The lure of the geographic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The general dissatisfaction of being alive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I went to the ENT.

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

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

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

A day of miracles and it's not over yet

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway! 

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

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

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

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

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

Making a motion toward something

It's been a good week. The vertigo bucket in my head has been mostly calm sailing. The salt shaker in my right ear has been mostly silent or just barely hissing. I hardly notice it. Really, I can't complain. Even getting a mammogram wasn't a big deal. Deflating the fun bags used to hurt. Now I barely feel it. I was in such a good mood, I did my taxes! It really was a good week. 

I hope I remember this moment. Tomorrow my so-called part-time job starts. I got hired as a remote dissertation editor for a department in a scrappy for-profit college. I've never heard of universities having editors on staff. I don't know yet what to think. I'll let you know. I don't know yet what my schedule will be. I'll let you know. I suspect whatever happens, the expectations will be ridiculously high and the compensation absurdly low. As usual, I'll let you know. Why am I doing this? What do you mean, at my advanced age? I guess I need something to focus on, something to spin around. Spinning around my next book project isn't filling up the well. I need to feel useful. 

And you'll be with me for all of it, as usual. Lucky you! For more than a decade, I've relied on this blog to absorb my angst. You've been there with me. I started the blog with some rants about my employer, a for-profit career college. I complained about my dissertation program, as I recall. I told you how I felt about being laid off from my job. I celebrated the PhD with you. I shared with you the ups and downs of dealing with my mother's dementia. You were the first to know when my cat died. And when my mother died. And then you came with me to Tucson. You've been with me the entire journey. Thanks for being my witness as the moments have unfolded. 

New moment, new unfolding. I feel as if I leaped off a cliff coming to Tucson, and I'm still falling. I had a picture in my head of what life in Tucson would be like. Peaceful, warm, mild, slow. Tucson is not that. Instead, I found rough, raw, loud, and fast. It's all about the sky here. No matter the weather, the sky dominates. In Portland I was hemmed in by trees. Oak trees, maple trees, ash, aspen, and cottonwood trees, pines, cedars, and spruce, spewing their leaves, needles, and pollen everywhere and covering up the sky. I was smothered in trees. Here, trees are an afterthought, barely a thought. Scrubby beat up things hiding in the washes or ridiculous telephone pole palms that give no shade while shaking their stupid pompoms in the wind. 

After almost ten months, I still don't know what to make of this city. I still get lost. I still don't know where I belong or where I'm going. I still feel like getting in my car and heading west until I run out of road. 

A mild case of existential dread

COVID is still a thing here in Arizona. I'm laying low in the Bat Cave, hiding out from omicron, even though I know, as a bleeding heart liberal, I'm prone to believe the sky is falling, has always been falling, will always be falling. I don't fear death. I do fear long COVID. My brain already has enough hiccups. I double-mask and glove up when I go to the grocery store. Other than that, I've stopped going into buildings. I walk the streets alone, reveling in the 64F sunshine and wishing it were warmer. Meanwhile my sister in Boston is buried in two feet of snow. She's been feeding birds on her balcony. They are lined up like marauders on the railing. I'm afraid I'll get a text saying she was pecked to smithereens by chickadees and sparrows trying to get to her birdseed stash. 

Meanwhile, it's mild and dry here in Tucson. While I wait to die from a stroke, I have been patting myself on the back for finally getting the upper hand with the little dudes. I have been spraying weekly. I rarely see a little skittery dude now. Not alive, anyway. I see a few on their backs with their limbs frozen in the air. Did you know that some cockroaches are the same color as bits of sautéed onion? I know. Kind of puts you off your feed, doesn't it?

