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. 

I Don't Want to Buy This House

I went to my weekly meditation group Tuesday evening online. I always keep my camera on all the time, which Howie gently encourages from time to time, to help it feel like a community, but after the second time I fell asleep during meditation, fortunately waking up before I drooled down the front of my t-shirt, I turned it off. As in the car earlier, I felt extremely sleepy.

Thus it was frustrating and eventually extremely frustrating, after I got in bed at 11:30 p.m. or so, to find myself unable to fall asleep. I lay there awake for four hours, thinking darker and darker thoughts, particularly about this house, and then I got up and canceled the trip here I had scheduled for September, and I canceled the final two weeks of this current trip. I wish I could go home tomorrow, but I have various appointments scheduled and I also want to go to a memorial for my uncle this coming weekend.

The smell is not getting better at all. My head hurts, my throat tastes foul, I am angry. I am angry at the painter for not painting when he agreed to, which might have avoided this whole thing. I am angry that I can’t think of a way not to buy this house, which should be as simple as saying, “I don’t want to buy this house,” but somehow doesn’t seem to be.

I am angry that I am going to end up owning a house that I never want to see again. I have developed a burning hatred for this house in just the past 24 hours. The bad vibes from the horrible things my other sister said are lingering, as well, making the whole thing feel miserable.

And I am sad, really sad. Sorrow permeates this house all the time. I don’t feel my parents’ presence here in any way, but I can picture them everywhere: There is Mom in the living room in her comfortable chair reading The New York Times. There is Dad asleep in his recliner in front of the TV; there is Rachel Maddow. There they both are, standing in the kitchen, one telling the other what is in the oven. There is my father, sitting on the deck holding the garden hose, watering his arbor vitae.

I am not going to do any weeding. That is over. The good part is over. I will never weed here again. I will not ever live here. The cats will not ever live here.

I am not going to unpack my suitcase with my sentimental items in it. I am going to take it back to San Francisco and unpack it there. Before I leave here, in a week and a half instead of three and a half weeks, I am going to pack up everything I want from here and ship it to San Francisco, and I am never coming here again. 

Green and Lavender

I flew to Michigan yesterday, after 45 minutes of sleep. I had the best seatmates on the plane again and the flight was uneventful. I used to be completely terrified of turbulence. Now, if I don’t say so myself, I am almost entirely impervious to it. (Wait! Do “If I don’t say so” and “If I may say so” mean the exact same thing?)

I took the shuttle to Ypsilanti, sharing the back seat with a woman about my age who also grew up in Ann Arbor. She asked where I live, and I said defiantly, “San Francisco.” “Cool!” She asked what I do, and I told her I’m a hospital chaplain. “Cool!” (That’s what we used to say in the 1970s when something was cool.) Later I grumbled to my sister that no one is going to say “Cool!” when I say I live in Ypsilanti, MI, and weed my garden.

I had explained to the painter that I am sensitive to scents and chemicals, and asked him to paint at his earliest convenience after my prior departure from here. He assured me that his calendar was wide open and that he could schedule this as requested. By the time it actually rolled around, he was juggling other jobs, so I don’t know when he actually finished—in fact, there is still some drywall in the basement that needs painting—but when I walked in the door last night, after my 45 minutes of sleep and cross-country flight, I was unpleasantly overwhelmed by the smell of paint. It is all water based and it is all low VOC, but I’m acutely sensitive to this kind of thing. I got a mild headache pretty much right away.

I didn’t get quite as far as saying I could not buy the house (as far as I can recall), but I dramatically announced (to the realtor, my sister and my daily text group) that I would have to return to the airport and fly right back to San Francisco. I remember when Tom’s mother got a new apartment or had her apartment redone. It was maybe six months before I could go into it. We had several visits where we sat in the lobby together.

I didn’t exactly want to sleep in an airport hotel and fly right home, but I already had a headache and had to do something. The things I had taken out of my backpack I put back in, and I exited the house, locking the door. I might have actually called the shuttle then for lack of any better idea—sleeping in the car having been ruled out after I got here after the estate sale—but then I saw that my phone battery was down to four of whatever those units are called: I wasn’t going to get far. I guess you say your phone battery has four percent of its ingredients left. (No, I know: capacity.)

