Twigs

This morning I checked with the owner of the window washing company to see if I had chosen the right stuff to use on the deck, and he said he thought another thing would be more appropriate; he thought the Deck Correct would be overkill. The deck wood looks pretty bad to me, but worse must exist somewhere. I was on the deck pondering the colors for the other product, of which there appeared literally to be a thousand, when I got a text message from the realtor saying she had sent the closing paperwork. I’ll have to get back to deck colors tomorrow. It was off to Dad’s desk to read documents and make notes and talk to the realtor and examine my bank account and communicate with my siblings.

The paperwork included the Bill of Sale, indicating that Bugwalk (“Seller”) hereby sells to Bugwalk (“Buyer”) the property located at such-and-such spot. 

The plant had never sounded louder than on this day, of course, which fortunately was otherwise lovely, and of course anxiety arose and my head began to ache a little and a knot began to form in my gut, all to be expected as the momentous occasion approaches.

I wasn’t able to connect with the person at the title company today regarding the actual transfer of funds, so that will likely be tomorrow.

I went out for a walk in the afternoon and passed an apartment complex with a very loud piece of machinery running just outside the units of rent-paying tenants, likely an air conditioner. And then there are people who live right on Washtenaw and listen to the roar of traffic all day long. It could definitely be worse.

Except as noted above, I am on an even keel emotionally today, and I am trying to remember Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s words: Objects themselves (in this case, this sound) are not good or bad. The investigation is of what’s going on in our minds, noticing if there is aversion or grasping or if we had become lost in thought and are just now aware again.

My sister, that sly dog, very casually mentioned that our mother liked the power plant, feeling that it was a suitable object for an engineer to gaze upon. If she liked it, then (gulp) I like it!

My ritual after getting in bed includes offering gratitude to my parents. I say their whole names, then their less formal names, then “Dad” and “Mom.” This generally leads to my feeling sad or even very slightly panicked, or kind of shocked: How can this be? Last night I suddenly wanted to see a video of my mother, and alas then was up for 90 minutes in the middle of the night watching videos of my mother in memory care, but must say that some of those gave me joy without an ensuing wave of sorrow, which is what happens almost every time I think of either parent. She was so funny. In one video, she says something like, “Because I am young and beautiful, I do not need to grovel before a little pile of twigs.” I should think not.

Another Harrowing Day in Decisionland

Yesterday, that is. Today has been perfectly plausible.

The night before last, I lay awake until 6 a.m. and then got up yesterday after not enough sleep. Properly I should have stayed in bed until 4 p.m., but it doesn’t feel good to do that and also guarantees that the next day will be messed up, too. After I got up, I cried and cried, still obsessing about the power plant noise and the various unsatisfactory choices regarding the breeze and the smell and the air conditioner and all that, and my mother still seeming not to be here, though once in a while I hear a little noise just like the noise I might have heard when she walked past the closed library door.

After having promised my realtor I would not change my mind again, I texted her yesterday that I was reconsidering my decision. This had partly to do with the $10,000 for the tree, though my sister had offered to assist with that. I asked if there was any possibility of getting my earnest money back and she said this would probably work out, since I’m both the seller and the buyer.

Do I need professional help? I have decided to return to therapy at different times over the years with my main, almost lifelong therapist, and what inevitably happens is that I feel perfectly fine after two sessions and wonder why I’m spending all this money, or, and most customarily, she enrages me, and that’s the end of that.

This period of indecision (i.e., months of agonizing and catastrophizing) has been really difficult. It just sounds deranged to contemplate moving from San Francisco to Ypsilanti, MI, which is part of the very appeal of doing it: What a wacky thing! But that can also make it seem like I must be making a giant mistake. Leaving what is objectively the best city on the planet for southeastern Michigan just cannot be happening.

Have I lost touch with reality? I don’t see anyone else crying like a two-year-old for two straight hours, or maybe it was just 17 minutes, but it felt like a long time, but then, why would I see this? As they say in Al-Anon, compare and despair, and, along the same lines, that we would do well to avoid comparing our own insides to other people’s outsides. Maybe half the people on the planet are crying their eyes out right now.

I hadn’t made it to the grocery store on Friday and it was clear it wouldn’t happen yesterday, either, and that I would have to go today, so I texted my sister to see if she wanted to come over yesterday instead of today, as had been planned. I had a list of things to discuss with her (ladder, air conditioner filter replacements, etc.) and was going to ask for her help moving some furniture. She said she would be over in 15 minutes. I replied that there was no rush, as I hadn’t eaten yet and needed to do that. She didn’t see my reply and soon turned up at the door, so she ended up having to watch me construct my breakfast and said it was making her feel a little queasy. She said she’d never seen anyone put that much oil on toasted bread before. The tablespoon of walnut oil on each slice is to prepare the surface for the third of a cup of nut butter.

We didn’t end up moving furniture, since I was thinking of not buying the house. We did look at the brochures with the various possibilities for coating the deck. There were a couple of things that looked so beautiful, but I had to concede that nothing is going to make that old weathered wood look anything like the picture. I am thinking about Cabot’s Deck Correct. I’m going to ask the owner of the window place if he thinks that’s a good choice.

After I ate yesterday and after my sister departed, I went out for a walk and then I went out to pick up the plant material I’d cautioned the window guys not to trip over. I wanted to get it off the ground before the fellows who mow the lawn turn up again (because they would probably toss it into the underbrush and then I would not be able to locate it). That was the one thing I was going to do, but then I saw vines that needed pulling down, and some vine branches to be cut, and burdock that needed digging up, and thistles that needed to be uprooted, and an eye-poking honeysuckle branch or two that needed to be cut back. I ended up being out there for several hours, until it was so dark I could barely make out my clippers lying on the ground.

When I first went outside, I was displeased to see Digby’s dog in my back yard yet again, this time chasing a rabbit.

While I was doing the various tasks outdoors, my elastic-waistband pants kept falling down, not all the way down, but I kept having to yank them back up. I was trying to think later what to do about that: suspenders? I remembered that when I was a kid, I went through a long phase, maybe years, where I always wore overalls. The store where I got them still exists: Sam’s, in Ann Arbor. I will go there and get some overalls!

A couple of weeks or so ago, I went to see my doctor at Kaiser about the vestibular symptoms. She said calcium and magnesium might be the problem and to discontinue all supplements for two weeks. The symptoms completely cleared up. Today, for the first time since beginning that experiment, I took vitamin D, Jarrow’s BroccoMax, and oregano oil, and the symptoms came back within a few hours. I don’t need to ask my doctor which she thinks the culprit is. I will stop taking all three, wait to feel fine again, and try them one at a time. It’s probably the vitamin D, which is too bad, as that helps with absorption of calcium and magnesium, and I do have near-osteopenia and don’t eat dairy because it gives me a horrible cough and then, reliably, a cold.

I spent some time today picking out possible deck colors, considering what will or won’t attract bees, what will look nice next to my feet if I lean forward and look at my feet, what will be pleasing adjacent to the house color. Tomorrow I will ask for some samples to be dropped off.

I got a text message from my cat sitter today saying that she had smelled gas in my apartment and found one burner turned partway on. I hope this was a freak occurrence and not Marvin’s new hobby.

After breakfast today, I went to my sister’s to pick up some packages that had been delivered there and to drop off a couple of things she had lent me. Despite knowing better, it is hard not assume that the plant is full of mean people with whom I’m going to get in a fight after they refuse to close the windows. I am purposely trying to pretend that 50 people just like my uncle work there: kindly, benevolent, easygoing sorts who would recoil from doing another the slightest harm.

