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.

My Friend the House

My sister said they are starting to use AI at her job, and that she observed an exchange between an AI and her co-worker wherein the AI said another parameter needed to be supplied. 

Her co-worker provided what was needed and added, "My bad."

My sister said, "You just said 'My bad' to an AI."

Her co-worker said, "Well, I don't want to make it mad. They're going to be in charge of everything."

The new air conditioner was supposed to be installed by yesterday, a five-day effort. The installers arrived and the electrician turned up as planned for the final day. I had decided to get back to my roots with a little Metallica; it turned out the electrician is a huge fan, has seen them 18 times, is about to see them again, and has a piece of Metallica art tattooed on his forearm, so he was happy when he came in and heard them.

The yard guys also came yesterday. They did a lovely job with the majority of the spring cleanup and plan to return Monday to finish up. 

The lead air conditioner installer (who I’m halfway in love with; roofer? What roofer?) hit a snag when it comes to wiring up the thermostat. This house has a water heater, which heats the water one uses for a shower or running the washing machine. It also has a boiler, which heats water to heat the house via baseboard heaters. (It has taken me about two years to grasp this, and that we do not have a furnace.) Boilers and therefore people who can fix boilers are increasingly rare; many houses these days are heated via forced air. (My father used to drain his boiler, now my boiler, every single month. When some technician looked at it for some reason or other, he said it was the cleanest boiler he’d ever seen.)

The lead A/C installer was trying to figure out yesterday how to connect the new air conditioning system and the boiler to the thermostat without destroying both. He got as far as he could get, and then called various people seeking tech support, not one of whom responded, being as it was Friday afternoon.

He said, “Just curious: Did anyone by any chance say anything about a Mitsubishi thermostat?”

I said, “No. Would it have been better to use a Mitsubishi thermostat?”

He said, “I think that question is going to be asked.”

I said, “Let the record reflect that I asked it, at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 10, 2026.”

The installer finally just had to put the original thermostat back and call it a day, but before he did that, he took me on the tour of the attic I had requested. I had never been up there before. It requires climbing up a ladder with shallow wooden steps that can be pulled down from the garage ceiling. One thing I really appreciated was that this person didn’t say, “Ma’am, are you sure you want to go up there?”

Lower down, you can stick your toes out on the far side of each step, so that your foot is securely on the step, but at the top, there are a couple of steps with a firm surface immediately beyond, so you have to hang on with just your toes there.

The installer casually said, “You go first,” which maybe was inspired by thinking he might have to catch me, but he didn’t make it sound like that, and I climbed up the ladder. Digressing to say that the attic in my childhood home was like a true third story of the house. You walked up a normal flight of stairs and then were in a long room with a high ceiling and solid floor where you could easily walk around. This room had sloping walls, but it was such a large room that there was plenty of space where you could walk around. This room led into a second room the same height but not as long. We regularly played up there, especially in the second room, which was a little cozier and I think not used for storage; a lot of things were stored in the big first room. It was warm up there, and had kind of a musty smell, not unpleasant. In that second room was a giant box of old comic books that had belonged to both of our parents when they were children: Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu.

The third and final room had a much lower ceiling. Either you could not up in there, or you could stand up only along the center line. This room was used just for storage of I forget what. Maybe some seasonal thing, like screens. My father would have, once a year, taken down screens and installed storm windows, and then done the opposite approximately six months later.

So I was a little shocked when I got to the top of the ladder in this house, crawled on my knees into the attic (not wanting to risk trying to step from the top step of the ladder into the attic, especially while hanging onto the top step with just my toes), and found that it was just one expanse, in which I could not stand up. Fortunately, I am Mrs. Squats as well as Miss Grumpy, so I could easily crouch down the whole time I was up there, though it also wasn’t that long. The air was unbelievably foul. My throat was immediately irritated and it remained so for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I can still feel it a little even now, more than 24 hours later.

The A/C installer showed me the new system and how they had reorganized the ductwork. He said that my office, in the back corner of the house, basically does not have any insulation over it. He said spending $1000 on fixing this might pay for itself over a couple of years. There is plenty of unwrapped pink, fibrous insulation up there, though not of the vintage expected to contain asbestos. It looks like it could benefit from someone spending some time up there with a mini shop vac. (Mini because how would you get an actual shop vac up there?)

The installer said they had just gotten light in the attic, a couple of bare bulbs thanks to the electrician. He said that before that, they had worked for days by flashlight! While crouching down. Good lord.

While it struck me as a hell realm, he said it is the nicest attic he has ever been in. He said, “This is the Cadillac of attics.” For one thing, it has a floor. He said usually people don’t want to pay for a wooden floor in an attic, and so you have to walk from joist to joist. My sister said later that it would be pretty easy to miscalculate or stumble and put your foot right through the plaster into the room below. (Could not your whole body follow that foot, being as the two are attached?)