Back into the house I went. This was now well past my sister’s normal hours of operation, but I texted her and asked if she would come over. That was the smart thing that I did. She came over. She advised opening various windows and putting box fans in some of them blowing outward. We have a solid collection of those because of the wet basement. Her eye fell on the ceiling fans; I’d forgotten about those. I turned all of them on except for the one that for some reason makes the light bulb burn out. She said to turn the A/C way up (to 85) so that it wouldn’t be trying to cool the outdoors and set the HVAC fan to run all the time instead of just when needed. She speculated that maybe it would be good to, in a given room, open a window, deploy a fan in the other window, turn on the ceiling fan and then close the door, so all of the efforts / effects would be confined to that one space.

The one room that was perfectly habitable was my own bedroom, which used to be the library. My mother painted that years ago and it still looks fantastic. She did a very meticulous job. Tom’s brother, who used to be a painter, saw a photo and said she did “a crazy good job.” No new paint, and I also have a big HEPA air filter in there. I am keeping the door closed for now to keep all the nice, clean air in. The display on the filter says it is not detecting any PM2.5 (particles 2.5 microns in size or smaller), but if I open the door, soon it says there are 2 or 3: “3 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, not a percentage,” says the internet.

My sister said she had also gotten the garage door opener working. Someone had quoted me $800 for that. Next she is going to install a keypad to operate the door and also get a remote for it.

I went to bed last night without unpacking my suitcases, washing my face, or brushing my teeth, and I am giving some thought to doing the same tonight. I used to unpack my suitcase as soon as I arrived, but it has been nearly 24 hours and I have not done it. I am way, way out of steam. I brought a second suitcase this time, a carry-on containing sentimental items I would not want to lose. To get my father’s wedding ring across the country, I wore it. 

I did not sleep well last night. All of the furniture had been pushed into the center of the rooms for painting, so the first thing I did today was to set the office up again. I got my sister’s hand truck from the garage and used it to remove my mother’s 50-pound combination backup battery and speaker from the office. There is only one three-prong outlet in the office; my father made do with a network of long, thick extension cords. I still have one and am using it wrapped around the perimeter of the room, but called the electrician to see about getting more outlets. They are scheduling for November, but put me on the waiting list. That will give me a chance to figure out where else I need outlets.

Not that I will need them. I’m going to be living in San Francisco, where I’m a hospital chaplain! I keep saying that, and yet somehow I find myself moving inexorably toward home ownership, like a person being sucked into quicksand.

Once I could sit at my father’ s desk again and type on my father’s keyboard, I worked on the various electronic signatures for the real estate transaction, the theory still being, even though it’s been a couple of days, that it doesn’t make sense not to buy a house I might want. I will say, and this I really mean: Under no circumstances will I rent it out and be a landlord. I don't want people calling me in the middle of the night about their toilet and I don't want them wiping boogers on the walls.

Most of the forms I just signed as the seller, but there was one I had to sign twice, once as seller and once as buyer. Then complications with the website for the earnest money, then paying the earnest money, then one form that wouldn’t work electronically, so receiving a PDF and printing, signing, scanning and emailing back. Many details. By the time it was all done, it was getting to be 3 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten yet.

My sister thought it was safe to set the A/C to 85 because she said it was not expected to be hot. Last night was pleasantly cool, not humid, with a fresh breeze blowing in windows that are usually closed. I noticed a big open-air gap at the bottom of one screen. That’s where the bugs are going to come in.

Today, however, was hot and humid and I felt extremely droopy. As recently as last summer, I prided myself on not using the air conditioner in the car and just rolling down the windows. Oh! “Roll.” There’s an anachronism, I guess, or are there still cars that have handles that you crank to lower the windows? There probably are, in Europe and for very rich people. Anyway, the heat is bothering me much more than it did last year. Even with all of the windows up in the car and the air conditioner on, it was too hot, and here back at home, with the A/C still set to 85, the same.