Also, given the problem with Digby’s dog, there is the danger of ending up in conflict with all of my neighbors, which would be good to avoid. My parents didn’t want to have conflict with their neighbors, some of whom are now my neighbors, so they just didn’t. Whatever happened, they did not remark upon it, let alone file a complaint with the city or send a letter threatening legal action. My father and I are very similar, but one giant difference between us is that he was a person of profound equanimity. If people had loud parties until 2 a.m., if they grilled with charcoal, if their extremely excitable dog ran up and down the fence barking loudly at my father while he did yard work, so be it. One day, two pit bulls escaped a neighbor’s yard and menaced my father. One tore the downspout off the house, leaving streaks of blood on the wall. My father’s only response was to describe the incident to his own family members. (Oddly, it was the loudly barking dog that seemed to bother him the most, even though it posed no physical threat.)

When my father returned home from visiting me in San Francisco in 2015, he accidentally forgot to retrieve his beloved iPad from luggage claim at the Detroit airport. As I recall it, my sister, mother and I were beside ourselves: that favorite object, perhaps gone for good! My father didn’t turn a hair. He and my mother drove back to the airport. The iPad was still there. It’s three feet from me as I type this.

It is a beautiful day today. On a day like this, with the sun shining down and the puffy white clouds and the gorgeous blue sky, I wonder how anyone can bear to live anywhere else. But when it’s not so nice, I wonder, as my friend Lisa M. put it on the phone yesterday, “What on earth possessed people to settle here?”

I went today to ACE to exchange an item, to Stadium Hardware for work gloves, to Arbor Farms and Plum Market for groceries.

I texted the realtor to say I am planning to close on the house on Thursday. When my parents were alive but living over at the retirement community and it was just me here, I enjoyed taking the trash and recycling out to the curb. I would pretend that I was a grown-up and that this was my house. Now it is about to be my house. (I’m not sure if the grown-up part is achievable.)

There is a woman, presumably homeless, often seen walking up and down in the center divider of Washtenaw near the Arborland shopping center. She used to have grey hair but now it’s brown. She’s diminutive in size, and has the use of only one arm, though, not wanting to peer closely enough to get an exact understanding of the situation, I’m not sure if she is missing a hand or everything from the elbow down or if it’s all there but doesn’t work.

I hadn’t seen her for weeks and was relieved when there she was today, a block farther west. I was stopped at a red light and rushed to get some money to give her. She must be very well practiced at identifying when someone is preparing to do this, and she must many times have watched people drive off before making any gift because the light turned green too soon. So she came right over to the car window as I was digging in the pocket of my backpack. I gave her a twenty-dollar bill, and she thanked me. I said it was good to see her and she said it is always good to see me. I said, “I didn’t see you for a while. I was worried,” and for a moment, it looked like she might be about to cry.

Yuckly

Today was another semi-traumatic day in the life of the almost-homeowner, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Two days ago, on Wednesday, the fellow from Community Pest Solutions who came before came again, this time to address a persistent ant problem that had cropped up in the kitchen. I had put out eight ant baits from the hardware store with little effect. The pest engineer said he would put out some of their baits, and also spray outside again; he said two outdoor treatments should be absolutely sufficient to prevent ants from turning up again before the end of the year. 

I asked how I’m going to keep Marvin from eating ant baits that are on the counter. He said they can potentially be put inside cupboards, or that outdoor treatment only could be used. (I did not used to be an ant baits or pesticide spraying person, but now I am. It’s a much bigger problem here than in my San Francisco apartment.) Their baits worked almost instantly.

Also on Wednesday I received a quote from the window people for the deck work and cleaning the gutters, which I accepted right away. Then I wrote to the renovations people to say that if they were to take the deck work out of their quote, I would accept it.

Furthermore on Wednesday, the electrician who loves Metallica came to provide some estimates; he showed me a little video of Sphere in Las Vegas, where he will soon see Metallica. During his visit, I learned why this house does not have outlets in handy places and why it isn’t going to. The choice is between installing ugly metal boxes on the exterior of the walls to run wires from existing outlets to where they are wanted or tearing open the finished basement walls at astronomical expense.

My parents made a point of plugging in one of those flat-to-the-wall extension cords behind every piece of furniture that was in front of an outlet, and this office that I am sitting in has a sturdy orange extension cord that runs halfway around the room, along the wall. The electrician confirmed that the three-prong outlet near the door actually is grounded. So that is the setup I’m going to stick with.

Somewhere along in here, difficulties with the other sister arose again. I try to treat her as our father would if he were here, which excludes driving two hours to give her an exceedingly stern look. During the upsetting exchange, both of us were texting our nice sister to complain about the other.

Yesterday two fellows arrived from the window place. I showed them the deck and apologized for the piles of vines in a couple of places on the ground. I haven’t really done any yard work during this visit, but I can’t resist pulling vines down if my eye falls on them. One of the guys said, “It’s okay—if he falls down, he falls down.”

One of them cleaned the gutters (meaning that now I don’t have to pay the painter to do this), and the other power-washed or soft-cleaned the deck. He asked what color I have in mind for the stain, and I said more or less the color of the actual wood, and therefore was surprised when they dropped off five samples that were all almost a lurid salmon hue, but then I realized that when I said “wood color,” the wood was wet and therefore darker. 

Also yesterday my friend’s son who is a gardener (and really lovely young man) came over to look at the yard with me. He told me the names of a lot of plants and pointed out the invasive species. He has pretty much a full-time landscaping job, but said he could also work here from time to time.

One evening this week I moved around some furniture, setting up a congenial area in the living room where two people could sit to engage in civilized conversation. In front of the couch (my sister’s couch) is a table (my mother’s table) with a colorful cloth place mat on it, a fan, pads of paper of various sizes, two pens, a cloth handkerchief, a box of tissues, some magazines, the book I’m currently reading. It’s satisfying to arrange things just the way I like them, though major revisions will be needed if Marvin ever arrives here.

There was a scam attempt this week: I got an email saying I needed to review and Docusign something. I had gotten a lot of emails like that and initially did not question this one, but then realized it was a bit curious since my realtor is out of town this week, and also I happened to notice that I saw the email while looking at my phone and didn’t see it while I was looking at the desktop computer: It had been sent not to my main email address. I pretended I was going to reply to it and then could easily see it was from a scammer.

I am planning to determine the value of the car and give each sister a third of the total. I told them that, and my sister said I don’t have to give her any money—she said she regards it as being my car, and since we might have ended up donating it, she doesn’t need to receive any money for it. 

I guess that brings us to last night. Upsetting interactions with the other sister aside, it was nice to feel that I was progressing steadily toward closing day, not lurching back and forth, and even finding some pleasure in arranging the place. I felt almost a little excited about the whole thing.

Last night I began to feel increasingly bothered by the noise coming from Eastern Michigan University’s power plant (“Energy Center”), which is right across the street. I have been visiting this house for 20 years and had never really noticed it, let alone been disturbed by it, but then, my parents always kept the windows closed. That was actually something I did not like about visiting here, especially in the warmer months. Outdoors it would be whatever temperature it was, nice and warm, with the fragrant smells of all the green growing things, while indoors it was all sealed up and artificially cold, even with the air conditioner set relatively high. I felt unpleasantly cut off from the outdoors every time I came back inside.