But also, according to the installer, some attics are so low in height that they have to slither along on their bellies. I felt unpleasantly mashed in that attic just having to crouch down; when he said that about having to wend his way through a little crack, I almost said, “I’m sorry, I have to get out of here.”

I once read a long piece in The New Yorker about cavers who slither along on their bellies in a crack with a trillion tons of rock below and the same above. They wriggle along, able to feel the rock with their backs, and they do this for hundreds or thousands of feet—I can’t remember the details—until they get to a place where they can stand up. That is the one thing I’ve read in my entire life that I genuinely wish I could unread. What happens if you panic at the halfway point? It makes me feel a little short of breath to think about it. (To mention the one thing I’ve seen in my entire life that I genuinely wish I could unsee, that was a photograph of a teratoma.)

The first roofer who came to provide a (totally ridiculous) estimate said you should be able to see daylight at intervals all the way around the edge of your attic. The roofer who ended up doing the work assured me he had achieved a good balance between the air coming in at the edge of the eaves through the vented drip edge, and the box vents on top of the roof that let the air out. All I could really see up there was insulation, but the roofer, who I texted right from the attic, assured me everything is copacetic.

I thought of asking him to come by and show me, but I decided not to hassle him about that, since he had previously said he could hook us up with strong young men to carry stuff, which we will need later. What I need here is an attic insulation person who can achieve good insulation throughout, cover up the insulation as needed, and ensure it is sufficiently away from my vented drip edge.

I’m having to do so much for this house and learn so much about it, not one bit of which I had ever felt the slightest interest in learning before, that it’s starting to feel as if it’s my friend. Don’t worry, house! I’ll take care of you. I’ve even named it. I call it “The House.”

So then it was time to depart from the attic. Again to his credit, the installer casually remained where he was while I navigated the ladder. I was actually a tad uneasy about going down, especially those top couple of steps. I realize now that maybe he was not thinking about catching me if I fell; otherwise he would have preceded me. Maybe I didn’t appear feeble to him.

I took a photo of him smiling a winning smile next to the huge part of the air conditioner that is outside the house. He looks darling, but I actually prefer his customary I’m-over-this expression, maybe because that’s how he has looked every other time I have seen him. However, there were many laugh lines that magically appeared in the photo, so he must routinely smile, just not at work.

Today I had lunch with my father’s friend Julian, who sent the extremely timely note about sealing the new air conditioner against mice, which has been done. I was going to go to Seva in any event today, but while Julian and I were corresponding about the air conditioner, I asked if he would like to join me. I had my usual vegan tempeh Reuben, a side of roasted rosemary potatoes, and a bowl of Senegalese peanut soup. Julian had a side of avocado. I thought it might be a fiscal decision, but he said he was fasting, more or less. He did accept the offer of my pickle.

The new air conditioner is a mini-split. Thanks to my lunch with Julian today, I can now state with at least mild confidence that the “split” is because it provides both cooling and heating; it is possible that the “mini” is because the first such systems were huge industrial ones, whereas this application is smaller.

The mini-split’s heat is appropriate for the “milder” temperatures of spring and fall; it is not expected to keep you warm in the dead of winter.

I told Julian that the contractor is having problems with wiring both the boiler and the new heat pump to the thermostat. He asked why anyone is trying to do that in the first place. Per his understanding, each should have its own thermostat. For one thing, if one fails, you still have the other. His advice was to consult the different company that installed his Mitsubishi system and whose people are now replacing the motherboard that was damaged by the mice that got to the part of the system that’s in the attic. I plan to call them on Monday. I might even ask them to take over the rest of this project, or pay them to consult with the first company.

I was also wondering if the new system should be connected to all three of our existing thermostats, but after I got back from lunch, I discussed it with my sister, who has some expertise in this area, and she said she agrees that the boiler and the heat pump should not try to use the same thermostat, as Julian said, and she thinks only the boiler needs to connect to our two other thermostats.

I have been taking a walk every day, regularly miscalculating what to wear but so enjoying the lovely fresh air and the smell of growing things. Today I had a chat with a man arriving to visit his mother, who lives two doors down. If I stay here, one day I will know a lot of people around here by name.

I ran my theory about death no longer seeming theoretical past my sister, thus explaining why she and the other sister keep mentioning mine, and she said she thinks that is exactly it. 

Mett-Rage

Today I received a text message from an unknown number with a photo of some kind of piece of electrical equipment with what looked like a dead squirrel on a ledge of the piece of equipment. “Is that a dead squirrel?” I inquired of myself, thinking I must be misperceiving it. It proved to be two dead squirrels, one appearing freshly deceased and the other in a fairly advanced state of decomposition.

