Enshittification of the Bike Lanes

I have not read Cory Doctorow’s book, but have lately heard many quotes from it from the other Lisa M., who was enthralled by it.

Due to a series of weather alerts yesterday, I did not walk until after dinner and so saw several people on the neighborhood streets I had never seen before: different shift. Probably a good idea to do one’s walking in the evening as summer approaches, come to think of it. When I was a child, my mother and I used to jog around our block in Ann Arbor at night. Maybe it was sometimes due to the weather, but I think it was mainly due to some sort of self-consciousness or, alas, shame about our bodies. Dementia did nothing to free my mother from dissatisfaction with her body. Even when she could no longer figure out who her immediate relatives were, she remembered that she needed to be on a diet. So sad.

As I walked yesterday evening—it was still rather uncomfortable out in terms of heat and humidity—I mulled over a minor climate control problem: It is certainly at the moment time for air conditioning, but since just a week ago it was in the 40s and I needed my winter coat to walk one day, it seemed premature to turn the A/C on.

I initially concluded that I could just leave the settings unchanged when I depart tomorrow: The heat is on, but it might not ever run. It does not matter if it is too hot, because I will not be here. But then I remembered that I have the estate sale lady and her crew to think of, along with the shoppers I hope will be here on sale day, and also my sister stopping by to get the last of her things out of the house, so I decided I’d better turn the air conditioning on.

I was delighted when I saw that there is a heat-cool auto setting! The thing will figure out for itself what to do when. I guess there would only be a problem if there were an overlap, like wanting the house heated to 72 but cooled to 70, but our settings do not overlap.

I saw an ominous article in The New York Times about Amazon using four-wheeled little trucks to make deliveries using bike lanes. They call these battery-powered vehicles which can hold more than 100 parcels “cargo bikes,” which is certainly a misnomer. It can only be about two weeks before these menaces become ubiquitous in San Francisco. If they are using the bike lanes to get from destination to destination, that presumably is also where they are going to park. On Valencia Street, the bike lane zigs and zags, making its way between and around outdoor dining areas and parked cars; in many places, it is between the curb and parked cars, meaning there can be people wandering into the lane from either side. The available space appears to have been apportioned among the various roadway users a half inch at a time. 

Along with actual bicycles, the bike lane is crammed with e-bikes, e-scooters, giant kid-carrying bikes with the big bin on the front, and of course tech bros shooting by at 40 miles an hour with an inch to spare. There are many stretches where if the bike lane gets blocked by, say, a car or a dumpster, there is not an easy way to get around the impediment. It feels far from safe; one just hopes for the best. (So far, so good.)

So the thought of adding ten Amazon mini delivery trucks per block is dispiriting.

I’m starting to give some thought to taking a cab to work and walking home to avoid cycling on Valencia. I’m not sure how long that walk would take. An hour? I will test it while I’m there.

Now that I might be about to be a property owner on this little block, I am more mindful of how others are taking care of their places: Is that shambles going to affect my property values? Most houses and yards on this block are nicely kept, definitely including mine. I regularly get compliments on the yard. There are maybe four places out of perhaps 20 houses total that are sort of disaster areas, including two houses owned by ex-spouses. You can get a sense of how they might have formed a couple; they had at least one thing in common. I had to smile yesterday evening when I saw a front yard that was occupied by nothing but thistles. They were nicely spaced out, almost as if someone had purposely landscaped with what most consider to be weeds. I’ll bet they don’t get too many trespassers on their thistle lawn; that could be a plus.

My sister came over today bringing two bins of Christmas stuff our mother passed on to her years ago, maybe wanting not to store it any longer but not being able to bear to throw it out. It was fun again seeing all those familiar and colorful shiny objects from nearly 50 years ago.

The big day is finally here: Time to put blue tape on everything not to be sold! I took my car over to my sister’s so the driveway will be free for the estate sale workers and shoppers. I have felt a low-level anxiety creeping up over the past few days, that familiar knot in the gut. But I must say I have been free from a lot of unnecessary anguish, which I believe is thanks to re-devoting myself to the teachings of Sayadaw U Tejaniya. I think I would normally be a wreck at this juncture, but I am not at all. I am reading and savoring his book Relax and Be Aware: Mindfulness Meditations for Clarity, Confidence and Wisdom. I bumped into him many years ago and went on a retreat at Spirit Rock based on his teachings; I have never encountered him in person.

I am sorry I drifted away and plan never to do that again. I am pretty sure that I am hearing some of Tejaniya’s words of wisdom from Howie on Tuesday evenings in our online sangha; he has even mentioned Tejaniya’s name from time to time. 

Grand Finale Versus Grand Chore List

Yesterday after our walk, Amy mentioned some improvements she has made to her house, which she bought a year ago, and she talked about shoveling snow in the winter. This was inspiring: I could shovel! (Maybe; I have a chronically bad shoulder.) For that matter, I could probably do several of the things I currently pay a yard work person to do. I started listing them in my mind. Instead of paying someone to do such-and-such thing, I could buy the tool(s) needed and do it myself, though I felt a bit unsure about certain tasks: Could I prune a tree so that it doesn’t touch the house? (I did not even know this was a thing that needed to be done until my sister mentioned it a few years ago.)

But also, is this really how I want to spend my time and energy? Is this like Americans transforming from leading scientists into people who joyfully pick the strawberries immigrants used to pick (for 1/10 the hourly rate), as a member of the current administration described a few months ago? Is weeding alongside the path at the north end of the house and then doing that again and then doing that again going to be as interesting and meaningful as meeting new patients on the oncology unit at the hospital? I began to feel discouraged, deflated and overwhelmed.

