Embark

I can still feel a little of the back and forth energy sloshing around in my head (“You can change your might right up until closing day”), but I think this is indeed and actually underway. No more suicidal thoughts; I think I had just worked myself, through my own dedicated efforts, into a really horrible state.

I am getting nice “Welcome home” messages from my relatives in Michigan. I often thought about moving back—I came to San Francisco in 1982 and began to think about moving back to the Midwest in 1989, probably not unrelated to the Loma Prieta earthquake—but always concluded that I did not have a second giant move in me. Pretty much the entire reason I wanted to move back was to see more of my parents, so it is bittersweet to finally be doing it after they have gone. Odd that they will never know.

As closing day, I chose the birthday in August of my late aunt, which I think her daughter and husband (my only remaining uncle) appreciated. Also, my realtor had said that you can put a house on the market in that area in any month other than August, so now she can claim to have brisk sales even in August. She emailed today that the title company has agreed to accept me as both the seller and the buyer of the house.

I met today with the cat transport people. They are a husband and wife plus a third person who is a vet tech in a feline-only clinic. The wife is a “nationally recognized leader in animal welfare” who has been doing this work for more than thirty years. I spoke with the husband and he explained that they had long helped friends with pet transport as a favor and then realized a couple of years ago that there was a need for this kind of service. They fly all over the world with people’s pets; they specialize in cats but transport dogs, as well.

Gabe said he has spoken with people who are moving to a completely different country, a huge logistical undertaking, who say their very biggest fear pertains to moving their pets. I can easily believe that.

I explained a little bit about Marvin, including his proven ability to liberate himself in seconds from a soft-sided carrier (“I’m not in here”), and Gabe said he is not worried and that he is sure he and Marvin will get along great. Marvin is not mean. He’s lovely, just implacably determined for things to go his way. I am not going to interview any other cat transport people. These are my folks. The idea is that two of their team and I will fly together, seated next to each other, the other two each with a cat in a carrier and me quietly minding my own business in the third seat. After our meeting, Gabe sent a link to a list of their recommended carriers. He wrote, “I look so forward to helping you return home to our beautiful state!” They themselves are based in Detroit. 

I asked what he thought about my bringing along enough aluminum screen and cable ties to wrap Marvin’s entire carrier in, just in case—would that cause problems at security? Gabe told an anecdote about someone who was prevented from boarding a flight because they had cat litter with them. This triggered a full-on uniformed-officer response and investigation, which eventually determined that the suspicious substance was cat litter. So maybe I won’t fly with aluminum screen and cable ties, but we agreed that a roll of duct tape is never a bad thing to have on hand.

I’m continuing to feel a little mournful about the beautiful weather—leaving it—but in an odd way, the weather can actually be superior in Michigan because the air conditioning makes the inside of the house comfortable, including not too humid, whereas my apartment in San Francisco is so porous that the weather outside and the weather inside are pretty much identical. It is in fact a bit muggy today in San Francisco, with gorgeous sunshine. (In Ypsilanti, it’s 96 degrees and climbing, with a “real feel” of 112 degrees and the air obscured by wildfire smoke. Sounds nice!)

Another thing about the weather is that in Michigan, I can often eat outside. It was probably having breakfast on the deck and watching the leaves flutter in the caressing breeze and the chipmunks gamboling about that first made me think I might not be able to give up the house. I can eat outside in San Francisco, too: I could set up a folding chair next to the trash chute and look at the peeling paint and toilet plunger next door, while listening to the abusive father shriek threats at his children. (Yes, we have called the police and CPS many, many times at this point. Just hoping something really horrible doesn’t happen.)

I loved being a hospital chaplain. I had not meant to stop for another six years, but the universe seems to have sent me a house which will be a nice place to retire and do a little weeding. I am already thinking about volunteering at a hospital in Detroit. I was putting away the clothing delivered by the laundry service and it struck me that I had never felt entirely like myself in my work clothes. Looking forward to feeling exactly like myself all the time. Also looking forward to being with the cats all the time and flying only occasionally.

I am also thinking about being a hospice volunteer again. That was the first step toward being a hospital chaplain and it was tremendously rewarding.

Also thinking about getting a bike rack for the car so I can go take bike rides near where my friend lives west of Ann Arbor.  I’m thinking about going to Cabela’s and getting some work boots to prevent my feet from being crushed in case I drop a weed on them. I’m even thinking about seeing if it’s possible to put the car inside the garage—nah, never mind that one. I don’t want to (again) demonstrate a loss of touch with reality.

Decision. Finally!

I have decided to buy, and live in, the house formerly occupied by my parents in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

In the end, despite the giant hassle of moving and doing all the things the house needs for Marvin to live there and my anxiety about moving the cats, and despite the things I will miss so much about San Francisco, particularly the sun and being able to have the windows open nearly 365 days a year, I can’t pass up the opportunity to own a house (despite having actively wished until about six months ago never to own a house): to have my own place, my own car (for the first time since 1985 or 1986), and my own expanse of weeds.

My conversation with our student a week ago was so helpful in shifting my mindset about leaving my job, and then last night, when I was having my weekly conversation with Lisa M., she asked about the house—how many bedrooms it has and so forth. At some point, she said that buying it “sounds like a no brainer.” I think maybe that was the final little bit of encouragement or permission I needed. I also realize that, amid all the back and forth and pros and cons and what if this and what if that, the greater clinging has been in regard to my job and San Francisco (of course, possibly because those are both highly desirable things), and therefore (I guess) the invitation is to let go of those things and step into the unknown. To have an adventure!

I emailed my other sister to confirm that she was still amenable to selling me her share of the house. We had discussed this in the past, but with more details in hand, I wanted to make sure it still sounded fine to her. I received a thumbs-up almost immediately.

Next I emailed our realtor to tell her I have decided to buy the house and to ask her to start the various procedures for the transfer of ownership, and after that, I emailed our attorney to let him know.

Then I attempted to go to sleep but kept thinking of a few little things I could just take care of right now; I kept leaping out of bed and firing up the computer, and finally resigned myself to it being a night of very little sleep.

I have been receiving congratulations and expressions of pleasure via text as I let people know, which makes me feel that I am on the right track. Today has been full of texts and emails and phone calls with our realtor, my sisters, the attorney, the cat transport people, and tradespeople of all sorts, now that I do have to do all the modifications to the house necessary for Marvin to become a Michigander. I have a meeting with the cat transport people tomorrow.

Our real estate transaction is unorthodox in that Bugwalk the trustee of her parents’ trust is going to sign a document confirming that she has agreed to sell a house to Bugwalk the home buyer: I am going to both sell and buy the house. I had been thinking about how to get my sisters their cash, but it turns out that it normally comes from the title company, so there are some details to work out. 

Accordingly, the closing is tentatively scheduled for a few weeks from now.