It's about 7:30 p.m., it’s 81 degrees outside now and 82 inside, and humid either place. Ah, that is one thing the air conditioner does which it isn’t doing right now: lower the humidity.

Around 3 p.m., I went out, happening to be wearing deep green pants and lavender socks. (Why was I wearing socks in this kind of weather? I have come to feel that if people can see my bare toes, it robs me of a commanding air.) I went to a pizza place in Ann Arbor that a friend had recommended. Its floor was big alternating tiles in almost exactly those two colors. It looked extremely loud and very old-fashioned on the floor but I trust looked fantastic on my person. Unfortunately, the place reeked of Pine Sol, so I continued on to Ricewood, where I had a Szechuan chicken bowl, which is a substantial meal with eight ounces of protein. I listened to the Ann Arbor people talk: PhD programs and upcoming sabbaticals to Croatia.

Just like the last time I was here, I could barely keep my eyes open in the warm car. I actually found myself wondering if it would be bad just to close my eyes for a teensy second, since the next traffic light was still three quarters of a block away. Because of that, I didn’t do several errands, but I did go to the hardware store for sponges and ant baits. I didn’t used to be an ant baits kind of person, but now I am. I went to Arbor Farms, already having changed my mind about having oatmeal instead of toast made with gluten-free bread. I will probably still have oatmeal, but if you just want a quick little snack, that’s a piece of toast, not cooking up a pot of oatmeal.

My sister lent me two air cleaners. I picked them up from her place on my way out earlier. I have them both running, and I think things are trending in the right direction.

Carol-Joy said that if you set a dead animal on the ground, even if you put it under a bush, birds of prey will locate it by smell and make it completely disappear. I found a dried-up mangled dead bird on the lawn today and put it in the daylily bed that is the designated repository for dead creatures, not expecting to see the dead robin I put there weeks ago, but it was still there, looking about the same.

I lately paid the summer property tax bill on behalf of the estate and saw on a summary of fees and costs today that I will be expected to pay the summer property tax myself, prorated, and then at closing, the estate will get back what it had paid earlier. This I expected, but was surprised to see the winter tax on there as well, a much smaller bill, but paid months ago. What does that have to do with anything? My realtor (now that I’ve forked over earnest money, she’s starting to seem like my realtor) said that both tax bills cover the whole year. I didn’t know that. What I have to pay now and what the estate will soon get back is indeed about half what was paid months ago. 

Another thing I used to be terrified of was being in a house by myself. When I was a child, there was generally someone else around, and after I was an adult, I always lived in apartment buildings. I mean, right now I live in an apartment building!

If You Can’t Say “I’m Moving,” Don’t Say Anything at All

So there I was, having finally figured out how to have it all! Just yesterday this was.

I stayed up late last night doing routine money-related tasks, balancing my checkbook and so forth, not literally a booklet these days. I often do this just before going to Michigan.

I got in bed at 2:30 a.m., didn’t set the alarm, and woke up at 11:30 a.m. I had texted our realtor yesterday to say I thought I had worked out how the real estate transaction should work. She suggested that we speak on the phone today.

I made the mistake of texting the details to my other sister during the night, and there was some drama. Some rather harsh remarks were made, not by me.

When our realtor and I spoke on the phone this afternoon, I told her my plan of buying the house but hardly ever being there, and she was entirely approving. I was a little surprised. I asked her what the point is of buying a house you don’t plan to occupy and she chuckled and said genially that she couldn’t help me with that question. 

I can pay someone to mow the lawn weekly and edge it monthly, and I can pay someone to remove the snow from the sidewalk, just as the estate has been doing, but the thought of the house quietly sitting there on its own with the flowerbeds becoming choked with weeds made me feel a little sad. I remember feeling the same way about my childhood house in Ann Arbor after we all had moved out of it, while my father was still there laboring away for ten years: Did it miss us? It probably enjoyed seeing my father. If I could see my father right now, I would certainly enjoy that.