The accompanying text was precisely this:

“Mini splits need good sealing up at installation see email just sent Julian ann arbor”

I was thoroughly perplexed; I thought maybe I had been added by mistake to an exchange among the employees of the company installing our mini split (whatever that is); just as I was reading this mystifying message, with its sinister accompanying photo, I could hear the crashing and banging overhead of the mini split installers.

I asked, “Who are you?”

Answer: “Friend of tom.”

Oh! This was my father’s friend who advised me to get a Mitsubishi air conditioner (mini split and also heat pump) (I really could not tell you what a mini split is) just after my sister and I had decided to do just that.

It turned out that Julian’s similar or identical unit had been installed in a non-rodent-proof manner, and so he was getting in touch to warn me about this. The email to which he alluded went into much more detail, and offered a couple of solutions with step by step instructions, very like something my father would have sent upon making a discovery that his relatives might benefit from.

Given the precision timing, I texted Julian that it was almost enough to make one believe in a literal afterlife: Two messages so far from our father in heaven about this air conditioning system, both via Julian.

I gave the air conditioning company a call to make sure they were going to prevent us from having this problem. Our fellow there said that this is outside their purview normally (a bit annoying given the cost), but he said if I provided steel wool, they would mix it with some grey electricians’ glop and seal it up as best they could. He said it’s hard to stop mice from getting to these systems, where they enjoy nestling against the warm piece of machinery. (In Julian’s case, they damaged the motherboard and he is having to have that replaced for $1400.)

Mice? I went back and looked at the photo. I had not understood the scale of the piece of equipment correctly. It was smaller than I thought, and the two dead rodents were mice.

I went over to ACE to get some steel wool and to Arbor Farms, right next door, for groceries.

On my way, I practiced metta for my fellow drivers, especially whoever I was stopped behind at lights:

May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you be free of suffering.
May you be at ease.
May you live a long, healthy, happy life.

And then I totally lost my temper with a fellow who works at ACE. I have observed this exact sequence of events before: By whatever means, I arrive at a state where my heart is hugely and tenderly and warmly open, and then I take offense when others don’t happen to be in the exact same state of mind. Or rather, I suspect the mechanism is that I have let some of my own defenses fall away and thus am not prepared when I encounter adversity.

I walked into ACE and over to an island near the middle of the store. This is a wondrous store. It has a massive collection of beautiful kitchen things. I want everything in it. At the island, an employee asked what I needed.

I said, “Three things: steel wool, ant baits, and a specialty tool.”

He looked totally outraged, like I had just grievously insulted him and pushed way past the boundaries of acceptable behavior. He announced that they don’t have tools. I am pretty sure he left out the word “specialty,” but that must have been inadvertent, or perhaps I am misremembering.

Anyway, what?!? Game on, ACE employee!

“You don’t have tools anywhere in this hardware store?!?”

He started to say something, but I, furious, said, “Never mind, never mind; I’ll ask someone else,” and I marched off while he was still trying to speak to me.

I found another employee and said, “Are you in a good mood? Because the person I just talked to wasn’t.”

He said, “Oh, that was Mr. Grumpy.”

By then, I was already feeling kind of bad about the exchange, and I said, “Well, I can also be grumpy if you catch me in the right mood. I shouldn’t have taken offense.”

The second employee found the steel wool and ant baits, but wasn’t sure about the specialty tool, which I will need to get my father’s license plate off the car and put mine on. The employee offered to walk out and look at the car with me, where he said he had never seen such a thing.

Back in the store, he consulted a third employee who explained that this was an anti-theft screw for which you need a special screwdriver bit. I suspect I will find this thing in the car, because that’s where my father would have put it, but the ACE employee also told me where I can buy the little kit that contains this item, if necessary.

I now went back to Mr. Grumpy and apologized for being Miss Grumpy, adding, “You were totally right: You don’t have that tool.” We had an entirely pleasant exchange, both smiling, and I left the store feeling happy instead of ashamed of myself.

I decided not to worry about the proposed Ypsilanti Township data center too much. It looks like Ypsilantians and Ypsilanti Townshipians are a determined bunch who may succeed in preventing this facility from being built in the location initially proposed; the spot they prefer is outside Ypsilanti Township.

Furthermore, it is not due to begin operation by 2031, by which time who knows what will be happening, and finally, maybe they actually will build something that doesn’t cause problems for the community, though probably not. One little problem is that whether the thing emits a low-frequency hum or not, I will be positive I’m hearing one.

Hum

Last night it popped back into my mind that a data center is being planned for not far off, in Ypsilanti Township, which mostly surrounds Ypsilanti but is a separate thing. The location is six miles from this house. It is a project between the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory. A key purpose of this facility will be nuclear weapons research. 