Let's see, what else? No more men with guns this week, no more people pounding on my door at midnight. Yesterday my neighbor on the other side of the wall had a little party with the girls. I couldn't hear the music but the bass from her stereo pounded for several hours through the wall. I wanted to rip a hole with my hammer and stick my head through. Here's Johnny! Now I kill you. However, I refrained. Once again, I was driven to the Internet to discover the name of my malady: misophonia. It's a thing, look it up. Earplugs don't work. I took a folding chair into the closet and sat there with my mp3 player going in my ears until the noise stopped. Eventually my heart settled back into its own rhythm rather than trying to beat in time to a song I could not hear. Neighbors. They come and go. Come August, I will be one who goes. 

Of course, life is uncertain. I'm feeling some existential dread. I heard that term on the radio today. I really like it. I think I will adopt it as my description for my state of mind. How are you, Carol? Oh, feeling a little extra existential dread today, how about you? 

It's hard to mope when the sun is shining. I have to put my back into it. Really make an effort. On these mild sunny days, it takes some serious motivation to maintain my chronic malcontentedness. It's like belonging to Misanthropes Anonymous. Sometimes I have a little slip and hate someone or something but mostly I've got this recovery thing handled. I have a lot to be thankful for. For instance, I think I might be getting a little stronger after five weeks of the bisphosphate pills. One false step on the treacherous Tucson pavement could shatter my timbers but I have hope that if I keep moving, gradually my bones will strengthen. Then when vertigo trips me over a curb, I'm more likely to pop up like Bobo the Clown. 

Mom used to say it's hell getting old. Now that I'm my mother, I can say it too. It's hell getting old. She lasted until 91, though, and I'm only 65. What the heck, Universe?

Speaking of what the heck, when I was fourteen years old, I wrote a book about some pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail. I wrote it in pencil on notebook paper. Five hundred pages. It took me four months. I tied the pages together with yarn and bound the book with kelly-green fabric glued onto corrugated cardboard. I'm looking at it right now as I'm typing this blogpost. It has traveled with me through the years, mainly because I didn't know what to do with it. Scanning it would take forever. Typing it is out of the question. Does it have any value as an artifact? If I were a famous writer or artist, it might. Like, wow, she was only fourteen when she wrote it. Nobody cares, but I still can't bear to relegate it to the recycle bin. 

Now, at last, through the wonder of modern technology, I discover I can have Google Docs type it for me. All I have to do is read it aloud. If I can stomach my teenage maunderings about covered wagons, Indian raids, and cute Indian boys, I don't think it's going to take all that long. Three pages of longhand scrawl condenses to about three typed paragraphs. If I manage to read this entire tome aloud, I think I will find out it's only about a hundred pages. Then I can store it in the cloud, shred the book, and let my literary executor deal with it, if I'm fortunate enough to have one of those. 

What did I just say? No recollection

 

In the past two days, two people have asked me if I'm really a chronic malcontent. I've been complaining in this space since, what, 2010? Maybe this whole blog thing I do isn't clear to anyone but me. You will interpret things I write in your own special way. Probably the most practical lesson I have learned in my years of working a program has been that what others think of me is none of my concern. 

In the past, stating something like that has gotten me into hot water with my family. I can't say I care much. I'm distracted by things other than my blog and its readers. On Monday, in broad daylight, a young white man walked past my window carrying a long gun as if he was looking for someone and meant to use it. Ten minutes later, five police officers showed up with weapons drawn. On Wednesday night around midnight, someone pounded hard on my door. I peeked through the blinds and saw a young white man (not the guy with the gun) standing outside my door as if he expected me to open it for him. Maybe he was looking for the person who lives in the other same-number apartment in the other section of the complex. I didn't open my door to find out. 

I'm hunkered in my burrow, figuratively speaking, wondering how long before I give up trying to fend off reality. Maybe I'm chronically malcontented, maybe I'm just situationally malcontented. Maybe when that stupid ship I have always believed was offshore finally flounders in tie up at my dock, I can heave a sigh of relief and relax. Meanwhile, I soldier on, taking care of bithneth. 

Yesterday my friend E witnessed my signature on my healthcare powers of attorney. My sister now has the authority to pull the plug. I need to mail copies to the State of Arizona and drop off copies to my doctor's office. Next on my list is to fill out the POLST form (printed on orange paper, don't forget) and then write my will. The fun never stops. 