Fully five of the things I have to do for Marvin involve doors: Installing two where there currently is empty space, fixing two that don't latch properly, and installing an entire screen porch with a door in it outside the front door. 

I am sure I will have moments of regret and panic, but finally it feels like this thing is underway. I can do this. Just this moment, just this detail, just this phone call. 

OMG: Everything Is so Great!

I contemplated after posting yesterday: Is it wise to mention one’s suicidal thoughts on the internet? It’s partly just a matter of logic: I have tied myself into such a horrible tangled knot over this stupid decision that, at the moment, I can’t picture myself in either place, and if a person isn’t in this place or that place, then aren’t they in no place? Now I’m chuckling: I ought to be able to picture myself sitting in front of my computer in San Francisco since that is where I actually am.

I had a wonderful friend in Alcoholics Anonymous when I was in my late teens and early twenties. His name was Chet. In his early forties, he had two little girls with his ex-wife and was a father figure to me, as well. He once told me that if I were any smarter, I’d commit suicide. He didn’t mean I was too stupid to think of such a great idea and carry it out; he meant that a speedily processing brain is not always a good friend, and that if mine processed any faster, it would be an outright enemy. That’s what’s happening now: Too much thinking.

So returning to sitting meditation does seem to be a positive step. As Howie mentions very often indeed, in these or other words, when we are attending to the “raw data of cognition,” we can’t be lost in a story about the past or future. Listening to the fan whir, knowing I am hearing this: In this exact moment, is anything missing or broken or not enough?

Also, if James Hetfield can mention suicide in his songs, I can mention it in my blog. He’s still here and so am I.

I was recalling another time I saw this kind of debilitating indecision: After my mother had started to have dementia. Her phone died and she went back and forth and back and forth about replacing it, anxious about spending the money, among other things, though that was far from an issue. Earlier on, she would have had a lot of fun with a new iPhone. She would have tried out every app, every wallpaper, every setting, every color, every possible thing that phone could do. We would have been deluged with text messages and videos full of special effects. By the time she finally did get a new iPhone, it was impossible even to teach her how to make a phone call or to answer one.

We went through the same thing over medication for her Parkinson’s disease. She was initially worried about side effects and decided not to take it, but later thought maybe she should give it a whirl. Back and forth, back and forth. Every several months, she said maybe she should try the medication. She never did end up taking it, or any other substantial medication. In memory care and on hospice, she was given a small amount of Ativan daily and also CBD daily, the latter per me and my sister, which did seem to help with her mood and with sound sleep. In her final months, when her breathing was too fast, she got a bit of morphine, and steady morphine in her final few days.

A minor note about oatmeal: I decided it had better feature toasted walnuts or nut butter (walnut or cashew) and not both. After yesterday’s oatmeal with both, I was not hungry again for 24 hours.

If thinking “I can’t stand it” leads swiftly to a dire state of mind, wouldn’t it be the case that thinking, “Oh, my god, everything is so great!” would lead to the opposite? I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to work that way, but it doesn’t. The latter seems artificial, like an attempt to force things to be some other way, whereas the former just seems like sound and accurate reporting. 

Bulging Right Eye Tumor

I felt almost a little panicked before breakfast today: Am I on a diet if I have to have oatmeal instead of the wonderful toast I have on work days? (Because there is not time to have the salad I have on non-work days.) I know there is gluten-free bread and maybe I’ll bump into a great one, but I would generally rather eat something simpler than something highly processed with lots of ingredients. The good news is that today’s oatmeal very closely approximated the toast.

In pot: Half a cup of gluten-free organic rolled oats, a cup of water, about half a cup of toasted walnuts, half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon. In bowl: A cup or so of thawed frozen blueberries, and a chopped-up apple. Add the former to the latter. On top: A big dollop of walnut or cashew butter and a tablespoon or so of walnut oil. Delicious! Oh! I forgot the fresh minced ginger. I’ll add that from now on.

Several months ago, a close associate mentioned that she does not have a to do list. I haven’t thought of that consciously every moment since then, but I think it’s been nagging at me subconsciously around the clock: Without a to-do list, how does she know what to do?!?

My father was Mr. To Do List, and I am Mrs. To Do List. (While the person who claims not to have a to do list is as closely related to my father as I am.) As I have mentioned here more than once, the only thing that terminated my father’s to do list was getting pancreatic cancer and finding himself suddenly living in a retirement community where most of the objects associated with the tasks on his list were no longer available. He said some of the items dated back 50 years.

Today I was working on this and that, and found myself stressed out and with the same nagging headache I have now had for days, which I hope is a vestibular migraine but which I secretly suspect is a brain tumor; my right eye feels weird. I’m pretty sure there’s a bulging tumor behind my right eye.

My strategy lately has been to eliminate various components of my life in hopes that I will find myself having what I read about what some guy who lives on a desert island all by himself claims to have: a serene relationship with time. I want that so much.

I have given up my whole entire job, which you would think would help a lot, but today, as I stressed out about whatever, it was suddenly obvious that it does not matter how much stuff I X out: I will often be stressed out because my mode of living, governed as it is by my to do list and by compulsive schedule making, reliably generates stress. It is very similar to what they call in Alcoholics Anonymous the “geographic cure”: Maybe if I lived in Colorado, I wouldn’t drink as much.

I will never get to the end of my to do list. It produces new branches in all directions; it grows up, down, left and right; it bulges in all directions at once, like a basketball being inflated; categories develop subcategories. If I ever got done with the Tasks of Top Importance, it would be on to the Other Tasks, and then to what I call Things to Do Never, in recognition of the fact that I will never do them (though I would if I got through the other categories).

I think all I can do is just take a lot of entries off the list, all those things I will never, ever get to, and to try to have a more sane relationship with what remains, which I think means saying how much time I can spend today after I do what is necessary for well-being and a serene relationship with time and giving up the idea that if I stay up all night, I can get it done! It won’t get done even if I stay up all night every night for the rest of my life (which might not be that long if I make a habit of staying up all night every night).

So never mind for today estimated taxes on capital gains in this state versus that state. I guess a person without a to do list just does what obviously needs doing right now and does not worry about anything else? And then does she end up with a huge penalty in April because she did not pay her estimated taxes?

Perhaps a person can be mindful of her estimated taxes and also ask herself regularly what in this moment would constitute good self-care.

This bring us to formal meditation practice. From one week after 9/11 until a month or so ago, I missed precisely one day of sitting in meditation, and that one missed day was an accident.

I have lately returned to practicing in the style of Sayadaw U Tejaniya who, on the one hand, thinks sitting meditation is a fine thing to do, but who, on the other hand, doesn’t think you should do it if you’re merely trying to fulfill some clockly requirement and are going to sit there replaying over and over what you’d like to say to your cigarette-smoking neighbor. (Though on the third hand, I once read somewhere that meditation is whatever you do while you’re sitting in your designated meditation spot, a kind and generous idea I rather like.)