The University of Michigan seems to have proceeded in bad faith and with evident contempt for Ypsilanti Township, many of whose residents are low income. (They don’t seem to have considered locating this data center in the upscale Ann Arbor Township community of Barton Hills.) As a public university, they do not need to follow local zoning regulations and they also won’t be paying property taxes. 

They began by buying 20 acres of land, which made it sound like the project would not be large, but then picked out another 124 acres adjacent to the 20 acres. The project is so large, it will need its own DTE (gas and electric) substation. The University of Michigan, per accounts online, seems to have been extremely unforthcoming with information and arrogantly unresponsive to the concerns of community members, as has Governor Gretchen Whitmer. When Ypsilanti Township calls to talk about the data center, she doesn’t answer the phone. She is claiming that Michigan will be a model for how to build these things in a responsible way that is good for the community.

The University of Michigan, also an entity I thought well of until about 24 hours ago, keeps saying it’s not a data center! It’s a “high-performance computational research center.” (I was looking forward to voting for Gretchen Whitmer for president, but now I am not so sure.)

Apparently Michigan is an increasingly popular place to plan data center projects because it’s cold here half the year, which reduces cooling costs. Twenty-six AI data centers have been proposed across Michigan; as of late last year, 16 potential sites had been identified, but it is not assured that all will pan out. As of yet, there is no giant AI data center operating in Michigan, but there is this one planned for Ypsilanti Township and a massive one nearing completion close by in Saline, just south of Ann Arbor. This is all kind of new, following tax breaks for data centers signed into law late in 2024.

The Ypsilanti Township Board of Trustees originally approved the proposal unanimously, but a week or so ago, after much activism by citizens, voted against it, and the Ypsilanti Township government website clearly says they oppose the data center. Besides the concerns about demands on the electrical grid and noise and water pollution, Ypsilanti Township is concerned that putting a facility like that nearby puts a bullseye on their back, fearing it would be a “high-value target,” potentially even for foreign adversaries.

The site is on the Huron River, near a public park and near an affordable housing development. Ypsilanti Township proposed a different site, one that has unused land available and includes an industrial zone. While the university and LANL have bought the land at the original site, they say they have not made a final decision about the data center’s location.

My major concerns about this are two: I was thinking that University of Michigan Health would be a great place for me to be a hospital chaplain, should I eventually be able to get such a job, but I would not work for them now, on principle. I’m down to zero attractive potential employers in this area. 

The larger concern is about noise, not the horrendous racket people nearby might have to endure, but the low-frequency hum these places are notorious for generating, which the internet claims can be heard up to 30 miles away. My ears are particularly well tuned to that frequency. Many years ago, for months or longer, every single night, all night, I heard a low-frequency hum, as if a large truck were idling a block away. It was maddening. Not loud, but completely impossible to tune out.

There are many online accounts of people being tormented by this kind of hum from a nearby data center. I would be mighty unhappy if I gave up an excellent job and transported Marvin and Duckworth across the country only to find that I can’t live here because of such a hum.

This morning, the air conditioning guys arrived, and so did the drywall guy. In the afternoon, a second painter came to provide a quote, and I met with a first estate sale person. The first thing the painter said was something like, “What’s the plan here?” 

“Why do you ask?”

He said, “I can see there’s a lot going on. Is this an insurance claim?” (He had not failed to observe the two service vehicles parked out front in addition to his own.) I was getting ready to not like him, but he soon won me over through sheer force of personality; he is a dynamic presence and a quick thinker. He also proved to have an eagle eye, pointing out a lot of things I’d never noticed.

His quote was a bit lower than the first painter’s, and since he has a crew, he said he could get this done in four or five days, whereas the first painter, who works alone, said it could take more than three weeks. I decided to go with the painter who came over today, and notified both.

I also, shameful to say, initially thought I might not like the estate sale lady, but I ended up liking her a lot. Earlier, I spoke with another estate sale person on the phone who, after she received photos, said, “This is a cleanout.” That is, there’s nothing to sell, but if you give me enough money, I’ll put all of your possessions in a Dumpster. My sister and I like the idea of our parents’ objects going out into the world, of someone coming along and saying, “Look at this hand-knitted hat!” or “Look at this pad of paper! There are still half the sheets left!”

When I spoke on the phone to the person who came today, she said she will sell what she can, then donate as much as she can, and give the rest away for free; very little will be truly junk. We liked the sound of that right away, and she and I proved to hit it off very well, so after she left, I canceled the meeting I had scheduled with another estate sale place on Friday. My realtor had recommended them, but I encountered an online review where someone said this place bailed on her just days before her sale, which was necessitated by the death of her husband, and left her in tremendous distress. The estate sale person I picked out today came to this reviewer’s rescue.