Almost the whole four years I’ve been here half the time, I also kept the windows closed. My sister put screens in a couple of dining room windows several months ago, and then I could open those windows, and it was really nice. The strong paint smell a week and a half ago led to opening a whole bunch of windows and at first, that seemed great (except for the intense heat and humidity it let into the house, as there was no point in using the air conditioner with all the windows open).

The house being so sealed up was one of the main things I had worried about when trying to make the decision about buying it. I really appreciate the open windows and nice breeze in my little San Francisco apartment, and realizing I could have the same here was great (for several days).

The power plant often has many windows open. It is possible that the noise from there is unusually loud right now because it is so hot and humid. The plant is trying to generate enough cooling for the entire campus, and no doubt it is miserably hot inside that building; of course they would open windows to try to make it bearable for the workers. Between the two, it may currently be as loud as it can get.

I looked online and saw that it became a co-generation plant in 2017, which seems to have been a great source of pride. Regarding noise, the internet says: “The new co-generation plant at Eastern Michigan University uses natural gas to produce both electricity and steam heat, which can generate operational noise from turbines and generators during normal operation.”

This morning I got on the blower and called the City of Ypsilanti. I was advised to email the manager of Code Enforcement. I also called EMU and was given the phone number of the plant. I called over there and was told to email a certain fellow at CenTrio Energy. Their website mentions how they strive for energy efficiency and how they follow all ordinances, but I notice lacks a phone number dissatisfied persons can employ.

I sent an email to both parties:

Good morning, Joe and Tony--

I am in the process of buying the house [across the street] from the power plant, and am writing to confirm that the plant is in compliance with any applicable noise ordinances. I am having some difficulty with the noise, to the point that I am wondering if it is foolish to proceed with the home purchase.

I notice that the plant often has multiple windows open.

Can one or both of you put my mind at ease that the plant is in compliance with noise requirements, and confirm that this remains true when the plant's windows are open?

Thank you very much,
Bugwalk

I got an out-of-office response from the fellow at the City of Ypsilanti and no response from the CenTrio person. (Helpful to remind myself here: Don’t assume ill intent on the part of others. The fellow from CenTrio is not a jerk. He’s just a person doing his best, just like me.)

About this time today, the five salmon-colored samples were dropped off, and one of the three arborists came to discuss the silver maple in the back yard. (He asked how I like living near the university and said the power plant noise would drive him out of his mind.) Digby the local tree guy had said it might cost $3000 to remove the maple; a crane would be needed. The guy today said it would cost $10,000, and that they would have to block the street in front of the house for an entire day, and they will either have to drive over my mother’s wood-enclosed beds in the garden or over my father’s daylilies.

Here is where things began to spiral radically downward.

I got an updated quote from the renovations people with the deck work omitted: $9500 for the screen porch, installing four other doors, and various other tasks. I’m sure there’s a cheaper way to do the screen porch, but I am pretty confident that this place will do a nice job and it will be good to get so many things competently taken care of at once. I also won’t have to spend time researching doors and driving around to door places. They will do all that and provide choices.

At the same time: $10,000 (!!!) for the tree plus $9500 for Marvin-necessitated improvements plus the house price itself, all to live in a place where I have to listen to an annoying noise around the clock?!?

I happen to be reading for work Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing, by David A. Treleaven, and thus was able to notice that I had exited my window of tolerance. Outside that window, one is hypoaroused or hyperaroused. I was the latter. (I think of the three as insufficient response, appropriate response, or overreaction.) I sent my daily text group a certain number of agitated messages, but stopped before I became truly distraught, and also before I crossed the line into, what do you call it, fibbing: “After I pay for this tree and this cat porch, I am going to have to eat at the soup kitchen!” Sounds dramatic and helps illustrate the terrible duress I am under and what a sad, helpless victim I am, but is it in fact true? Not really.

However, every possible avenue now seemed so dark that I really didn’t feel like doing anything, so I got back in bed, resolving to stay there forever. Forever rolled around at 3 p.m. when I woke up not yet having eaten anything today, beginning to feel definitely hungry, and now able to identify that this was not a constructive course of action, though I did get caught up on sleep, so maybe it was completely constructive.

I discussed with myself what could be done to salvage the day in the limited time remaining: What could I do that I would afterward feel good about having done?

Eat. I went into the kitchen and made breakfast and ate it on the deck, the only meal of the day given how late I ate it. I called the window people and asked for a darker set of samples. I reminded myself that I don’t have to buy this house, that I can buy it and sell it again, or that I can buy it and just come here now and then. I reflected that I will probably get used to the noise. I reminded myself that the racket might be extra-loud right now because of the weather.

Fortunately, there is not a low-pitched rumble. There is a mid-range hum which is not bothering me. What’s getting to me is a high-pitched whistle or whine. Maybe there is something that can be done to mitigate that particular frequency if I put enough time and energy into it. Maybe the city council can help.

I reminded myself of the teachings of Sayadaw U Tejaniya: Objects are not good or bad, and certainly our work is not to eliminate all undesirable objects and ensure that everything around us is lovely and pleasing (though that sounds pretty good, now that I see it in black and white). Our work is to notice what thoughts, feelings and attitudes are present in regard to whatever the object is: Aversion.

I also pondered environmental racism and classism: A lot of people put up with a whole lot worse. God-awful things that give everyone in the vicinity cancer and dry up the wells or set them on fire. Is there some reason I am exempt from an environmental disturbance? There is not. I could even see it as a form of solidarity with those who have way less choice, or no choice. If the value of one’s property plummets to nothing, what do you do?

Speaking of choice, I have that. I don’t have to buy this house. I don’t have to live here once I own it. But more specifically, I can even choose not to hear the noise. All I have to do is to close the windows all the way around the house. Just closing the ones facing the energy center doesn’t do the trick. I wish the choice was noise + being shut up in the house or quiet + a fresh breeze, but unfortunately the choice is either noise + a fresh breeze or quiet + being shut up in the house.

For a time today, I closed all the windows: quiet! Very nice. But yuckly stifled feeling. (I meant to type “yucky,” but I think “yuckly” conveys it even better.)

So then I opened all the windows again: Nice breeze! Annoying sound. But that was my choice, which did make me feel better.

Honestly, my beloved heavy metal is probably going to cause me to go deaf before the power plant does. I have a decibel meter I acquired for that very reason that I haven’t tried yet, but today I took it out of its box. I will find out how loud my music is, and how loud the power plant is with the windows open or shut. I certainly can’t hear the power plant while listening to Carcass or Darkthrone, and maybe a white noise machine also has a role to play here.

After I ate, the painter stopped by with his darling girlfriend to go over the next and I hope final phase of painting, and then I went for a walk, another thing I know I will feel good about at day’s end.

Before I went out to walk, I talked to my sister on the phone. She said that Dad was very sensitive to noises—I don’t think I was aware of that—and that he never mentioned being bothered by the power plant. She also doesn’t think that’s the reason they always kept the windows closed. She thinks it was just the hassle: opening them and then closing them and having to fiddle with the thermostat. She said Mom didn’t like screens. I didn’t know that, either. My sister didn’t mention why that was, but maybe it’s just one of those things like believing that it's proper for ladies to wear white gloves to church and not proper for them not to.

She thinks I will probably get used to the noise, and she offered to help with the cost of the tree removal. She is a complete and utter gem. I joked that I had turned down the neighbor’s offer to contribute $300 but was now going to take him up on it and my sister said I should also ask him to send over 20 of his friends (to deal with the tree).

She mildly said let’s see how the other two quotes are. Maybe one of them is noticeably less and maybe they have some crafty plan for getting to the tree without flattening parts of the garden.