Tejaniya’s idea is that meditation starts when we wake up and concludes when we go to sleep, and that we don’t spend the time in between focusing grimly on whatever object is most noticeable in a given moment but rather in a relaxed, steady, calm, cool, easy observation of our own mind and body, in due time coming to notice how our thoughts, bodies, attitudes and emotions affect one another for good or ill.

This really has been interesting. I have the thought, “I can’t stand this,” and immediately there is a downturn in how my body generally feels, which confirms that, yep, I can’t stand it, and then my body feels even worse, etc. In mere seconds, my life feels completely untenable, thanks to that one little not-fully-observed thought, which could occur during sitting meditation or at any old time.

Accordingly, I decided to experiment with sitting for as long as it actually felt fruitful or for as long as I felt like sitting rather than for a set period of time. I decided to try skipping a day! I had always been afraid some teacher would grasp how rigid I was about my daily meditation and order me to skip a day on purpose. All on my own, I skipped a day. And then another. Soon I was sitting in meditation never, except for Tuesday nights with my teacher’s sangha.

Really, it felt fine. I don’t think I feel any worse than usual. I mean, I feel terrible. I feel crazed. Thoughts of suicide are appearing regularly. While I guess I would say it has been decades since that specifically has been the case, I can’t say there weren’t many, many times of feeling terrible and crazed during the 25 years when I meditated every single day except for one, and many, many times of life seeming easy and delightful.

I don’t know if the extra awfulness of this time is due to not meditating daily or just the horrendous pressure of having to make what is literally a life-changing decision or if it is mainly a manifestation of grief.

After my father died but before my mother did the same, I decided that I would absolutely commit suicide after my mother was gone. I got online to pick out a method and soon learned that nearly everyone who survives a suicide attempt reports that right after they did whatever they did, they regretted it. There was a horrible story of a child who took a lethal substance, readily available online at low cost, and then asked his mother for help, but it was too late.

I took suicide permanently off the table, with the counsel to myself that no one is going to follow me around making sure I conduct my life in a constructive manner. Only I can do that and only I can choose to do it.

I thought that was that, but I find those thoughts popping up again in maybe the past month.

I just feel so stressed and so miserable. I suppose here is where a person might consult their therapist, but that is absolutely off the table after she laughed merrily all through the story about the death of someone I knew.

I’m just going to have to figure it out. I do not have a suicide method picked out—wow, wave of dizziness as I typed that—and therefore I don’t have the supplies, and if I find myself choosing a method, yes, I will call the suicide hotline.

I was reading today online about how meditation actually rewires our brains. That seems to be in direct contrast with something Howie mentions regularly, which is that our meditation practice does not “trickle down” into the rest of our lives: The 30 minutes we spent meditating yesterday evening does not affect this moment. Or does it? Does meditation rewire the brain over time? If 25 years of daily meditation hasn't done the trick, would 26? Was it that one missed day that put the rewiring out of reach?

On the chance that the lack of regular sitting meditation is actually making things seem worse or genuinely and actually making them worse, I’ve decided to return to daily sitting meditation, even if it’s just for ten minutes.

Toasty

On Wednesday I went in a Zipcar to see my friend in Novato. We went to Marvin’s for lunch and sat outside. The weather was gorgeous. I had a grilled turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese on sourdough bread, and onion rings; I slathered a quarter-cup of butter on the outside of the sandwich. It was sublime.

We spent the afternoon playing cards. I told her about feeling so tired at work and in effect now being on a leave of absence and she asked if I resort to sugar or caffeine at those moments. I was shocked! Such a thing had never once crossed my mind, but I guess that is what people do, now that she mentions it.

Needless to say, the typing of which never stops me from going on to type the thing that was needless to say, by the time I talked to Lisa C. on the phone yesterday, my decision about moving or not moving had liquefied to a certain extent. It’s that dread of making a fatal error: What if I feel better in a few months and, alas, my job is gone? But then, what if this is my permanent condition and, alas, someone else now owns my house and is pulling up my weeds?

There are some things that still need to be done for the house in any event, including removing the bottom six to eight inches of about 75 feet of wood paneling in the basement that either has been touched by water already or could be in the future; this is a mold prevention strategy.

I had put a lot of effort into another thing to be done in the basement only to finally grasp that the City of Ypsilanti does not permit it, as confirmed on the phone by one of their inspectors. 

To wit: There is ancient clay tile under the basement floor which is clogged with dirt and who knows what else; this has been verified by camera. Water collects on the floor when it rains; this has been verified by my eyeballs. The advice I got was to tear out that clay tile—which is not tile per se but pipes—and replace it with some nice, modern PVC pipes out to the footing, which is the perimeter of the house. When it rains, storm water goes in drains in the footing or under the footing or near the footing or in some way having some other relationship to the footing, and then, if the clay tile were sound, it would go through those pipes to the sanitary drain in the basement floor and off on its municipal adventure. Oh: a sanitary drain is where the water from sinks and toilets, etc., drains.

But because the clay tile is blocked, water ends up on the floor; it might be seeping right up through the flooring, if there is such a thing as seeping up. That is the theory of one person with expertise in these matters, anyway. If we had put in the PVC pipe and still seen water, the advice was to then install “drain tile” (not to be confused with clay tile) just along the stretch where water was seen, and then, the water that went into the drain tile could make its way via gravity to our now-confirmed-to-be-functioning sanitary drain.

One could also install drain tile clear around the whole perimeter of the basement, along with a sump pump, if one wished to spend north of twenty thousand dollars.

I was in the process of getting my third quote for the PVC pipe when I finally came to understand that in 1981, Ypsilanti disallowed having storm water go into the sanitary drain, because all of that rainwater then has to be processed by the water treatment plant instead of going more or less harmlessly into the ground. Ann Arbor doesn’t permit this, either, and probably zillions of places don’t. You are required to have a sump pump and something outside the house (specifically drywall or a “bubbler”) to absorb the water so it doesn’t go right into the basement of your neighbor whose house is downhill from yours.

I guess you can easily find someone to do this disallowed thing, as evidenced by the two quotes I got without the contractor saying one word about a sump pump, but I would rather do the right thing. Also, what if you did the wrong thing and then had some kind of problem with the new system? It could get to be a big mess.

So I think that ends for now any idea of doing anything about the wet basement, as we don’t have enough cash left to do drain tile all the way around the whole basement. By the way, it took me months to grasp even the rudiments of how this all works. It felt good, the other day, to confidently explain to a contractor what exactly we need—just before I found out it’s not allowed.

