding that tells me I bought the automotive equivalent of a hothouse flower. Pavlov's frothy minivan owner. Each time the light does not come on and the bell does not ding, I feel a tremendous sense of unearned relief. 

Trouble is obvious when it happens. This week’s trouble has been the refrigerator, which seems to have a funky defroster. The maintenance guys, Jaime and Carlos, visited on Wednesday. Jaime is clearly a refrigerator whisperer. He showed Carlos how the defroster works, and I sat nearby and listened. Carlos and I wore masks. Jaime did not. I didn't ask why. Yes, I was willing to trade the possibility of COVID-19 for a repaired refrigerator. 

Jaime gently removed the back inside wall of the freezer and set it aside. He chipped off chunks of ice to expose the metal rod that normally heats up to keep ice from accumulating where it doesn't belong. However, he said there could be an issue with the gizmo that tells the defroster when to defrost. Maybe it was funky, maybe not. He said he would order some parts, just in case. Meanwhile, feel free to put your food back inside.

I did not remove my food from the ice chest and put it back inside. I’m not a fool. Good thing, because despite his ministrations, the freezer still cannot make ice and the main part of the fridge is still not cold enough to keep yogurt safe. Nothing has been repaired. The fan runs almost constantly but Darth Vader the Defroster is still AWOL. 

I’ve been camping without a properly functioning fridge for ten days. The only thing I keep in the box are raisins and nuts. Although, today I mentally kicked myself—I don't have a thermometer, but I’m guessing the freezer is probably the perfect temperature for keeping my yogurt safe. I wish I had thought of that before all these trips to Safeway for bags of ice. Oh well. This is how I learn my way, by going in circles.

It has been a going-in-circles kind of week. On Monday, I met a new dentist, chosen from a short list of locals in the Medicare provider network. This dentist was unlike any dental professional I’ve ever met. I use the term professional very loosely. I’ll call her Stumpy. After Stumpy's exam and cleaning, I have a profound appreciation for the professional dental practice I left behind in Portland. 

On Tuesday, I motored to the desert hinterlands for my second visit to the lab and contributed a little more blood for a follow-up exam. Then to round out the day, I got my COVID-19 booster shot. Wednesday was more or less a black hole of aching-bones misery, punctuated by the fruitless visit from the maintenance guys. Thursday I started to feel a little better, except for a late-day migraine. Friday I found out my blood is no good, tornadoes tore up the Midwest, and Mike Nesmith died. It’s been a rough week.

I spent Friday and Saturday grieving. Once I started grieving, I tried to glean as much value as I could from my investment in the production of tears and snot-nosed congestion. That is, I packed everything I could think of into my grief bucket—the death of my cat, the pandemic, my mother’s death, my stupid car, my stupid blood, scary weather, mean people, the demise of the second-to-the-last Monkee, the little dudes in my kitchen, the fridge, the melting ice in my ice chest, my sagging butt, and the whiskers growing out of my nose.

Trivia, perhaps, but big or small, it’s all evidence that things are changing. Circumstances have changed, are still changing, and I myself have changed. For someone desperate to manage and control circumstances so she doesn't have to be afraid, change is cause for grieving.

So what should I do? I will tell you what I would like to do. I’d like to go to bed for the winter, hibernate in the Bat Cave until things settle down, inside and out. However, I know that is neither realistic nor possible. So I’m meeting life head on. Next week I am going for my pneumonia shot. Why not? I’m on a needle-jab jag. Then, I plan to start a new drug for osteoporosis—oh boy, that is bound to be fun. And third, I’m going to make an appointment to meet a hematologist. I predict I am anemic, and the cure will likely involve eating great slabs of beef liver daily. 

Blessings or curses? Who knows? I have more evidence to factor into the mix. The southern Arizona weather is chilly at night but mild during the day, compared to Portland or Albuquerque, anyway, with brilliant sunshine and pure blue skies. This afternoon, I walked to a local cemetery, saw people visiting the graves, and felt gratitude that I was born in this time and place, the perfect age to appreciate the ephemeral under-appreciated phenomenon we knew as The Monkees. My brother sent me photos of his five black and white cats, all brothers, and of his soulful-eyed black puppy who now weighs over forty pounds. My sister, taking on the role as parental stocking-stuffer, sent me a toothbrush. 