On my walk, I heard crickets chirping, making maybe just as much noise as the power plant, if one were to use one’s meter. Is a sound bad if a machine makes it but fine if a creature does? (Yes, actually.) I noticed that the power plant sound is worse for my next-door neighbor, which surprised me, as our house is the one that’s right smack across the street, but there is a piece of equipment outside one end of the plant building whose sound is aimed right at my neighbor. I don’t want my neighbor to be unhappy, but it did kind of make me feel better to know I wasn’t suffering alone. There are probably a number of houses where the occupants can easily hear the noise if they have their windows open.

I also felt a little suffocated during my walk, maybe just the weather, but it almost felt like I was up to my neck in childhood-related quicksand. Maybe it is psychologically unwise to return to the scene of the crime. Maybe it is pathological in some way to want to. We were not sexually abused, nor verbally abused, nor physically abused (depending on how you define the latter and depending on which of the three of us you’re talking about). We were simply left to our own devices more or less from birth, which this or that therapist of mine has framed as neglect sufficient to constitute trauma.

(How many therapists and counselors have I seen in my 64 years, individually or as part of a group? At least ten.)

I made myself a lovely life in a beautiful place doing something that has great meaning to me, far away from here. Is coming back just abandoning myself? It may be; maybe it will become obvious that that is so. However, for now, I am assuming that I will close on this house a week from yesterday.

Window Day

The window guy was due to come today between 10 a.m. and noon to straighten everything out. I realized that if he didn’t know how to work these vintage triple-hung windows, I was not going to be able to explain it because I didn’t know, either. I texted my sister to see if she could give me a call just to explain in theory how it’s supposed to work. While I waited for her call, I went into my mother’s bedroom and, lo and behold, after examining the matter and fiddling around, got one window set up properly: Pane of glass in the upper half of the window in the outermost track, meaning closest to the great outdoors. Next, a pane of glass in the middle track, pushed to the upper half of the window, as well. Finally, the screen in the innermost track, lowered to cover the bottom half of the window. No gap underneath the screen, either.

I was thrilled. I fixed another window, and then another, and then another. By the time my sister called, I no longer had any questions for her, just good news. Noon came and went with no window guy. I had not yet eaten because I was busy fixing windows. I called the window place and learned that the guy had gotten delayed, but the actual owner could come this very afternoon.

A general contractor came over to discuss my list of projects. I did not like him for various reasons, and so didn’t even go through my whole list. I said, “I guess that’s it!” and saw him out. I also spoke on the phone with a woman from a design / remodeling place about the screen porch needed outside the front door, though I suspected my job might be too small potatoes for them. Likely so, but they are also scheduling several months out, so she referred me to a list they maintain on their website of various kinds of tradespeople.

I think I will probably go with renovations people I met with last week. They seem organized and professional (the opposite of the person who came today, come to think of it) and they seem to have a solid, well-established process.

The owner of the window place came late in the day. I told him I’d spent hours today fixing windows and he chided me (not in a mean way) saying I should not have lifted a finger and should have left it all for them! But I’ll bet he was secretly glad later that I had done that, because he lives in Ohio and ended up being here for more than two hours struggling with the final four windows, while his family was sitting down to a nice dinner without him. It was past 6:30 p.m. by the time he left here.

By the way, those two windows of which I grumbled that the window washers had wrongly put the screens outside the glass are actually supposed to be that way. I thought it was incorrect and pulled the glass out pursuant to putting the various things where they I thought they were supposed to go. After I realized the screen actually goes on the outside, I could not get the glass back in. The owner of the window place wrestled with this for 30 minutes or so before prevailing. I certainly told him I had messed it up myself.

I liked him. I made a suggestion at some point and he said he wasn’t sure if that applied, “But there are no bad ideas! Keep ’em coming!” Later on, he asked me to show him my technique for getting the screen into proper position. I demonstrated how you use a hammer to adjust a window. That was the only tool I needed. I used it a lot. (Without ever breaking a pane of glass.)

He said they would give me back part of what I paid them, and he also offered to give me a great deal on rehabilitating the deck and on power washing the gutters all the way around the house pursuant to painting, so all is more than well.

Yesterday evening, I was thinking I’d have to replace a whole bunch of windows and that it was going to cost a lot, but this evening, while the cost of windows has not changed, I see no reason to prioritize this. I drenched the two most recalcitrant windows in WD-40 with immediate good results. The windows are basically working fine. Oddly, all but two lack handles. I will buy some and either install them myself or pay a handyman to.

A good day. I learned a lot, and without knowing in advance that I was going to learn anything. 

Tree. Also Another Tree.

Even meeting up on Saturday with my friend who is almost exactly my age and therefore still presumably has reasonable acuity when it comes to smelling unwashed lunch companions was not enough to goad me into taking a shower beforehand. I next vowed to do it Saturday night, before my uncle’s memorial service on Sunday, but by evening, I was too tired and crossed it off my list. Oh, well. There would definitely be a lot of old people at that event.

I planned a schedule for Sunday morning that left plenty of extra time so I wouldn’t be in a rush and therefore late for the gathering, then decided sleep was more important and extracted every possible minute from the planned schedule, then reverted to Plan A.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I decided I had better get in the shower, even though that didn’t appear on the schedule, and just make it work. So I was sparkling clean and exfoliated as needed from head to toe when I got in the car, on time, to drive up to Torch Lake. I had even allowed four and a half hours for what was supposed to be a four-hour drive, and arrived exactly on time.

I thought I was going to be dazzled by the beauty of Northern Michigan and charmed by all sorts of picturesque sights, and that it would be emotional, since I spent a lot of time up there in the summer when I was a kid. I don’t mean to be cynical, but it wasn’t notably beautiful except insofar as trees are generally pleasing to the eye; there were plenty of those. I couldn’t help but think that California is way more beautiful. It also wasn’t emotional, except for slightly, when I saw a sign showing the number of miles to Petoskey, the town next to the place where our extremely modest summer cottage (a former garage) was located. I have no intention of going there ever again; it gave me a slight pang to see the name. I don’t want my memories overwritten with whatever is there now.

Also, I thought Northern Michigan was supposed to be cool and refreshing. That’s why a lot of people have cottages there. “Up North” is where many Michiganders are always wanting to go. I suppose if you go in January, it is cool and refreshing, but yesterday it was very hot and very humid. I could sort of see the lake from where the memorial was held, and it did look lovely. That’s as close as I got to it.

Honestly, the most impressive thing I saw was the freeway overpass for the Saginaw River. As you approach from the south (not so much the north), it looks huge and like it’s about five times as high as it needs to be. I almost felt uneasy as I approached: Am I going to fall off the side? The river itself appeared to be just a flat, utilitarian expanse. It looked like an industrial area, with big piles of raw material of various sorts.

The uncle who had died was 17 when I was born, my mother’s brother. She loved him a lot and remembered him well after she’d forgotten much else. He was a genial fellow, but we never lived near enough to each other for regular visits. Unlike my mother’s other brother, he also didn’t live near Ypsilanti, so I had hardly seen him in decades, let alone his three sons, and I had never laid eyes on a single one of his six darling grandchildren.

However, he came once with my other uncle to visit Mom in memory care, and after Dad died, there was a little lunch out with both uncles and their wives. That was in effect my father’s memorial service. It was wonderful to see the uncle I hardly ever got to see, by then several years into neurological problems of his own, not affecting his mind, but affecting his ability to speak. (We also had a little lunch out after my mother died, with the same people plus a cousin and his new wife.)

