The Third Way Is to Be Kind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, when you put it that way …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop Me Before I “Garden” Again

Another exciting day of horticulture and neighborhood intrigue!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mano a Mano in the Garden

On Wednesday I went out to do some yard work, with one goal being to prune the end of our forsythia that is hanging over the sidewalk. The roots are on our property, as is most of the plant, but it separates our yard from the yard of the neighbor who hates to harm the slightest living thing, so I was hoping to complete the task and quietly depart for another sector before he realized I was doing it.

Unfortunately, a friend arrived to visit him, and when he came out to greet his friend, he saw what I was up to and rushed over in a frenzy. I went and stood by the utility pole on the lawn extension that marks the property line and said firmly, “This is where the property line is. I am not going to touch anything on your side.”

But it turned out it was more than just the forsythia. He yelled, “If you have something to say to me, you say it to me directly!” He said that he had gotten a letter from Digby, our well-regarded local tree guy (not quite the actual name). Apparently a complaint from someone had caused Digby to write him a letter, and he assumed it was I who had complained. I asked what the letter had said, and he yelled, “This is not your business!” I assured him that I had not complained about him to anyone and he stormed off, clearly unconvinced. I had no idea gardening was going to be some sort of blood sport. How thrilling!

I went inside and texted Digby to see what was going on, and he said that someone had written a letter to my neighbor taking him to task for vegetation that was encroaching into a neighboring yard and that whoever did this had signed Digby’s name to the letter, which he was not pleased about.

Besides this not being a great way to communicate and not fair to Digby, it is truly perplexing: Only four yards abut my neighbor’s: Mine, that of a brand-new neighbor who seems very nice, that behind a house which is unoccupied, and that which belongs to an elderly lady who has lived on this block for decades and who seems like a genteel sort. But also, if something is hanging into your yard, just cut it off! And also, why would Digby the tree guy care about drooping vegetation?

I had meant to spend four hours in the yard that day, but it ended up being six and three-quarters hours, and I left quite a swath of destruction, if I may say so myself. A lot of things have wild grape vines on them, the pulling loose of which is very satisfying. I am going to need a tall grabber thing, and I’m also about two weeks from needing a chainsaw. What with one thing leading to another, I found that I had created a substantial hole in the greenery in one area that went pretty much all the way to my irate neighbor’s porch; oops. My sister had lately pointed out a weed tree that is now a full-grown tree. She said it would be nice to remove it, but it was far back in a thicket of whatever. Well, not any more. You can now walk right up to that tree and lean against its trunk if you want. We could ask Digby to cut it down, but I don’t have any problem with it, actually.

The forsythia is no longer hanging over the sidewalk, but I can’t say it’s a very graceful pruning job. I’d like to think my father would be proud of my zealous if unskilled efforts. I don’t recall any actual bickering about this, but I’m under the impression that my mother sometimes thought that perhaps there had been a bit too much pruning on the part of the other party. But what are you supposed to do? There is only so much planting one can do, whereas weeding, pruning and clipping are forever. I am finding weeding to be positively addictive.

That afternoon, I randomly dug up, cut down, tore off and pruned various things here and there on the theory that if a plant wishes to survive, it had better actively be blossoming when I come along with my implements. I was starting in on some things with big leaves that I suspected of possibly being in cahoots with the burdock when I spotted my brand-new neighbor who seems very nice, whose name is also Digby. My sister said it is rather amazing for one person’s circle of acquaintances to include two Digbys.

I asked Digby what the thing was that I had just half dug up. She said it was a hosta. I asked if it would bloom, and she said it would. She pointed out some nearby in her yard that were getting ready to bloom. I apologetically patted the soil back in place as best I could and told Digby I would not further disturb any hosta.

That evening, as I had dinner on the deck, I took a photo of a thing nearby and looked it up: a hosta of some other kind! I took a photo of another thing, and, astoundingly, that was yet another sort of hosta. I wonder how on earth people gardened before the internet existed. I have also started to use the Merlin app for bird identification.

I texted my neighbor before bedtime to say that I was sorry that someone had communicated with him in such a disrespectful and dishonest way. I reiterated that it wasn’t me and said I consider us to have a good relationship, such that we could talk about anything that might be bothering either of us. I received a brief note of thanks. (Not, let the record reflect, an apology for yelling at me and for the false accusation, but it was good that he responded at all, and in a positive manner.)

There are several beds in the yard, two mostly just dirt thanks to myself, and four or five completely choked with weeds and, I guess, non-weeds? One large bed in particular I know has a lot of different kinds of flowers in it, but with little blooming at the moment, I have decided to pause before I accidentally make a lot of nice things disappear. I am waiting for book on weeds of the Upper Midwest to arrive, and have lately obtained two lethal-looking tools for weeding in crevices.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at Seva, and in the late afternoon, I had another phone conversation with my financial advisor. I mentioned that I’m completely stuck trying to decide where to live. He said with certainty, “Michigan is where you want to be.” I was incredulous. I hadn’t even bothered trying to get anyone else to tell me the answer to this conundrum because I knew nobody would do it, so I couldn’t believe the answer was being offered just like that. I asked, “It is??”