Last night I went through my closet yet again and pulled out some jackets I brought with me, thinking, who knows, COVID might end someday and I might need to look business-presentable. Now both things are unlikely, and I am no longer planning for a future in which it matters how I look. I'm letting go, not hanging on. It's past time to relinquish the past. Into the thrift store donation box the jackets went. I'm trying not to think about the long spaces of time that open up before me when I am less obsessed about my possessions. 

My next task last night was to go through a box of my old writings. I should have done this before I moved. I dug into some dogeared folders and found essays from early college days, as well as some lined notebooks of handwritten stories half-started, never finished. I used my old printer to scan the few things I thought worthy of keeping and jammed the moldering paper in a sack for recycling. 

Some of the handwritten stuff was hard to read. The ink was faded, the handwriting was illegible, and the ideas were trite, melodramatic, and self-conscious (unlike this blog). I had forgotten how much angst I used to have. All my characters were morose and self-righteous, all the scenarios were tense and predictable. If you think I'm a bitter writer now, you should have seen some of the stuff I tore up into pieces last night. Compared to that writer, the malcontent you meet here in this blog is Little Mary Sunshine. 

It serves no purpose except self-centered self-flagellation to retain that part of my past, even in stories. Self-flagellation is so 1980s. Stick a fork in me. Even these documents I've scanned will be lost in the cloud once I'm gone, as links to shared folders fade in memory and email addresses gather dust. Nobody cares. And I no longer care. I'm paring down, letting go, simplifying in preparation for the next adventure. Bottom line, like all humans, I will shuffle off this mortal coil empty-handed. All this stuff I thought was so essential to my wellbeing has become a concrete block around my neck. I feel a great sense of relief to lighten my load. Seven months left on my lease, then I'm off to the unknown. If I don't get shot by a stray bullet while eating my eggs and veggies. 

 

Delinquent neurons are not apologetic

The brain is back. As much as it ever was, anyway, which is good news for me, out here alone in the short branches of the wild west. It's good to have a brain that works when SUVs are coming at me at 50 mph. Last week my brain hiccupped in a weird new way but according to Dr. Google, it is unlikely to happen again, and indeed, my memories are as intact as they were before the hiccup, which is to say, generally faded, tattered, and stored at the back of a dark, high shelf in a closet I rarely can find. All systems normal. 

My mind has been failing for a while. My most recent brain glitch is probably just another notch on the downward spiral into dementia and death. Some years ago I realized that my brain was no longer a reliable partner. Somewhere around the intersection of menopause and my vegan meltdown, which was a rolling disaster that occupied my attention for several years, I became aware that mentally, things were different. 

The names of new acquaintances flew past me into the ether. Phone numbers evaded my retrieval attempts. I started forgetting names of people I'd known from California, people I'd worked with. Whole portions of conversations went missing. Discussions and decisions were lost to vagueness.

I fought the encroachment of incompetence by denying reality. For years, I had prided myself on my near-eidetic memory. That marvelous (unearned) skill smoothed my path from kindergarten through college and beyond. I refused to believe it was starting to fail. Quelle horreur!

My inability to accept the changes in my brain produced some stinging defeats as I doubled down on defending my mistakes. The facts (which mattered back then, unlike now) always revealed my thinking errors. Go back and look at the minutes, Carol! We said this, not that! When it started to become a pattern, I had to accept the sad reality that something in my brain had changed.

Smack someone down often enough and sooner or later they catch on. Eventually I learned to stop claiming to be correct. Out of sheer grief at being betrayed by the brain I thought I could trust, I swung to the opposite extreme and made sure everyone knew my memories were mired in a wasteland far from any known landmarks. 

