Underdo

And indo. Underdo is the opposite of overdo, and I think makes another fine mantra, along with “It’s only money.” And indo is the opposite of outdo, though that implies some sort of competition with someone else, which is not my problem. My problem is my own time management practices and OCD / addictive / perfectionist tendencies: Just that other strand of ivy! Just that other weed! Just 15 more minutes on the phone with my friend! Ten unexpected free minutes? That means I can do this and this and this!

I did order a fleece-lined flannel shirt last Thursday evening, from Ireland, and was astounded when it arrived today. It is a really nice shirt: of substantial weight, handsome looking, and very soft and warm (LeeValleyIreland dot com). Hmm, I wonder if there could ever be a situation where I’m wearing my one fleece-lined flannel shirt and accidentally dribble an entire tablespoon of olive oil down the front, so then I put on my other fleece-lined flannel shirt and dribble an entire table spoon of olive oil down the front of that shirt.

I told our realtor that I had not heard from the surveyor she recommended. She said she had never heard of him not returning someone’s call and said she would try to reach him today. I got a call from him this morning. He said he would send a proposal. I was wondering how, if the surveyor just puts pins at the corners, someone installing a fence would be able to follow the line from pin to pin. I started to compile a list of questions to ask the surveyor, but when his proposal arrived today, it answered all of them. Before I looked at it, I said to myself that as long as it wasn’t more than a certain amount of money, I was going to accept it, and it wasn’t more than that.

For the price, they said they will accurately determine the boundaries, set pins of such-and-such description at the corners, locate any encroachments, set additional stakes between the corners to clearly mark the lot lines, prepare a certified drawing, and give me CAD and PDF files. This sounds excellent. I wrote back that we should go ahead and schedule.

I have been stewing over where to put what pieces of furniture, both those left behind by our parents and the few things I will bring from San Francisco, and had felt kind of overwhelmed by the task, interior design not being one of my talents. But the invisible hand must have been working in the background, because yesterday evening it suddenly all became clear what should go where.

In San Francisco, I used to have an enormous salad for breakfast and something smaller for dinner. My breakfast routine could take three hours or more; it was often 3 p.m. by the time I was finished. Somehow it became reversed here, in part because I didn’t like the idea of the day not really starting until 3 p.m., with gardening to do and walks to take. I lately concluded I was going to have to ratchet my whole schedule to be earlier, by force if necessary, and I think this is going to work out. I never thought it was a good idea to eat such a substantial meal in the evening, per the adage, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”

In part I was having a quicker breakfast here because I like to have that meal on the deck if weather permits, and I didn’t necessarily want to sit out there for an hour or more during the actual eating part. My plan now is to have breakfast indoors, probably, but then allow some time for sitting on the deck reading afterward. (Yay, retirement!) (Being a hospital chaplain seems like something that happened long, long ago.)

Today Digby the tree guy came with his crew to scour the property for buckthorn, which is an invasive species, and remove same. I heard one of the crew members exclaiming over something: In an impenetrable area of underbrush and trees, he had discovered what he said was the largest lilac he ever saw. It is ancient, but not dead. I had no idea it was there.

I also spotted today what I’m pretty sure is a skein of poison ivy (leaves of three: let it be) going up a hawthorn in the front yard, thanks to my walk with my friend a couple of weeks ago. She showed me how to identify it: two mittens and a glove. I will look up how to safely remove it.

There was a vague thought that had come to me about retiring in San Francisco, some way it would be undesirable, and it has finally come explicitly into focus. It is that retiring there would mean for the most part being either inside my living space or in an urban environment, whereas being retired here means being inside my living space or truly outdoors, not in a vast wilderness, but in actual green nature.

I am now satisfied that I have made the right decision, and hope to clear out my apartment during my upcoming trip to San Francisco. Every single day, the yard here is different. There was much more orange to be seen today near the ground than even yesterday. Of course, today the yard also looked radically different than it did yesterday due to all the buckthorn removal.

While I was visiting my plants this afternoon, I saw the other Digby in her yard and mentioned the dog poop to her. I had been worried she would say I have no way of knowing whose dog deposited it, but she didn’t do that at all. She apologized profusely, more than once, and said she is starting to think about a fence herself, though so far she is only thinking about the back edge of her lot, which will not do the trick, because her dog is no doubt going through the yard right next to hers. But good that it’s on her mind. I told her I am planning to have my lot surveyed, not just due to the question about the boundary between our yards, and I told her I am also thinking about a fence. She said her mother actually turned up with a fence, but she didn’t like how it looked. So, good: we’re on the right track here.

Sneaky Pete

The cat lock / screen porch / vestibule is nearly done. I am absolutely delighted with it. The first night it truly existed as a porch, someone brought a delivery and actually put it inside the porch! Swoon.

Our realtor had said that while we could get away with not painting the exterior of the house, we should paint the interior, and we should have the soffits (the boards covering the underside of the eaves) scraped and painted. My sister and I both felt we should do the same things for the house regardless of who bought it, so even though it is now known who ended up buying the house, I am going to go ahead with this work. I got a quote from the fellow who painted the interior of the house, but he thought that maybe there were some soffit boards that needed to be replaced, so we put the scraping and painting on hold until that could be determined.

The renovations people are going to assess the soffits and fascia (the little vertical boards that run along the edge of the eaves) and replace individual bad boards as needed. I contacted the painter to say that after this is done, he can paint, though I had sensed his heart might not entirely be in this. I mentioned that, and he allowed that he is recovering from a minor injury and doesn’t really want to go up and down a ladder a million times. (Who does?) I can understand that, so I said I’d find someone else to do the painting.

I had the name of a painter a friend was happy with and had them over yesterday to provide a quote, which was more than twice as much as the quote of the first painter, though it also included painting the exterior of the gutters. It did not include taking off the gutters and painting whatever lurks behind them.

However, the gutters have to be taken off to fix the fascia boards, so it struck me that it would be efficient to see if the renovations people can go ahead and do the scraping and painting while they have the gutters off for the repairs, and indeed they can, for more than three times the initial painting quote.

“It’s just money, it’s just money,” I say once again, smiling wanly to myself. My sister suggested that the second painters could run over and scrape and paint while the renovations people have the gutters off, but they are currently scheduling for March. (In the spring!)

Last month I spent about triple what I should be spending, but it’s only money (!) and much of that was one-time expenses having to do with moving into a new place or improving / taking care of the place. I came upon my father’s notes about buying this house and maintaining it. It will be interesting to see what he thought was necessary and what vendors he liked or didn’t.

I have learned very lately that, as soon as I start to feel chilly, it is important to react by changing clothes right away. Otherwise, the feeling is hard to eradicate and causes gloom to set in along with the physical discomfort. It’s also important to take a layer or two off my bottom half in order to upgrade to warmer items, or off my top half, but not both at once: too suddenly and awfully cold. It reminds me of when we were children and would be instructed by our mother in the winter not to open doors on both sides of the car at the same time, to keep the brutally sharp wind from blowing right through.

I have ordered some thick sweatpants and also a second fleece-lined flannel shirt. I have had one of the latter, the same one, for many years now. It is wonderfully warm. I am wearing it right this minute. (As a survivor of early stage breast cancer, I generally avoid polyester, but I really could not do without this shirt.) Along with the sweatpants, I ordered a second fleece-lined flannel shirt, because what if I’m wearing my one such item and then dribble an entire tablespoon of olive oil down the front?!? It has never happened in all these years, but it could! Anyway, I figure buying warm stuff is fair game for a person who has just moved from California to Michigan.