Also, not to talk about money again, which once upon a time was bad form, but I had told my financial advisor that I am living fine on X salary, and he calculated that I could have Z income each month without problems, but Z is a little bit less than X, and actually, while I had been certain I was living fine on my salary, it appears that might not precisely be so (though how could I not be? The whole thing is a mystery).

I lived frugally for a very long time and in theory I could do so again, but maybe I couldn’t in practice, or maybe it would be an unpleasant source of stress. I decided to undertake a monthly analysis of my expenditures and just as quickly abandoned that tiresome-sounding idea. However, I have started adding up a given month’s expenditures once the next month starts, not putting it into categories or anything, but just getting an idea of the total and sort of noticing what I bought that maybe I could have not bought.

I think the money will work out, particularly if Social Security exists six years from now, which does not seem to be guaranteed. The premiums for my Obamacare are currently $1336 a month. I don’t know if it would be more or less in Michigan, but I guess I can hang on for one more year, at which point I should qualify for Medicare, if that still exists.

I was pondering how, when I am in San Francisco, feeling increasingly cramped and constrained in my studio apartment, I long to eat outside, but how could I do it? Setting up a folding chair near the trash chute and watching the neighbors’ rats run up and down doesn’t seem like it would be satisfying. In that regard, Ypsilanti is hugely better than San Francisco.

Another couple points of comparison: My apartment is full of light; many sectors of the house are dark. (Should be fixable.) I can have the windows open in my apartment pretty much every minute of the year: fresh air. There are screens on some of the windows in the house and I could open the inner window and have fresh air but I am transforming back into a Michigander: realizing there actually is hardly any minute when you would want a portal to the outside: In the winter, you don’t want to let the warm air out, and in the summer, you don’t want to let the heat and humidity in.

I am sure that my father, once upon a time, yearly replaced the screens with storm windows (these are an outer, second window) and later on vice versa. I don’t know if he kept up with that forever. It’s possible that at some point he just left the storm windows on all year, since you can hardly ever open the windows anyway, and since the storm windows would help with insulating the house in the winter.

My sister found the screens in the garage and installed a couple, taking off the storm windows. My approach to this is going to be that some of the windows have screens, some have storm windows, and that’s that.

Amy has groovy newer vintage windows where both things are available in the upper half of the window, and you just slide down the one you want to use. I would love to have those, but I would also love to have some caulk applied near a low brick wall out front, the lighting improved, the house rewired if necessary for improving the lighting, the deck power washed and painted, the wet basement fixed, maybe even the exterior of the house painted someday and much more. I may never be able to afford to do most of these things and so they will hang over me forever as undone to-dos. My father said the one good thing about moving to the retirement community after he was diagnosed with cancer was that it made his to-do list vanish. He said there were items on that list that had been there for 50 years.

Does it make sense to start a to-do list that will only ever get longer and never get shorter? I guess one approach would be never to say I’m going to repair or improve anything, though I’m not sure that’s the right idea, either. I think it is prudent to keep up with home maintenance.

I have never, ever wanted to own a house. I didn’t want to take care of a house, and I didn’t want to clean a house, but now here I find myself planning to do both of those things, at a relatively advanced age, which I had envisioned being devoted to my Grand Finale. Increasingly, being stuck in that little apartment watching the rats run up and down seems unendurable, especially when just a plane ride away is my very own unpainted deck and very own broken but you can still sit on it plastic deck chair.

I don’t know if these are reliable life lessons, but the two times I’ve seen a centipede in this house, they were in the bathroom. (Are centipedes always in the bathroom? Does a bathroom always contain a centipede, even if not in plain view?) Also, when I most recently saw a centipede in the bathroom, it occurred simultaneously with seeing a giant ant. (Does the presence of one imply the presence of the other?) 

Centipede

Today I had lunch at Seva: the vegan version of their tempeh Reuben, and crispy French fries with ketchup. I went over to Amy’s in Chelsea and we walked up and down part of Washtenaw County’s Border to Border Trail. This non-motorized trail will be 55 miles long when it is finished; nearly 43 miles are complete now.

Mosquito season has begun, so we walked not in the woods but along a paved walkway that went alongside a cemetery for a while, and crossed over a creek. Afterward, we sat in Amy’s pleasant living room drinking water and chatting while our phones broadcast various storm alerts: thunderstorm warning, lightning in the area. There was a brief period of heavy rain, and there were flashes of lightning while I was still at Amy’s and while I was driving back home along I-94.

I stopped at ACE to get, among other things, a plain light-colored apron for eating on the deck, and I got a few groceries at Arbor Farms next door.

Amy texted me later that we had walked 5.53 miles.

It was hot and sticky during our walk, so I took a quick shower after I got home. I found four or five enormous ants in the tub, most right near the drain. Yesterday evening I escorted two giant ants and a centipede out of the bathroom and through the front door; the latter shot out along the counter from behind the hand towel, eliciting a shriek from me and a mumbled, “This is not my favorite part.” 

I Hereby Unvolunteer

I had booked helpers from Dolly to move several items today, but saw a note this morning saying that our helper had “relisted.” (I never saw anything about the second helper, but there were going to be two.) I guess that’s a nice way of saying that the person said, “Instead of being on the work list, I’d like to be on the non-work list!” I called Dolly and the pleasant customer service person said he would get busy trying to find another person, though he pointed out that this would have to be someone who chose the task; they can’t assign work. I politely said I would prefer to cancel the project, as it was supposed to have started 15 minutes prior, and to receive a refund, which was no problem.