My friends were sympathetic but impatient. They would only listen for so long before they were like, yeah, we get it, you're human, can we get back to the business at hand? With my family, when it emerged that Mom had dementia, I couldn't really get much mileage on the complaint engine. Yeah, poor Carol. Sad, but let's get back to poor old Mom! I couldn't compete. That was annoying. When I whined I can't remember, she would roll her eyes and laugh. As her brain deteriorated, though, she got more empathetic. Then I felt like a colossal cad for whining.

I learned to write everything down, a habit I employ to this day. If I didn't have Write blogpost on my calendar every Sunday afternoon, I would not be writing this blog post. 

Last week my brain took a half-day holiday and opted not to make new memories for a few hours. Man, I wish I could just opt out and have someone else take the wheel for a while. The rest of my brain muddled through the afternoon, casting resentful glances at the empty spaces the AWOL neurons had left behind. These slackers didn't tell anyone that they were leaving or where they were going or when they would be back, so the rest of us had to soldier on, moving from moment to moment with no breadcrumb leading back to where we'd been. It's definitely a surreal way to experience reality. A taste of what is to come, perhaps.

After lunch, the delinquent neurons came back online and were like, What's up, dudes? Oh, sorry, did we lock you out of the memory palace? Whoops, our bad. 

Those slackers. I'd like to write them up or something. Maybe tomorrow, if I remember. 

Who am I and what just happened?

Poor old Google can't keep up. I'm opening and closing several web accounts using multiple log-on identities on two different computers and Google keeps trying to alert me, Oh no, there could be a security breach! As long as I remember my passwords, I'm okay. Worst case, I get a text with a magic number. If I ever lose this phone or get a new one, I'm toast. I've lost one yahoo! identity because of a lost phone number. If it happens again, I'll just have to reinvent myself. 

Reinvention is not new to me. For example, I used to be a person who had a cat. Then the cat died (two years ago today) and I reinvented myself as a person who used to have a cat. Up until a year ago, I was someone with a mother. Now I'm not. I used to be a resident of Portland, and now I'm a resident of Tucson. Personal reinvention is the natural progression of life. Or is it reincarnation? I don't know. 

Speaking of starting over, I asked the universe if it wanted me to live in my car. You know how you sometimes ask the Universe stuff? Or is it just me? Universe, I said, if you want me to live in my car, okay, I'll give it a shot, but if you don't, please send money. 

You can't expect the Universe to do all the work. Sometimes the Universe needs help. Right after Christmas, I got on the Web and looked for a job. I found a job listing for an academic editor, updated my CV, figured out how to upload my documents, and clicked Apply. Whoosh! With that click, I had notified the Universe of my willingness to earn.

The Monday after New Year's, I got an email. The next day, I had a phone screen. The day after that, I had a Zoom interview. Thursday I got a job offer. How about that? I had one day to bask in my job-hunting glory. (They want me! I'm not too old!) The basking was short-lived. On Saturday, parts of my brain stopped working. 

It happened while I was on a Zoom meeting. Maybe I was super stressed out, I don't recall. I had a ten- minute talk, and luckily, I had notes. I think what I said made sense, but I can't be sure. I don't remember much. By the time the talk was over, I was experiencing a phenomenon known as transient global amnesia. Now that I'm more or less on intimate terms with the condition, I think I can snuggle up to it and call it TGA. 

TGA is a sudden, profound, temporary inability to form short-term memories. I know! Who knew such a thing was even possible!? Not me. I thought I'd had a stroke. After the Zoom meeting ended, I ran to the mirror and started making faces at myself and flailing my arms around in the air over my head. Was my mouth drooping? Had I started drooling? Were my arms matching each other in their range of motion? No to the first two questions, yes to the third. Did I know my name? Yes. Could I type? Let's find out.

I consulted Dr. Google and quickly discovered my malady had a name. Transient global amnesia. It sounds frightening, and it was. Transient sounded reassuring, but global? Amnesia? Oh no, who am I? What just happened?