I also found some of my father’s notes on the family tree and see that my great-grandfather died in San Francisco, while his brother died in Sacramento. For some reason, my father’s father ended up in Baltimore, where my father was born, and then my father and his parents moved to Michigan, where my father’s mother had grown up and where several other members of that part of the family lived. I wonder how my grandfather came to meet his Michigan bride. Maybe it’s in my father’s notes. He and I were the only members of our immediate family who were interested in this kind of thing. (Weirdly, I found a photograph of those grandparents on the Flickr page of someone I never heard of, identified as being relatives of his.) (Oh! I wonder if that is the child of my cousin. I will inquire.)

I often have felt a bit downcast in the evening here. It seems dark and lonely and gloomy even inside. I thought maybe listening to the radio at night and hearing human voices would help, and maybe it will, but this hasn’t really taken so far.

However, I think I hit upon a simple solution this evening, which is to turn a lot of lights on. This had eluded me until now because I’m trying to be more mindful about economizing, and because my father was extremely careful not to waste money. He didn’t yell at us to turn off the lights when we walked out of a room (or about anything else), but it was clear that that was what a right-thinking person would do, and I can sort of hear him murmuring, “Turn off the lights,” when I exit a room.

It is indubitably wasteful to turn on unneeded lights and to leave them on in rooms that one is not in, but this is a question of mental health. I immediately felt better when I turned lights on in the four areas adjoining the kitchen, though there was also a little bit of melancholy due to one of those rooms being the one where my parents spent most of their time. Nice and bright, all right, but no father in his recliner and no Rachel Maddow on the TV. No TV, for that matter.

I went out to visit my new plants today before weekly grocery shopping, and was displeased to see a deposit of dog poop next to the house, clearly from Digby’s dog. No other neighbor’s dog comes into the yard, and this area is far from the sidewalk. I went back inside to get two plastic bags and picked up the poop. If I see Digby, I will mention it to her, and if I see poop here again before that happens, I will write her another letter. Kind of frustrating that she does not just put up a fence.

Last night I attended an online election training put on by Indivisible and the ACLU and plan to volunteer as a poll monitor. I had thought of being an election worker, but that is too big a commitment for right now, both in terms of the preparation beforehand and the all-day shift. I also signed up to go to an October 17 event here in Ypsilanti. 

One particular thing here is better than I expected: I thought I would miss the neighbors in my apartment building, just hearing their occasional sounds, and hearing the people playing soccer in Mission Playground outside, and seeing the people walking up and down the sidewalk, should I exit the building, but it is turning out that my neighbors here give an equally satisfying sense of nearby humanity. I do not hear them or see them as often, but, on the other hand, I know them better. I know them by name. I know them to speak to and have some sense of their lives: That one plays the trumpet. That one has back problems. That one just started kindergarten (and reports that kindergarten is great!).

Carol-Joy and I often play cards when we get together, an enjoyable pastime indeed. She and her sister devised a method of playing online, but when Carol-Joy and I tried it a few months ago, I found it awkward and not very enjoyable. Now that I am far away, though, I decided I had better give this another try, and it could not have gone more smoothly. This is marvelous! It was great to see Carol-Joy and to spend an hour playing cards and chatting a little. As she pointed out, this is something we can easily fit in pretty often, an hour here and an hour there. The game is called Sneaky Pete.

Is it Springtime Yet?

To make a long story short (translation: I can’t remember what happened when), all of the plants got planted (and the stump guy did come over and grind out a lot of stumps). I actually can’t remember what plant got planted first, which is rather amazing since this is the first thing I planted in more than 50 years, or maybe the first thing I planted in my entire life, and this momentous event occurred in just the past several days.

In sum: Two hydrangea trees (one in the sunny south yard, one in the back yard), two different kinds of flowering azaleas (one next to each of the hydrangea trees), two forsythias (one between my yard and Digby’s and one along the long fence that separates my yard from that of my plant-loving next-door neighbor), and four ilexes. Three of the four ilexes are near the deck. I periodically sat down on the deck where I often sit so that I could contemplate where it would be nice for my eye to fall upon an ilex (holly). Along the long fence, lo and behold I discovered a quite large holly that my father likely planted, so I put the final ilex nearby, so they can be friends. My father’s holly is the classic one a person might think of, with the slightly poky leaves and red berries, strongly associated with Christmas. My four new ilexes are called “soft touch.” They look different, but are equally comely.

I frequently nearly lose my balance in the back yard, including one sickening moment when my knee threatened to bend backward. My balance when riding a bicycle is impeccable, but navigating this sloping expanse which is also riddled with substantial and lumpy roots is challenging. (My sister says that eventually our mother could not walk in the back yard.) Maybe I will get to know certain paths through the yard over time, but for now, I am walking slowly and carefully, repeating to myself the mantra, “Feel with your foot.”

In the course of planting these things, I have learned a couple of lessons that I am sure I will never forget, since doing it wrong the first time around entailed a huge amount of extra time and effort. Regarding the forsythia between my place and Digby’s, I went out there and cleared the area I had in mind, pulling up ivy and other plants. I ended up with a lovely expanse of dirt maybe six feet square, picked out a spot in the center, started digging—and bumped into a huge tree root. I adjusted the spot and continued digging, soon to bump into yet another massive root, and then a third. I ended up edging closer to Digby’s yard than I had originally intended, though not too much closer, and the lesson I learned was that I should pick the exact spot where I want to plant something and just start digging. I can clear the surrounding vegetation later if the spot proves to be fine, or move elsewhere immediately if the spot isn’t suitable. As it is, I hope that forsythia will be able to send its roots over and under the tree roots.

A second much smaller lesson was that the mulch is supposed to extend out past the drip line of the plant (the drip line being the outermost point where water, such as rainwater, drips off the plant; I am having to look up many, many things).

One evening I got on a roll and planted four of the final five things (and only did not plant the fifth because it became truly dark; plus at 7:30 p.m., a lot of mosquitos arrived). The two hydrangea trees had the largest root balls and required the most effort. These four things were all small, but nonetheless I was exhausted and achey by the time I was done. Normally I do not have back problems, but now I have back problems. Ditto glute problems. Normally I do have shoulder problems, and at the moment, they are bad enough that the fingers on my right hand are tingling. My sister politely didn’t say anything, but I could see her registering that I drop a lot of things: BAM! “Oops!” BAM! “Oops!” This is my baseline of many years, but it might be even worse when my fingers are tingling. My hands are increasingly arthritic, also contributing to post-gardening pain.

I began to feel a bit disheartened about my plans to be a gardener. Maybe I just can’t. When my mother moved here, she was 67 and still gardening away. We have photographs of lovely things she created outside. Can it be that, at 64, my gardening days will be winding up soon? And if I’m not going to garden, what’s the point of being here rather than in San Francisco? I think this is not an all or nothing thing. I don’t think the message is that I ought not to garden. I think it is that I need to not overdo, and if I can do only a little, then that’s fine. I was thinking maybe an hour of gardening on yard work days should be the limit, but realized there is no need to make a rule, as tempting as it always is to make a rule. The need is to be aware of how I’m feeling and respond appropriately.

I did some raking yesterday: not fun for a perfectionist. I immediately integrated another lesson: Heed the wind direction. I came upon a nice idea online about raking being a conversation with one’s lawn, in part because excessive tearing at the grass with one’s rake can harm it. Instead, notice if it looks like the lawn is fine with the leaves or if it might be happier if some / most of them were removed. You do want to get the leaves off the lawn before they get covered with snow. A sodden mass of leaves on the lawn can kill patches of it by spring. (This I learned a year or two ago.)

Spring! Is it here yet? I feel uncomfortably cold a lot in the past few days. The heat is set to 70 degrees. I believe it is impossible literally to freeze to death in a place where it is 70 degrees, but I feel a chill I cannot banish with current garments (except for those moments when I suddenly feel like I’m boiling to death). I think I need sweatpants.