Along with removing the bottom of the wood paneling in the basement, which the estate will pay for, there are a whole bunch of things to be done if I am going to buy the house, nearly all having something to do with Marvin the cat. So there continue to be many, many phone calls to make, and by late yesterday morning, what I have self-diagnosed as a vestibular migraine had set in and is still with me. It’s not even really a self-diagnosis; my chiropractor, who knows and fixes just about everything, concurred when I mentioned that.

It is definitely giving me the heebie-jeebies that soon I will have to stop whipping out the estate’s credit card and start reluctantly extracting my own from my wallet, though whatever I spend will result in at least a minor improvement to something I will own that will presumably appreciate in value unless it’s completely swept away by a tornado.

I’m now starting to think the difficulty with this decision might boil down to fear of my own death. My parents have both died, removing the generation that in some conceptual way was standing between me and the great beyond, and whereas there is at least still one more thing after working—retirement—after retirement, which this decision greatly turns upon and which might have already happened, there is only death, at least as seen from my habitually gloomy perspective.

I had mentioned here that a co-worker had recommended this book: The T.I.G.E.R. Protocol: An Integrative 5-Step Program to Treat and Heal Your Autoimmunity, by Akil Palanisamy, MD. I don’t have a diagnosis of autoimmune disease, but I ordered the book, whose advice my co-worker had followed with good results. The idea was that autoimmune problems can cause inflammation which in turn can contribute to fatigue. So if there is fatigue, is there inflammation or even the beginning of some kind of autoimmune problem? (Though besides not having a diagnosis of any autoimmune condition, the couple of times I’ve had C-reactive protein tested, it’s been very low.)

After acquiring the book, I put it on the shelf where it couldn’t do me any immediate harm. I was put on my first diet at the age of seven by my mother, whose intentions could not have been better, but this was the beginning of decades of disordered eating, not to mention the conviction that I was fat and ugly. At this point, I know very well to be extremely cautious with anything that feels like a diet; an elimination diet is one of the major components of the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol.

Yesterday evening I had gone to the other extreme and decided to read the whole book ASAP—in the coming several days, if possible—and to do what it says to do: What if following that advice actually worked and I could return to my job? In a rush, I turned right to the part of the book about how to eat and soon concluded that I would rather feel horrible every single day for the rest of my life than to follow that plan for even two weeks. I couldn’t even if I wanted to; by about the second day, I would be eating a half gallon of ice cream after getting home from McDonald's.

I also felt a little confused: The book mentions fermented food as being great for your microbiome; I believe that. But the internet mentions fermented food as being a known migraine trigger. (The internet also avers that “vertigo” is a symptom and not a diagnosis. This I did not know.)

Fortunately, I had an appointment with my chiropractor on this very day, which forced me to shower for the first time in a week, because, really, who cares any more? (My friend in Novato is ten years older than I am; I was hoping that thing about the sense of smell diminishing with age is actually correct.) Truly, this is a very difficult time. I have also stopped meditating, but I think that is actually for a good reason. I’ll get back to that some other day, probably. (Cliffhanger!)

I told my chiropractor that the vestibular exercises seem to be helping a lot: the room no longer spins and the floor does not suddenly tilt. I told him about the symptoms that are continuing: brain fog, slight vertigo with certain motions, very slight headache if symptoms go on for enough hours, nausea; I’m not sure if the nausea is related. On my last two trips by airplane, I came close to vomiting.

I asked him if vestibular and autoimmune issues are related and he said they could be; the gut affects a lot of things. He watched me do some of the vestibular exercises and confirmed there has a been a big improvement. (It has something to do with how the eyes focus on and track a moving thing.)

I told him my feelings about attempting the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol and asked what he thought about my just ceasing to eat gluten (on the theory that gluten can cause “leaky gut,” which can cause inflammation, which can cause fatigue) and he said that since I don’t have a diagnosed autoimmune disease and since that’s my visceral reaction to the matter, setting gluten aside for a time would be a “good elimination.” This mainly affects eating out at certain restaurants; at home, it’s just a matter of having oatmeal instead of toast. 

Poof

I went to work on Saturday at the hospital, and while I was speaking with a patient I have spoken with a couple of times before, I felt that familiar feeling of the energy suddenly draining out of my body. (I’m sure nothing to do with that particular patient; I just happened to be with her.) I looked at my watch: 1 p.m. exactly.

After work I felt lousy, as usual, and I decided I was done doing the same thing and expecting different results, and that I was going to have to give my two weeks’ notice on Monday morning. Or maybe I decided it was not okay to feel lousy nearly one third of the nights of the week. I wrote it in my calendar, and I wrote “Last day of work” on the page for that day. After that, with relief in sight, I actually felt a bit more jaunty for the rest of the evening.

Sunday morning, the next chaplain called at 8:30 a.m. to take over and we had a great conversation. This was a Clinical Pastoral Education student, one of whom I am particularly fond, though this year’s whole crop is wonderful. He shared in a vulnerable manner about his life, an activity we chaplains highly approve of, and so I decided to tell him about my decision, though I felt a little weird about it, since he is a student and it’s a personnel matter. In part it was because he spoke so openly and I pictured him hearing about my resignation and thinking, “I told Bugwalk all that stuff and she didn’t say one word about what was happening with her?”

So I just told him, including that becoming a board certified chaplain is the accomplishment in my entire life that I am most proud of, and that working in the hospital as a chaplain is the most profound honor in my life, which it is, but that I am sick of feeling horrible two days and nights per week. 

He asked, “How do you feel?”

“Sad.” I was very near tears.

“Is it okay if I feel sad with you?” We felt sad together for a bit.

Then he said maybe what is next is a whole new way of being a chaplain that I can’t right now imagine—maybe my chaplaincy is bursting out of the hospital the way the weeds I pull in Ypsilanti burst out of their narrow cracks (though I guess the analogy ends there, since at that point the weeds are, not to put too fine a point upon it, dead).

That was incredibly helpful. It made a place for the sorrow and the ending, but also opened up an expanse of space in which to feel joy in anticipation of being well rested every day and of a new chapter and new adventures.

I warned the student that I might change my mind about giving notice by Monday morning, which is what happened, mainly because I just could not imagine those words coming out of my mouth. Like, the thing I am proudest of and which means the most to me, I am going to say I don’t want it any more?

I could have just done nothing, but in the end, I asked my boss if I could speak with him, and I told him everything. I told him that while I have made a bit of progress in improving my sleep schedule, it hasn’t been enough. I told him several things I had never told him before: that I need an enormous amount of sleep and that this is why I can never work two days in a row, and about wrestling with the decision about buying the house. I told him I had planned to give two weeks’ notice in that very conversation, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

He said what is great is that I’m a per diem! He said I can simply step away for a time but not give up the job. He mentioned that, after all, I work just two days a week. (And on top of that, have been away fifty percent of the time for more than four years; he didn’t say that.) That was a nicer way of putting it than, “We barely see you, anyway, and will hardly notice if you aren’t here.”