TGA is a strange phenomenon. My mind had wandered out into the short branches and could not find its way back home. Thoughts ran through my brain like water. Once they passed through my mental processor, they were gone as if they had never existed. File not found, file deleted, file corrupt. I was literally trapped in each moment, like a goldfish in a water bubble. I could not reconjure the thoughts I'd just had moments before. I could have a conversation, but I could not hold the thread of the conversation in my mind. Every sentence was new, disconnected from anything that just passed. I attended another two meetings, limping from one sentence to the next, before I could eat lunch and assess the damage. Formats and agendas saved me. I could read, I could follow directions. I just couldn't remember what had just happened. 

The word that kept me calm was temporary. Sure enough, in a few hours, the fog lifted. The websites I consulted indicated I might not remember much about what happened during the episode. I know what I had done because I had notes and my calendar, but I can't recall specifics of what I said or what others said. A few hazy images linger now, but mostly yesterday afternoon is a black hole. 

I have profound empathy for what my demented mother most likely suffered in her final years. It was utterly confounding and disabling to be unable to access my short-term memories. It's ironic that the goal of meditators is to detach from distractions and stay in the present moment. Someone should figure out how to put TGAs in a bottle, Red Bull for Buddhists. Guaranteed to keep you in the here and now.

I don't think I am cut out for meditation. Before this episode, I was neutral on the idea of the here and now. Now I am sure, being stuck in the here and now is not nirvana. It's okay to visit, but don't lose your way back to where you were. 

Which leads me back around to this new editing job. It's a part-time remote gig editing dissertation chapters for half a dozen students a few weeks of each ten-week term. I need a functional brain to do the job. I'd like to believe that the Universe has come through, delivering an income source when asked, so I don't have to end up living in my car, but we know the Universe can be a trickster. 

This week the new college is checking out my former employer, a crummy career college that laid off a bunch of teachers in 2013, me included, and finally gasped its last in 2020, thanks to COVID. The defunct career college (of which I have blogged a great deal! See just about any post prior to 2013) is following good camping practices by packing it in, packing it out, and leaving no trace. I had to send copies of my W2s to the background check company to prove I actually worked there. 

The new school might decide I'm a liar. I doubt it, though. They need people like me, people who are intrinsically motivated by something other than money. It's a for-profit institution. If you have read my blog over the years, you know how I feel about for-profit higher education. I know they underpay employees to keep tuition low. I know the hours will be ridiculous, and I will have no say in anything. I know this from experience. If they decide to hire me, I will accept the job with my eyes open. Editing student papers will help me stay current in my quest to be of service to nontraditional graduate students who need support and guidance. It's my thing.  

As long as my brain holds out, I will keep trying to live usefully and walk humbly. 

Let me take you to noisy town

Happy new year, Blogbots, all six of you. How are you doing? I hope you are staying safe in this stupid cold season. Yes, cold. Tucson temps fell below freezing last night. For the past week, we've been socked in with clouds and rain. It felt like Portland in early November. Then the clouds rolled east, leaving clear skies. You know what happens in the desert at night: The temperature plummets. I can hear you say, Really, Carol? Plummets? When I say plummets, I know it's all relative. Some of you are in actual plummet-prone places. (Have I ever used the word plummets so many times in one paragraph?) I'm thinking Albuquerque. Minneapolis. I'll step aside; I can't compete. However, remember, I moved here for the famous warm winters! I've been checking the maps for someplace warmer and drier that doesn't involve moving to another planet.

Speaking of noise, fireworks! On New Year's Eve, the big vacant lot just over the cinder block wall on the far side of the parking area was the scene of some pretty impressive DIY displays. (I kept checking to make sure my car wasn't on fire.) I'm on the first floor, so I couldn't see much through the trees and the block wall, but my neighbors upstairs were on the parapet above me, oohing and ahhing at each explosion and glittery colorful burst. I imagine they were sitting in chairs, but I didn't go up the stairs to find out. I don't think I could have interacted with them without resentfully asking them to use their indoor voices after 10:00 p.m. Anyway, New Year's is a thing here. The fireworks were hammering the neighborhood from six o'clock until the taco dropped at midnight. (There really was a taco drop somewhere in Tucson, I'm not making that up.) By 12:30 a.m., everyone had shot their firecracker inventories. I'm sure that is when the heavy drinking started, but I was asleep by then, worn out by the noise. 