I also need yoga. I was looking around online and saw that there is a weekly class at the Ann Arbor Senior Center, which is part of the parks and recreation department. They have bridge lessons there! They play Scrabble; the description mentioned “riotous conversation.” I am totally going to the senior center for riotous conversation and to check out the yoga class. I love the idea of playing bridge with other old ladies, but I have the vague idea that riotous conversation might not be welcome during bridge. My grandmother played bridge. I believe it was the foundation of her impressive social life, but I don’t think the socializing was mainly at the card table.

Oddly, neither of the two surveyors I contacted ever called me back, but the internet said you don’t really need to pay for professional surveying unless there is a dispute that needs resolving, which there is not, though I feel a little anxious about the row of forsythias between my yard and that of my plant-loving next-door neighbor. Does he know where the lot line is? Does he understand that those plants are almost entirely in my yard? (My father would have been extremely careful to plant them so that not more than the tips of branches would intrude into the neighbor’s yard.) 

I see my neighbor has been doing some pruning on his side. However, I think that kind of tidying up is reasonable and also, those plants are very wide. I don’t think he is ambitious enough to prune so much that I would perceive any diminution from my side. I noticed an interloping plant in the forsythia right near the sidewalk, probably technically in my neighbor’s yard, but I saw his car was not in his driveway, so I went and got the snippers and clipped it near the ground.

A while back, I met with someone from the renovations place to discuss building a “cat lock” (so called by my sister) or a “screen porch” (so called by myself) or a “vestibule” (so called by the renovations place) outside the front door. This extremely friendly and personable young man said I would have two handymen on the premises for two days to build the screen porch, replace a storm door, replace the door to the hallway with one with glass panes in it, and install new closet doors in my mother’s bedroom, a new door to the TV room, and a door for the laundry room in the basement. Later I asked if a second storm door could also be replaced.

The work was due to begin last Friday, but got pushed to Monday, which was fine. Last Wednesday, I received a scope of work document that needed some corrections. I was unable to connect with anyone about that last week, so when Monday rolled around, the document was still in a pending status. In addition, several inquiries on my part about the stain to be used on two doors had never received any response, so I had no idea if we had all the right stuff coming and if we were all on the same page or what. Not my favorite feeling.

I called on Monday morning about the stain and the scope of work document. My project manager was out of the office, but they said they would send another project manager over to do a walkthrough with the person who would actually be doing the work. The two handymen had ended up being one handyman, and on Monday, that one handyman said he is juggling ten projects (which made me a little nervous about accurate counting of the time I’m paying for, but I decided not to obsess about it). That one handyman also seemed to be quite unaware of what work needed to be done and what knobs and so forth had been chosen, so the extra walkthrough was very helpful. The project manager who came on Monday was the same person who came over in the first place. I like him very much indeed.

No materials whatsoever were on hand on Monday except for things I’d obtained myself, so after the walkthrough, the carpenter (I think he might mainly be a carpenter) went away to do who knows what, and came back later to spend a couple of hours installing anti-Marvin latches here and there. He put a very sturdy latch on a bathroom cabinet door that proved to be no match for Marvin whatsoever. Fortunately, he had something on his truck that will absolutely keep Marvin from getting into that cabinet, from which he can get into the plumbing and underneath the tub through one of those holes I have so many of. I thought Duckworth spent that whole day hiding under the couch, but then he emerged from underneath the tub, covered with dust.

The carpenter reeked of aftershave to the point that I felt nauseous by the end of the day. I debated whether I should say something or not (“Don’t hassle the fellow” versus “This is your house; you are paying for this work and you have every right to express this”) and finally did say, in as mild a manner as possible, that I am very sensitive to scents, so it would be good if he could go easy on the aftershave. He said he does not wear aftershave at all, but maybe it was his deodorant, which is something-lavender scent. I’m sure that is it. I said I would actually prefer the smell of sweat, though maybe his other clients don’t feel the same way.

As it turned out, he worked outside on Tuesday and also today, but even when I was near him outside, I did not get the slightest whiff of that stuff, so maybe he skipped using it. He is being careful about the cats when he goes in and out. I was stuck inside all day Monday and Tuesday, worried about the cats, but was able to go for a short walk on Tuesday after the carpenter left for the day, which seemed like a huge and wonderful luxury, and then today I went out back while he was here and fiddled with my mulch and ivy. It was a lovely day today.

Yesterday materials for the screen porch were due to be delivered between 6 and 10 a.m. I didn’t see any sign of anything arriving, but it’s because what was supposed to be a big pile of stuff was just four two-by-fours, placed right alongside the house, a comical sight when the carpenter showed it to me: that’s it? However, he could use those for framing the screen porch, so he started doing that. Various questions and problems arose regarding fixtures, but I had assumed there would be endless complications with every aspect of this, and so was not perturbed; the carpenter worked through each issue methodically. He is a lovely man, very calm.

Yesterday afternoon some absolutely dreadful-looking engineered wood arrived, meant for the screen porch. This stuff was really ugly; plus I have said about ten times that I don’t want engineered wood. Fortunately, it also struck the carpenter as beyond the pale, and he hopped in his truck to go find something else. What he came back with was exactly what I’d had in mind all along. Thank goodness he is the one doing the work. He made good progress yesterday and today. I am extremely pleased with how it looks so far. He is doing a wonderful job. (Plus, my sister said more than once that I was going to have to aggressively prune an evergreen just outside the new porch, but I can see that I will not have to touch it at all.)

The various doors that were ordered two weeks ago have disappeared, electronically speaking. They were supposedly pre-hung doors, but all magically transformed back into slabs somewhere along the way (a slab being just the door itself without the frame or hinges) and anyway are absent without official leave, so once the porch is done, we’ll have to wait for the doors to turn up.  

Wonderland

The way I now think about this is that it’s as if someone handed me the keys to a fairyland: a huge space where I can stretch out, a lovely yard, a deck to breakfast on, even a car, but with the one little catch that this fairyland is located in Ypsilanti, MI. Or maybe there was a sail that caught a little puff of wind which kept it open enough that it caught another little puff of wind, and then finally the sail filled with wind and blew me all the way across the country. (My sister alone put quite a few puffs of wind in that sail.)

And of course I think of Brad Pitt. I once read that he refuses to go backward no matter what. For instance, if he leaves the house and realizes he doesn’t have his keys, he doesn’t return to get them (supposedly). (I’ll bet he goes back if he discovers he forgot his phone.) Having literally and massively expanded my space and that of Duckworth and Marvin, following in the footsteps of Brad Pitt, I shall not re-contract.

Therefore I may as well and shall cause my belongings to join me in Michigan. I have contacted a nationwide moving company to begin the process of getting quotes.

Yesterday, with my sister’s help, I dropped the car off at AAMCO for its yearly check, which costs way, way less than taking it to the dealership. After retrieving the car, I went to Walgreens, Sherwin-Williams, the bank, two grocery stores and two hardware stores, and then I washed and chopped vegetables for the week and had dinner.

It was a beautiful day today. My sister came over to help in the yard. I suited up in my overalls; I love having all these pockets. These haven’t seemed as comfortable as the ones I wore in a certain longish era of my childhood, but they aren’t very well broken in yet. I also realized part of the reason something did not seem quite right was that the crotch of them was several inches south of the crotch of me. They felt better once I hiked them up. Unfortunately, I had them hemmed prior to this realization, so they are definitely high waters, but that beats having them puddle around my ankles. I might end up wearing overalls all the time once again. I might even jauntily let the straps dangle around my shins from time to time.

I decided I would like to plant the new plants myself, if possible: two hydrangea trees, two different azaleas, four ilexes, and two forsythias. If the garden guy planted them and they failed, I might always wonder if things would have gone better if I’d planted them myself, and of course if they do well, it will be very satisfying to know I planted them. I allocated four hours this afternoon, with the hope that maybe I’d get them all planted. 