Right now, it's quiet in Bat Cave. No pounding, no voices, just my own soft music, my playlist of favorite songs. See what I mean about taking my blessings for granted? It's not hard to know when things are going wrong. It takes dedicated mindfulness—and a sneaky optimism—to be aware when things are going right. 


December 05, 2021

Between here and there

When last we spoke, I mentioned that my nemesis, the check engine light, had returned to disturb my peaceful cat-sitting gig in Albuquerque. The day after Thanksgiving I drove to two places in a valiant but fruitless effort to get the problem resolved. One was closed for the holiday, the other was too busy, come back later. I pictured days of delay as I waited for parts and repairs. As it turned out, on Monday, when I started up the beast in the frigid early morning sunshine, the check engine light did not come on. Maybe there is a god.

The theme of my days seems to involve driving in circles. On Wednesday I got lost on my way to the airport to pick up my friend. I knew it would happen. It always does when I drive in the dark in an unfamiliar place, so I allowed plenty of time. My sense of direction deserts me in the dark. I won't mention what else deserts me. Suffice it to say, it's probably time for another eye exam.

I eventually found my way to the cell phone waiting area and dutifully waited with my cell phone on my lap and my feet wrapped in a big towel, thanking that possibly nonexistent higher power for helping me find the place. I don’t know why I fret. I always somehow manage to get to where I’m going.

That track record is reassuring; as long as I know where I’m going, I’ll eventually get there. Driving in circles on the way to my destination is sort of my personal motif. Ask any passenger I’ve ever had. Following a linear route on a map is something I aspire to but seldom achieve. My friend reminded me that there are phone apps to guide me. So far I have not successfully managed to get my old smartphone to talk. Maybe I haven't given it the old college try. My style is perhaps more elementary—I meander, geographically and otherwise, like a kindergartener wanders from puzzles to playhouse to play-doh. I’m okay with that, as long as I’m not in a hurry. Where I hit the metaphorical concrete bridge abutment is that moment when I realize I have no idea where I am going, that there is no destination other than death, and how and when I get to the final destination is almost completely out of my control.

Tucson looks different to me now, after driving to Albuquerque and back. It’s just another city. Just a place where my stuff happens to be, a place to land for a while. I haven’t experienced many cities in my lifetime. I can name them on one hand and still have fingers left over: Portland, Los Angeles, Tucson. Three cities in my sixty-five years. Does that seem like too few? Well, to be precise, I sampled two L.A.-adjacent neighborhoods that were actually cities: Santa Monica and Venice, to be specific. Maybe I’ll find something similar here—the Santa Monica of Tucson. Could that be Marana? Oro Valley? Neither one is a place I can afford, even if they have vacancies. You need real money to live here.

How can I make a decision about where to live if I haven’t lived but a handful of places? I’m chagrined to report, I moved to Los Angeles in 1977 sight unseen because my high school friend J had moved there, and also because Portland winters suck. I moved to Tucson in 2021 the same way. My defense in 1977 was that I was twenty and stupid. My defense in 2021 was COVID-19. I’m a lot older but possibly still stupid. Maybe it’s the way my brain rolls. It’s all or nothing. After Mom died, my choice seemed to be stay in one place and succumb to toxic black mold or pack up everything and move to a new city. I always knew I’d head south once I was free. I’m a creature of the sun. Tucson promised warm weather and affordable housing.

Nothing is every quite as advertised. Tucson has warm weather, yes, and also shocking heat waves, thrilling monsoon rains, walls of dust-filled wind, and the potential for ice in winter. Affordable housing, yes, if you don’t mind living in the demilitarized zone in a roach-infested motel-style apartment with noisy neighbors on four sides and the ever-present threat of burglaries and car thefts. I guess I should put affordable in quotation marks.

I drove for seven hours, crossing the desert between Albuquerque and Tucson, and as I covered the dusty miles, buffeted by speeding semi-trucks, pickup trucks, and motorhomes, I gradually stopped being afraid of Tucson. I found I had gained a new appreciation for this city. Maybe it's more like I achieved a sense of neutrality. I drove away before dawn on an unfamiliar highway into an unknown future and reentered the city on a hot afternoon, moving with the traffic, knowing exactly where to exit and how to find my way home.

Home. I’m using the word home now consciously, wearing it like a loose overcoat, trying it on for size, knowing the definition of home could quickly morph into something else.