I texted our estate sale lady to see if she had an idea regarding movers, on the theory that she probably knows a thing or two about getting an object from Point A to Point B, and I also started looking around online. I had been thinking Two Men and a Truck could be a possibility, but the reviews for the ones in this area were pretty awful. Then an app called Thumbtack came into view. Whereas booking the Dolly had literally taken more than an hour, as each thing to be moved had to be specified in detail and then double-checked, triple-checked … 75 times checked, all I had to do at Thumbtack was to describe in a freeform field the nature of my needs.

Along with downloading the app and setting up my account, the whole thing can’t have taken more than five or ten minutes. Immediately after I pressed the submit button, Thumbtack suggested three possible vendors. Two of them sent electronic messages within about 60 seconds, and one of the two also telephoned. I arranged to have the latter come today at 2 p.m. They arrived at 2:30, having advised by text in a timely manner that they had had “a lil truck problem.”

They moved a dresser, Mom’s exercycle, and Dad’s air compressor over to my sister’s, and brought back an enormous toolbox and La-Z-Boy loveseat to put with the items for the estate sale. I asked my sister if the dresser had arrived intact, and she said it had, but that she wasn’t sure if she would use these movers again. They had arrived without straps to secure things, and the U-Haul van they were using didn’t have a ramp. She had noted, as had I, that one of them—these were college students—was wearing Birkenstocks. So was I, but I wasn’t going to move a toolbox that weighed about 200 pounds.

Earlier on, I was thinking about all the things I could have fixed around here now that I know about Thumbtack! The movers were perfectly fine for what we needed today, but not top-notch professional movers, so that tempered my enthusiasm a little, but it still seems like a good app to have. I told my sister it was a life-changing moment: “It’s okay to be an old lady!” There will be help for the things I need help with.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees at all, though for some reason, the lady bee keeps starting her hole-making operation over in a new spot. I warned the movers about the bees, and one of the two looked alarmed. I dislike bees myself—that is, I’m afraid of them—but I do not want these bees, or any bees, purposely harmed. I advised the movers not to swing at them. These particular bees are very large. It occurred to me that this might bee (sic) a problem on estate sale day. Someone might swat at our bees and get stung; maybe someone would kill one of the bees.

A couple of years ago, I noticed a pile of sawdust underneath that bench just as someone was arriving to fix a little gas leak in the basement. He pointed out the hole in the bench, and before I could speak a syllable, he sprayed into the hole with the can he was holding in his hand. The bee burst out of the hole in agony and died just outside it, on the driveway. It was awful. That’s how I knew what this was when sawdust appeared again lately.

I am planning to leave here on Thursday, so I offered my sister the opportunity to undertake an exciting special assignment: Using Thumbtack to find someone to get started painting that bench ASAP, before the hole is complete and the eggs laid, in which case we would have bees hanging around until maybe September. We agreed that I would undertake the exciting special assignment, and that she would oversee the phases of the operation that occur after I’m gone. I ran the whole thing by our meticulous interior painter, assuming this would be outside his purview, but just wanting to see, or perhaps he would know of the right painter, but he offered to pick it up and take it home and paint it in his garage. That is absolutely ideal: If there is no bench for a while, there should be no bees, and when it comes back, it should no longer be of interest to them, though I am definitely prepared to deploy clanging wind chimes; I might do that anyway.

It was 89 degrees today, sunny, humid, breezy. The breeze makes a big difference when it is hot and humid.

I scattered the grass seed I bought the other day and watered the lawn, and I took a walk, followed by dinner on the deck.

Burdock

This morning I spent some time picking out individual paper clips that I would like to keep, with the thought that I might literally be losing my mind. I went through the junk drawer in the kitchen, setting aside to keep only things that are habitually in use, and putting several tools with the items for the sale, tools I will probably need two weeks from now, but I feel kind of bad that the estate sale lady might just barely make her standard fee from our little sale, so I want to leave as many things for her as possible.

My sister came over and we, mostly her, did more furniture moving. After she left, I spent an hour in the yard weeding and clipping dead brown stalks and ivy, of which there is much. I had wanted in particular to get rid of some burdock that springs up outside the kitchen sink window, but it proved to be difficult to uproot. A weeder was useless, and even a trowel could get only the smallest couple of plants. I’ll have to go out there with an actual shovel if there’s time. This time I wore gloves, and along with the paper lawn and leaf bag, I brought a big bucket for carrying my few tools in and to put any bits of trash in. My glasses kept sliding down my face, so I will get something to keep them in place. I saw two live worms, but they didn’t hurt me.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees; at least, I saw the lady bee this afternoon. I think it was the female because she went under the bench presumably to continue her efforts at making a hole for baby bees. I swept the sawdust out from under the bench yesterday, but there was more there today. Painting the bench might cause the bees to look elsewhere for shelter and apparently they also dislike wind chimes that make a robust clanging sound, not due to the sound itself but because of the vibration. Myself, I am partial to wind chimes, so that might be good all around.

It was sunny and humid today, about 80 degrees and with a nice breeze. In the late afternoon, I went for a walk. I exchanged names with a woman gardening on my own block, and I ran into my next door neighbor, Javier, walking his dog.