My sister and I headed out to the south yard. My plant-loving next-door neighbor and his teenaged son were hacking away at some plants in their yard, trying to let in more light before winter comes, he said. (Winter! What a thrilling idea!) We all greeted each other. My neighbor said he loves the color I painted the deck; he said it’s his favorite color. Later I saw some substantial branches lying on the ground definitely on my property; they could well have come from a plant of mine, but whatever. There were moments when I was hacking away in that same area weeks ago and suddenly realized my nose was three inches from the side of his house. I don’t really care what happens in that area.

Today I began by clearing various things out of the way where I’d like to plant one of the hydrangeas, in a flower bed of our mother’s. My sister kindly cut yard waste into shorter pieces and put it in lawn and leaf bags. I told her to let me know if she’d like to swap tasks; I didn’t want to hog all the fun, but she said she is comfortable in an assistant role. I dug, and dug, and dug … surely this hole must be deep enough? My sister said she thought another six inches should do it. 

In sum, not one single plant got planted today, but that’s partly because of my meandering yardwork style. All kinds of other stuff got done: I watered all the unplanted plants, dug up thistles, pulled up a lot of some other big weeds that are extremely easy to pull out, cut off things that seemed too low overhead or too close to the eyes, pulled up English ivy, pruned the lilac a bit to make way for my forsythias, made a huge pile of buckthorn, clipped a lot of some kind of berry whose stems are covered with thorns, and took out a second compost area under which was some really fantastic soil. (The first compost area is right off the deck. That is where I put my compost.)

Where I would like to plant the other hydrangea, in a wood-enclosed bed in the back yard, there are some stumps I can’t get out. I had agreed with the stump guy to wait to tackle stumps until the silver maple is taken out, but I really need these smaller ones out of the way, so I texted him to see if he could do an earlier first pass, and he said he’ll be over tomorrow.

At one point, I clipped some of that thorny berry and suddenly found I was looking at about 200 flying insects, some smaller and some larger, presumably the adults. They were clearly reacting to having their nest disturbed but they were not remotely aggressive or in any way frightening. I didn’t recognize them. They kind of looked like flying ants.

My sister told me that there are some invasive species, such as buckthorn, that you can’t put out with the yard waste. This I had no idea of. You can put them in your regular trash, it appears; we agreed it would be good to label the bags inside the trash bin, just in case. I ended up with a massive pile of buckthorn. If I have to put it in the trash, it will be weeks before it’s all gone, but maybe I can ask the yard guy to take it away.

For several days, I had conversations with Digby and her mother in my mind wherein I said a lot of insulting things. Yesterday I finally reached the point where I could just note this as “imaginary.” I also felt sorry that I had lost my temper if only in the more intrapersonal sense; there should have been some way I could have self-supervised to avoid that. I finally had the mental wherewithal to begin to remind myself that Digby and her mother are not bad people, no more than I am. All three of us have our lovely qualities and our moments that don’t go so well. Not by this morning, but by this afternoon, I could picture myself apologizing for my part in that interaction.

I avoided the area between our yards for most of the day, but by late afternoon, after my sister had departed, I edged over there and did a little weeding and pruning. I could hear that someone was in the yard, but kept my gaze studiously averted. However, I could feel that there didn’t seem to be a bad vibe emanating from that direction. (If nothing else, 44 years in Northern California gives you the ability to accurately assess a vibe.) Finally, someone strode toward me: Digby. I called a greeting to her, and I said, “I’m sorry for all the tension the other day.” She came up to me smiling warmly, holding something in her hand. (No, not a gun.)

I added, “I’m sorry I got off on such a bad foot with your mother. I look forward to getting to know her in other contexts.”

Digby said, “She’ll probably be by from time to time. We went apple picking today.” Here she reached out to hand me the container she was carrying: Homemade applesauce, still warm! So sweet of them!

We discussed my yard a little. I pointed out my hydrangea tree; she admired it. I said that something or other in my yard doesn’t look very good and she encouragingly said, “Now!”, meaning that it will look good later. I said her yard looks wonderful; she said she cannot take any credit for that. Indeed, the prior owner took really excellent care of that yard. It is a showplace. Yay! Neighborly relations restored. I’m very glad.

My plant-loving next-door neighbor and his son had knocked off work a while earlier; at some point they started up again, with the sounds so audible that I did actually feel a little uneasy and suddenly had a better understanding of how he felt the day I pruned the forsythias that separate our yards: Are their faces about to appear in my yard? 

Today the yard looked so beautiful to me, whereas the same yard seemed depressingly overgrown a week ago. I guess it’s like body image, where one day it’s, “Yeah, looking good!” and then two days later I look decrepit and pocked.

After I chose the title of this post, I remembered that that word is literally on many a Michigan license plate: Water winter wonderland. 

Lynwood Gold

Two days ago, I went over to the Michigan Secretary of State to apply for my Michigan driver’s license and REAL ID. As always, things went extremely smoothly there. I arrived early; when I left afterward, it had just reached my original appointment time. It was a bit painful to have my California driver’s license canceled, though fortunately they did not physically seize that now very prized item. The photo for my new ID is great, in my opinion, which lessened the sting a bit.

With time to spare, I went over to Home Depot to buy a couple of limelight hydrangea trees, but, while you can order a plant on their website for delivery, they don’t deliver plants from the store. I didn’t have any way to get these tall items home, so I ordered them online later (not from Home Depot; they didn’t have them online).

I have not yet heard back from the surveyor and that day was mulling over what to do about Digby and her assertive parent; not about them as such, but about reducing my future interactions with and view of them, as well as their view of me. There are four lots that touch mine (plus one where it is just a teensy point that reaches the perimeter of my yard). In the winter there is little privacy, with most of the greenery gone. The yards of all neighbors can be seen during that part of the year. In the summer, three of the four lots are well obscured from view, but one can still clearly be seen through a large gap where there is nothing planted, which of course is Digby’s.

I discussed with my sister whether to put a fence there, or to go ahead with planting my four little ilexes, which are evergreens and thus will not lose their leaves in the winter. They would probably take a long time to fill in the gap through which I see Digby’s perfect lawn and tasteful accoutrements, but if they ever got that big, they would also protect privacy during the winter. I know they do well here because there is an enormous thriving holly at the north end of the house.

My sister asked what kind of fence I had in mind. I said I was thinking of an ugly cinder block wall, and that I was planning to have painted on Digby’s side of it YOU AND YOUR MOTHER ARE BIG TURDS. (Making myself laugh here.)

Actually, what I had in mind was something made of wood, with slats two or three inches wide, with the slats being vertical or maybe diagonal, with a little bit of light between them, so that it would generally block the view but not have the feel of a brick wall.

We concluded that maybe the ilexes are not a practical solution; our thoughts turned to forsythias. I ended up ordering two two-gallon Lynwood Gold forsythias. These should grow quickly and are said to make fine hedges. There is a long row of forsythias between my place and that of my plant-loving next-door neighbor. My sister said our father planted these to block the view after a previous occupant of that house objected to the sight of our mother’s wood-bordered beds. My sister said the neighbor grumbled that our mother was turning our yard into a “junk heap.” I don’t know if she literally said that, and unclear why she voiced an opinion about something in someone else’s yard that was not at all close to her lot, but anyway, I am hopeful about the forsythias, though nervous about the actual planting, when it seems likely that Digby’s mother will storm up to ask me what I think I’m doing.

Tuesday evening, I went to my meditation group online.

When I turned off the light in the living room that night, I saw Marvin and Duckworth sweetly snuggled up together on the couch. At maybe 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning, I was awakened by a loud and bad cat sound. I got up immediately and found the cats in an angry standoff in the spare bedroom, with lots of hissing and growling. Fortunately, they were not actually physically engaged, though it was clear from the amount of fur on the floor that they had been.