I’ve seen a couple shy little dudes since my return. As long as they stay out of my bed, I don’t care. The next challenge to my peace of mind is the refrigerator, which is clearly gasping its death throes. It can no longer make ice or keep my yogurt cold. My new icebox is literally a box of ice. I can’t dredge up much angst. Yes, it is inconvenient, evidence that I unwittingly moved to the third world. On the plus side, the fridge no longer sounds like Darth Vader haunting my dreams. In addition, the ice cooler will be useful if I end up living in the belly of the beast.


November 28, 2021

Closer to the edge

Howdy from Albuquerque. As I sidled along tidy sidewalks next to cinder block walls and wooden fences in the neighborhood today, cold in the shade and warm in the sun, I pondered two things: the depthless blue of the late fall New Mexico sky and the progressive nature of mental illness.

Wait, Carol, what? Are you mentally ill? Well, what would you call a person who deliberately, almost rebelliously, even compulsively, eschews a traditional safe lifestyle for a path uncomfortably close to self-annihilation? I’ve been trying on the term minimalist. As in, Honey I shrunk myself and now I’m a minimalist! I’ve jettisoned possessions like an aged cat spews gas. If you don’t know me, it sounds plausible. Yeah, cool, Carol’s a minimalist. However, I know me, and I can’t hide behind a claim of minimalism. That would be a bit like spraying poo-pourri in the bathroom. We all know what goes on in there when you turn the faucet on full blast.

It could be that my mental compulsion to downsize is in alignment with the current zeitgeist of decluttering and simplifying. Some of you might say, Thank you, Carol, for living simply so that others might simply live. Right. You obviously don’t know me.

Doing a Marie Kondo on my life might actually be trendy but my hipness factor is unearned—in fact, if I'm hip for pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, it is purely coincidental. I was dismantling my life, or it was crumbling around me, long before it was cool to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Who cares. I’m beyond hip now. I’m out in the stratosphere, way past Swedish death cleaning, on my way to total erasure.

What is “pure” minimalism? Is that a thing? No idea.

As part of my quest to downsize after Mom died, I decided to move from Portland to Tucson. You all know the story. My decision was logical (I thought), based on my knowledge at the time. Now I know there were some things I didn’t know, and I didn’t realize then that I should have known them. For example, I didn’t know I was a credit ghost. That situation made it difficult to rent an apartment. (Embarrassing disclosure: I apparently failed to recall that I may have created that condition years ago myself by freezing my credit after some generic data breach. No recollection.) Second, I didn’t know how expensive car insurance was in Arizona (I could have researched it). Further, I didn’t know that fiber optic for internet is not a thing in my Tucson neighborhood and never will be (could have researched that, too). Finally, I’d heard rumors but didn’t fully understand that tenants in Arizona have almost no rights (it’s right there in the Arizona Landlord and Tenant Act, I could have looked it up and chosen to move to a different state—apparently Oregon has good tenants’ rights. Who knew).

I wasn’t totally ignorant. Some things I knew. Stuff we all know. You get what you pay for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. There’s a sucker born every minute. Nothing is guaranteed but death and taxes. Blink and you’ll miss it. The early bird gets the worm and then is annihilated by a diamond back rattlesnake. Never fall in love with a car.

I am not all-knowing. I doubt if anyone is, even though some people I’ve known sure act like it. Carol, you should [insert suggestion here]. I’m sure part of the reason I’m standing on the edge of the existential cliff overlooking a fresh new hell is because I deliberately did the opposite of what they all suggested. I'm obstinate that way. Hence, the diagnosis of mental illness. Well, the difference between a suggestion and a criticism is not hard to discern.

At some point, you have to stop peeling back the layers. If you peel too deep, what’s left? There’s just a gaping mouth, waiting for a kind soul to insert worms. Nobody is going to stuff food down my throat except me—at least, not until I’ve had a couple strokes and can no longer lift a fork to my lips. Whenever I feel like whining Oh, no, please don’t make me take care of myself, my mother’s voice rings in my ears. This not the voice of my demented mother, the one I trailed behind, stooping as needed to rescue a dropped glove, a used tissue. Rather, it is the voice of the mother who lived with my father and sneakily thwarted his wishes at every turn. He wanted me living in their basement forever, tied to his twenty-dollar bill gas-money handouts. She wanted me out of the house to sink or swim on my own. To motivate me, she spoke the dreaded words: “Carol, just get a job.”