So the upshot was that he took all of my scheduled days off the calendar but I am still an employee of the hospital.

Later in the day it dawned on me that my income had just ended. However, I mainly felt an increasing sense of ease. Because I pretty much spend Monday and Friday getting ready to go to work on Tuesday and Saturday, I suddenly had a wide-open vista before me, four newly free days every single week. I can have lunch with my friend! I can sew a pair of pants! I can call Recology about the collection of e-waste that has been outside my apartment door for weeks and weeks.

I didn’t have to go to sleep early yesterday evening because today was no longer a work day. Instead of the alarm going off at 4:55 a.m., I didn’t set it at all and woke up at 11:30 a.m.

I think I have finally figured out what the most important thing is. It just is not mind over matter when the matter is one’s own body.

I think I just retired.

And after all this agonizing and trying not to agonize, it is suddenly and finally obvious: I will buy the house, and I will move to Michigan. I am kind of patting myself on the back: I knew that eventually things would become clear. I was just hoping it would happen before my siblings took me to court for malfeasance.

I will not be moving right this minute. There are several things I need to do to the house, mainly for the cats, and I have to figure out how to move the cats and move my stuff, and I need time for it to sink in and to plan how to take leave of the things and people I need to say goodbye to, here where I have lived for 45 years.

It is hard to grasp that being a hospital chaplain is over. It is almost ten years to the day since I began my training to be a chaplain. I can easily picture the day I started, the other people who were there, the room we were in, specific things that were said. It seems like it was five minutes ago. The whole ten years, including a solid year spent full-time at UCSF for Clinical Pastoral Education, seems like the merest puff of smoke, barely seen, and then—poof!—gone just like that.

Part of me suspected I would end up staying in San Francisco, which I still might. But part of me knew I would move back to Michigan the day I took a walk with my friend there and put my hands into a cold lake and whispered a wish, “Bring me home. Bring me home.”

Our realtor had lately gotten new comps for the house and found they hadn’t budged from earlier on. I asked her yesterday to go ahead and do her market analysis, which will establish a range for the list price. I plan to go with the number halfway between the top and bottom figures. I must then discuss details with my sisters, sell some stocks, and pay my sisters for their thirds of the house.

The to-do list will be long, but as I recently read somewhere or other, if the task seems daunting, it’s because it hasn’t been broken down into small-enough steps.

I’m kind of looking forward to getting away from the 200 AI billionaires, but there are things I will really miss, I think mainly the sun, and being able to have the window open and have a fresh breeze nearly every day of the year. Neither place has everything; each place has nice things the other doesn’t. 

Strategically Placed Toilet Plunger

Rereading my last post, I see that I conflated two things and maybe was too hard on myself regarding my advocacy for my mother. Being rude to a faceless customer support person is not good and it’s also not the same thing as pointing out that my mother has been sitting in her wheelchair outside the door of her apartment for three hours waiting for someone to help her into bed, and she is now weeping. That happened multiple times.

I’m sure the people who took care of my mother were thoroughly sick of me by the time our era there ended, or maybe they always understood completely where I was coming from. I never said to any caregiver, “You’re doing a terrible job and also your shoes are ugly.” But I did point out every last thing that was not right. I was not a jerk; I was exacting and unrelenting, though perhaps there is not a definite line to be drawn between those two things.

They heard from me way more than they probably heard from any other family member because I was there on average 2.5 hours a day for more than two years (that is, five hours a day fifty percent of the time), which gave me ample opportunity to observe things going wrong. Then there was the special situation of our having way more private caregivers with Mom than any other resident had, which gave rise to endless conflicts between the private caregivers and the staff caregivers. I spent many, many hours dealing with those conflicts. Perhaps if I had it to do over again, I would not have leapt into the middle of those situations and just left it to the manager of the private caregivers. All of this back and forth about who did what never went well, though at the least the private caregivers knew I had their backs.

The facility always had a complaint about the private caregiver up their sleeve and ready to deploy when I mentioned anything a facility person had done wrong and it of course never improved the relationships between the two particular people, or the two groups in general. A couple of times, it noticeably made things worse. Now and then, a private caregiver mentioned that a given staff member was unfailingly kind and helpful to them, which always made that staff member rise in my estimation.

I will say I was left with the definite impression that the facility staff had behaved more poorly than the private caregivers, declining to do things they were responsible for and which we were paying a lot for because why should they when there was a private caregiver sitting in a recliner in Mom’s room? They were also routinely blatantly rude to the private caregivers, for instance, refusing to speak to the private caregiver when they let them in the door of the unit at the beginning of their shift.

I can see how it would be annoying to be working like a dog for $16 an hour while someone else is sitting in a La-Z-Boy for that same $16 an hour, and at times even snoozing, but the facility was still responsible for all of the tasks we were paying for. ($16 an hour is not what we paid. I think our hourly rate was $35.) We were perfectly happy to pay someone to sit in a recliner and watch TV and even take a little nap now and then because it meant they were there when Mom had something to say, and could tell us later what it had been. We did not want Mom to feel alone.

One private caregiver said one day that Mom had asked, “Want to hear me sing?” Which indeed the private caregiver did want to hear!

At a certain point, our mother was clearly five years old again in her mind. She told me once that her brother’s name was “Ricky” (rather than the Richard he has long been known as) but when I said I knew that, she said, just like the Mom of any era, “You didn’t know that.” 

So I guess if I had it to do over again, I might just be more aware of my underlying attitude when reporting problems. Often I had a knee-jerk response, which went unnoticed by myself and therefore unquestioned, that the person who had let my mother’s prescription medication run out—this happened multiple times—was a bad person as opposed to a lovable yet fallible human being like myself who was doing the best she could.

Maybe I would let some percentage of things go unmentioned. And maybe I could have tightened up how I described things, avoiding the phrase “all too often” and just saying specifically what had happened.

The time or two when I was genuinely and rightfully enraged, I communicated that in a way I did not have to regret later.

Rereading another recent post, I felt a little embarrassed about complaining about bad listeners. For continuing education for work, I just started reading The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (Third Edition), by Michael P. Nichols, PhD, and Martha B. Straus, PhD.

I did often feel that I wished someone had responded another way, and I did have a couple of outstandingly bad experiences, including one when a friend laughed heartily throughout an anecdote that turned on my father’s death and one in which my therapist laughed heartily in response to a story about someone dying, of which I had many, because about 30 people died in the course of two years: my mother, my father, my Uncle Joe, my Uncle David, my landlord, three friends, the spouse of a friend, my neighbor who was murdered and about 20 other people I came to know and like—even love—who lived in memory care.