When I called to cancel, I said we had decided to go in a different direction (perfectly true), and the person said, “What’s that?” I was slightly shocked, and probably a bit incoherent in my answer, which should have been, “I’ll forgive you for asking if you forgive me for not answering.” She sounded distinctly miffed when we hung up. Odd. I mean, it could have been that I was getting divorced and had to sell the house pursuant to that, but then there had been a last-minute happy reunion and thus no need to sell the house.

We have an estate sale person and a painter.

Proceed with Care

Holy moly, what a day! And it’s not even 3 p.m. yet.

I did not succeed in getting to bed on time last night, but it was only two hours later than planned rather than four. I was, as is customary these days, awakened this morning by a phone call from a guy who fixes or installs things, but he was just calling to say he planned to come in the afternoon, as they had “a lot of metal to make” for the air conditioner.

Accordingly, I was already awake and dressed when the drywall guy came, the one recommended just yesterday by our prospective painter. (“Our” referring to me and my sister.)

This young man was one of those people who is interested in everything and who can fix or build everything. On top of that, he delivered a pithy and inspiring sermon about losing his mother—how he prayed that she would live, but when she didn’t, he did not lose his faith in God. He accepted that not everything that happens is going to be good. Terrible things happen, too. It is not the work of Satan if something bad happens, and it also doesn’t mean the cosmic vending machine is broken. You can put your quarter in and push the button for the thing you want, but you may or may not get it. All things, good and bad, happen in God’s world / in the universe / under the sun. That’s what I believe, and so does my drywall guy, so that should pretty much settle that.

He also spoke about doing what you can to help others—not just sending them good wishes, but physically doing what needs to be done. In the realm of very practical assistance, he pointed out a wasps’ nest right outside the front door that no one else had spotted, even though it’s right there. It had four vertical tubes. I asked John what a person is supposed to do about that and he said to scrape it off the wall before it gets warm, so I used a trowel of my father’s from a bucket full of his gardening tools that has been sitting on the dining room floor just like that for years now to remove the wasps’ nest. The material was surprisingly hard. Yellow larvae ended up on the ground. John said to sweep them under the nearest bush, and he came out with a blower to do a final tidying up of the area outside the front door. He also shop-vacced out the fireplace!

In the late morning, I met with my Zen teacher, Joshin. We talk via Zoom every couple of months or so. I told him I was still wrestling with my decision. He asked what my understanding is in a dharma context. I said I understand that things are going—not the way they are supposed to: They are going the way they are going, without a doubt. I said I know trying to think my way to the answer is not helpful, especially as the goal I’m trying to think my way to doesn’t even exist (permanent happiness for an imaginary person).

Joshin spoke about something he is wrestling with which also entails trying to figure out what will happen in the future to a person of great importance to him, and finding himself worrying about things going wrong. The worry can lead to panic, and then the panicked feeling adversely affects what is happening right now.

He reminds himself to pause and recognize what condition of mind has arisen. He practices compassion for self. He sees that what he is trying to do is an expression of caring for his loved one, but is it actually helpful?

In regard to my decision, he offered a question for reflection: “What’s leading me?” On a splendid clear day like today, it is easy to answer that: The beauty and the peace of this place. My nervous system feels great here.

While we may rightly use our wisdom to anticipate the likely outcome of a decision, Joshin said, our task is to “attend to what’s happening now with a high degree of care.” He said that the Buddha’s last words were, “Proceed with care.”

He asked if I am familiar with a certain practice. I said, “Given that I’m going to have to ask you what that word means, I would say not.” He told me a bit more about it, and I remembered that he had mentioned this in an earlier conversation. I told him I had gotten the book he recommended; I can picture it on my shelf in San Francisco sitting there quietly waiting for something to happen. The practice is lojong. Joshin explained to me how to proceed. We’ll get back to that.

(From Wikipedia: Lojong is a contemplative practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition which makes use of various lists of aphorisms or slogans which are used for contemplative practice. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes.)

The word itself appears to mean “mind training.”

A couple of hours later, I met with a friend of a friend who is the manager of spiritual care in two hospitals in a large hospital system in southeastern Michigan. We spoke for half an hour over Zoom. He said hospital chaplain jobs are not that easy to come by, as people understandably do not give them up. He said my best bets in my immediate area are the University of Michigan and, um, another hospital.

The latter is where my father went to the emergency room four years ago yesterday and where he then spent three weeks as an inpatient. My mother later on had a terrible experience there. Or she would have if she’d been awake. She managed to sleep for about 27 straight hours in that same emergency room. I had a terrible experience there, awake for nearly all those same hours, sitting overnight on a straight-backed chair next to my mother.

Just before she went on hospice, my mother was in the emergency room three times in a row, twice at the University of Michigan and once at the other hospital. Things were considerably better at the University of Michigan. Her stays there were much shorter, they did much more testing, and I didn’t have to throw a giant tantrum to get her discharged. The tantrum I threw at the other place, which caused the entire emergency department suddenly to fall silent and all the other patients in the vicinity to be quickly wheeled away from the person having the loud psychotic break was one of the finest acts of my entire life, and dazzlingly effective at achieving the desired results.