One had the other cornered. I tossed a cork ball to slightly distract them, and then I threw a soft rectangular cat bed from the hallway over one cat. He emerged, but I put it over him again and held him underneath it, and we edged our way over to the corner. That cat was enraged, hissing and growling. I sat down next to him and held the cat bed over him. The other cat was still across the room. I couldn’t tell who was who. I spoke soothingly to the cats and did the breathing I learned from my yin yoga teacher in San Francisco. I said, “You’re all right.”

After a while, the cat I could see had clearly become calm; the one underneath the cat bed was still hissing regularly. I kept suggesting to the other cat that he go out of the room, but of course he didn’t move. I was stumped: If the cat under the cat bed was Marvin, no matter how upset he was, I knew he wouldn’t bite me, but if it was Duckworth, he would most definitely bite me, and I don’t have health insurance here.

If I’d had my phone within reach, I would actually have called my sister to ask her to come over and fetch the other cat, but I didn’t. Fortunately, it eventually became clear that the other cat was Duckworth, and he became so calm that he came right over and lay down against my leg. Marvin wasn’t making any obvious effort to get out from under the cat bed, so I quickly got up, picking Duckworth up, and left the room with him and put him in my bedroom. I separated the cats overnight.

It may have been just one of those things, exacerbated by the fact that they are still adjusting to a new place and new routines, or maybe the liquid Prozac I have been experimenting with for Marvin is not delivering a sufficient dose.

When I said I have not fallen whole-heartedly in love with these cats, I did not mean that I do not pick them up and pet them and tell them they are beautiful, remarkable cats. Of course I do that. That is part of the job. They are beautiful, remarkable cats.

Yesterday a plumber came to install the new faucets in the basement laundry room and the kitchen. The hole in the countertop in the laundry room was not big enough to accommodate the new faucet, so he enlarged that. He warned that it might damage the countertop. I said that was fine. Someone pointed out that the whole sink, counter and faucet appear to have been salvaged from a chemistry lab. That is very likely so.

I inadvertently managed to sign up for Medicaid here in Michigan. I zipped through the application process just meaning to get a sense of it, and therefore did not provide the information about the withdrawals I took from my 401(k), which I learned later should have disqualified me from getting Medicaid. What I was hoping for when I applied was a chance to say that I am moving from another state; this should qualify me for a special enrollment period. I never came upon any mention of that, but I did get a notice saying it appeared that I qualify for Medicaid, which I definitely do not want, as it comes with the requirement to work 20 hours a week starting next year. I got a stern notice saying I’d need to provide proof of my income in five days, but then next thing I knew, I got my Medicaid card in the mail; this might be the same card I will use for Obamacare if I ever succeed in getting that.

I figured I would be at loose ends while the plumber worked and that this would be a good time to try to straighten this out. I called the phone number on something I received in the mail and was advised that there were 27 callers ahead of me. It gave me the options of staying on the line or waiting for a call back. I always choose the former. However, my new phone offered to put the call on hold and let me know when to pick up. I have never tried that before, so I did that, only to be instructed to pick up the call just in time for the post-call survey.

I called back; now there were 43 callers ahead of me. I spent a good long while listening approximately every 60 seconds to an announcement that offered to save my place in line and call me back or, if I wanted to remain on the line, I should press 3. Fortunately, after I had pressed 3 eleven times, I finally heard the part of the announcement that says I can sign up to be an election worker! I’m definitely going to do that. That’s right up my alley: Greeting a lot of people and providing assistance.

Thanks to my friend Lisa and at least two Reddit users in Ann Arbor, I am faithfully walking outside each day. Prior to that, I was taking just a token walk out to the main drag and back, which takes only about ten minutes and is therefore pretty easy to skip. I like that part of the walk because I am going up and down my own block, so it is helpful in starting to get to know the neighbors and to keep an eye on their doings and gardens.

Someone at the State of Michigan finally answered yesterday and I explained my problem: I have wrongly qualified for Medicaid, which I do not want; this happened because I did not provide the information about my 401(k) withdrawals. She asked if the withdrawals were within the past month. Thinking quickly, I lied that they were. She said: That’s okay; we don’t take lump sums into account. She asked if I’m going to make such a withdrawal monthly. Thinking quickly, I lied that I do plan to do that.

She thought that over and told me not to worry: I qualify for a county Medicaid program, which does not have an assets test. (Really?!? A trillionaire can get free health care from Washtenaw County?) Here I threw myself on her mercy and said that I am old, though not yet 65, and that I have just retired and I do not want Medicaid because I don’t want to work 20 hours a week next year. Here she chuckled and asked gently if I would like her just to close my case. I said I would like that! Now completely stricken with guilt, I said I had to confess something. I told her I had lied to her: My 401(k) withdrawals were not in the past month; they were two months ago. There was a silence, and for a minute I thought she was going to say she was not going to close my case and that I’d better get up off my keister and get working, but then she asked me when I will turn 65. She thought for a moment and offered some ideas; she was not sure about the special enrollment period.

But duh! Open enrollment begins November 1, so that is the answer. She did close my case, she was chuckling and friendly when we hung up, I do have health insurance (albeit requiring a cross-country flight), and on November 1, I will apply for the Affordable Care Act in Michigan. Hopefully those 401(k) withdrawals will make me ineligible for Medicaid. I guess if worse comes to worst, I will end up with Medicaid, not fulfill the work requirement, and get thrown off Medicaid just in time for Medicare to start. Thank goodness; immediate problem solved and conscience reasonably clean. 

Today I got something in the mail saying to choose a doctor by such-and-such date or they will choose one for me. I can’t believe how quickly Michigan got all this going. (Remember this when it comes time to vote for Jocelyn Benson for President; she is currently the Secretary of State in Michigan.) (Totally great-looking person, too, for what it is worth.) Well, I have learned my lesson. I will not apply for anything from now on until I have all my ducks in a row and all the information at hand.

There are days where I wonder how anyone can stand to live here, strictly related to the weather. But other days I wonder how anyone can bear to live anywhere else. Today is one of those days, with the sky a deep, pure blue, and the puffy white clouds, and the fresh smell of a million green things, and all the little leaves fluttering in the breeze. Warm enough to walk in a t-shirt. I went over to the post office to put in a change of address request, and I have contacted a nationwide mover about bringing my stuff here. Clearly I am not going to schlep the cats back to a tiny apartment, and, while this is less clear, I can see it doesn’t make sense to maintain two households. My standard of living will shoot up as soon as I let go of that apartment. That is a tempting thought.

In the yard today I saw a tidy little hole in the lawn which must be the front or rear door of a chipmunk. There was an avocado pit right near it. The occupant must have somehow dragged it home from the compost area, and then reluctantly concluded that if he or she tried to bring it inside, there would be no further ingress or egress.

(Updated to fix name of forsythias.) 

What Giant Jerks!

Someone had to say it!

On another topic:

King!

Thank you very much for your sage counsel (see comment on previous post). I bumped into a parallel sentiment on the Ann Arbor Reddit: someone saying that they found they minded the cold in winter much less if they made sure to go outside every day; at least one person concurred. I will do it! That is a very good point about there being more light outside than inside even if it’s overcast.

Moving on to the events of today, I had previously mentioned the dog of my neighbor, Digby, making unwanted visits to my back yard. 

On August 11, I sent her this letter; which I include here as pertinent to what happened today; identifying details altered. (I had mentioned the problem to her verbally two or three times before sending the letter.)

Dear Digby,

I am writing to express my growing frustration with Sam’s continued unwanted visits to my back yard, which in Ypsilanti qualify her as a “nuisance animal.” (Legally speaking, a misdemeanor.)