I have become gun shy about telling people important things, which is not a good feeling; that is what I meant when I said I feel fundamentally alone. I am not very far into this book, but one of their main points is that it is nourishing conversation—talking and listening—which makes us feel connected to each other, and that if there are problems, it is not because the other person needs to change. (That cannot be right!) Also, it is helpful if you received attuned listening from your parents when you were a child, which I did not. It makes it harder if you didn’t learn that other people will listen to you and care about what you have to say, but presumably improvement is always possible. Or at any rate, there are a lot of people in that same boat.

The authors also point out that X number of enthusiastic responses via text message are probably not as satisfactory as one direct conversation—on the telephone counts—where you feel heard.

So I retract “I’m surrounded by crappy listeners” and offer the restatement “I have had some difficult exchanges in the recent extraordinarily difficult years and can feel the effects of those, and I understand that I did not receive as a child that which would have made me feel confident that others care about me and that I am lovable, but it is my responsibility to figure out how to invite and conduct nourishing conversations, and even if I am not great at this now, I can get better at it.” That’s what I meant to say.

I left Ypsilanti yesterday morning after readying the house for interior painting. There are certain pieces of furniture that I must have moved five times by now: from the house to the retirement community, from the retirement community back to the house, out of the way for the estate sale, back to where it is needed, out of the way for painting …

It was excessively hot and humid, as it had been the day before. My flight at DTW was delayed because the air conditioning on the plane broke and the interior heated up to possibly 110 degrees, per the announcement in the airport, and so they had to use something else to cool the plane off, which took half an hour or so.

As usual, I was sitting next to the most delightful people on the plane, a pair of retired physicians traveling to a medical conference and to see family. By the end of the flight, the wife and I were clutching each other’s hands to emphasize various points. Ironically, Delta way overshot on the cooling, and we were freezing for the whole flight.

It was wonderful to see Marvin and Duckworth, to sleep in my own bed, and to wake up in the beautiful California sunshine.

My downstairs neighbor sent a little video of her package from Chewy being stolen: A shiny white SUV with a bicycle on its rear rack pauses in front of our building, an elegant-looking woman in a white dress and high heels hops out, clatters across the sidewalk, grabs the big box, and hops back in the car, which rolls off.

The neighbor graciously said that, though it didn’t look like it, maybe the people were under economic duress and that she hoped they enjoyed all the stuff she had picked out for her new cat. I was picturing the people opening the box and saying, “Oh, this is for a cat!!!” Then they probably called Chewy to say they had ordered iguana stuff but received cat stuff and wished to demand a refund as well as a million dollars to compensate them for emotional anguish.

This morning I had breakfast while admiring the view out the window: lots of peeling paint, a trash chute, and a carefully balanced toilet plunger. In Ypsi, I have to look at lots of greenery and my father’s daylilies, one blooming after the other, but maybe I can put a toilet plunger out there where it will always be in view. 

Renovations Captainette

Howie has lately had a few guest teachers, all of whom I really liked. One asked this question for self-reflection: “Who do I become when things don’t go my way?” That caused an internal wince. Over the decades, I have often gotten really angry and been quite unpleasant with someone who has thwarted my desires or who simply happens to be the person I’m talking to after something has gone wrong. (That is, a stranger, because they are not actual people, like people I already know, right? Sigh.)

Years ago, I completely lost my temper with someone at AT&T (phone service provider) and used the F word (I did not tell the person to F off; I said that I just wanted the thing to effing work, if I recall correctly) and ordered them to cancel my service. The person, likely a little bit angry herself by then, did that with such alacrity that when I said two seconds later that I didn’t really mean it, it was too late—my service had already been canceled and furthermore, that plan was no longer available to new customers, which I now suddenly was, and what I had to get instead was more expensive. Even at the time, I could see I had that coming.

As time passed, I got better at recovering from this emotional derailment in time to apologize to the person I’m talking to, and quite often—at this point, basically always—I am perfectly delightful from beginning to end, with nothing at all to regret or apologize for. It helps to remind myself that that person has not a very fun job and that the least I can do is to be patient and friendly. Also that I am lucky to have a computer that has a problem or a basement that floods when it rains.

That being relaxed and agreeable is my default these day is mainly due to the painful learning experience of advocating for my mother when she was ill and in the care of so many various people with such an astonishing array of responsibilities and details to attend to. There were so many things that could go wrong, or at least fail to be perfect, and they often did go wrong, despite the astronomical expense of her care. When what was supposed to happen did not happen, I got quite exercised and communicated accordingly. I wish I had the whole thing to do over, in part because my vigorous and proactive gatekeeping no doubt affected how people felt about my mother, and of course because those workers of all sorts had only good intentions, were doing the best they could in very difficult jobs that don’t pay nearly enough, and did not deserve the extra stress.

I could have made the exact same points and achieved the exact same results in a much nicer way.

I haven’t really felt lonely here yet because I am always having to talk to the electrical person or the roof person or the air conditioning person or the ant person or the wet basement person or the drain person; often I have spoken to two or three or four of a given kind of tradesperson, and so I have wondered who I’ll talk to when I’m done talking to all those people who fix things, but it’s dawning on me that I might literally never be done talking to them. (Which is not really how I had wanted to spend my Grand Finale.)

Often they offer warm compliments on the house. “I’m also a realtor and I’d buy this place!” “This house is built like a bunker!” “I love this house! It’s like a California bungalow.” One of the two persons who came today said, “I love your home. You’re on the corner but it’s kind of hidden away.”

The house is made of cinder blocks encased in bricks. When I lie in bed at night, it is a rarity to hear anything whatsoever. One end of the house is rather dim; I have come to think of that as my personal compound: bedroom, bathroom, office. The other end is brilliantly light, with giant windows to both the east and the west. I like that light end more, but am coming to appreciate the contrast, and the privacy and seclusion of the other end.

Today I made 16 phone calls, several to people who might potentially tear the clogged clay tile pipes out of the basement and replace them with PVC pipes, which may or may not help with water collecting on the basement floor after it rains. I made several more calls to people who might be able to fix or build or tear out various things that need fixing, building or tearing out.

So maybe my new occupation is Home Repair Coordinator, and if so, I will do it with as much kindness as I can possibly muster.

It was hellishly hot yesterday and today, closing in on a hundred degrees and exceedingly humid. Yesterday, the first day of the heat emergency, I waited until evening to take a walk, and then I proceeded at a stately pace, but still arrived home sticky and limp. 

When I opened the front door this morning about 8 a.m. to let in the fellow who had come to see about my mini split and smart thermostat problem, I was stunned at how hot it was. Of course, the symptoms had vanished during the night, so there was not really anything for the person to do. Maybe it’s a matter of learning the details of how the new thing works. 