I had dinner on the deck, my customary salad, and was visited by two or three bees, one at a time. I think it’s because I was wearing a yellow apron of my mother’s, because my own was in the laundry. I consulted the internet and learned that bees are attracted to yellow, while good colors to wear if you don’t want bees hanging around are plain white, plain tan, or plain pale blue. Supposedly people who work with bees always wear plain white.

Squawk

Yesterday I ran errands and also bought yet another pair of shoes, at Ann Arbor Running Company, just to demonstrate that there will not be any problem living frugally when I am a retiree. These shoes are Altra Torin 8s: wide toe box, zero drop, but plenty of padding. I have such high hopes for them that yesterday evening I ordered a second pair online in a different color. Super frugal! 

This morning the place that installed our new mini-split (air conditioner + heat pump) sent a technician to investigate the low-frequency hum the system is producing. He kept saying how extremely quiet these systems are—so quiet you can hear the coolant flowing through the pipes. He explained that the various noises, some of them loud enough that I’m worried they are annoying the neighbors, and including the low-frequency hum that is annoying me, are just the normal operation of the system. I guess the idea is that the system is so quiet that you can now hear all its loud sounds? That doesn’t really make any sense. As for today’s visit, I expected that the upshot would be: live with it, which I had already decided to do, so that was fine.

It is quite lovely to have nice, warm air blow out of the ceiling vents that previously only cold air came out of, though, since heat rises, it doesn’t seem like the best place for the vents. They were installed for an air conditioner and have been repurposed for the heat pump. I’m not sure where they would be if they were being installed from scratch, but possibly still the ceiling.

Next! Watering of the new grass. I went out and started the sprinkler and watered the first area without incident. I moved the sprinkler to the next area and fiddled with the hoses. One hose comes from the back of the house and then a splitter, or whatever you call it, attaches to two other hoses, one for the front yard and one for the end of the house. My sister set that up.

Somewhere along in here, I noticed that two carpenter bees had come along. I saw the two very large bees and I also saw the telltale fresh piles of sawdust underneath the sturdy wooden bench in front of the house. I remember my father sitting on that bench on a lovely day in June, a couple of months after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He and I and my mother took a walk in the neighborhood. He was exhausted when we got back, I think. I remember his angry, upset expression as he sat on the bench.

I read today online that it is the lady carpenter bee who makes the holes; she is not aggressive unless she feels threatened. The man bee is aggressive, but lacks the ability to sting.

As for the new grass, I found that no water was coming out of the sprinkler in its new location, so I went and twisted the thingies on the two ball valves this way and that, tromping over our new grass repeatedly: If you have this one this way and that one that way? If you have them both this way? If you have them both that way? I swear I tried every possible thing but could not get the sprinkler to work. I finally had to text my sister and say I had done my best to pretend I’m an orphan, as our parents sometimes advised, but was stuck. (When my sister arrived later, she swaggered in the front door and said, “What seems to be the problem with the sprinkler, little lady?”) (I scarcely need mention that five minutes after she took up the problem, the sprinkler was working fine.)

After wrestling with the sprinkler for however long, it was getting to be time for me to leave for my appointment with the key place. I needed a spare key to the garage to put in the lockbox for the estate sale lady, but neither ACE nor Stadium Hardware had the right blank. They suggested a place that is just a locksmith. I had to leave without brushing my teeth or washing my face, due to all the fruitless fiddling with the sprinkler.

I got in my car and noticed that there seemed to be some people standing in my yard, which I could scarcely make sense of. I called over to them, “Hey!” It was a man and woman who looked at me blankly, like, “Why is that lady yelling at us?” They did not move an inch, as they clearly felt themselves to be on public property. I informed them that they were standing in my yard and they reluctantly began to step toward the sidewalk, not without sneering, “Oh, it’s the end of the world!” (The man did that.)

They were walking a dog who evidently had wanted to inspect my father’s daylilies close up. I said that I had just today picked up a dog turd from that area. The woman said, “It wasn’t us,” as they huffily departed. Perhaps it is that if you own a dog, all property is suddenly, magically public?

I consulted my associates: Was I the asshole here? One said no, people standing in her yard would not be acceptable. Another said that he would have said, “Get off my fucking lawn before I give you a lump on your forehead with my 9-iron.”

I drove over to the locksmiths, noticing that I was less patient with tailgating drivers than usual. They used to gravely irritate me, but now I just say to myself, “That is not a bad person. It’s just that someone taught them to drive in a ridiculous manner.” But today when I noticed someone not more than two inches behind me as I was making ready to turn off Stadium Blvd. to go to the hardware store, I came nearly to a dead stop on purpose before I made the turn, while mumbling, “Get off my ass.”

At the hardware store I got a small squirt bottle and a pound of grass seed to try to repair all the damage I did this morning, and next door at Arbor Farms I got some orange essential oil. Back at home, I put a little oil in the new squirt bottle, added water, shook the bottle, took the cover off the wooden bench and sprayed it with orange oil. While I was doing this, I noticed hundreds of small-medium-sized ants trooping into the house, but only one could be spotted inside, so they are disappearing into the bowels of the house for now. 

It was nearly 80 degrees by this time, a gorgeous, sunny day with a pleasant breeze. I took a walk and then it was time for dinner on the deck. Whereas breakfast is eaten mindfully and lunch doesn’t exist, I have taken to familiarizing myself with the events of the day during dinner. The sun was just about in my eyes as I sat down on the deck, so I thought I would see if darkening my iPhone would somehow help. I turned it all the way down to completely black as a starting point—and then could not see the controls to turn the light on again. Nothing I did made it be anything other than completely black. I finally had to try to turn it off and restart it without being able to see anything on the screen, and somewhere along in there, I heard a high-pitched squawk. Eventually the screen became not quite black, and I could turn the light up again, whereupon I saw that I had accidentally made an emergency SOS call; that’s what the squawk was.