By the way, I know it sounds grand (maybe) to talk about paying people to do this and that, but remember, this is Ypsilanti, MI. It’s not like someone in Beverly Hills discussing their gardening staff. This is just doing the minimum to maintain presentability. It doesn’t cost that much there.

I ran my understanding of how the real estate transaction would work past our realtor, and then I was really kicking myself because I had it all wrong and could have avoided the inter-sibling drama entirely.

It turns out that it will be a completely standard real estate transaction: I will send a bit of earnest money, and then send the remainder of the entire purchase price of the house to the title company. On closing day, I the seller will sign, and I the buyer will sign—I think this is a first for our realtor—I just hope I and I don’t manage to get into a fight before the big day—and then the fees will be taken out and our realtor will receive her commission and each of us heiresses will receive a check.

I said that I don’t want a check; I’m already inheriting one third of this house, so why are we doing this in a way that I will receive a check? But that is the proper way to do it, and it’s just as well that I will receive a check, because this is going to take nearly every cent of cash I have. I was starting to get a little worried about my cash flow and then remembered: I’m going to get a check!

In that very conversation, I, using my fine logical decision-making mind, determined that it does not make sense to put on the market a house that I might want, even if I’m not going to live in it, so I told our realtor that will buy it and that I will not change my mind again, or if I do, I won’t mention it. (A chuckle here from the realtor.) I also confirmed that the price will be what the appraisers had come up with, and what the comps have been all along; our realtor had come up with a figure about $4000 higher when she did her market analysis, but both of my sisters are fine with using the appraised price, and I believe that will be advantageous when it comes to doing the estate’s final tax return: The house won’t have gained value.

The estate’s attorneys were going to write up the details of our unorthodox transaction, but it occurred to me that this might be an expensive redundancy; our realtor confirmed that, and also, it is not going to be a weird transaction, after all. I emailed the attorneys after the realtor and I got off the phone to say they don’t need to do that, and to ask if they have a vague idea what their remaining bills will total.

So, then, fine: buying the house just in case. My sister said a nice thing: While she said it is up to me and that she won’t be mad if I don’t buy the house (this was before I spoke with the realtor), she said she had been starting to like the idea of me buying it and us helping each other out—driving each other to colonoscopies and so forth. While she said whatever I did was fine, and did not mean to exert the slightest influence, I did feel that as a certain amount of influence, or at least invitation, toward buying the house.

So, if I have a house, which is almost certainly going to be the case, then maybe I should just occupy it. All the tasks that had melted away yesterday like the Wicked Witch of the West suddenly reappeared, piling one on top of the other like brightly colored blocks in an animation: If I’m going to do this, then I might as well do that, and if I’m going to do that, then I need to do the other.

I guess I would just as soon not fly back and forth even quarterly, so perhaps I will be on the phone on Tuesday, after all, resigning my hospital chaplain position.

One thing all this back and forth has done is to rob myself of people’s wholehearted congratulations and sympathetic joy, as they put it in Buddhism (feeling happy about the good fortune of others), because someone might be delighted to hear that I am buying a house the first time they hear it, but I can see how it might not be so exciting the third time they hear it. Honestly, at this point I am not entirely clear on which friend thinks what. My sister, who is an extremely good egg, did kindly say “Congratulations!” today (in a later conversation) as if she were hearing the news for the first time. 

I’m buying a house! 

The Boy Who Cried I’m Moving

Before the end of yesterday, I had gone ahead and asked our realtor to restart our transaction. I’m so used to referring to things as “our” this or that (me and my sister) that it feels weird to say “my” anything.

The cat people wrote back that for me to travel with just one of them, that person accompanying Marvin while I escort Duckworth, is certainly possible.

This morning upon awakening I was contemplating the scenario wherein I decide Michigan life is not for me and that what I really, really want is to live in a world-class city with perfect year-round weather and to be a hospital chaplain. If I relinquished my claim to this rent-controlled apartment in which I have resided for 28 years for one second, I would never be a San Franciscan again, with new renters now paying astronomical prices. Briefly I tried to envision myself in Daly City instead? Or Stockton? 