While my father was on hospice for almost exactly six months—hospice care is offered to those whose life expectancy is judged to be six months or less, though the average length of hospice care is much shorter—my mother somehow managed to be on hospice for two years. We aren’t Medicare fraudsters, and wouldn’t have done anything shady to prolong this excellent care, which was in danger of being lost only twice.

At some point, residing in memory care, my mother got a new hospice nurse (she had four of them, all told; my father had two) who immediately sniffed that she didn’t see why my mother was even on hospice. While recertification occurs at pre-established intervals, it is also the case that any time a hospice nurse judges that his or her patient no longer qualifies for this care, he or she is supposed to start discharge procedures immediately.

However, this nurse couldn’t possibly have done a thorough review in the very short period before she offered this opinion, and she also went around sharing this view with the caregivers who worked in memory care. When I heard about this, I was enraged, and called the hospice and requested a different nurse, who soon turned up and was with my mother through the end of her life.

The other time my mother almost stopped being a hospice patient, her nurse had reasonably made that determination and said that the final step would be a video call with the doctor. I never met this doctor in person; by all accounts, he is wonderful. I could also see, from his photos, that he is a handsome fellow, so I concluded that it would be good if I also attended this meeting.

Well, in the meeting, my mother suddenly and completely decompensated. She suddenly became unable to speak and began babbling unintelligibly. (For good measure, an hour or so after this meeting, she also fell; she was not injured.) The doctor said, hmm, maybe we’d better pause this process, and she ended up being recertified.

After my talk with the spiritual care hiring manager today, I concluded that if I see a .4 job in the Metro Detroit area, I’d better go ahead and apply for it. Having a freeway commute is not ideal, but working in a hospital is the best thing there is.

I also remembered where this whole thing began, in about 2011, which was that I was a hospice volunteer. I can be a hospice volunteer again! I can live a simple life and volunteer at a hospice or retirement community one afternoon a week, and volunteer teaching children to read another afternoon each week, for balance. Maybe the latter in Detroit.

April 6

Today is the day, four years ago, that my father fell ill. When I called him, he sounded just dreadful. He went to his own doctor; the thought was that it might be stomach flu. He began to vomit and vomit. He asked my sister to take him to the emergency room. The thought by the end of the day was that it was pancreatic cancer. (That’s what it was.) (The vomiting was because the growing tumor had finally caused an intestinal blockage.) After he left the house to go to the emergency room, he didn’t return home for six weeks. I remember my mad rush that night to book a flight and pack my stuff. I arrived in Ypsilanti the following day.

This morning I woke up in a mild state of dread, just like yesterday; it faded as soon as I got out of bed to let the air conditioner installers in. Installing the air conditioner may take all week. I had gotten an astronomical quote for painting from someone recommended by my realtor, so she and I got on the phone to discuss that. A friend who owns rental property had pointed out that the new owners might want to choose their own colors, so why paint? Our realtor said she won’t be mad at us if we decide not to paint, but even if our paint gets covered over three weeks later, it’s still worth doing because fresh paint makes a place look clean and well cared for. We agreed that we could omit the garage and basement, which brings the price down to something that is reasonable relative to the cash we have left of our mother’s.

When my parents were leaving my childhood home in Ann Arbor, they agonized endlessly over what colors to paint bedrooms soon to be someone else’s. This I recall clearly. Thus when they moved into their new house, the one I’m sitting in, they never painted it at all. They bought this place in 2007. It took a long, long time to do the move because they didn’t use movers, I’m pretty sure. I think they just brought over what would fit in their car on a given day. They probably asked my sister to help with larger items. There are some things in the basement here that are enormous and extremely heavy; somehow my father and sister got those things down there. I gave a table saw that was in the basement to my uncle last year. Two strong young fellows could hardly get it up the stairs. Anyway, I can picture that, with such an attenuated process, there was never an obvious moment for painting. They probably thought they would get around to it, but they didn’t.

As for this painting job here, there are some spots in the living room that need a plasterer or drywall person. Today the painter recommended someone who soon provided his own astronomical quote. I feel that, as I am the agent of two gentlewomen besides myself, I should contact more than one contractor, but since we need this done pretty soon and since the whole project has so many moving parts, maybe I don’t have to get multiple quotes for every little thing. I accepted the drywall guy’s quote and he will start tomorrow.

I plan to meet with another painter this week, and to do a more detailed walkthrough with the first painter next weekend just to make sure we have the same understanding of what he’s going to paint. Color? I don’t care.