If you’ve ever wondered if that actually works, it doesn’t.

Item by item, the proof that my parents were once here is disappearing, including the heated bird bath from the back yard. I therefore also put the sturdy yellow brush used to clean the shallow basin with the things for the sale, but then decided that might make a subtle memento. After my father returned from his three weeks in the hospital and then three weeks in rehab, I cleaned that bird bath with that yellow brush every single day so that when my father sat at the dining room table and looked out the window, he would see a pristine bird bath. One day I came in from that task, and found my father sitting at the table. He made an admiring remark about my zealous bird bath cleaning.

As she left today, my sister said I’m doing a good job of being a homeowner. It certainly does afford an endless supply of things to do that you didn’t think you’d be doing. I am laughing now, remembering how three years ago, give or take, I asked the people doing the fall cleanup of the yard if they would be sure to pick up twigs and branches that had fallen into the yard. They said they would. They didn’t. They said the spring cleanup people would do it for sure. The spring cleanup people didn’t do it, either. I asked this yard guy, that yard guy, and the other yard guy and for some reason, it proved to be impossible to get anyone to pick up a twig.

I would have picked them up myself, except I didn’t know what I would do with a twig once I had picked it up. I have now, with the help of my sister, grasped in what kind of bag you are supposed to place a twig, should you pick one up, and also where you are supposed to place this bag and on what days of the month you may do this. Sheesh. From now on, we will be twig free, unless I don’t buy this house. Then there might be twigs.

Ypsilanti: All of the Weirdos, None of the Waymos

In the mirror the other day, I noticed that my belly was sticking way out, while my butt has become increasingly flat: They have swapped the ideal characteristics, which makes it look like my head is on backward.

A couple of days ago, the woman who is putting on our estate sale came over to discuss details and answer questions. I’m sorry now that we donated so many things earlier on. I’m afraid this sale is going to just barely be worth doing. The estate sale lady said the tools in the basement and garage are what is making it worth doing. She said she might bring some of her own stuff over to include in the sale, which is very kind of her.

The sale will happen after I leave here next week. Unfortunately, the after-sale cleanup can’t be done until after I get back, so I will return to find a house that is forlornly empty except for recognizable family items that no one would take even for free, plus maybe some things belonging to the estate sale lady, which might create a moment of perplexity: I didn’t know we had one of those.

I had a perplexing phone conversation with a mortgage loan officer who helped a friend of mine. She said that the only funds that can be considered when issuing a mortgage are a paycheck and / or a 401(k), and that I might do better just to sell some stocks and pay cash for the house, if possible. After we hung up, I realized there must be a missing piece in there somewhere: Don’t retirees buy houses? Indeed they do. You can potentially get a “portfolio loan” or a “pledged asset credit line.” A portfolio loan is like a HELOC—home equity line of credit—but secured by your hillock of stocks and bonds rather than by your house.

It was odd that this person didn’t mention any of these possibilities. She works for a particular bank as opposed to being someone who might approach any number of lenders on behalf of a client, so maybe it is just that her particular bank prefers to lend based on income-related assets.

Yesterday I went to the monthly lunch of my father’s high school classmates at Knight’s. I was finding it extremely difficult to hear in the noisy restaurant, which I think can be an early sign of hearing loss. I intend to be an early adopter of hearing aids, as difficulty hearing is associated with dementia. I asked Kay, to my left, if I was going deaf faster than usual or if it was just very loud in there. She said she had just been asking herself the same question and said it was that there was a very loud group of lunchers near us; she said it appeared they were about to leave.

A bit later, she said, “Oh, no!” I turned to see a herd of children trooping in, about six years old, eight or ten of them. However, I noticed later that they didn’t seem to be making it hard for me to hear. I told Kay that the children didn’t seem to be very loud, after all. Kay’s face lit up as she said, “That’s because they’re gone!” Sure enough.

Kay often has a joke or two to tell at lunch. A couple of months ago, one was slightly off color. The following month, I said, “I’m going to sit next to Kay so I can hear another X-rated joke.” Tom, formerly of the military, said virtuously, “I don’t listen to those. I cover my ears.”

I had met with a couple of painters, one who by the accounts available to me is very meticulous but who thought the whole thing might take him three weeks, and another who said his crew could get it done in four days or so. I decided to go with the zippy painter, but over the weeks found that communicating with him was rather frustrating; it could take him 24 or 48 hours to answer a text message with, “What is it you need?”

Time is somewhat of the essence because I’d like to get the painting done and preferably also have the house cleaned while I’m away, which will be for about two and a half weeks, but then I remembered that the three-week estimate included doing the basement and garage, which had to be eliminated due to a checking account whose balance for some reason only goes down (the one for the estate), so I texted the meticulous painter to ask if he would give me a call.

He called ten seconds later. I said, “I’m crawling back to you,” which made him laugh. Thank goodness, he has taken us back and he is also available at the needed time. He came over again today and we walked through the house discussing types of paint and colors and repairs he said he can do. I asked what he does about window coverings and he said he takes them down temporarily. I asked him to just put a couple of them in the trash after he does that.

Right after I spoke with him yesterday, I texted the speedy painter to say I had decided to go with someone else.