The smart thermostat is integrated with our gas and electricity provider and knows when the peak hours are, when energy costs the most, and so it tries to pre-cool so that the equipment can run less during the hours when the rates are higher. The program is called eco+. It has a setting to “Adjust for humidity,” which causes it to aim lower than the set temperature to achieve the desired feeling, as humidity makes cold seem colder and heat seem hotter. Yesterday it was aiming three degrees low for this reason, as I learned in the course of the day. However, the fellow who sold us this system said the regular old air conditioner tries to do the same thing, though maybe not to quite as low a humidity level as the other thing aims for, so it’s not a bad idea to turn off the “Adjust for humidity,” which I have done.

I did not take a walk today. It was just too damn hot. I did go out to lunch at Seva, because that is my tradition on my last day in Ypsi, and just walking from the car to the door of the wonderfully over-air-conditioned restaurant, I felt like I was going to keel over. It actually felt almost a little difficult to breathe at one or two moments, and I struggled to stay awake while driving. The air seemed thick and murky, both in regard to trying to breathe it and in its appearance, but the pertinent app said the air quality was moderate.

I am planning to go home for two and a half weeks and then to come back to Ypsi for three and a half weeks and then to go back to San Francisco for six and a half weeks, with the thought that several weeks in a row of going to work might be illuminating in some way. I suspect that if I spent three months straight in either place, I would just stay in that place forever.

A lot of the calls I made today were about repairs or renovations I would need to undertake if I were going to have cats, specifically Marvin, living here. I asked my sister if he could climb up the inside of the chimney and she said it might be possible? I can so easily picture Marvin’s head sticking out of one of the chimney vents on the roof. I can picture the expression on his face just before he leaps off the roof and is never seen again.

Step by step, I can feel myself getting ready to be a homeowner, but it’s not official. I feel quite mournful at the same time about my soon-to-be-lost occupation, which I worked extremely hard to prepare to do, and which means everything to me. 

The Third Way Is to Be Kind

On Sunday, our painter came over for a final look at the house and to discuss colors and types of paint. After that, I worked in the yard, and in the evening, I had my weekly conversation with Lisa M. on the phone. I’m enjoying my “gardening” so much that by that evening, I had again decided absolutely to buy the house. I asked our realtor how long it would take for me to become its official owner, arrangements with my sisters aside (which should be simple), and she said only a week or so.

My parents had a whole gardening store’s worth of yard tools in the garage, which had its upsides and downsides. My sister said that every time Dad wanted to use a given thing, even just the lawn mower, he had to move a whole bunch of other stuff out of the way, like a Rubik’s Cube: If I move this bucket full of spare plumbing parts, I can get a foot closer to the air compressor, and so forth.

Most of those tools are gone, but my sister helped me pick out a basic collection of implements. I kept two small clippers, one with a curved blade and one with a straight blade. I used the former for several days and hesitated to try the other; the curved blade just looked more effective. In the name of science, I forced myself to try the others one day, and they are considerably better. They are noticeably more powerful and they make a much more satisfying snick-snick sound.

I have been using Google’s Gemini to identify plants to very good effect. These wonderful clippers had no brand name on them anywhere, but when I took a photo of them and asked AI what they were, I immediately learned that they are the Knipex Anvil Shear (model 94 55 200), and they are not even intended for gardening but rather to cut things like rubber, leather and hoses. 

One of these days, I might even use them to cut hoses, as there is a whole system of interconnected garden hoses snaking almost entirely around the house, no doubt installed by my father.

So my antipathy toward AI data centers has cooled. I am now going to call the City of Ypsilanti and demand that they install one right in my back yard. Ypsilanti Township is still vigorously fighting one that the University of Michigan wants to build. I had mentioned being worried about a possible low-frequency hum, though I guess that is a well-known problem at this point and so they are devising other ways to cool the equipment, but it also finally occurred to me that I hear a hum all the time, anyway—from EMU’s heating plant, which is right smack across the street. It’s not that annoying throbbing vibrating hum, but there is a sound 24 hours a day.

Many parts of Eastern Michigan University’s campus are truly gorgeous. There are many lovely obviously very old buildings. However, the heating plant isn’t necessarily one of them. I had never thought it was desirable to have something like that in plain sight and had even wondered why it hadn’t caused my parents not to buy this house, but my sister lately pointed out that it is a total selling point as regards privacy: There aren’t peering human neighbors right across the way. (It had actually occurred to me that it could be good for safety. There is probably someone there all the time, should a mugger come along as I am pulling into my driveway in the dark.)

Delighted with Gemini’s success at identifying the Knipex shears, I went ahead and asked it if I should move to Ypsilanti. Its thoughts went on for several screens, but the lead paragraph was this, bold type Gemini’s: “Whether you should move from San Francisco to Ypsilanti depends heavily on whether you prioritize dramatic cost savings and a community-oriented college town lifestyle over a fast-paced, high-income global tech hub with perfect year-round weather.” 

Well, when you put it that way …

It concluded by saying I would need to consider my own primary drivers, so it ultimately left me in the same boat as before. It clearly had very strong feelings about Ypsilanti being way more affordable, but that is not really true in my case. The property tax + two kinds of utilities + home and auto insurance almost exactly equal what I pay in San Francisco for rent + utilities, though of course there is the enormous difference between renting something and owning it, and of course the instability of being a renter, though I have been squatting in that exact spot for 28 years now.

San Francisco’s high prices and income inequality are well documented and far from new. Apparently that is about to become astronomically more pronounced because of an estimated 200 new AI billionaires. Is it horrible to live in a weird bubble with the ultra-ultra-ultra rich, who are almost all white, or is it nice to smirk that I get to live in a place designed to suit the ultra-ultra-ultra rich (a really nice place!) on a very modest annual salary, thanks to rent control?

A slight factor in this whole thing is whether my apartment building will be sold one of these days, though I am unlikely to be evicted, thanks to being old and having lived there for so long. The owner of the building died more than a year and a half ago. Her daughter, whom I like a lot, has not yet decided whether to keep the apartment building or not, and I am unfortunately not in the position to object to someone taking forever to make up their mind about something.

So, to recap: Sunday: Definitely buying the house.

But then Monday rolled around! On that day, my boss in San Francisco returned from a trip to Africa and a video popped up on our group chat of his extravagantly decorated office, with sparkling streamers and things covered in cheery polka-dotted wrapping paper and, all over his office, images of each of us represented as superheroes or musicians or what have you. There was a beautiful photo of our boss’s smiling face with this text: “There are three ways to ultimate success. The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” Another image of our boss showed him dressed like Mr. Rogers and had the text “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood.” The one of me showed a heavy metal magazine featuring a cover story on Kiss with the center image replaced with my face. I texted the group that I could feel the love.

If the most important thing is love, how can I leave this remarkable group?

(But maybe it’s not! Maybe the most important thing is the eradication of weeds.)