Today the sun was brilliant. I walked my usual 30-minute circuit, enjoying the balmy 60°F warmth and sunshine. In daylight, I glimpsed the house that is the source of the neighborhood party noise. The sub-woofer was still going. A pre-teen boy was dancing on the flat roof, I kid you not. Speaking of kids, I am going to guess this is the house that keeps chickens and a goat on the property. A rooster crows at odd hours of the day, and occasionally I hear a goat bleating. I'm so confused. Meanwhile, the pounding bass continues to pound. I can't hear it, but I can feel it in my decrepit bones. 

Anyway, happy ho ho and all that stuff. I'm trying to ignore the cacophony of noises in and around the Bat Cave. The neighbor kid's bedroom is on the other side of the wall, five feet from where I sit. She's got a television. My loaner refrigerator is drowning out most of her noise. The loaner fridge has a little drummer boy behind the ice box. Whenever the fan comes on, he sits up and does his clattery thing to awaken the defroster, and then goes back to sleep. The fan roars on for another hour. This is a very small apartment. The only way to escape a noise is by drowning it out with a bigger noise. But the granddaddy of noise comes from that house on the other side of the vacant lot. It's always party time in the Old Pueblo.

Speaking of confused, last night I went onto one of my websites to update the copyright year. My heart dropped when instead of my website, I saw the infamous white screen of death. Oh no! I suspected a plug-in had gone bad, failed to update or something, but I couldn't get into my admin area to deactivate the culprit. What's a non-tech-savvy oldster to do? Failure was not an option. I did some noodling around on the internet and remembered that my ancient computer still has an old ftp program, which I used to use to shuffle files hither and thither. Would it still work? Would I remember how to use it? 

I bashed around, trying to follow instructions from multiple web experts, and eventually stumbled on some solution. Lo, when I clicked the button, my website reappeared, resurrected from the dead. I was able to repair my plug-in problem and now things seem to be functioning properly. Such are the dilemmas of stubborn DIY oldsters who do not want to admit things are harder than they used to be. Not that I've ever been a tech wizard. I'm a fast reader, is all. 

For example, tonight I was leading a Zoom meeting. Suddenly we were inundated with Zoom bombers. For a moment I was paralyzed with shock. Then I realized I needed to find the host credentials and log on as the host. I did that, and eventually I figured out how to remove the trespassers. Someone advised me to lock the meeting. I did that, and after that, we carried on in peace and quiet. I've never been a Zoom host before but I learned quickly. I admit, I felt a certain amount of satisfaction in having the power to eject someone from a meeting. I can think of umpteen times over the years I wished I'd had that power. So long, bye bye. Of course, I'm sure lots of people wished they had that power over me.  

 

The Chronic Malcontent cautiously connects

Happy holidays, Blogbots. May you have as much joy as you can stand during this stupid, cold, virus-infested, consumer-obsessed season. I'd like to turn the page on 2021 and forget it happened. Then I remember I said the same thing last year, trying desperately to escape 2020. I guess it proves the truism, wherever you go, there you are. Circumstances surround me like a cloud of stinky holiday farts. I can think of some other so-called truisms: You can run but you can't hide. Life sucks and then you die. Buy now and pay later. Whoops, no, not that one.

Speaking of whoops, yesterday I connected with a woman who worked for me in the late 1980s, back when I was suffering with a ten-year-long entrepreneurial seizure that almost killed me. I ran a small business making some things I really hated to make, which is not a business model I would recommend to anyone wanting to be self-employed. This woman, I'll call her Marty, was younger than me but just as opinionated about just about everything, especially about the existence of God. 