My uncle’s memorial was lovely; his friends and family clearly adored him and had marvelous anecdotes to share. One of his sons is or was a pastor and did a beautiful job of leading the formal part of the day. All three of my uncle’s sons became tearful when speaking of their father—remembering his sense of humor, his fierce love for his family and his life wisdom. I was dazzled that my uncle and his wife raised three young men who can show up in such a vulnerable and heartfelt way, something we chaplains greatly admire. I appreciated that my mother’s name was mentioned in the write-up about my uncle’s life. It was emotional to look at the photos spanning my uncle’s lifetime and see him in all the different eras of his life and to see my grandparents (and even one shot of myself).

My other uncle and his wife were there, and also my lady cousin whom I rarely get to see. It was delightful to be with them, and the whole thing was wonderful. Literally, I laughed and I cried.

I was extremely sleepy during the entire drive up there and had reserved a hotel room in Traverse City, meaning to stay overnight, but I was rather energized after seeing my family members and meeting a bunch of new people and learning how they knew my uncle and enjoying one of my favorite things in all of life (namely free food, a love I share with my remaining uncle; we made pigs of ourselves; the key technique here is to assume no one is noticing how many times you revisit the buffet table and never to question that), so since it was only about 5 p.m. when I was back in the car, I decided to go ahead and drive back to Ypsilanti.

For the first part of that journey, I chatted with a friend on the phone, which was very engaging. My other sister forced me to buy a battery to recharge my phone after my phone died when I was driving back to Ypsilanti from Cleveland one night. It’s a great thing, but it’s also in San Francisco, so when my phone died right when I was in the middle of saying something extremely interesting about my neighbor’s dog, that was the end of our conversation.

I was sorry not to be talking to my friend any more but was soon very glad my phone had died when it did, because I then noticed that I was about to run out of gas on I-75. I have never run out of gas in my whole entire life. With my phone also dead, I would have been standing on the shoulder of the freeway gesticulating in an urgent manner and hoping someone would stop. Probably not the state police. In the entire 8.5-hour journey (I was going a little faster on the way home) on a major expressway, I saw two state police cars, or maybe just one.

I observed many, many hair-raising moments where someone would roar up behind someone else in the fast lane, closing the gap so as to allow about three feet between two cars going 80 miles an hour or so, in order to communicate that the driver of the rearward car was feeling an urgent desire, namely that the driver of the forward car should remove his vehicle from the path posthaste.

While I was slightly disturbed every time I saw this, and would then slow down myself so as to be a little farther away when the fiery crash occurred, the only time I was genuinely outraged was the one time when this happened in the slow lane. Where on earth was the driver in front supposed to go? Were they just supposed to roll their car off the side of the freeway into a cornfield?

The odd thing is, this behavior seems so belligerent and so aggressive (and certainly was, in the case of the person terrorizing the other person in the slow lane), and yet, the same driver who had done that never failed to use his or her turn signal when subsequently changing lanes. For instance, after chasing the too-slow car out of the fast lane, the overtaking driver would pass however many cars in the lane second from the left, and then him- or herself pull into that second-from-the-left lane, but not before politely signaling the lane change. So it is not that these people are clueless bullies. This is just how it’s done in Michigan, I guess. And I guess no one really cares if you speed here, because there was virtually no one out there monitoring it.

When I got back to the house in Ypsilanti (I would have said home, but you’ll soon see why I’m angry about this whole thing again), I saw there was a new thing on the house: A keypad for the garage door opener my sister got working. Inside the house, on the (not “my”) counter was a little remote for the same thing.

This morning, I had one of those very vivid almost-awake dreams, this one about a naked cab driver and rather disturbing. I was racking my brains trying to remember the moment I’d even stepped into this cab—why couldn’t I remember it?—when I thought I heard a noise at the front door. Yikes! I then remembered that I’d turned my phone ringer off for the memorial and forgotten to turn it back on, and that the window washers were due this morning.

I rushed to the door and saw a colorfully painted vehicle in the driveway. I stuck my head out and asked if they had tried the door earlier and were now returning, but they were just arriving. Whew!

They set about washing the windows. The stuff they used didn’t smell very good, but it aired out quickly. Later in the day, one of them said he was having trouble getting a screen back into the window. I know these windows are old and I imagined he was talking about an ancient screen that was pretzeled out of shape. I told him not to worry about it and just to throw it into the garage: If it doesn’t fit back in, it doesn’t fit back in.

It was horrifically humid today; it still is. The air conditioning has been off all week due to trying to air out the paint smell, which is still not gone. (The air conditioner has a role in removing humidity.) Today the windows were open because they were being washed, letting the heat and humidity freely roll in; nothing to be done about that. After the window washers were gone, I discovered that my efforts to impress upon them that they should not leave the slightest impression on the new paint had been wholly in vain. There are several damaged areas.

I also discovered that they had made every screen but two disappear and the two that they did manage to put back, they had put in the wrong place (outside the storm glass instead of inside). And so instead of having lots of screens available through which paint-dispersing air can come in, even if humidity also comes in, I have window after window where the choice is solid glass or it just being wide open, as in you can stick your arm out.

But not only that, the glass doesn’t go all the way to the bottom of the available opening, so there is a little crack for insects to come in everywhere you look. Why is that? Because they put the panes of glass into the wrong tracks, so the little knobbies on the bottom don’t fit into the holes waiting for them, because the holes are at the bottom of the other track. They put the windows into the tracks meant for the screens.

My sister said she would come over and try to put the screens back in. I said the window washers had taken them (thus getting a rare rise out of my sister). They were not in the garage and I assumed they had taken them to hide the evidence, once it turned out it wasn’t just one screen they couldn’t get back in but every single one they tried to put back in. I called the place to say that our screens needed to be brought back, but it turned out they actually were in the garage.

I had said just to throw any damaged screen in there, but they had taken the time to find some other screens and windows and carefully lean the ones from today next to those. The upshot was that the general manager of the place is coming tomorrow to put the screens back, and my sister didn’t have to worry about it. Out of 13 windows, they screwed up 12. I hope the general manager has a few hours to spend over here tomorrow, and I hope they see the correctness of a partial refund.

So now it is hot, humid, and airless, and I am back to hating this house and this whole thing. I did laundry this evening and noted how blissfully cool it is in the basement. As you walk back up the stairs, it suddenly becomes insufferably hot and humid and your (my) level of irritation and misery ticks up another notch. I spent part of this evening sorting out what screen goes where and putting flattened cardboard boxes on the floors to set the screens on. Plus, every horizontal surface was coated with grit after the window washers left, so I had to wipe or sweep many things. I super hate owning a house and I don’t even own one yet.

Earlier when I opened the door to the cabinet below the kitchen sink, a muscular bug flew out; it appeared also, like me, to be very irritated. I captured it in my bug-catching jar and put the special bug manila folder over the top and held the whole thing against my stomach to keep the bug in until I could release him outside. My sister arrived just then. Neither of us recognized this bug.

We made our introductory remarks and then I looked down, and—no bug. Where the hell did it go? I was holding the jar and manila folder firmly against my stomach. I must have slackened my grip at some point and it saw its opportunity. I was sure it must then have crawled into my apron pocket, but it wasn’t in there. Whereas it made a huge huffy fuss upon leaving the cabinet, it left the jar with extreme stealth, evidently and if so wisely having decided not to call further attention to itself.

Fans Cool People, Not Rooms

The mantra of the cost-conscious retiree as she turns off the fan before stepping out of a room.