I had ruled out maintaining two residences but now decided maybe it would be prudent to hang onto this apartment for a year, just in case. A friend had offered to drive cross country with me and my stuff. After deciding to keep paying rent here, I thought maybe I would take her up on that. Since I have two of everything at this point and am all set up to live in Ypsilanti, I could just box up my unread books and some clothes and kitchen stuff that would be nice to have, and go forth in a rental car with my friend. 

That would mean not having to move my stuff, which would be great. It would also mean that when I came back to visit, I would have a place to stay. Soon I had decided that, as long as I am going to have two residences, I may as well adjust the schedule so that I could work a shift at the hospital now and then. This meant that I would not after all resign from my job. I was planning to do that this coming week, to free it up for someone else.

In fact, I could be in San Francisco the majority of the time or nearly all the time; I could be here for three months and then go there for two weeks. That would mean not having to move the cats, not having to get Michigan ID, not having to find Michigan health insurance, and not having to find a doctor, chiropractor, facial person or barber there.

I could work one day a week nearly all the time, which would offset the cost of maintaining two residences. I have consciously been trying to figure out for months how I could have everything and give up nothing, and honestly, it felt this morning like I had succeeded, and I still feel that way.

With all of that decided, I set off to take Tom to lunch at Orphan Andy’s to celebrate his retirement; his last day of work was yesterday. It was a lovely day and everything seemed utterly delightful and pleasing, with the sun shining down and people wearing amazing, fabulous outfits. On a roll with making excellent decisions, I further decided that it will suffice to avoid gluten when I’m at home and that it will be fine to have what I want when eating out, so I had a grilled turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese and bacon, onion rings, and a side of what must have been half a cup of butter; this I troweled onto the top of my sandwich.

I virtually never see anyone I think is cute in the romantic sense, but there is a server at Orphan Andy’s I do think is cute in that way, and he was our server today. I tipped him $30 on a $47 bill, but left before he noticed; it was nice to think of him being surprised and happy when he saw that.

This afternoon was for ironing and various details pertaining to trip planned for Monday.

If I’m not moving the cats, then I also don’t have to do all that stuff to the house to get it ready for Marvin. My to-do list is melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, but I had scheduled a lot of appointments with general contractors and handypersons and plumbers, and plan to keep all of those appointments. It can’t hurt to learn what they can do and what it would cost, and of course, I might change my mind again and decide just to be there all of the time. Making decisions is fun! 

I Might Be Moving?

I went to bed at around 5 a.m. instead of the planned midnight. The reasonable thing to do in that case is to sleep all day, but the cats need their Prozac by noon or so, so I reframed it as being a nice six-hour nap instead of a night of sleep.

I felt horrendous when I got up, and so reminded myself that this is not a good day to decide anything and that I should take it easy and focus on the absolute essentials, including dropping off an Amazon return, because I plan to fly to Ypsilanti on Monday and have much to do before that. I also sternly instructed myself not to spend all day texting people about my every fleeting thought and most definitely not to sit in front of the computer doing things that don’t need to be done today.

I had told my sister that the cat transport people were no longer speaking to me. She said to give them a chance to process and maybe they’d respond. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t, because we had been going back and forth pretty steadily, and then nothing, but my sister, as always, proved to be correct: This morning I received a genuinely reassuring email laying out in detail how they would proceed if Marvin threatened to escape his temporary lodgings, and so then I had to hop on the computer, after all, to correct the record. I was wrong to think ill of them.

However, that really is a big expense for a person who is retiring who didn’t make that much money to begin with, so in my email thanking the husband profusely for setting my mind at ease, I put forth the idea that I could travel with just one of them, that person escorting Marvin (in part because he is one pound heavier) and I Duckworth. I’m sure they will be amenable to that.

It was also essential to text my cat friend to ask for a pep talk on flying with Marvin, which I did before seeing the email from the professionals, because I must be driving our realtor crazy, though maybe she is very used to this exact kind of thing. 