We argued daily as we worked shoulder-to-shoulder. She liked making the things, evidenced by her annoyingly relentless optimism. I hated making the things, evidenced by my chronic malcontentedness. At the time, it didn't occur to me that her positive outlook on the work, well, really, on life in general, might have something to do with her spiritual philosophy. She thought God was everywhere, and I thought God did not exist. We never figured it out. Thirty years later, I'm still working on it. 

About a year ago, Marty started following me on Instagram. She used a pseudonym so it took me a while to figure out who she was. For the past year, most days, she's posted videos and images stolen from other people into the direct messenger space. Never once has she actually written anything, like Hi, remember me? Finally, I realized that her messages were sent only to me—duh, direct messages. They weren't generic posts that anyone could see. She was trying to connect, without actually connecting. 

Maybe her goal was not to connect but to annoy. If that was the case, she had succeeded. Her incessant posting of inane weirdo videos forwarded from other weirdos penetrated my Instagram fog. 

I messengered her: Hey! Why don't you ever say anything to me? 

Marty wrote back immediately: I wasn't sure you would want to talk to me.

I wrote: I'm always happy to reconnect with old friends.

Marty: You can never be sure. Some people don't like it. 

That comment made me think her Instagram experience was nothing like mine.

Me: Would you like to talk sometime?

Marty: How about now?

In a few minutes, we had figured how to have a video call on Instagram and were seeing each other in real time. To me, that was the triumph of the day, mastering a live video call on Instagram. The pleasure I felt at reconnecting with an old friend faded quickly once I realized she was still a crazy wackjob. I was all about the video call. Social media, you will not defeat me.

Marty's face appeared below mine on my phone screen. She looked the same to me, or rather, she resembled what I remembered of her after thirty years, except her long thick hair, formerly dark brown, was now completely white. She wore bangs across her forehead and thick black-rimmed glasses. Behind her I could see the typical chaos of a creative person's space. She turned her phone and gave me a quick dizzying tour of the mess. Once again, I thanked my lucky stars that I have so few possessions. 

Marty: I'm working for [Name of a person I should have remembered but didn't]. I'm one of twenty assistants. The holidays have been weird. I have a big family. They are all Democrats. 

Me: [To myself] Uh oh, should I have seen that coming?

Marty: Yeah, I'm not vaxxed or any of that stuff. My family can't stand that I'm a conservative Republican so I can only hang out with my two nieces. 

Me: Yeah, the holidays can be difficult.

After that, I let her talk while I examined my long teeth on the video screen. Long in the tooth is a real thing. I practiced tossing my head back so my jowls didn't stand out so prominently. Then I noticed my chicken gizzard neck, and dropped my chin. My chin receded into the distance and my nose took over the screen. Meanwhile Marty yammered on about her skin cancer challenges. 

Marty: I don't trust the regular doctors so I'm going to a guy. He's given me some stuff to put on it. If it reacts, then I know there's cancer. If it doesn't react, then it's okay. 

Me: [To myself] Oh boy, sounds like hydrogen peroxide. Is that a treatment for skin cancer these days? Who knew? Maybe we could have avoided sending Mom to the dermatologist during the pandemic. I cringed mentally as I recalled laying waste to the clinic's bathroom in my futile attempts to clean up after Mom's fecal meltdown. Get behind me, 2020!

Marty: [Probably sensing my mind was elsewhere] Well, it was really good to see you. 

In that one statement, everything about our future interactions was spelled out. She will keep sending me stupid videos I never look at, and maybe she will direct message me occasionally now that she knows I'm okay with it, and we will never connect by video again. 

Once again, I'm chagrined (and relieved) at how carefully I've set my boundaries to exclude wackjobs, past and present. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I know it's good to see things through other people's eyes sometimes, but how can I have a meaningful conversation with someone who can't, won't, refuses to . . . you know, care about the common good? I know I can't change her mind, any more than she could change mine. Two planets. We are in a race to see whose planet will survive. I'm not optimistic. 