As I contemplate the pursuit of a life shallow in material possessions but flowing with creativity, I hear her voice daily. Right on, Mom. I hear you. I could get a job, I bet. Probably. As long as it doesn’t involve leaning my head back or balancing on a ladder, there are many things I could do. Probably not driving, maybe not heavy lifting, but I could certainly sell small things to customers. How long before stoking the fires of consumer culture sent me running screaming into the night?

I’m squatting (stiffly, because of arthritis) at the intersection of a few questions. First, what is home? What is it, where is it, and how small can home be before it cannot support life? There must be someplace for me somewhere, probably more than one someplace. It’s a big country and it’s not like I’m moving to Mars. Here’s another question: What is freedom? Is anyone truly free? Where on the planet can you go to avoid someone holding up a book of statutes and telling you No, you can’t live like that?

What if I don’t want to be a tenant or a traditional homeowner? What other options are open to me? Even if I bought an undeveloped patch of land in the desert, there are laws about parking a “home” there. There are laws about parking a “home” on someone else’s land. There are laws about parking a “home” on BLM land, which supposedly belongs to all of us.

You’ve probably heard people say something like “home is where the heart is” and thought, Aww, isn’t that sweet. I don’t find it all that helpful. My heart has been obliterated, shattered into a billion glittery bits that haven’t yet fallen to earth. Maybe they will eventually coalesce and stake a claim in some city I can find on a map. Silver City, my friend says. Bisbee, you would love it there, lots of artists. Sedona, Wickenberg, Green Valley, Ajo, Yuma, Quartzite.

One more truism: If you don’t have a “home,” then you can never be lost.

This ten-day cat-sitting house-sitting gig in Albuquerque has given me some valuable insights. Albuquerque is an appealing city, with its pueblo architecture and civilized sidewalks. Despite the dry air and nosebleeds, I have enjoyed seeing some local sights. For example, the petroglyphs are a twenty-minute walk away, how cool is that. However, if you’ve seen one ancient rock carving, you’ve pretty much seen them all, and the weather, despite the sunshine and blue sky, is colder than a snowball’s dirty brown underbelly, and being cold sucks. It’s not winter yet and the nighttime temps are below freezing. It's not news that I was not made for cold weather. I’ve been complaining about being cold forever. My blood slows to a viscous crawl below 50°F.

Regarding the house-sitting gig, this four-bedroom two-story condo would be great for someone young enough to be on the ascending side of a career trajectory. Owning a house like this says you have achieved the American dream, you have arrived, congratulations, you are finally a viable adult. (We were worried about you for a while.) For someone like me, a nontraditional oldster tumbling in freefall down the descending side of a career trajectory, living in a place like this would be a heavy drag on my quest for minimalism. It’s a lot of space that demands constant upkeep and cleaning for no good purpose except to store and display the trophies of success. I don’t need display shelves anymore. I never achieved success, and I gave what few trophies I earned to the thrift stores.

The best part of any home is the four-legged creatures who dwell within. However, much as I am enjoying caring for this funny little old cat, my heart has not found solace. It is great to feel cat fur again, but petting a cat who is not Eddie does not fill the massive Eddie-sized hole in my heart. 

And, oh yeah, the check engine light came on again. So, if I don’t see you here on this blog next Sunday, I’m stuck somewhere on I-25 or I-10 in the desert between Albuquerque and Tucson. I'd be obliged if you would send a posse.



November 21, 2021

Every moment is a new adventure

It's 449 miles between here and Albuquerque, a drive of approximately six and a half hours, or more like eight hours, the way I drive. I drive like my father, who coincidentally would have turned ninety-five today. Happy birthday, Pop. Your legacy lives on. I think of you whenever a semitruck blows me off the road. Well, what's the rush, right? I have one pace.

I'm driving to Albuquerque to cat-sit for a friend who is going out of town for the holiday. I'm thinking of this as another house-sitting job. I'm practicing for my new career. Yep. Intentional houselessness, here I come. I think. We'll see. I still have nine months on my lease. After that, who knows? Housing costs are going up everywhere, it appears, and so are Medicare premiums. 