It is painful to get rid of my mother’s stuff, but at the same time, every area that is cleared out is suddenly a space with any number of possibilities and makes the house feel more like it’s mine. I could have a couch! I must have tried 50 times to figure out how to fit a couch into my studio apartment in San Francisco and have never been able to do it. Tom, right above me, has a small one, but he doesn’t have an easy chair and two bookcases. I want a nice long couch that you can read on until you fall soundly asleep on the couch with a blanket over you. We had a couch like that when I was a child.

Also, it is a choice to get rid of the things in the house. There is nothing stopping me from getting a storage space and putting every last item in it.

I read yesterday that we are apparently on the verge of a stock market crash. The warning signs are supposedly flashing. It crossed my mind that maybe this isn’t the best time to quit my job, but I reminded myself to make decisions based on what I love rather than on my fears.

I called my friend who used to work for the Humane Society of the United States to ask her about one of my cat-related anxieties. As soon as I got the first two words out, she said, “Everything will be okay, everything will be okay, everything will be okay.”

In an earlier conversation, she said that there are no wrong answers. I think there indeed are, but that was still helpful in that it made me realize I have been approaching this as if there is a right answer—because I’m an Enneagram One, I assume everything has a right answer, from where to put an apostrophe on up to whether to continue with cancer treatment—and completely disregarding that it might be fine just to do what I want. (You can just do what you want?) (Though let’s not forget that my Zen teacher did say it is not cheating to use our brains to foresee the results of our decisions.)

With the stock market on the verge of crashing, I decided I’d better extract some cash on this very day, and soon realized I had absolutely no idea how to go about liquidating any asset nor any idea which one I should liberate. Liberating an asset sounds better than liquidating it, which suggests someone tying a stock certificate to a brick and dropping it in the lake. Sell what? Using what cost basis? Should I stop reinvesting dividends? What’s a settlement fund? Do I need one? My financial adviser was just going out of town and can’t talk for a couple of weeks, so I decided to let it go for now. Alcoholics Anonymous saying: When in doubt, leave it out. If the stock market crashes between today and two weeks from now, that isn’t a sign per se, but it will affect my choices.

It was a cold, windy, gloomy, overcast day. I had to wear my winter coat when I went out walking. It was so dark overhead that it looked like it was going to rain at any moment, but it never did, so I watered the new grass in the yard.

Yesterday at lunch, one person asked another an odd question: “Did you put your boat in?” Context revealed that this is a question to be asked in the spring and pertains to the relationship between one’s boat and the lake, which varies by the season. 

As for what I’m going to do here after my financial adviser helps me liberate enough money to get started buying the house, I plan to volunteer two afternoons a week, once with old people. If possible, I will do this at the memory care unit where my mother lived. The other afternoon, I’d like to volunteer with children, perhaps teaching reading and the right place to put an apostrophe. This will be while I’m looking for a job in my field; this job, if it turns up, might be a hospice job, which are way more plentiful than hospital jobs. Then I will keep my eyes open for a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job. If I can get one, it might well require a commute, maybe into Detroit, but the hope is that eventually I could have a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job in Ypsilanti or Ann Arbor. 

Holy crap! I almost forgot the most important thing, which is that when I was coming back from my walk several days ago, I saw my tree guy walking toward his giant car from the 1970s, which was parked at the curb. He introduced me to the three new neighbors whose house he was just leaving; they’re friends. He said they’re in a metal band, and he told them what my license plate says (MTLHEAD), and we exchanged devil’s horns. These people live together, are in a band together which is actually findable on Spotify, and all of their cars are the same color. They looked like very interesting people. They must have a rehearsal space elsewhere, as I have not heard a note. This is good; I don't want groupies camping on my new grass.

Weeds

When I said I was thinking of causing someone to plant peony bushes in my yard in Ypsilanti, I didn’t mean to imply that I have a butler. (Alas, not.) Well into his ninth decade, my father always mowed his own grass and shoveled his own snow. When he fell ill, which was in April, 2022, my sister offered to mow, and I think she did do that several times, but with all we were suddenly in charge of, it seemed reasonable to pay someone to do those kinds of things, especially since my sister has her own grass and snow to attend to. 

By the time I found someone to mow the grass, a neighbor had reported us to the city for letting it grow to more than X inches tall. We got a notice saying to take care of it or else the city would come and do it for us. I think they send you a bill if they do that, and they also might mow right over your expensive new little plant, so we addressed it. My father, likely inspired by a really stunning large holly bush that is at the north end of the house, had lately installed another holly bush in the back yard. It was much smaller than he had realized it would be and, after being planted, could barely be seen with the naked eye. We could hardly expect the City of Ypsilanti to spot it.

Four years later, we are still paying to have the lawn mowed, to have the snow and ice cleared, and to have occasional yard work done; the young fellow who does the latter could probably be engaged to plant some peonies.

Today I spent a couple of hours photographing my mother’s artwork, including many portraits of my father, one labeled, “My Hero.” I found a decades-old watercolor of a lamp that was not ten feet from where I was doing the photographing today, another of a piece of furniture which was also in the very same room where I was today, and one of the very chair I was sitting on, or its sibling. I found a drawing of my father’s childhood home and a watercolor of my mother’s college dorm room, with a written explanation on the back of where the pictured things had come from. There were many portraits of us children, and some renderings of cats. My sister took some originals, I others, and we left most of the rest for the estate sale.