In the afternoon, I went out to go to Arbor Farms and Plum Market. The gas tank was nearly empty. I thought probably I could make it to the west side of Ann Arbor and back without running out of gas, but didn’t want to risk having to call my sister to come and rescue me for such a dumb reason. It didn’t bother me to pay $58.74 to gas up the car. I’m glad I can pay $58.74 to put gasoline in the car. (If you told my father you had put gas in a car, he might well remind you that what you had put in the car was gasoline. Sometimes I said to him, “I filled the car with gasoline. Well, not the whole car.” Which I thought was very funny.)

It also didn’t bother me to get pelted with sideways-blowing freezing rain while standing under the gas station’s completely ineffectual overhang, but what was slightly galling was knowing for sure that thirty seconds later, the sun would be beaming down and the sky would be a lovely deep blue studded with puffy white clouds. That was exactly the case.

I came home and had a salad for dinner and set to clearing stuff out of the way for the drywall guy. I discovered a further ugly patch of damage alongside the far edge of the fireplace and also that one known crack in the wall undoubtedly occurred when one of the brackets for the drapes was installed. I texted the drywall guy and he said he doesn’t have to remove that bracket. He will just fix the crack everywhere it is visible and not underneath the bracket. He said if he took the bracket off and repaired the entire crack, it might just crack again when the bracket was put back. 

I also discovered that inside the fireplace is a horrible mess: leaves and ashes and, as far as I could tell without looking too closely, a huge colony of diminutive dead insects? It would be nice to get that cleaned up before painting the front of the fireplace. My sister said a shop vac might be something to try.

I further discovered four parallel black scuff marks on the beautiful hardwood floor. I don't know if you can refinish just part of a floor. The gorgeous floors are one really nice thing about this house.

I didn’t have time to go for a walk today, but I’m hoping I might actually get to bed on time and get a decent amount of sleep.

Breathing Room

I felt kind of bad later about what I said about the very slender gentlemen in San Francisco. Even though there are a lot of them, that doesn’t make them a type; each is a human being doing his best to care for himself and to find a moment of happiness or two in this vale of tears. And even though I don’t find them attractive, I’m sure there are many who feel a melting sensation when they run by, so I apologize, thin San Francisco tech men.

Yesterday my sister came over to discuss our house-related efforts, and we established a tentative timeline which called for me to take my stuff and get out already at the end of my next visit, on May 20, to be followed by an estate sale, painting, cleaning, and window washing.

My idea now is to let all that happen, which will proceed without my oversight because I won’t have anywhere to stay and can’t really justify the cost of a hotel if my only task is going to be to nitpick over the painting job. Then I plan to come back and stay for a week in a hotel and walk up and down in the empty, freshly painted house and make a final decision.

After we had that discussion, I felt distraught: The end is in sight. As night fell, I felt just miserable and realized that part of the problem was that I was cold. Here is one thing I’ve learned about this: There is no point in turning on a space heater nor in sitting on a couch with a blanket cozily over your lower half, because when you walk out of that room or rise from the couch, you’ll really be freezing. It’s better to put on more layers or swap a layer for a warmer layer. Indoors!

My apartment in San Francisco is often a toasty 74 or 76 degrees or even warmer, between the sun streaming in the bank of windows in the living room and the radiator, which seems to be accountable only to itself and often comes on when it’s 80 degrees outside. The thermostat in Ypsilanti is set to 70 degrees (colder at night) and thus it is 69 degrees in the parts of the house I visit most often (colder elsewhere, including in the basement) and I am not willing to pay to have it be warmer than that. That probably is already warmer than my father kept it, and so I am often chilly.

A nice wool base layer helps a lot, and there is also no law saying a knitted hat can be worn outdoors only. Now I am chuckling, remembering a sibling telling me not long ago that our childhood home in Ann Arbor was freezing cold in the winter (this I do not remember, of course), but my father wore a warm hat inside the house, so one could not complain about the cold unless one was also wearing a blizzard-proof hat inside the house. I do remember touching a certain radiator and being delighted when I found it warm.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is the relapse-prevention advice, “HALT: Don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired.” I got sober in Michigan in 1979, where that saying was amended to “CHALT: Don’t get too cold, hungry, angry, lonely or tired.” When I realized yesterday evening that I was just plain cold, I put on more clothes and then had a good chat on the phone with a friend, and I felt much better afterward. Besides listening with compassion and noting that maybe one approach is just to put my focus on what I know I need to do about the house, she put forth the idea of introducing a playful note: “Oh, goody! I don’t have to decide that right now!”

However, this morning, I felt extremely bad again, like I might even be nearing some sort of psychotic break. Is it possible I actually cannot go forward without my mother and cannot do the grieving that parting from all her stuff would entail?