I noticed that cold air was coming out of a ceiling vent in the kitchen even though it was below the temperature the air conditioning is set to, so now I am going through a whole thing with the Mitsubishi heat pump and the Ecobee smart thermostat, in particular the eco+ feature, which is synced with the utility (DTE). I will not bore you with the details. This has generated miles of notes and is not resolved, but, since the actual cooling seems to be working as desired, I told the vendor that if they want to sort this out after I return here in late July, that would be fine; that would give them time to undertake some research. I am definitely learning a few things myself.

I stayed up way too late Sunday night talking to Lisa M., and so did not wake up until 1 p.m. yesterday, when I saw the outpouring of love in my work group and saw that something was amiss with my Ecobee thermostat. The actual heat emergency hadn’t started yet—that was today at noon—but it was revving up. I went out to Arbor Farms and ACE hardware, and found the combination of heat and humidity to be nearly unbearable. Regarding today and tomorrow, The New York Times said, “Most of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois will be under the service’s most extreme and rare warning level, reserved for long-lasting extreme heat that offers little to no relief at night.”

Because of that, I made sure to cut up my pile of garden clippings yesterday evening. Right after that, I created another huge pile of the same, but put it all in bags before I came inside. The final thing was to lie in the grass in the dark under a hawthorn tree for a bit, watching the fireflies flicker and the leaves flutter in the breeze. Some light-footed insect scrambled over my face, its little skittering legs going up one side, down the other, and off into the grass before I knew it.

Last night I had a series of bad dreams, including that I returned from a trip to find I had left a window wide open and that, while Duckworth was still there, Marvin was gone. Also that I was sitting next to someone high up who fell to his death on the concrete below. I had the presence of mind to cover my ears so as not to hear the horrible wet splat, but I could still hear the screams of the onlookers.

(Once upon a time, one of my sisters was meditating in the spacious atrium of a downtown San Francisco hotel, which was her custom so as to avoid having to go all the way back to where she lived in the Sunset neighborhood between work and evening plans. She heard a horrendous crash: Someone leaping to his death from a high-up floor.)

Stop Me Before I “Garden” Again

Another exciting day of horticulture and neighborhood intrigue!

I had breakfast on the deck and then did some writing for the peer review required by the Association of Professional Chaplains five years after board certification and every five years thereafter; this will be my first one. They provide a long list of prompts for writing, and then the reviewee assembles an appropriate group who meet to have a discussion based on the writing.

I decided it’s not good to choose one of gardening or walking, but always or almost always to walk and then to do a little gardening. After I spent about an hour writing, I went for a walk and was surprised to see that I had evidently inspired my plant-loving neighbor with my forsythia-related efforts: he had begun to work on his side of the forsythia right near the sidewalk, leaving a big mess thereon. (I did a little sweeping there later.)

Down the block a ways, I encountered a fellow weeding. Weeding! Swoon! I asked him how he knows what to pull out and he said he is a professional gardener who has been working in that yard for three years, so he is very aware of what needs to go. I asked if I could pay him to spend an hour with me in my yard pointing out what to weed and he said that would be fine.

Continuing on, I encountered my plant-loving neighbor walking his dog. He was now all smiles. He said he’d figured out who’d written the letter; he used the word “back,” but said he didn’t want to talk about it. He apologized for yelling at me and said I should always let him know if there is anything I’m concerned about. I said he should do the same, and thus friendly relations were restored.

When I got home, I saw him in his back yard using his weed whacker or string trimmer near the lot line of our new neighbor, Digby, and suddenly it all became clear: The letter he got was from Digby, not from Digby! I texted my sister about this and she said she had assumed this from the start and considered it to go without saying. Hmmph.

I then texted Digby the tree guy to say it was Digby the nice lady who had written the letter, and that my neighbor is aware it wasn’t him. He was happy to have that cleared up and to know he had been exonerated.

I filled out the professional gardener’s online request form, and if that doesn’t work out, there is always my friend’s son, except that I am going to be living in San Francisco, where I will not need to know these things.

I’m sorry to say that one of the main things I have learned from these past four-plus years of caring for my parents is that I’m alone in this world, fundamentally, and the other is that a really good listener is nearly impossible to find. Even my therapist is a crappy listener. (I therefore never see her.) Chaplains are really good listeners. I decided it would be best for such well-being as I might be able to achieve to hang around a group of chaplains. In Michigan, I could almost certainly get a job as a hospice chaplain, but those are solitary jobs. In San Francisco, I’m part of a group of 11 chaplains, plus a harpist and two supervisors.

Also, I cannot get past my terror about transporting the cats. I think I have mentioned that I once saw Marvin shred a soft-sided cat carrier in less than 60 seconds. He was not on 200 mg of gabapentin at the time, as he will be if he ever goes for a ride on a plane, but I am still terrified that he will somehow get loose and never be seen again. If plane travel for Marvin comes to pass, which I really cannot picture, I plan to bring a swath of aluminum screen and a bunch of cable ties to swaddle the carrier in if he starts to destroy it.

Continuing to fly back and forth does not today seem like a reasonable idea. It’s not fair to continue to make the cats spend so much time alone.

After my walk, texts about Digby and Digby, and filling out the gardener’s online form, it was out to the yew hedge to continue snipping off the orange dead parts, a tedious and slow process. I meant to spend one hour but ended up spending two. I couldn’t resist plucking a few weeds out of the sidewalk cracks and the lawn extension, and set aside a distinctive-looking one for later identification. It was Pennsylvania Pellitory! I was very excited when I saw a couple more later on and could pluck them out of the ground with confidence.

It is also kind of great now to see so many hostas when I go on my walk, completely invisible until a few days ago.

I had dinner, my usual salad, on the deck and realized that my eye had fallen on what looked suspiciously like my arch enemy, wild grape vines. I clomped over there in my Birkenstocks and ended up with a massive pile of vines in front of the garage; I will have to cut them up later. The sun had set by the time I was done, and the fireflies were flickering, little white lights suddenly appearing in the dark.

During this effort, I again found myself within a few feet of the side of my neighbor’s house (though not necessarily on his property; it gets a bit murky in there). I’m going to try to remember that the main point of nature is to keep people from being able to see each other and to stay out of that area unless absolutely necessary. (That is, if I see more grape vines I might be able to reach.)

It is also probably best not to garden in the dark with sharp tools lest I have a freak accident that will cause my relatives to feel embarrassed every time they have to explain how I died.

There is a tall tree in the yard that has wild grape vines way higher than I could possibly reach, even with some sort of pole, including at the very tippy top of the tree. It is maddening. Dangling down are thick vine stalks no doubt cut by my father once upon a time as high as he could reach. That might be one important difference between us: He could evidently live with that, but I’m not going to be able to (as long as I’m in the same state with it).

Once I get everything I can get to by hand—and I think I might be nearly there—I am going to hire someone to somehow get up there and get that down.