My tentative plan is to dry up and blow away. I've achieved Stage 1 of my plan: contract osteoporosis. (Is osteoporosis something one can contract? I'm not sure. Mom had it so it's probably genetic. Which means Stage 2 will be dementia.)

My Tucson friend E has a dream of creating a hot springs oasis in the desert, a place to grow old soaking in hot water. I'm on board with that dream. I'd happily volunteer to be pool boy. Girl. Whatever I am. When all the hair migrates from your legs to your upper lip, gender tends to blur.

I published my second novel this week. Sorry I can't tell you what it is because this is an anonymous blog. Note to self: In the future, if you want to publicize your accomplishments, don't be anonymous. 

When I get back to Tucson, I have some medical and dental tasks on my calendar. It's not a surprise. I turned sixty-five and the grand vista of Medicare opened up before me. Over the past few years, I postponed my healthcare needs while I orbited my mother, knowing there would one day be a reckoning, and that reckoning has come.  

Is it true that we don't fall apart until we achieve the goal—then we relax and let go and everything falls apart? If that is a thing, then I am in trouble. I kept things together for five years, getting closer and closer to my own personal abyss as my mother inched closer to hers. (No, I did not push her off the cliff, although I thought about it, usually when I was mopping up her messes.) Now she's gone, and now it looks like the edge of my own cliff is crumbling under my feet. Maybe it's more like taking a used car to the mechanic. Fix one thing, get ready to fix everything. I got one tooth pulled and smithereens! 

What does smithereens look like? Thanks for asking. It's a systemic slow-motion mildly tragic disaster.  

My bone marrow, in its quest for sustenance, has apparently cannibalized my muscles, so now I'm a breakable stick with flaccid funbags. My joy at fitting into my old non-stretch Levi's has pretty much evaporated, because the pants no longer support my droopy butt. Now I look like an old baggy version of Mr. Green Jeans. I predict a hip replacement in my future, if I don't fall down and break them both first. 

My hair is falling out pretty much everywhere except my nose and upper lip. I have the beginnings of cataracts. I can't see well enough to pluck the whiskers from my upper lip but I can see my mother in the mirror just fine. This week, I think I somehow managed to contract a hernia. Is that a thing? Germs are everywhere, who knows, hernias could be, too. I wear my mask at the store, but hernias could be spewing out through the ventilation system, how would I know, until I bust a gut lifting my grocery bags into the car? I blame politics. 

On the bright side, I went for a bike ride on the bike path with my Tucson friend E. Luckily there weren't many up hills and down dales; thus, I managed to pedal the whole way and back without falling in the Rillito River or getting bit by a Gila monster. I thought there was a better than fifty-fifty chance either my brain would give out or my body would give up, but neither one came to pass. Once again, I discover I am capable of more than I thought. I am not a quitter in most things, but sometimes I give up on myself too soon.

Well, it's not time to give up yet. However, if dementia is in the cards for me, I have a plan. I hope it is a long distance in the future, because the plan is pretty vague at this point. The plan depends on many factors, few of which are in my control. However, I think it will involve hot springs, warm blue skies, good friends, something tasty to drink, and a few magical pills. 

Meanwhile, I have miles to go, people to enjoy, stories to write, and places to see. Until I reach the end of the road, the road trip continues. 


November 14, 2021

On becoming a rock star

Have fun staying poor. Apparently that is a meme in the bitcoin world, a member of which I am not, in case you were wondering. Selling virtual art through nonfungible tokens seems like a Faustian bargain. Artists deserve to be paid for their work, yes, maybe. But do we have to sacrifice the health and well-being of the planet (and humankind) in the process? Maybe we need to redefine what we consider art. For example, artists have spent countless hours trying to replicate the phenomenon of sunlight on a lake. Now that art can be turned into an NFT, thanks to the massive computing power facilitated by coal-fired power plants and natural gas, is that really what we should do? What if, instead of auctioning off NFTs of sunlight on a lake, we simply appreciated the actual sunlight on a lake? Just a thought.

I don't have plans to create NFTs. I am on a mission to prove to myself it is possible to have fun staying poor. In nine months, I will be moving from the Bat Cave. I don't know yet where I am going, I just know that this is not the place to stay for another year. I am reframing my experience as a rock star tour, which means I'm some kind of rock star. Stay tuned to find out what kind.