This morning I was thinking about the new screen porch to come and wondering what kind of screen will be used. I know it will be metal, but will it be as hale as the old-fashioned screens in many of the windows in the house? I tapped the screen in my mother’s bathroom: quite robust. Very robust indeed. Impenetrable, in fact—because there was a whole pane of glass immediately behind the screen. Sheesh.

Much of that fresh air I thought I was enjoying was illusory. I wondered why the paint smell was lingering so determinedly in the bathroom. I went around and checked the other windows in the house and found that the majority were the same. What I thought was a screen inviting the breeze in was a solid pane of glass.

In the afternoon, my sister came over to examine the windows with me, with the upshot being that while some WD-40 or a bit thicker lubricant might ease things for certain windows in the short term, it is probably time to shop for windows. For each window, the screen has to go both up and down, and the neighboring pane of glass has to go both up and down. Not even one of the four is possible for some of the windows. Or, to be precise, I do not know if the thing will come down because, for instance, it cannot be made to go up.

I fetched my all-purpose tool and was able to fix the big gap in the living room window that was no doubt inviting a lot of bugs to come in. My sister said she herself would have used a wrench instead of a hammer, but in this case, it did the trick.

I went today to Ricewood to have lunch with a friend. With Morgan Wallen in mind, I took Packard instead of Washtenaw, which turns into Stadium Blvd. I was correct to identify this as a potential problem. While there was no slowdown at all getting to the restaurant via Packard, right across the street from Ricewood were two women advertising event parking for $60, 1.3-mile walk to the stadium then required.

I took my sister to see my neighbor’s mesmerizing lawn extension and she also thought it was gorgeous.

Muscle Memory

Today I called the three places recommended by Digby the tree guy. I left messages at two of them and made an appointment with the third. There are some bumpy tree roots near the stairs to the deck which we were warned in the past not to touch because that would harm the tree, but now that the tree is probably soon to be gone, I will also ask the tree people if they can plane those roots so a certain elderly lady doesn’t hurt herself strolling about her estate.

This is going to be a showplace! I wonder how long until I hear from Architectural Digest. Probably when I hear a car going by the house at reduced speed, that is them rolling slowly by to feast their eyes on the gracious lines of my dwelling and inspiring lack of weeds. I’d better arrange to meet with a stylist and makeup person right now.

I spoke with the young fellow from the renovations place today to ask some questions. I plan to meet with one or two more people and then choose.

In the early afternoon I took a short walk and then went to Arbor Farms and the hardware store, going the very long way around. Once upon a time, en route to memory care to see my mother, I blundered into impenetrable football traffic, when they evidently turn the traffic lights permanently or what felt like permanently green for people trying to get on the freeway after leaving Michigan Stadium and red for the cross traffic, certainly a solid 20 or 30 minutes. Terribly long when the person who gave birth to you may have only months to live! (It turned out to be weeks, but I did not know that then.)

I had the crafty idea to go all the way down to Ann Arbor-Saline Rd., but when I got there, I found they had completely blocked off access to it. Too many people in the past must have had that same idea.

Then I had another crafty idea: to go through the large expanse of the Briarwood shopping mall. I turned in there, inched my way along amid many other cars and finally—emerged where I’d started. I now know to be aware of when home football games are, but I would not have thought to wonder if country music star Morgan Wallen, caught on video in 2021 using a racist slur, might be playing at Michigan Stadium tonight and tomorrow night. My sister alerted me to this; apparently there might be even worse traffic than for a football game. (A friend of mine said she once arrived in that area at 3 a.m. from out of state and found the traffic like that, and it was not even the morning of a football game.)

Today I found the parking lot at Arbor Farms and ACE very sparsely occupied, maybe for that exact same reason. On my way to the door of the hardware store, I counted five Subarus besides mine. The people at ACE, like me, understand that there is no such thing as owning too many cunning little saucers. They must have 200 of them on display, all different kinds. I bought one today, which was on my shopping list, and resisted the temptation to buy a colorful little metal cup, not having identified the need for this item before I went in the store. But now I know I need one, so I can buy it next time! 

There was a new cashier up front. We bonded right away. He has a very melodious voice. As I was leaving, it sounded like my phone was ringing, but the sound didn’t seem to be coming from as near as my backpack. It turned out that the new cashier and I have the same ringtone. I hadn’t realized it was uncommon, but he said he had never before met anyone else who had the same one. I picked it because it is easy to hear in a noisy environment like a hospital.

At Arbor Farms, I bought two packages of 12 rolls of toilet paper at one dollar off apiece. That is not a huge savings, especially if calculated per square, but a dollar is a dollar now that I’m a retiree. (I am trying to use fewer commas. It is slightly painful.)

When I was returning from my walk earlier, I saw my plant-loving neighbor returning from work. I asked if he had a couple of minutes; I wanted to warn him about the eventual removal of the maple. We went into my back yard and looked at it together. He wasn’t as upset as I thought he would be. In fact, he wasn’t upset at all because it had occurred to him that it might fall on his house. He has a similar tree in his back yard, but can’t afford to do anything about it. He pointed out where part of it had lately fallen, fortunately into his back yard. I said I had actually wondered if his tree might fall on my house. (Digby said it is too far away.) At this point, my neighbor began to get very excited, as if he were being accused of planning a heinous crime, even though he had just said he was worried about my tree falling on his house.

My tree is visibly closer to his house than vice versa, but it is not like his tree is in the next town.

His functional English barely exists—good to know you can get a teaching job at a major American university without being able to speak English—I mean that sincerely—it is not EMU to which I refer but the place one town over—and he does not seem to have learned one additional syllable in the four and a half years since I met him, but the same must be said of my Spanish, which is also sub-functional, so our conversations tend to get louder and louder, with a lot of arm waving and futile attempts to drown out the other. 

He seemed to be saying he planned to cut down a plant that was on my property, or worse, that he thinks that area is on his property when it is not. Finally I understood that he just planned to walk past that plant, with the full understanding that he was on my property, in order to get to something on his own property that he wants to address. We reached an amicable understanding and I even got a text message from him later offering to contribute $300 to the cost of removing our tree, since we made a contribution when he had to have a branch of that same tree cut off because it was too close to his house. I used Google Translate to send him a note thanking him profusely for his generous offer, but saying I will not take him up on that.

The low tire pressure light came on while I was making my circuitous way home from Arbor Farms. I had obtained a device for inflating a car’s tires but hadn’t tried it yet, secretly hoping never to have to. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a learning experience that I know is coming, but if I am not to call my sister to rush over with her air compressor and not to feed $50 in quarters into the ancient machine at the gas station, it is time to learn how to use this thing.

I opened the tiny instruction booklet—next year, I won’t be able to read it—and was happy to discover that it included many different languages. I tore off everything but the English part and put it in the recycling bin. Then I forced myself to read the first line of the instructions and soon saw that it is quite simple. I would have inflated the tire this evening, but the car tires have to cool off to get an accurate temperature reading, so I plan to do this tomorrow morning.

It occurred to me that maybe the reason my behavior at moments has seemed to be that of someone decades younger is that when I last lived here, I was 20 years old and had been 19 five months earlier. (At that point, I moved to San Francisco.) Maybe the teenager-type mood swings and dramatic failures of self-care are pure muscle memory.