Since I did happen to be sitting at my desk, I decided to give my former employer a call to see if I need to link to an external bank in advance of making a modest withdrawal from my 401(k), in the event that I did decide to buy the house. This caused me to identify yet another annoying aspect of having to talk to a machine about every dad-blasted thing these days. I’m so glad this whole A.I. thing will be over in a week or two, because I’m already sick of it.

Besides it never understanding anything I say (“I’m sorry; I could not understand”) and offering one ridiculous idea after the next, it is annoying having to listen to long-winded recorded instructions: “If you’re ready to proceed, enter the six-digit number we sent to your phone number with last four digits such-and-such.” Right after the word “number,” that is my precious seconds going right down the drain. It is certainly possible to speak over the thing, but it is not then a serene exchange, and it sometimes gets what you interrupted it to say and sometimes not.

The New York Times on my phone is doing a very weird thing where it continually flips back to June 26. If you want to know what happened that day, let me know. Yesterday, it began to do this every several seconds. I called them. I will let you imagine the conversation I had with the A.I. about this. I am going to have to live with it. Here is the kicker: Soon it will not be any better to discuss the matter with an actual human being because they will not have learned anything about the topic in the first place or will have forgotten it, so if the A.I. cannot fix it, it cannot be fixed, and my experience is that it does an astonishingly poor job with just about everything. Really, we are doomed, just to mention it. 

I cannot afford to have an A.I. raising my blood pressure, either, because the higher number was 25 somethings higher than usual yesterday. Twenty-five units? Slices? Heaps? Whatever they’re called, there were 25 more of them than usual. I checked my records and saw that it had been 13 years since I had an upper number that high. Objectively speaking, it was just four inches (?) over normal, but my blood pressure as a rule is very low. However, I think I have this figured out already. I think it’s the tablespoon of tamari I put in my garlic-permeated dinners. This I can adjust.

So, anyway, the 401(k) person said I did need to establish the link to the external bank before making a withdrawal. I was only calling to get the answer to that question, but once I found out that I did need to do that and that it could take up to 15 days, I sprang into action, since there could also be a wait associated with the withdrawal itself. It turned out my account was locked due to fraudulent activity five years ago, but that was easily and quickly straightened out. 

I initiated the link to the other bank which was established immediately, so it certainly seemed to make sense to go right ahead with the withdrawal. I am now all about my taxes, and was delighted to hear that the withdrawal would be subject to withholding, with mandatory percentages for federal and state that I could choose to make higher.

At this point, it started to seem like I might be moving to Ypsilanti again, but I think I should still give it a bit of time before asking our realtor to restart the process. But then, is it fair to leave the poor woman to stew about this all weekend? 

This can’t possibly be the way to end up retired and living 2500 miles away, all these random little things leading to other little random things, or is this the only way anything at all ever happens?

It is also essential, on this day of great haggardness, to mention what remarkable and precious friends and family members I have. I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone (outside my own family) to say, “I always knew you were a self-pitying jerk—glad you’re finally seeing it,” but I was nonetheless very touched by Lisa Morin Carcia’s kind comment here.

When my father fell ill, I made the acquaintance of a high school classmate of his, a devout Catholic who has become a wonderful friend. After I told her that I couldn’t move to Michigan because there was no possible way whatsoever to get Marvin there, she emailed: “It is difficult to assess if this is an omen, a road block, or just a hurdle.” Very nicely put indeed. That is the whole trouble, to be sure.

She had some ideas about cat transport, and she said that while she was not equipped to assess the emotional aspects, the economics of getting into real estate are highly favorable: "If there be any virtue, or if there be any praise, think on these things". (Phil 4:8) 

I Might Be Moving!

Before I forget, a hard-sided carrier for air travel has to be even smaller than a soft-sided carrier; the latter mashes down but the hard one doesn’t, so it has to be 17” x 12” x 8”.