I can hear you saying, rock star tour! But Carol, what is that? Thanks for asking. You know how musicians go on the road with their music? They start out sleeping in Volkswagen vans, occasional motels, and decrepit cab-over RVs and eventually graduate to 40-foot long, 36-ton Prevost mansions on wheels? They travel from town to town, stage to stage, building community and selling CDs? Right? I don't have a community or a CD to sell, but that's okay. You gotta start somewhere. In about nine months, I'll be starting my rock star tour. 

I've got the van, and this week, it's running well, no lights clamoring for attention, no bells clanging in my face. I drove it to Tempe this week to fetch a cheap mattress from IKEA. It was great. The two-hour drive going north was blocked by a traffic jam a few miles from my exit and I didn't even mind. The air was warm, the desert mountains were beautiful, and the radio played oldies from the 60s and 70s. Returning south was even better. I sang aloud until the station faded to static, feeling happy for the first time in a long time. I like the Bat Cave, despite the little dudes, but it doesn't feel like home. I'm just passing through. 

I get the feeling I'm not the only one. Tucson feels like a temporary town, as if it were built for filming a western and will be dismantled after the shooting wraps. Many of the homes here in the west part of the city (at least along the main thoroughfares) are trailer homes, parked in communities on land that belongs to absentee landlords. By definition, these abodes are temporary. Big Tonka Toy trucks move these prefab buildings out of one park and into another. The "homeowners" own the trailer but not the land it sits on, which is how landowners get rich. These landlord landowners farm out the landlording to property management companies, who get rich by pandering to owners and exploiting tenants. 

Some mobile home parks are like little Disneyland villages. The roads are paved, the homes are painted in appropriate desert colors and lined up neatly to the grid, the palms and saguaros are trimmed. White gravel front yards shine in the sun, decorated with ceramic figurines and pinwheels. The main clue to quality is the presence of an iron gate across the entrance to the park.

Most mobile home parks here on the west side look like they were settled by a caravan of squatters running on fumes. They parked their vintage Airstreams in haphazard rows and let the tires go flat. These parks are a mixture of abandoned RVs, travel trailers, and mobile homes arranged randomly as if placed by a blind crane operator. There are no gates or yards. In some cases, there are no roads, just paths of dirt and dust barely wide enough for a pickup truck. Awnings are bent or missing. Windows are broken and patched with tape. Trees are scarce. Some of the little travel trailers look like they are one monsoon away from blowing into Cochise County. 

You can tell who has money. The residents who live in the pristine mobile home parks head north for the summer. Someone picks up their mail and flushes their toilets. The lifers are the ones living in old travel trailers that will never travel again. They are stuck here year-round; summer or winter, going nowhere. 

Life is a temporary condition. Moving on is a time-honored human endeavor. I'm warming to the idea that I am a temporary resident of a temporary town. Blowing through in slow motion. Pausing for a year to savor the wildness of this place, and then letting the wind blow me someplace else. Fun, eh? How many people get to pretend to be rock stars? I'm thanking the luck that birthed me in this place and time. Not everyone has the privilege of choosing how and when they leap into the abyss. 


November 07, 2021

Creating a new reality

Darkness falls fast in the desert after the sun sets. Twilight doesn't linger. During the day, I imagine the little dudes snoring in their cozy nests under my kitchen countertop. I wash my dishes with an eye open but I feel pretty certain the kitchen is mine. Until dark.

In the evening (I imagine), the little eyes flutter open, the tiny mouths yawn, the little wings buzz, the skinny legs flex and stretch. I imagine the little dudes are eyeing the exits, which are entrances onto the vast stage of my kitchen counter. They probably poke each other: Who is willing to stick out an antenna? You go first. No, you go.

I have laid down some serious napalm in the form of insecticide spray. I have mined the place with sneaky bait traps. My last line of defense is diatomaceous earth spread around nooks and crannies, around the baseboards, and around the bed like a barricade of garlic. 

I don't think the little dudes drink blood, but I think of them as tiny vampires. They are fast and almost invisible if they pose in place. As soon as an audacious dude makes a move, my anxious eye spies it, my hand reaches for the spray bottle of rubbing alcohol, and in sixty seconds, the little dude is on its back, antennae wilted, tiny legs pistoning in the air. 

I don't like killing things. I'm sure I'm going to hell. But my consolation is the little dudes will all get there before me, if I have anything to do with it. I keep my spray bottle near to hand the way some angry people tote their AR-47s. Anything that moves in my kitchen is fair game. I don't care what you are.