Wet Basement: Lakefront Property

I got a pretty decent amount of sound sleep last night, nearly 10 hours, not quite as much as needed, but in the ballpark. This morning two friendly young women came to do a deep clean of the house. It was a lovely day: sunny, clear, warm and later hot but not searingly so, not humid, fresh breeze. The paint smell is pretty much gone, and I have realized there was a major silver lining to that experience, which is that I’m now in the habit of having a lot of windows open. Over these four years of being here half the time, I had come to think that you had the heat on about six months of the year, and ditto the A/C, and that there were about four days when you could have the windows open, two in the fall and two in the spring, but that is wrong. I am now thinking of routinely setting the air conditioning very high so that it rarely runs, and just having the windows open a lot.

We didn’t have air conditioning when I was growing up in Ann Arbor. It was often extremely hot and humid in the summer. My mother said another problem with this was the annoying sound it made, that of someone whining, “I’m hot!”

Yesterday I was walking through the back yard and the happy thought arose: My own little piece of paradise.

The cleaning people did an outstanding job, including making it so you can see through windows that have been nearly opaque for years and leaving two ovens spotless. They made a lot of dead insects disappear, including between the windows and the storm windows. They folded the towels and toilet paper the way they do in fancy hotels, and carefully put a small Nalgene container of hand lotion inside a nearby roll of masking tape. I was prepared to deal with the smell of cleaning products, but there was almost none. I was utterly delighted with the whole thing, with one very small exception. I asked a couple of times that they be extra careful of the new paint, but found a metal ladder leaned against the wall after they had gone, and a minute bit of damage to the paint. The painter is coming next week to do some things, so I will ask him to retouch that spot.

Another person who came today was the boiler, hot water heater and baseboard radiators guy. The baseboard heaters in the basement are basically piles of rubble, so he is going to send a quote for replacing them. On the other hand, I probably will rarely go down there except to do laundry, so whoever buys this house when I depart for memory care later might inherit those vintage appliances.

The boiler guy said you never really flush a boiler—this is the thing that provides heat for the house; some houses have a furnace—but he can do routine maintenance; he noticed some smaller parts that could stand to be replaced.

He said the hot water heater is too ancient to flush, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not that bad since my father flushed it out quarterly. My sister said that someone who came to work on it once said it was the cleanest water heater they’d ever seen. However, it has been at least three years since my father did that. He moved out of here four years ago, but I would bet $100 that he drove here from the retirement home to attend to that particular task for as long as he could.

The boiler guy mentioned a reasonable sum for installing a new water heater and said he can teach me how to flush it out.

I spoke with the accountant about the estate’s tax return and about the estimated taxes pertaining to the withdrawals from my various accounts. I also asked if she could do my taxes next year. Normally I do them myself, but with health insurance from the Affordable Care Act in two different states and the purchase of a house, some assistance may be needed. Then I can learn what sorts of things are deductible for future reference. She speaks mighty fast, but I think I gleaned everything I need to know, and she said she would do my taxes.

In the late afternoon, I went out for a walk. 

I received the proposal from the home renovation people and have a million questions, but it is more or less what I would have estimated, and includes a quote for the deck work that is considerably less than I thought I would have to spend. The main item is the “cat lock” or new screen porch outside the front door. Their quote even includes painting the new porch. When they said it would look less stupid if it were painted the same color as the house, I assumed I’d have to find someone to do that.

My sister and I agreed quite some time ago that we would follow the same course of action in regard to the house regardless of the eventual purchaser: put on a new roof, install new air conditioning, empty it out, have it painted, have it cleaned, and have the windows washed. The only remaining item now is washing the windows, scheduled for next week. We went back and forth on fixing the wet basement. My father wanted to do that, and my sister would have liked to do it in his honor, and the realtor was greatly in favor of that, especially if we were going to put the house on the market, but we don’t have enough cash left in the checking account and I do not have a strong feeling about it.

Daylilies

Maybe it’s not that I’m going insane but just that I’m doing an insanely poor job of taking care of myself. The basics, such as sleeping and eating regularly, but also doing what Howie calls remembering to “guard our sense doors,” of which the most treacherous by far is the mind, which in Buddhism is counted as a sense door, along with familiar favorites such as the eye and the ear. I have let my mind run amuck way too often, especially since all that is really needed is to notice that this is happening. “There it goes!”

I very nearly made the big mistake of deciding just to stay awake early this morning. Having come this far, and since it’s nearly time to start the day … . But instead I wisely got back into bed after putting on a flannel robe that once belonged to my father. Two or three winters ago, I could not get warm at bedtime no matter what I wore until I started wrapping that robe around me after I’d put on two or three other layers. It was comforting to wear something that had belonged to my father, almost to feel as if he were protecting me.

This morning it worked its same magic. I fell asleep right away and was jolted awake about four hours later by the first of several visitors today, two fix-it people. We toured the house and I pointed out all of the items on my long list of things that need attention. The biggest item is what my sister first described as a “cat lock”—a screen (AKA screened) porch outside the front door to give me a second chance to catch Marvin before he’s out in the street.

The next biggest item is whipping the deck into the shape, and after that, there are several doors to be installed or replaced (seven, now that I actually count), and then a lot of even smaller things. The fix-it people felt that all of the wood on the deck needed to be replaced, followed by oiling, staining or painting.

A bit later, two actual home renovation people arrived. We discussed the cat lock. I asked if it’s going to make the house look stupid, and to their credit, they said it will, though it might help to paint it the same color as the house. I didn’t want to show them all the other things, not wanting to waste their time, but they assured me that since they were doing something that is in their wheelhouse, they could potentially do everything else.

Regarding the deck, they thought the wood was fine and that it is just a matter of power washing and using a solid stain.

My mother’s bedroom door has not latched securely shut for a long time; maybe it was even that way when they bought the house in 2006. I envision that room as being off limits to cats, so I asked if the door could be made to stay closed. One of the fellows went back to their truck to get a drill and ten seconds later, it worked perfectly. I couldn’t believe it. I was thrilled and also sort of stricken that Mom lived without that working properly for so long. Maybe it was on Dad’s very lengthy to-do list, or maybe she didn’t even mention it and just lived with it. Unlike myself, she was not one to complain.

Her bathroom cold water faucet was broken, too; you had to kind of fit one piece atop another and press down and hope it would stay engaged long enough to turn the water on or off. I had that fixed while Dad was in the hospital or in rehab right afterward. It gave me great satisfaction, but she didn’t get to enjoy it for very long, since we soon moved them to the retirement community. My father had been in the process of planting two arbor vitaes, with one in the ground and its neighbor still in the pot. I hired someone to plant that second one before he came home. He was delighted.

Similar to yesterday, it got to be afternoon before I had a chance to eat: poor self-care, but I don’t know how it could have been otherwise with the various visitors and emails and phone calls and text messages. Cleaners are due to come tomorrow, so there was some discussion about that, and I spoke with the Ypsilanti utilities people and emailed with our insurance agent, and my realtor called. She said, with a soupçon of chagrin, that she realized she had never walked me through the steps a buyer follows, we had been so focused on me as the seller, and maybe that’s why there was some extra confusion yesterday. Tom’s financial advisor also got in touch, as he is unable to reach Tom, not an unheard-of problem. I would have been happy to walk upstairs and knock on his door, or alternatively to yell out my bathroom window, but the stairs and bathroom are far away right now. Tom texted that he is considering moving to Michigan, too, the neighbors are causing so much disturbance. I told him that Michigan welcomes him!

Right after I ate for what will be the only time today because it was so late in the day, Digby the tree guy came over to discuss vines / creepers that are too high for me to reach, a couple of deadish and also remarkably unsightly hawthorns in the back yard (one of them possibly literally the world’s ugliest tree), and the enormous and quite lovely silver maple that needs to be taken out before it falls on my house and / or the house of my plant-loving neighbor. Digby had talked earlier on about hiring a crane to deal with the maple, but today said maybe I’d better get quotes from a few larger operations, though he said to let him know after I get those quotes. “Maybe we’ll throw our hat in the ring.”