Sam was on my property at least three times in a recent two-week period. The first time, she was evidently looking for the woodchuck. A week later, she was chasing a rabbit and most recently, she startled / frightened a workman. 

None of these is desirable, but the reason this has now become a matter of utmost importance to me is that my cats will soon be living here. For the most part the best of friends, if they become agitated, they can fight seriously enough to injure each other.

For that reason, it is essential that Sam not trespass onto my property after September 1, 2026.

I will leave it to you as to whether to install a physical fence, try an electronic fence or come up with some other solution, as long as it is 100 percent effective. If you decide to install a fence, please bear in mind that the lot line is at the utility pole and ensure that any fence doesn’t go beyond that point. ([The previous owner] placed a number of rocks on my property; I intend to remove them one of these days.)

This problem aside, I have enjoyed having you as a neighbor and of course hope that our relationship will on the whole be cordial and peaceful, and that we will easily resolve any issues that may arise.

Sincerely,
Bugwalk

I had arranged for junk haulers to come today to take various things away, including the aforementioned rocks. Two friendly fellows arrived to do this work; soon one of them was banging urgently on my deck door. When I went to the door, he said that my neighbor was out there.

I had not gotten any response from Digby to my letter (not that one was expected), no fence has been installed, and, while I have heard her dog barking, I haven’t seen it in my yard. Since I was not sure what her reaction to my letter had been, I was pleased to have the opportunity to interact and went out there in a welcoming mood.

I joined the two junk haulers and Digby where the two yards meet, and then someone else walked up, loudly saying, “Hello, Bugwalk!”

“Who are you?”, I asked.

This proved to be Digby’s mother, who has a commanding presence. She walked up (on my property) to about six inches from my eyeballs and we sized each other up. I’ll bet we were both thinking, “Huh—rather like me.” We’re about the same height, same build, same (White) coloring, and same assertive energy. Thank god I got my bald fade yesterday! A definite edge for me; her gray frizzy hair (not unlike my hair) was longer and pulled back.

I had always understood that the lot line is at the utility pole, but Digby and her mother understand it to be somewhere else (about a foot closer in my direction) and showed me the marker, which looked like a cut-off plumbing pipe sticking about five inches out of the ground. Cool! I never saw one before. And fine.

I said, “Okay. Where do you think the line for rock removal should be, then,” and we worked that out, per the lot marker. Initially Digby was indicating a line that kept swerving toward me, but we were able to agree quite quickly, and the junk haulers set to work.

Digby or her mother (who I think is visiting from another state, but I’m not sure about that) said they would actually like to retain those rocks that I was having removed from my yard. I said they were welcome to them. I said that I was paying to have them hauled away, but if Digby would like to make a contribution toward the cost, I would be happy to have them placed on her property instead. Nearly rolling her eyes at this preposterous suggestion, Digby said she would not be making a contribution. I said that was fine and told the junk haulers to continue with their work as previously described.

I went back inside only to be apprised that Digby’s mother kept returning to the area to say she wanted the rocks put in her daughter’s yard, though she was standing right there when Digby and I had the simple exchange about this.

I walked back over there with one of the junk haulers. En route, I mentioned my plans to plant some things there. Digby’s mother called over, “Bugwalk, what are you planning to do here?” Even though I know perfectly well and the four ilexes (holly plants) are wending their way to my address even as I write, I said that I’m still thinking it over: none of her business. (Digby was nowhere to be seen at this point and was not seen again.)

Here the details get a little hazy in my memory, but I think Digby’s mother again said she’d like the rocks to be dumped into her daughter’s yard (pushy!) and she also advised that I write Digby a note letting her know what I was going to do in the vicinity of the lot line. Here I lost my temper.

Basically yelling, I said that whatever I planted was going to be on my own property and that I had no intention of apprising Digby regarding same. I said that if I were ever to do anything that affected Digby, of course I would let her know. And, just to make sure we were all on the same page, I said very loudly, “I am angry!” (I have often gotten good results by saying this to whatever vendor. Not, “You are a big turd!” Not, “I am going to come over and kick a dent in your garage!” Just, “I am angry!”)

(By the way, the junk haulers were deeply admiring of this. One said later on that I had put Digby’s mother in her place, and the other said he was glad I had spoken up.)

After I said I was angry, Digby’s mother said, “I am, too!” 

There was a pause, and then I said, “You know, Digby’s Mother, this really is nothing to do with you or me. If [the previous owner] hadn’t put rocks in my yard, neither of us would be angry right now.” (Subtly making the point, or such was my intention, that we would not always be angry.)

The junk haulers finished their work, and I came inside to describe the whole incident to my sister.

(Digressing to say that the first time Digby came to my attention in a not-good way was when she wrote the note to my plant-loving next-door neighbor to complain about his bush reaching its green fingers into her yard. (She should have simply cut off whatever was in her yard. I myself just had quite a bit of that neighbor’s pine tree removed for the same reason.) Digby’s note to my next-door neighbor caused an intense but brief brouhaha, as he thought the letter was from Digby the tree guy—different person—and for some reason suspected me of causing Digby to write this letter. We got past that, and then it was Digby’s dog treating my yard as its own, and now this. I hope we are not going to have endless conflict and legal wrangling. One of the junk haulers said they see this kind of dispute often in the course of their work, and he observed that there is always one bad neighbor. The person who put the rocks in my yard was also a difficult neighbor, so maybe it is something about that house itself.)

I said to my sister today on the phone that I don’t really care where precisely the lot line is and that I didn’t plan to call the City of Ypsilanti about it, and that I would just make sure to plant my ilexes definitely in my own yard, with enough room to spare that Digby wouldn’t later cut half the plants off if they crossed the lot line.

My sister, unfortunately, is not of the temperament to say, “What giant jerks!” (She is of the temperament to let things rest until any agitation fades away.) However, she did think it might actually be prudent to have the lot surveyed. I said maybe I should just put a fence in that area; she said there might be zoning requirements I should be aware of.

So I was soon on the phone to the City of Ypsilanti, after all, where a calm-sounding fellow said that if my fence is going to be right on the lot line, a survey is needed—that’s the whole problem: I don’t know where it is, which I had not been aware of until today. A survey is not needed as long as the fence is a foot inside the lot line (wherever that may be), and if the fence is going to be more than six feet tall, you have to speak with the engineering department. Good information! I asked about a surveyor and the fellow said they are not allowed to make recommendations.

I texted my realtor to see if she could recommend a surveyor and she immediately sent a name. I filled out that fellow’s online form and am waiting to hear from him.

One thing I’m not sure about is the situation along the side, as opposed to the back, of Digby’s lot. The back of her lot abuts the back of my lot, but if I just put a fence along that stretch, could and would her dog merely walk around the end of the fence? Is there any physical object preventing that? Maybe the findings of the surveyor will be helpful here, or next time I see Digby’s own next-door neighbor, I can ask if I can take a peek at that area.

I plan to send Digby a letter (by the way, I politely included my phone number and email address in my letter to her, but I do not have either of those pieces of information for her, so it will have to be a letter) saying I have had my lot surveyed or that I am about to, and that I am thinking of having a fence installed (so as to forestall future disputes akin to that of today; I do not plan to include that reasoning in my letter), and that I will pause for at least a month before installing a fence to give her a chance to hire her own even-better surveyor. 

Sweet Skin Fade

Yesterday was gloomy weather again, and the first time this year I had to put on my base layer of wool leggings. Fortunately, there are only six or seven months to go before spring. (I have a friend who hates summer who said on about June first that, fortunately, summer was almost over!) I got up at 11 a.m. yesterday even though I had gotten only 7.5 hours of sleep. Seven and a half hours is for some reason sometimes a sweet spot when it comes to sleep even though it’s way less than I usually need. I got up at 11 a.m. because it feels gross to sleep any later. Also, sleeping as much as needed might take until 2 or 3 p.m., and that decisively throws off the next day and the next.