My sister spent part of the afternoon sifting through items in the house, in part looking for things that belong to her and also for things she would like to have. After that, she went outside to try to straighten out the sprinkler situation. There is a vast amount of ivy around the house, including some that was well on its way to taking over the front yard. We lately asked the person who does the yard work to tear up a lot of it, rototill, and put down grass seed, which needs watering. My sister found a sprinkler, but the water was spraying out only for about two inches around the sprinkler, so today she investigated what was going on with the various hoses and spigots and sprinklers, and got it working.

I didn’t have an active role in this project, but it didn’t seem right to perch on the couch while others labored outside, so I went outside and did a little weeding, and also got rid of an unsightly expanse of dead brown stalks in the back yard. I weeded! Weeding was the one gardening task entrusted to us—nay, required of us—when we were children. We also were invited to look through the beautiful gardening catalogues and pick out flowers that would be planted in the yard; I remember picking out colors of roses.

It was satisfying to do that bit of yard work today, though, as I observed to my sister, “Oh, I see: Once you start, it’s never ending.” She confirmed that is so.

Snow Brush

Last night I temporarily turned the heat up six degrees higher than normal and walked around the house with a clipboard to see if heat is coming out of all 19 ceiling vents. Most were working fine, a couple particularly well and a couple just barely. When we were shopping for this mini-split (air conditioner plus heat pump), a salesman said there would not be vents in the basement, but there certainly were, thanks to my father.

This morning I was able to have breakfast outside for the first time this year. In the afternoon, I took a walk, as I have been doing every day.

Continuing with estate sale preparation, I realized that a piece of furniture behind a bookcase still had stuff in the drawers. I moved the various items that were sitting on the floor in front of the bookcase and then enough stuff off the bookcase to allow shifting it aside, and then went through the drawers, where I found a piece of paper on which my mother had years ago noted the name of an “awesome realtor”: lo and behold, the very one we are now working with. I took a photo of my mother’s note and texted it to our realtor.

There were all kinds of oddities in those drawers, including some essential parts of the Seth Thomas clock that hung in our library decades ago. My sister had said she wanted the clock and was pleased when she saw those pieces, including the shiny gold thing that swings to and fro, which she had not realized were not with the clock. For her part, she located the crevice tool for the vacuum in what has become the junk room.

We spent some time in the garage picking out yard tools I might want for the gardening I will never do, even if I live here. My parents had one, if not two or three, of every possible thing in every possible size, so it was like going to a very well-appointed gardening store with a blank check. I brought a bucket full of things inside, while my sister will put some longer tools in her garage until after the estate sale.

She unaccountably kept harping on the pressure of the tire’s cars and finally was able to make me understand that you’re not supposed to go by what it says on the tire; you’re supposed to consult the sticker on the frame of the driver’s door. After my big triumph yesterday, it turned out that all four tires were quite overinflated, but now they aren’t. 

I looked through the car this evening and found a floodlight that can be plugged into what my sister had mentioned in passing was a sort of car outlet in the trunk, which fortunately I had remembered. I tried plugging the floodlight into that thing and found it worked perfectly. There was also a thing in the car that you can plug into that same outlet to have a three-prong electrical outlet. My father had everything, and he thought of everything that could possibly be needed in the event of this, that or the other.

My sister had earlier offered me a snow-clearing brush from the garage. I politely said I already have one, but she pointed out that it’s nice to have a second one outside the car, like next to the front door of the house, so you can brush the snow off the car that will otherwise fall on you when you open the car door to retrieve your first brush. Good point. I put the second brush in the back of the car for now, and I also accepted a small red plastic shovel, which she said might be good for digging out if I get stuck in snow. (I think that might have been a hint not to call her if I get stuck in snow.)

After I decided to stick with my two days of work yesterday, I had kind of a sinking feeling, and called my boss back today to see if I could take him up on his yes to going from two days of work per week down to one, and he said I could. After we hung up, it occurred to me that maybe another arrangement could be for me to work every week one of the days (the weekend day, which is a service to my colleagues, as no one wants to work that day), and work the weekday every other week, but I decided to let it be for now. At least while I’m traveling back and forth, maybe working just one day per week would be nice.

Twelve Dollars' Worth of Air

Greetings from the beautiful state of Michigan, where I arrived on Monday after just two and a half weeks in San Francisco, where I felt impinged upon from all directions: the various unagreeable activities of my neighbors in my own building and next door, a vivacious new officemate at work. Since I arrived here, I also learned that the rats which are now and then observed running up and down at the apartment building next door have finally figured out that it is even nicer over on our property.

I feel a refreshing freedom here in Ypsilanti, a vast sense of spaciousness both within the house and without. I can listen to music without considering whether I’m bothering my downstairs neighbor, a mental exercise that is additionally exasperating as that same neighbor frequently plays music loud enough to make my floor vibrate. Yet if I end up going deaf because I can listen to my heavy metal as loud as I want, maybe that’s a bit too much freedom. For a reality check, I obtained an app-based decibel meter, but it proved to be useless because it can’t be used at the same time as my Bluetooth speaker, so I ordered an actual, physical decibel meter and plan to try it soon.

I told my sister where I’m thinking of planting several peony bushes (that is, causing someone else to plant several peony bushes—I have an irrational dread of doing the slightest thing in the yard, though I have added to my to-do list to go out back and dig up some burdock plants that are just getting going; surely I should be able to do that) and she asked if I had, then, decided to move here. I said I had 100 percent decided to move here, and also 100 percent decided to remain in San Francisco. I just haven’t yet figured out how to do both simultaneously.