At some point, it sounded like his phone rang and I heard him talking, so I tuned out. I heard him say, “Hey, buddy?” and realized he might be talking to me.

“Did you just call me ‘Buddy’?!?”

He sheepishly allowed that he had.

“I love it!” I thought that was very funny.

Next, the painter came by to discuss various remaining tasks. It was a lovely day: sunny, not too hot, not noticeably humid, and with a fresh breeze that seemed to move the project of airing out the paint smell forward a step or two, so I’m not mad at the painter any more. This being the first time I ever had a house painted (and it had also better be the last), I did not realize that “window trim” does not also mean the windows and their sashes. Those will need to be painted, too. I asked the painter to wait to do that until I depart again, and tried to impress upon him that it should happen soon after I depart and not right before I return. I reiterated this after he said, “Oh, then I’ve got plenty of time!” No, you do not.

He was going to paint the soffits, but thinks there could be some rot, so I need to look into that. If so, I guess they will have to be replaced; if not, the painter can proceed.

So it was not a lonely day. I just hope all of these people breathe enough solvents that they can’t tell when they’re with someone who can’t remember the last time she took a shower. All right, I will check my records: It was a week ago, and I only did it then because I got my bald fade that day, which leaves a lot of coarse itchy tiny snippets of hair stuck all over me like glitter.

Both of my parents stopped bathing later in life. My mother knocked off ten years before she died, give or take, I suspect out of boredom: I did that already. Later she had trouble stepping into the tub and keeping her balance. We had gotten a quote for a walk-in shower about a week before my father fell ill, so that never happened. My father as a rule was quite attentive to his skin and hair and nails, with a fine collection of lotions and clippers and such, and only discontinued these efforts after he became ill. He was so skinny that he never smelled unbathed. There just wasn’t enough of him to emanate an odor. My mother had a reasonable amount of flesh, but she also never smelled bad that I could detect.

I am not good at all at interior decorating. I can never figure out what might be a nice thing to have or what might be a pleasing place to put a thing, but I am actually limping toward an aesthetic now, the thought being that, from as many points as possible, there should be nothing between the viewer and a window. There should be an open, empty, spacious feeling, but if you poke your head around the corner, voila, there should a nice, long couch there, or a chest of drawers or filing cabinet.

Speaking of lovely things, I have a neighbor who was doing something on her lawn extension that didn’t look like much for a long time. I thought maybe she’d just given up on it. When I most recently walked by there, I saw that she had obviously carefully planned and executed something really transporting: There are puffs of greenery reminiscent of clouds throughout, interspersed with expanses of a textured plant closer to the ground, and popping up everywhere in random spots are brightly colored wildflowers. How did she think of doing such a thing, and how did she learn how? Maybe one of these years I can do something like that. (Fortunately, my yard looks gorgeous thanks to my father’s many daylilies in different colors, all blooming now, all by themselves. Digby said he loves them and that he takes pictures of them regularly; he took one today.)

The living room picture window has ancient drapes; it is actually one big window with two narrower windows on either side; the latter can be opened. Those drapes have to have been there since prior to my parents’ occupancy; maybe even prior to the person before them. They are in poor condition and don’t close all the way. I started to think maybe I would just get rid of them. I’m not sure what I would put over a window that big, but I also don’t really care if a passerby espies me seated upon my sister’s couch reading a magazine, or seated at my sister’s table having dinner. I pulled the drapes aside yesterday and bunched them up with string, whereupon I realized that they extend well beyond the ends of the actual windows. The drapes make it look much more horsey than it actually is. The windows aren’t really that enormous, so now I definitely plan to get rid of the drapes. (Almost sounds like I’m going to be living here, eh?) 

I Appreciate You!

What a dreadful night. I am on track to get zero minutes of sleep. It is morning. After canceling my September trip and shortening my current trip and canceling the associated cat care, I began my packing project, slightly complicated by the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any packing tape on the premises.

I put all of the flattened cardboard boxes in an empty room and started putting things to be donated in another empty room. In going through all of my parents’ stuff over these past four years, I had been saving for last things like family photographs and my father’s files and letters my parents wrote to each other in the 1960s: things potentially of supreme sentimental importance. In one letter, my father, in his twenties, writes about an old lady with dementia in the apartment next door who made a lot of noise. Sixty years later, his young bride was herself an old lady with dementia. He was doing a summer internship or something at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Pleasanton, CA. Maybe in that same letter, he referred to it as Unpleasanton.

Certainly the letters and photos are of great sentimental value; maybe not every single thing in my father’s files. All of these things were in the library, either on a bookshelf or in the closet. I put them on the floor in the same room where I put all of the cardboard boxes, making several trips, crying and crying and crying and crying and crying.

Then, knowing what is going to happen is that five days from now, the air will be a lot better and I’ll be kicking myself for shortening my trip, I un-canceled the cat care. And then, yep, I rebooked my September trip, despite the fact that I’m definitely never coming to this house of misery again, using the eCredit generated an hour earlier plus an additional $200, on the theory that an action taken when one is completely distraught and sleep deprived is unlikely to be the right one. I am now in the process of trying to make this current trip end when it was originally going to.

Also, I knew that if I said to my sister that I hate it here and I’m never coming here again and it’s too sad and my head hurts and the air stinks and my throat feels weird and I don’t want to buy this house and I canceled my September trip and shortened my current trip and I am purposely not going to do any weeding because it might be fun and then I might want to come here again where I am never, ever coming again, there would be a little kindly pause, and she would say in a mild tone, “Well, it seems like you were really enjoying weeding. I wonder if the air will be better in five days,” and then I would say, “Yeah, you’re probably right!” and rush to the computer to do what I already just did, so this was very efficient. 

Delta’s website balked at giving me the same flight back, so I had to text with a representative.

I have noticed, as likely have you, that a lot of people have switched from saying “I appreciate it” to saying “I appreciate you”; I was thinking maybe this was something started by Christians, but I’m not sure.

I had never said it to anyone until, why, I guess that was just yesterday. Hitherto, I couldn’t quite get the phrase to come out of my mouth. It seemed syrupy or something. I was thinking I would just be paying my sisters for their shares of this house that I am definitely not buying, and had liberated money from my savings with that figure in mind, but I will need to wire to the title company the entire cost of the house (ugh), so I needed another withdrawal from my 401(k). For some reason, the interaction was a little out of sync, so at some point, I said, “I appreciate you,” and it made a night-and-day change in the person I was speaking with. All of a sudden, she spoke as if I were her dear friend. It was like magic.

So when I couldn’t change my flight on Delta’s website and had to initiate a chat, I decided I would say that to the human representative who comes online after the machine retires in confusion. I couldn’t believe it when the chat began and I saw that Delta’s introductory automated information ended with, “We appreciate you!” They beat me to it.

I therefore had to up the ante; I told the person, “You’re doing a great job! I appreciate you.” I often tell people they’re doing a great job (if they are, or if I can see that they’re trying to).

I did end up getting my original flight back, for an additional $119.

Am I actually losing my mind? Yes, perhaps, but I guess there’s no law against it. There are pages in my calendar that say “Ypsi,” meaning I will be here on that day, but it’s crossed out, and then it says “Ypsi” again, and is crossed out again, and now says “Ypsi” for the third time. I think it’s basically grief.