This apartment building was built in the mid-1970s, and I think the countertops are original to the 1960s. The architects got a good deal on this stuff, I'm guessing, most likely because it fails to fulfill all the performance obligations of a mediocre kitchen countertop. First, the white background is speckled with dark irregularly shaped and placed spots of various sizes, scattered tightly like a reverse field of stars. Some speckles might even be a little glittery, but most are some shade of dark gray, if you don't count the handful of light brown cigarette burns left by former tenants. What this means in terms of the battle raging for kitchen supremacy is that it looks like the countertops are teeming with bugs. (The speckled counters surround the bathroom sink too but I haven't seen any little dudes there yet. Not much to eat there, unless they get a hankering for Colgate.) 

Second, the speckles aren't flat, they are just slightly raised, almost embossed into the surface, which I'm guessing is some sort of particle board, judging by how it is crumbling underneath the edges around the sink. Particle board and moisture are natural enemies, and moisture always wins. This slightly raised surface means I can never be sure the counters are clean, not without nuking them with bleach, which is really bad for the air quality in the Bat Cave. (Did I mention the Bat Cave has only one window?)

If I were to try to see the battle from the bugs point of view, I would say, wow, how lucky are we to live so close to a smorgasbord of aromas and flavors! Talk about the promised land. The embossed nature of the surface gives us good purchase for skittering. The plethora of crumbs and tidbits and drips left behind by a human with bad eyesight means some fine midnight brunches for us. And if the sneaky human flicks on the light and catches us manging around the stove, well, we can either run for our lives or freeze behind something and hope we don't get caught. How fun is that! It's a little dangerous at times—we lost Uncle Manny last week, and Junior Number Twelve hasn't been seen in a while. But what a life of luxury!

From my human point of view, I am constantly creeped out after dark. I didn't see any action for a few nights and naively thought I might have won the kitchen wars, but then last night I saw two full-sized dudes lurking around the so-called clean dishes, and I realize I'm fooling myself. You can't win this kind of war, not even if you raze the place to the ground. It's like I'm living on stage in an auditorium. During the day, the audience is snoozing, head to toe, spooning in their nests among their multitudes of eggs. As soon as darkness falls, every seat in the auditorium is filled. They are watching me with unblinking eyes, waiting for me to shut off the light. Soon they come creeping out of their hidey-holes to dance on the stage.

My eyes see the speckles on the kitchen counter, bug out, and kick my brain into fight or flight mode. I peer under things and between things, pointing a flashlight, pounding the counter. If I see something move, I launch a frenzied attack. I spray the bug and watch it kick until it expires, feeling just slightly sad and guilty. If it falls into a pile of diatomaceous earth, I let it lie there, covered in white dust, desiccating, a constant reminder to its brethren: This is what could happen to you. Each dead bug is my equivalent of a head on a pike. I don't think it is working as a deterrent, though, and it's really more like I don't want to clean up a bunch of little white-dusted corpses. It's just gross.

I'm starting the downsizing process again. I'm putting essentials in big see-through plastic bins. I know, plastic! Argh. Cardboard boxes are getting filled up with clutter and taken to the thrift store. Cardboard and clutter, both good hiding places for bugs, are now verboten. I'm getting as much up off the floor as I can. I moved the bed six inches from the wall and surrounded it with a dusting of diatomaceous earth. I sleep like a princess on an island. 

While I'm washing dishes and listening to my refrigerator breathing like Darth Vader twenty hours a day, I'm reflecting on my current housing situation. I'm trying to make home not be a geographical place but more like a state of mind. I don't have experience with this. My sister the world traveler does, I think. She learned early how to pack light and settle loosely. Me, wherever I go, I'm always lugging a sewing machine, a power drill, a bunch of art supplies, and ton of other stuff . . . and that's after downsizing and moving to Tucson. I can pare down some more, but at some point, I will reach the dreaded moment where I must let go of all my security blankets and pack what is left into my car. I have until the end of next August to find my new state of mind.

 

October 31, 2021

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.


October 24, 2021

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.

 

October 17, 2021

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.


October 10, 2021

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. 


October 03, 2021

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.


September 26, 2021

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.


September 19, 2021

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. 


September 12, 2021

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.


September 05, 2021

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.