I had planned to spend a lot of time here this summer and was looking forward to it, so this morning I ran that by my sister, who has endured much more “We’re having an estate sale / we’re not having an estate sale / we are having an estate sale / we are definitely not having an estate sale” than any one person should have to, not to mention considerably more “If I don’t buy the house … / if I do buy the house … / if I don’t buy the house  … / if I do buy the house … ” 

She has been listening to this literally for years now, and again this morning responded in her characteristic kind, generous, and gracious manner, saying that I have worked so hard taking care of our mother, the estate and the house, it would be nice if I could enjoy one—or two—last vacations here. Ah!

I’d like to think that I could achieve a happiness, or equilibrium, that is unconditioned—not dependent on these or those circumstances—but I must say that I felt much better as soon as it was clear that May 20 will not be my last day here.

I did my whole morning routine, which takes about an hour and which had fallen by the wayside amid the early arrivals of the roofers and the painter, and I had breakfast, and I felt happy that I get to play house for a while longer.

I told my friend last night that I can easily list ten good reasons to stay in San Francisco, ten good reasons not to, ten good reasons to move to Ypsilanti, and ten good reasons not to. I try not to think think think, but there is still plenty of thinking. Last night I picked up the Sayadaw U Tejaniya book I brought with me, and this was the second paragraph I read: “Whenever you get this feeling of not knowing what to do, just wait. Don’t do anything.”

(The book is Don’t Look Down On The Defilements They Will Laugh At You.)

I can’t really do nothing; it’s not fair to the other two heirettes. But I figure any moment of mindfulness that can be had is all to the good, that little bit of space free from any story.

It has been very helpful to participate in my sangha again. So many things I’ve heard Howie say in these past weeks have been just what I needed to hear. I am noticing that when he talks about delusion, one of the “three poisons” in Buddhism that are understood to cause suffering (the other two being grasping and aversion; different words may be used for any of the three; the poisons are also called defilements), instead of saying anything about confusion or being unmindful, he consistently and specifically refers to this as being the delusion that there is a separate, permanent self.

So no wonder I’m having such extreme problems with this decision: I’m not just trying to figure out what will bring permanent happiness, free of suffering, to a self that doesn’t even exist, not to mention that there is no such thing as permanent anything and no such thing as a life that completely avoids suffering—I’m trying to figure out how to achieve the impossible for some imaginary person who will exist in the future. That is, who won’t exist in the future, either.

I have noticed that there are two phases to this thing: The one where I think a lot, trying to deduce the needs and wants of my future imaginary self (so futile), and where I am filled with unease, worried I will make a catastrophic mistake, and then the one where I am doing better with my relaxed, continuous attention a la Sayadaw U Tejaniya, where I feel a great ease: Either choice, or some other choice, will be fine! All is totally, completely well. The trick is that I can’t decide to be in that latter state; that is merely grasping for something that is not present. The practice is the relaxed attention in as many moments as possible, and then voila, I find that the ease has returned on its own.

Pretending today that this is my house, I did some things to make it a little lighter and more open feeling: Just because my parents put that thing there doesn’t mean it can’t be relocated. I raised some shades that by custom are closed, and I moved some pieces of furniture. The improvement was immediate.

In the afternoon I took a walk. It was overcast at almost every moment today, 40 or so degrees, and windy, which makes a big difference for the worse, but I chose the right stuff to wear, and quite enjoyed the time outdoors, tromping along. I passed a woman with a baby slung to her back, and then I encountered her again later and she asked me if her baby was sleeping. A neighborly moment.

Water Glass

On a recent Tuesday evening, Howie said something like, if there is aversion in your mind and you are aware of the aversion, you’re doing the work. What a relief to know the task is not to figure out some way to get rid of the aversion, or, preferably, to be a wholly good person who just never experiences aversion, but simply to see it.

This came in handy this evening. During the day, I got to meet one of the roofer’s young sons. When I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, he pointed at his father. He clearly adores his father, and it is easy to understand why.

As for the roof, the crew did a fantastic job—it looks marvelous—and a conscientious job of cleaning up afterward.

I met the roofer precisely one week ago, yet when he drove away this evening, after using a blower on the driveway to leave it cleaner than it was before the roofers arrived, I felt startlingly and achingly bereft, like, Wah! Don’t leave me!

Every month, I text five people who took care of my mother at the end of her life, plus a woman whose husband was in memory care when my mother was, just to say hello and send good wishes; then there is a little flurry of texts back and forth. I’ve decided to add the roofer to that group, and I imagine that will likely be the extent of our connection.

Fortunately, Howie’s wise words came to mind, and I could say to myself, this is craving. If nothing else, the short time it takes to say that is time free from craving! I also reminded myself of something Howie said to me 30 years ago, when I went on my first meditation retreat: The more mindful you are, the less you’ll suffer.

So then: Water glass, sponge, can of salmon, red, blue, chilly.