For the time being, I’m proceeding in both directions, including that I have contacted a mortgage broker, one recommended by a friend here. I also asked my sister if she would feed the cats two times a day for three weeks while I’m back in San Francisco packing up my stuff, and she immediately said she would. Moving the cats is another thing I have outsized anxiety about. My hypothetical plan is to find professionals to do this; I will be on the same plane as the two professionals and the two gabapentin-saturated cats. I will be really hoping Marvin doesn’t regain sufficient consciousness to allow destroying the carrier he’s in. So as not to put the cats through watching me pack everything in my apartment up and having to listen to all that cursing, I will bring them first and then go back and get everything else.

At the same time, I decided to ask my boss if I could start working just one day a week instead of two. Maybe that would make life in SF tolerable? He said he had a feeling this was coming and that the answer was yes, but he also mentioned that of us four per diem chaplains, one does not exist (we have an open position), one wants to take all of May and June off, another wants to take all of July off, and now I want to cut my hours in half; he didn’t at all say it that way, and he said I can absolutely do whatever I want to do. He said he knows that when I’m working, he doesn’t have to worry about anything. I love my boss, who has been incredibly good to me.

Therefore, I decided to stick with my two days for now. My boss said he’d figure out how to make the one day work, but I don’t want to make his life harder. We agreed that on one of the two days each week, I will work as a campus where the office should be a lot quieter. Preferably morose if possible.

My main task during this visit to Ypsilanti is to prepare for the estate sale that is scheduled to happen after I leave again. It has been agonizing because we generally have to get rid of this stuff, and I know I shouldn’t keep all of it for reasons of psychological health, but if I end up buying the house, I’ll be mad that I don’t have X, Y and Z, which cannot fit into my apartment in SF but which could easily remain in the house. It will be weird to arrive here next time to find the house mostly empty.

The day after I arrived, I went to Arbor Farms for groceries, where I got to the end of an aisle with my cart and found a fellow sort of blocking the way there. I paused and tried to radiate patience. He explained that one of the clasps of his suspenders had come undone. I said, “That’s an emergency!” He agreed that it kind of was. I noticed that another shopper was perfectly color coordinated right down to his shoes and pointed this out; he beamingly agreed. Ann Arborites and Ypsilantians are extremely friendly people unless they’re in their cars, in which case four percent of them are unbelievable assholes.

Yesterday Ginny and I had lunch at Ricewood, and then I stopped by my father’s favorite gas station to try to put air in the car tires all by myself; the warning light was on. Usually when I see that warning light, I call my sister and she comes over with her air compressor, which is very kind of her but also ridiculous. I should be able to do more stuff on my own because I just should, but also the anxiety about things like this makes me think of the worries that set in for my mother as she began to sink into dementia, so it seems good on two fronts to try to man up. My mother, for instance, became afraid of putting the car window down, fearful she would somehow break it.

The air is two dollars for five minutes and the machine takes quarters only. (Which is to say this learning experience cost me twelve dollars.) At first, I succeeded only in causing the tire to have less and less air in it, and I pictured having to call my sister to ask her to rush home from her office in Detroit because the car was now undriveable and stuck right next to the air machine that other more competent motorists might want to use. But after enough tries, I figured out how to get air to go in rather than come out, and went home with all four tires reasonably close, in my opinion, to the recommended max psi. Victory!

I am enjoying fiddling with the smart thermostat for the new mini-split (A/C and heat pump) and noticing that it seems like a shame to gain expertise in all these various things only to hand it all over to some stranger. I also like the idea of having a perfectly regular schedule: sleeping from this time at night to that time in the morning every single day, meditating, doing my exercises, walking, having more time to read, and feeling well every day instead of feeling horrendous two nights a week. At the same time, I appreciate that there are many people who feel like that five nights a week, or seven, or every minute of every day. Just two nights is luxurious, considered from that perspective.

I guess the question is if it is inherently virtuous to keep at something that is difficult; I think that I do kind of think that. Yet there is actually such a thing as retiring and doing only what one feels like doing; there is precedent for this. And also I could volunteer somewhere.

Today the City of Ypsilanti sent a person to do the mechanical inspection of the new mini-split and another to do the electrical inspection, and I started (and finished) the process of finding movers to move some furniture from here to my sister’s, some other furniture from her place to here for the estate sale, and some other furniture yet just from one room of this house to another room of this house, so that everything not to be sold can be sequestered in two rooms.

My realtor suggested trying Dolly, which is part of TaskRabbit. I entered information about all the pieces of furniture, which was kind of a pain, and then called them to see if I can explain what goes where on the day of the move, the answer to which was: no. I needed to schedule one thing that was two-helpers-and-a-truck and another thing that was labor-only, though they could be on the same day.

The support person laboriously typed up the details, going over the list of pieces of furniture—precisely 11 things total—again and again and again. It took more than an hour, but this fellow was so sweet that every time I heard “two bookcases,” I tried to sound as excited as if I were hearing it for the first time. I went to measure a bookcase during our call and he said worriedly, as I unfurled the tape measure, “Don’t hurt yourself!” I suppose if one were careless enough, one could put out one’s own eye with a tape measure, the same injury I was afraid of incurring while putting air in the car’s tires. (Can the whole thing explode?)

In the end, I did schedule the two helpers and a truck, but it turned out we were outside the service area for labor only. How can that be? Can’t the two helpers just kind of move the other stuff while they’re here? The answer was: no. But my sister thinks we can certainly move those intra-house items ourselves, so I think we should be set in regard to movers.