Seven and half hours of sleep was not the sweet spot yesterday. I felt draggy and decided to take a nap after breakfast, but then I began organizing a couple of closets, with satisfying results, and the nap never happened.

In the evening, I looked online to see how people survive moving from California to the Midwest and came upon a post from someone saying how miserable she is living here, and how she tried to move to a sunny area of the country but it didn’t work out. Her words were drenched in negativity and self-pity and I suspected there was some slight overstatement here and there for dramatic effect: Did she really cry the whole entire way to work and the whole entire way home? I thought, this chick sounds just like me! The kicker was when she mentioned wanting to kill her adorable kitten. Did I actually post that post while in some sort of fugue state?

My meditation teacher, Howie, said once that when he is making a decision, he takes happiness out of the equation because he knows he does not require particular circumstances in order to be happy. In theory, eating a tasty bowl of Szechuan chicken at Ricewood on Packard is no better or worse than seeing one’s mother ax murdered, if indeed it is our attitude that determines our experience. Yet those somehow do not seem equally delightful. I imagine there are people who are not profoundly mentally ill who could maintain perfect equanimity in either situation, but I think approximately 100 percent of us would feel that one of those was better than the other.

I guess there is quite a stretch of territory between “All things are exactly the same if you don’t let the mind choose” and “I cannot possibly be happy in this situation of [whatever].” I do notice that I feel more relaxed in this slower-paced area; it seems to happen by itself. I don’t know that I could ever feel as relaxed in San Francisco; by the same token, I don’t know that I could feel cheery quite as often in the grey as I do in the sun.

But I think I can have a good-enough and even a perfectly delightful life here. After all, other people live here. After reading that person’s post, I decided to man up. I read a little about how to cope with cold, grey winters. Light boxes were mentioned, and so was exercise, including enjoying winter sports. I have not ever done it, but I am going to go snowshoeing! And maybe even sledding, which I of course did as a child; I think it would be very fun and something a senior citizen could totally do. I asked three people if they’d like to go snowshoeing. No response so far from two of them, but the third said, “Sounds fun!” I also ice skated as a child, but I think that might be out at this point. The number of broken ankles I need is zero. Or heck, maybe I will ice skate.

I also looked yesterday on Yelp for a suitable barbershop for a lady to obtain a sweet skin fade. (I have been told in at least one establishment that they only cut men’s hair.) I ended up feeling a little overwhelmed, but today asked on Reddit and immediately got four or five suggestions. I went over to one of them this afternoon and the fellow there did a very conscientious job. The Redditor assured me that women are welcome at this barbershop, the place says over the front door that it is a unisex salon, and when I walked in, sure enough, a woman was getting a cut that involved a lot of bald skin. Minus those three things, I would have thought this was entirely a place for men. There was a football game on TV, football helmets everywhere as décor, and a pool table in the middle of the room. Besides the woman who was getting her hair cut when I came in, every other patron was a man (going by my eyeballs, Black, White, Middle Eastern).

This place had more product displayed for sale than I have ever seen in any other salon or barbershop. There were many, many square feet of one particular line I had never heard of, a small display of a second brand, and an even smaller display of a third thing. There was a giant gumball machine, and two vending machines featuring three kinds of candy apiece. There was a large monitor on the wall opposite the TV showing a restful video of underwater life (maybe that is for the ladies). There were ten barber stations, but only one in use.

It was another gloomy day today, but I have decided to prevail: to act as constructively as possible and to find ways to enjoy myself.

My sister said to text her when I got home so she could come over to measure the basement fireplace, which she plans to cover to keep Marvin out. She did a beautiful job on the fireplace in the living room. I told her I would text her after I took a shower, but by the time I had lovingly burnished every square inch, it was getting to be too late in the day for her to come over. It takes me a long time to take a shower. That’s why I don’t do it very often.

I invited Duckworth to sleep over again last night. He immediately draped himself over one of my ankles and fell asleep. He ended up staying in my room for several hours, later sleeping on my chest. When meowing woke me up, I let him out.

Warmer

As in the children’s game where your enemies / playmates say that word if you are—what? I can’t remember if it means you’re getting closer to a physical object or if you’ve guessed a guess that is more nearly correct or what, but I as of yet retain the concept of warmer and colder and have rather often thought of this in recent months and years: better. Worse.

Last night I came out of the bathroom after my evening ablutions to find Duckworth hunched outside the door: aww. I let him into my bedroom and closed the door. Often in San Francisco Duckworth spent the night next to me on the bed while Marvin remained cooly aloof in the kitchen until the following morning.

Part of the problem here is that the cats have their end of the house and I have mine, so I don’t see them doing cute or charming things. I mainly now see them at mealtimes, when there are various routine irritations, and when I hear a crash, also likely an irritating situation: Again with that shelf?!?

So the ratio of neutral / pleasant to annoying is way off. Also, Marvin used to sit on my lap when I had breakfast, which took an hour or so, which was a bonding dynamic, as an ex-boyfriend used to say. He said that when he one time made me laugh so hard that I peed my pants. (I miss that fellow still.)

I have salads for dinner here instead of for breakfast, and I read while eating them (yep) rather than just listen to music, so Marvin sitting on my lap for an hour, which was a sweet thing, isn’t happening.

I closed the bedroom door last night after inviting Duckworth in, and he stayed for several hours. A couple of times, there was a meow. I got right up when I heard this to see if it indicated that Duckworth was starting to feel like releasing a giant fece. Is that the singular of feces? I guess feces is already singular, or neither, like “flour”? Straight from the internet: Flour is primarily used as an uncountable noun, so it is considered singular. However, in specific contexts referring to different types, the plural form “flours” can be used. My mother had many flours in her garage-ready chest freezer.

Duckworth did not appear to be on the verge of pooping the couple of times I checked last night. Another time, I heard a scrabbling sort of noise and turned on the light to see him—chewing on an electrical cord? No: Playing with a small tube of lip balm he’d knocked off the bedside table. Okay, good to know that is an attractive item. Somewhere in the wee hours I did let (or usher) him out of the room and close the door.

In the morning, I opened the door and he and his frenemy came in and looked around. Marvin was soon at the very top of a bookcase and, sure enough, reached down to fiddle with the items on the top shelf. (Clearly stipulating here that if he breaks my mother’s wooden metronome, I will kill him.) So: gathering information as to what can be gotten at and what can’t, what is or isn’t of interest, where they shouldn’t go and where they can. Looks like, in regard to those topmost shelves, one would want to make sure not to put anything but books there but could set smaller items on the shelf right below that, which is probably not reachable from the top of the bookshelf nor from the floor.

Next, my bathroom. Those holes near the sink are definitely of interest but neither cat can actually fit through. They could probably pluck the cupboard doors open—the holes are above the cupboard doors, which in turn are near the floor—so I rearranged the contents of the cupboards so it doesn’t really matter if they get in the one that is behind the holes. 

Oddly, they are extremely bad at plucking things open. The cupboards in my bathroom have magnetic latches that barely stick to each other, but I think that, with one exception, it’s good enough. When they were kittens, if they were in the bathroom, they could not get out even if the door was open a quarter inch. They simply could not figure out that they could pull a thing open even if there was an obvious crack, and would sit there indefinitely, trapped.

There is just one cupboard in my bathroom here where the magnetic clasp is as good as nonexistent, and there are things in there that I don’t want them to get to that would not be convenient for me if located elsewhere, so that is the one place a new latch is needed. I left the bathroom door open when we exited, and that immediately lifted my spirits, as it is now light when I look down the interior hallway instead of dark. I see the bathroom window and the greenery outside rather than a blank closed door.