I am getting a fine tour of some of my very worst qualities; at least, according to my own understanding. My relatives can probably tell you others. I once came upon a note I had written a friend when I was five or six years old which announced that I might be moving! I was not moving. I just wanted someone to care and preferably to be distraught that I might be moving.

Odd that that was also about moving. I am now watching myself firmly seize the victim role, insist on being easily and immediately defeated, think well within the confines of a tiny box, be relentlessly negative and hopeless, be a drama queen (hoping and pining for attention), and finally, if necessary, just a little bit disingenuous if that is what is needed to convince someone of whatever I’m trying to convince them of; my mother once observed that I could be equally persuasive on either side of a topic. (She said I would have made a good lawyer.)

Oh, and self-pitying.

In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I emailed my realtor and told her I would not be moving to Ypsilanti after all, because I had realized I cannot move Marvin. She asked if I had spoken with a mutual friend who is a cat expert. It had crossed my mind, but her notifications were off last night, so I hadn’t, and I still haven’t, because it was a busy day and now it’s the middle of the night.

I woke up this morning to yet another gorgeous sunny day, while the lead story in The New York Times was about the thick Canadian wildfire smoke blanketing the upper Midwest. The photos included one taken in Ann Arbor.

In my kitchen, a clear, fresh breeze was blowing in from the Pacific. I pictured myself just staying here, enjoying that breeze, which is very frequent, and the year-round perfect weather; I could work just one day a week and, by starting to use the money I have saved up, not have to scrimp.

I can stand the neighbor who does this and the neighbor who does that. It would be a very agreeable life.

I began to tell other people I would not be moving after all. While there is no doubt that this is a nice place, that it would be cheaper in the short term to stay here, and that doing so is a perfectly plausible plan, I wanted someone to talk me out of it, to come to my rescue and restore my faith in the thing that sounded equally reasonable and even wonderful just a couple of days ago.

And people did try to do exactly that. Someone even offered to help me financially, even to co-sign a loan. No, no, no, I explained left and right, in a very persuasive manner: I can’t get a loan for this reason. I can’t do that for some other reason. I can’t do the other thing because I just can’t. 

Another aspect of this is that if someone offers support with something, my interpretation is that they think I should do that thing, and that I will be letting them down if I don’t do it.

Soon my other sister said she could see I’d made up my mind. I agreed I had, though I really hadn’t. (In other words, I lied to my sister; I suspect I told ten such lies today.) She said she was bummed out and that she had already picked out the housewarming gift she was going to send me. I told her that was very kind of her, and then I wept.

It’s a little bit murky, because when I say, “My life in San Francisco is great! I’ve decided to stay here,” it’s perfectly true and also absolutely false, a ploy to get my well-meaning friend or relative to feel sorry for me because I am being prevented from moving to Michigan by forces well, well beyond my control.

It has certainly become obvious that any given thought has rather little to do with what ends up happening. It is almost entertaining to watch the mental pronouncements flit past and to realize how insubstantial each is. And yet, of course it is a thought that inspires someone to do a magnificent thing or a dreadful one, so they are at once like a fleeting wisp of smoke and frighteningly powerful.

In the afternoon, I went to see my doctor at Kaiser, partly about a manifestation on my ankle but mainly about vestibular symptoms: dizziness, brain fog, vertigo, the floor tilting, nausea. I asked if she could refer me for vestibular testing, but she said that is “nonexistent” at Kaiser, and explained that they care for a lot of people, so they can’t offer everyone every little thing. Nothing against her; Kaiser always takes that tone.

Since my deductible is so high, this was only the second time I’d seen her in two and a half years. I message her now and then about some symptom, and she tells me what to do and then I don’t do it, or she tells me to come in, and then I don’t (because of the high deductible), so I took the opportunity today to apologize for being her worst patient, but she claimed I’m not and was very nice about it. I know from working in hospitals that it does not take much at all for a doctor to label a patient “noncompliant.” Like if a patient asks if they can take a medication after lunch rather than before, the doctor runs to the nearest computer and enters in the patient’s chart that they are “noncompliant with meds.”

