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.

Thank You, Marvin

For saving me quite a lot of money, it appears.

I just looked at the link the pet transport people sent to the carrier they favor, and it is nearly identical, if not exactly identical, to the one Marvin liberated himself from with ease by just clawing right through the mesh.

This will not work. Some of one-star reviews for this carrier mention shoddy construction and their pet escaping from it.

I just spent some time looking for other options, but I think any soft-sided carrier is going to have the same problem. They all have mesh somewhere.

What we need here is a hard-sided carrier that is 18” x 11” x 11”, but this so far does not seem to exist.

By the way, the pet transport service would have cost $7500-8000 for the two cats.

And buying the house would have cost this much, and the car that much, and so forth, but I can’t do it if I can’t get the cats there, so it’s a good thing I had not actually quit my job.

I guess I will stay in San Francisco and work one day a week, or be retired here, and walk around and enjoy the foliage. 

Torniquet, Please

Okay, get this: I will need a checking account in Michigan and called the credit union where my sister banks, or credit unions; she likes them. I mentioned her name when the fellow asked how I had heard about them, and he said, “I think I’ve talked to her.” (!)

Forbes says it’s one of the best credit unions in the state (granted, I don’t know how many there are); they have a savings account that gets 2.9 percent interest. I got one of those, and basic checking, and enrolled in online banking. 

Today I had lunch at Plain Jane at 22nd Street and Guerrero, my favorite restaurant in San Francisco. A fellow came in with an older man and woman—his parents?—and spoke in a voice loud enough that it drowned out everyone else in the restaurant put together. If his companions spoke even a single word, I couldn’t make it out, but I heard every last thing the man said, including his efforts to persuade the elderly couple to go to Burning Man and how he advised someone to “Ask for what you want!” I very nearly went over to ask for what I wanted, but remembered Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s advice about not trying to make things happen nor not happen. I also remembered Howie saying something like, “If your mind is full of aversion and you’re aware of that, you’re doing the work.” That is a comforting thought. How persistent the idea is that we are somehow supposed to force our minds to be some other way, and how liberating to know that our main task is just to consciously notice what is happening.

Next I walked to Noe Valley to get a nice bald fade with a two on top. It was a gorgeous day, every lush plant and colorful flower blossom reminding me of how hard it will be to leave this beautiful place. My wonderful and meticulous barber and I discussed the upcoming life change. She said she thinks it’s not good for us to do the same thing over and over and that we benefit from doing challenging new things.

Proceeding to my next engagement, I ran into a friend on 24th Street. We got caught up for a bit, and I asked her if she'd like to take a road trip with me across the country in a van that has all my stuff in the back. (Due to the cost of professional cat transport, I am going to have to economize in other sectors.) She is potentially amenable to that, though she pointed out in a text message later that there are professionals who will pack up your stuff and drive it across the country for you. She added that one benefit of hiring professionals is that things won’t shift in the van, causing it to roll over and involve us in a fiery crash. I agreed that that could be a plus.

I received a couple of photographs today from a colleague who is on vacation in Montana, a timely reminder that there are lovely vistas everywhere.

While I was waiting for my dental appointment to start, I got a text from one of our Clinical Pastoral Education students asking if I would consider writing him a letter of recommendation for his application for board certification as a chaplain. As soon as I got home, I drafted the letter and texted him to say he’d asked the right person. I wrote, “The Enneagram One likes to get it done,” unintentionally coining a rhyming slogan.

I am deep into the mind-numbing details of figuring out what to sell of the things I’ve been saving up for so long, and linking this financial institution to that. Reeling from adding up the money for my sisters for the house, for fixing up the house, for moving the cats, for moving the rest of my stuff (which, if I hire professional movers, will literally cost less than moving the cats) and for my sisters for the car, then remembering I forgot to account for taxes. Ah! The refreshing feeling of hemorrhaging cash in all directions.