Several mornings here, I found that Marvin had unrolled some of the paper towel on the roller in the kitchen—one day quite a bit of it—without disturbing a single one of the many small nearby items on the counter—but I haven’t seen unrolled paper towel for several days now, even though I didn’t do anything to secure it. With this heartening observation in mind, it was on to the shower curtain in my bathroom. In San Francisco, I had to put the curtain up over the shower curtain rod when it was not in use to prevent it from being shredded.

All I had in San Francisco was a plastic shower curtain, but here I also have a nice more clothlike curtain, so there is more to get out of the way, and also the shower curtain rod here has only a small gap above it. I don’t want to wad a bunch of wet shower curtain through that small opening where it would sit against the gorgeous new paint. My first thought was to have the rod here lowered. It is certainly terrible looking, but so far I am having trouble finding a nice permanent-mount shower curtain rod, and if I did find that, the old one would have to be taken down and the screw holes patched, sanded and painted, which is not the end of the world, but I am now thinking I will dispense with the clothlike curtain, stick with the rod where it is, and get a pile of plastic shower curtains and just let the cats shred them. When one is letting in too much water, I can replace it. I can delay this by draping the shower curtain not over the rod itself, but over the fixture the water comes out of.

Next, the spare bedroom, which currently has piles of my parents’ papers covering a third or so of the floor. I plan to put a lot of stuff in the closet in that room, which was my mother’s bedroom, but need to wait until after the horrible folding closet doors are replaced. I figured there wasn’t much the cats could do to those piles of paper, and that seems to have been a correct assessment. I did soon hear a crash: my suitcase being knocked over against the wall, where it—yep—slightly damaged the new paint, but no big deal. So that door is now also open, another source of light and view of green leaves fluttering in the breeze.

Warmer!

Also literally warmer, or at least sunnier. Yesterday it was overcast—not raining (not raining too much—raining, but the kind where you do not see a single person in a raincoat), not hailing, not chilly, not tornado-ing, but grey almost all day, which does affect my mood adversely.

Down in the Dumps

Possibly because of the overcast weather, at least in part. Also not enough sleep last night. Today the tree guy came back to pick up the debris left from the work yesterday. In the afternoon, I went to pick up a couple of my father’s death certificates that the attorney had left over, to drop off the lockbox at our realtor’s office, to deposit a check at my credit union here, and to Whole Foods to get some olive oil.

I am using the garage as a “cat lock,” which was my sister’s excellent idea: I go out the door from what was our parents’ TV room into the garage; that door uses the same key as the front door, which is handy. I close the door and then open the garage door to exit. When I come back, I wait for the garage door to close before I open the door into the house.

I am in the process of having a screen porch installed outside the front door, having a door installed between the front hall and the TV room, having a door to the laundry room installed so Marvin doesn’t go into the room with the boiler and the water heater, replacing two storm doors, and having the door to the interior hallway replaced with one with glass panes so I can see what’s going on in there when a cat is detained there. (Every bit of this is necessitated by having cats except for replacing the storm doors.)

There were a number of smaller things I was going to have the contractor do as long as they were here, but the process of picking doors and hardware and agreeing on the details regarding the screen porch has been so laborious and frustrating that I have taken all those lesser items off the list. Last night I was ready to dispense with the door to the TV room and just go in and out via the garage forever, but hopefully things are going to fall into place.

I have said at every meeting that I want doors that are made out of wood, not composite, and that I don’t want any formaldehyde and such, so I was surprised and disheartened when just a day or two I got a list of possible doors that included composite ones, but that seems to have been a miscommunication. I think we’re on the right track now.

One of the contractors recommended wrapping the soffits in aluminum coil, which requires much less maintenance than just scraping and painting them periodically. It also requires $13,000, so that will not be happening. After all, the soffits have been painted only once in the past 20 years if that—probably not that—and since my parents both died at age 85 and I am 64, I reckon I will be painting those soffits just once.

Today Marvin broke into the utility closet and easily plucked aside a board that was covering a hole within which was some grubby plumbing-related equipment. Annoying. This evening, as I was cleaning the two litter box areas, I was reflecting that it was much more pleasant to live here without cats. I could have all the interior doors open, and there weren’t litter boxes to clean, and there weren’t cats in the utility closet, cats repeatedly knocking the same shelf down, cats hurling my favorite lamp to the floor, cats (or a certain cat) tearing the endpiece off the baseboard heater, cats (or a certain cat) plucking a ceramic piece off the base of my father’s toilet, cats hopping on the kitchen counter … .

The living room has become the cat room. I almost never go in there, because I know that sitting on the couch will require first removing cat hair, and it just seems like too much work.

Further, I am not sure that even now I could say I actually love these cats. They infuriated me so often when they were kittens that it would be most correct to say that I hated them, or at least Marvin. Things slowly and eventually became easier, and I assumed I would come to genuinely love them, but I don’t think I ever have. Even now, Marvin pisses me off every single day, and so does Duckworth, pretty much. Is it out of the question to rehome them at this late date?

Little fantasy of this evening: I rehome the cats, they end up with people who truly love them, and I sell the house and return to civilization. I could not see moving the cats back to San Francisco, but I could very much see moving myself back there without them.

I am annoyed with these cats often, and I also take absolutely excellent care of them, but that is because it’s my responsibility to do that.

Up in the Clouds

And now I am indistinguishable from a person at Home Depot swooning over the potted azaleas. I bought a heavy-duty wheelbarrow, to be delivered tomorrow, which just seemed like something a serious gardener (weeder) should have. I also bought a jumbo-size container of Green Gobbler, a small metal trash can with a lid specifically for cat poop, and the extension cord I will need for my garage-ready freezer. (What is a garage-ready freezer? One that is meant to withstand ambient temperatures from very cold to very hot.)

My parents had a chest freezer in the garage that was completely crammed with stuff, including about 15 different kinds of flour. My mother liked to have every possible thing for the activity of interest: every kind of flour, markers in every tip width and every color … my mind is kind of going blank as I try to remember, but anyway, that freezer was dauntingly full. You had to dig for whatever you wanted out of it. It is gone now. I announced to my sister that I would not be having a chest freezer in the garage. She smirked when I announced that I am now shopping for a chest freezer for the garage. 

This is because Arbor Farms does not stock the three-pound bag of Stalhbush organic frozen blueberries, but will be happy to do a special order, but only of a case, which in this instance is six bags. So the new chest freezer in the garage will be for 18 pounds of frozen blueberries, mainly. 

Nightly, I scoop the poop and pee clumps out of two litter boxes and clean the areas where the litter boxes are located. In San Francisco, each night I dropped a bag with cat poop in it down the trash chute outside. Here I had been putting the bag in the giant trash bin in my driveway, which sits in the sun, so when the lid was opened, the smell was pretty overwhelming: gently toasted cat poop (I think you can get more for it if you call it sun-dried). I brought the trash bin into the garage, which will probably help, as it shouldn’t get so warm there, but my sister suggested having a little metal trash bin with a lid just for this purpose, and I think that will be even better. I can transfer the contents of the little metal trash can to the giant trash bin before I put the latter at the curb each Sunday.

Today the fellow who periodically does heavier or more time-consuming yard work came over with his crew. They spent a few hours and got a lot done. I had been waiting for the tree guy to come; he ended up coming today, as well, with one other person. The main thing they did was to start the process of taking out two dying hawthorns. I really like the tree guy and also his crew member. The latter has an exceedingly still, alert air about him. He once pointed out to me a bird’s nest I would never have spotted that was about six inches from my eyeballs. He seems very grounded, not missing the smallest thing, but at the same time, there is something very light and airy about him, as if, should you turn your back on him for a moment, you might turn around again to find that he had drifted up into the clouds.