My doctor said that calcium and magnesium can cause vestibular symptoms. (As can the lack of these, according to the internet.) I said I’ve been taking calcium and magnesium for forty years, but she said our ability to process and metabolize things can change, so she said to try discontinuing all supplements for two weeks and if the symptoms haven’t cleared up, she will order a brain scan. Besides the symptoms listed above, there is often a weird feeling behind my right eye; that’s probably where the brain tumor is. (However, that eye sees considerably less well than the other one, so maybe it’s something to do with that.)

I got a vaccine I was due for and went to have blood drawn. I was shocked when I got home and saw how soaked with blood the gauze was, maybe due to regular consumption of garlic.

After dinner, I walked over to Valencia Street for a knife sharpening class using Japanese whetstones. I brought along my honing steel to see if it has a continued place in my kitchen and was assured that it does, and that it is of good quality. The class was very interesting. There were five students. Afterward, I decided just to drop my knives off at that same place for sharpening, even though the last time I did that, about a quarter-inch of metal was removed from a knife with great sentimental value to me. 

Doing it myself, as per the class, would require a fairly large metal bin to soak whetstones in, at least two whetstones, a clamp to hold the whetstone, a leather strop, a diamond flattening stone for maintaining the whetstones, and some compound to put on the leather strop, at the least. I don’t have space for all that, and it’s not like I’m going to spend a lot of time doing this. Though, hmm, I can think of a place where I do have space for all that.

When I got home, it was a bit before 9 p.m. and my plan was to do my evening exercises, perform my ablutions, and meditate, allowing an hour for each and then bedtime at midnight. It is now nearly 4:00 a.m. and I have done few of those things. Instead I found myself online reading about cat carriers, cat harnesses, how to use Excel to figure out how long your money will last if you get this much interest and withdraw this amount each month, what whetstones to buy if you’re only going to buy two, how to figure out what number less twenty-five percent is another number of pressing interest, and so forth.

Another thing I was reflecting on earlier today, along with noticing various thoughts passing by, was that I don’t have to recommence struggling with whether to move or not: It is going to happen the way it’s going to happen.

One thing I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do is pay $8000 for professional cat transport. I had a long email exchange with the professional cat mover fellow, who kept telling me not to worry about Marvin getting out of his carrier on the plane. He said this has never happened (which tells me they don’t exactly have a protocol for it), and he kept saying, almost in these words, “Trust us! We’re professionals.” As soon as I hear someone say that, my trust in them immediately plummets by twenty-five percent and I have heard that approximately six times from the same person in the past couple of days, so we are now in the red as far as trust. 

He assured me that they travel with zip ties! I asked how they fix shredded mesh with zip ties and that was the end of the conversation.

I almost felt a little sorry for him; he clearly did not know what to do other than to doggedly repeat his talking points. I liked him when we met.

In sum: If they can move a cat, I can move a cat. Or, at any rate, I can make a list of teeny-tiny steps and start doing them.

I was thinking I was going to have to liquidate twice as much money as my financial advisor said would be perfectly fine, but it’s really not twice as much, and now it’s $8000 less. 

As for sharpening my own knives, I also rethought that and ordered two whetstones, a diamond sharpening stone, a leather strop and some compound to put on the leather strop. These stones don’t have to be soaked. You can just splash water on them. I didn’t invest in a clamp to hold the stone because at least one reviewer said the plastic holder the stone comes in is working just fine for him. I just spent probably ten times as much on knife sharpening equipment as I would have spent in the entire rest of my life to have someone else sharpen my knives, since that occurs only about every 20 years.

I saw that my favorite dental floss, Dr. Tung’s, also comes in mint! I ordered several packets of that, and yes, I ordered a cat carrier, after extensive research. Certainly not the one the professional cat transport people use. The carrier I ordered did not have one single review saying the reviewer’s cat had been able to escape from it, whereas every single other cat carrier I looked at did have at least one review like that.

I almost emailed my realtor to say we can go ahead with closing on the house on the day I picked, after all, but decided I’d better proceed with caution there.