Your quest for control is futile

You’ll be relieved to hear, after two weeks of me camping out of an ice chest in the Bat Cave, the maintenance crew carted away the malfunctioning refrigerator and replaced it with a temporary. Like a loaner car, sort of. This loaner fridge is a little smaller, a lot quieter, and smells like an old motel. The handles are slots embedded in the side edges of the freezer and fridge doors. I keep forgetting where they are. Opening the doors conjures foggy memories of family beach trips to cheap motels with musty kitchenettes. I left an uncovered cup of coffee in the fridge overnight and tasted the smell of old motel this morning. Once again, impersonal circumstances confirm I live in temporary housing.

Omicron has come to Tucson. Last night I dreamed I was at a social gathering. In my dream, I suddenly realized nobody was wearing a mask, including me. I went outside, looking for my car so I could get a mask from my stash, but couldn’t find my car. I often lose my car in dreams. Not sure what that means.

Because I survived last week’s COVID-19 booster, I decided to press my luck and get a pneumonia vaccine. My new insurance company recommended it, and my new doctor concurred, so off I went for another jab in the bicep at my local grocery store pharmacy. You never know if you are going to be the one in 30,000 who has a negative reaction, as in, seizure, heart attack, or stroke. This time, the principles of statistics were on my side. I had a good outcome. My arm was sore but I had virtually no side effects, compared to the achy malaise I felt after the COVID booster.

Overall, I am making good progress on my 100,000 mile healthcare self-care checklist. I think I’ve had all the shots I can get for now, so check on the shots. I survived the first dose of the osteoporosis medicine with only some mild heartburn, so check on that too. Next up on my after-holiday list: a visit to an ENT, a visit to a hematologist, and a mammogram. I’d rather have another shot than get a mammogram, but what can you do. If you’ve got ’em, you gotta squash ’em. It’s a law, I think.

Most days, my brain feels like a sandcastle being washed away by waves. The things I knew how to do yesterday are mysteries to me today. How is that possible? Do I have dementia? Is there a vaccine for that? Not yet, although I heard there might be a new pill for Alzheimer’s. However, there is no cure. Mom took a drug to slow the rate of her dementia decline, and I guess this new drug does something similar, affecting other areas of the brain. It’s not covered by Medicare yet, and the annual cost of the drug is $56,000. Oh, thanks, I think I’ll pass. Once I get to the where is my butt stage of dementia, I’ll be opting out permanently with some cheap fentanyl. Of course, we know all about best laid plans. Most of my plans fall into the category of half-assed bungled plans bound to go sideways.

Tucson had its first overnight freeze and its first omicron case this week. I doubt if the two events are connected. Tucson apparently has a winter season. I blinked and fall was over, and here we are at the threshold of winter. Every time I cross one of the many viaducts over the Rillito River, I read the sign with a heavy heart: Ice forms first on bridges. Why would they need signs like that in the desert? Because it gets cold at night here, and on rare occasions, it snows, even here in the city. I’m like, what the hell, Tucson. Baja is looking good to me right now.

My ongoing adventure feels a bit vague. If you know me, you know I like to know where I am and where I am going; that way, I can manage and control my life so I don’t have to be afraid. What do they say about fear? What you resist comes back to tear your lips off? I’m not an experienced camper (although I feel a little more confident about managing an indoor ice cooler). I’d rather get a job at Walmart than have to live in my car in a Walmart parking lot. Although, considering Walmart, I might end up doing both. Who knows.

Living in the wreckage of the future is as futile as trying to live today for a better past. All I have is the present moment. Why is that so hard to accept? Oh, right, because I can still find my butt. Hooboy. The blessing and curse of not having dementia.

Despair is always an option. I reserve my right to wallow in my malcontentedness. However, the sun is out, the sky is blue, and it’s a good time for a slow ramble in the nicer part of the demilitarized zone I fondly call my neighborhood. Tucson homeowners are putting up Christmas decorations. Step by step, the journey continues.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.