He said it is, because it’s “quieter” and has “lower expenses.” He said I’d be a “top-tier retiree” in Michigan. That may be, but I am not sure I want to be a retiree at all yet. Nonetheless, I decided that I would go ahead and buy the house, but spend two-thirds of my time in San Francisco and one-third here until I get sick of one or the other, or of flying back and forth, or of paying for flying back and forth, an expense currently borne by the estate. However, when I woke up today, this struck me as a ridiculously complicated idea. (Also, my poor cats. On their own fifty percent of the time for more than four years now.)

I had lunch today with a friend at Ricewood. One of her sons is a horticulturalist specializing in native plants. I asked if he’d be able to look at my flower bed and point which things are weeds and she said he definitely could. I asked her to put us in touch.

This afternoon the pest guy was due to come over about the debris on the living room floor, which the internet said was termites, though it also said it was carpenter ants, and also that it was just ants. For sure there are hundreds of sturdy-looking though not-too-large ants walking up and down outside the front door, though I have never seen one inside.

While I waited for the pest guy, I cut vegetation from the other day into pieces that would fit into lawn and leaf bags, and I tried out my new weeding tool on the cracks in the driveway. It worked superbly. If there is anything more satisfying than plucking weeds out of the cracks in one’s driveway, I can’t think what it is. A week ago, my driveway had hundreds of weeds sprouting out of the cracks; it is now pristine.

The pest guy arrived, bringing piles of good news. I do not have to worry about the woodchuck that lives next to my deck. I wasn’t actually worried, but I had become worried that maybe I should be worried. The pest guy said the woodchuck will not breach the cinder blocks the house is made of and that they only do something about a woodchuck if the woodchuck is destroying the garden and the homeowner is upset.

The guy who did our home inspection a while back noted the presence of carpenter ants, but the pest guy said all decks have carpenter ants hanging around, and that if they were actually nesting in the deck, there would be piles of sawdust, which there aren’t.

I showed him a hole near the front door I have seen a bee or two going into, and he said just to keep an eye on it. He said plugging the hole is not a good idea, because the bees may dig their way out—into the interior of the house. 

He looked at the frass on the living room floor and said it is not falling from the visible crack in the ceiling. He said the crack is likely due to settling of the house. I asked if he would patch it from the attic side if it were his house or just the room side. He said just the room side. Holy moly! Every time this young man opened his mouth, he saved us more money.

As for the producers of the frass, he said it is just ants, not termites and not carpenter ants. He pointed out a couple of actual dead ants. He put a couple of baits in the area, and he sprayed the ant trail outside; he said it is absolutely the ants seen outside the front door that are kicking solid excreta onto the living room floor. He said we are now covered for any kind of ant until the end of the calendar year. He said the ants that produced the frass should be dead in three weeks and the baits can then be discarded, but to call them if I see ants or frass after that. He said he deals with three or four cases of termites per year, and three or four cases of just ants per day. In return for this cornucopia of glad tidings, the estate gave him $395. 

I was extremely relieved that nothing turned out to be something it was going to cost a fortune to address. 

Loose Crud

Yesterday evening I noticed some debris on the living room floor and swept it up. It looked sort of like coarsely ground black pepper. I was astounded to see quite a bit more of the same in the same spot this morning. My sister said it seems to her that she has often seen something or other in that spot. Due above is a crack in the wall, and above that, a crack in the ceiling, neither very large. My sister said maybe the roof work or the A/C installation shook loose crud that is in the attic, or maybe the operation of the new heat pump is doing that. She said it would not be a bad idea to rule out some kind of destructive pest, so I scheduled an appointment for this Friday, and then I felt a little disheartened: Yet another thing that needs fixing that will cost X amount of money?

My sister went on to say she thought we should take a look at it from the attic so we would have a better idea if what the pest person says makes sense. That was even more disheartening; a wave of vertigo set in, or vestibular migraine, or whatever it is: A foggy, disoriented feeling in the brain.

This was going to require either climbing up into the attic via the wobbly fold-down stairs in the garage and crawling all the way across two rooms in the exceedingly foul air and hoping to be able to locate the crack, or using a ladder to get up onto a ledge near the living room ceiling. Neither sounded that great (ladders and vertigo maybe not being things that go well together), but I indicated that I was on board. (I mean, what was I going to do? Sit on the couch while my sister crawled around in the attic?)

The day picked up greatly after that. I had a nice breakfast and after debating whether it’s allowed (by whom?) to skip taking a walk if it’s a gardening day, went out to do yard work. Being a perfectionist, I would prefer to both take a walk and do yard work, but besides the time factor, it is mainly a question of energy and allocation thereof. I skipped the walk.

The main goal today was to dig up burdock, which has giant not-very-winsome leaves and gets huge extremely fast. It has very substantial roots (which I guess can be cut up and used to brew health-giving tea). Getting it out of the ground required the use of an actual shovel. I often had to jump up and down on both sides of the shovel, and I had to temporarily relocate several heavy rocks. It was extremely satisfying each time I heard the POP! of the roots giving way. One time it was such a loud crack, I thought for a moment that I had snapped the wooden handle of the shovel.

There used to three arbor vitae in the back yard which I had not seen for some time. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to them. Along with tackling the burdock, I did other bits of pruning and weeding and pulling vines off things. My next door neighbor does not believe in harming the merest blade of grass, so I was chucking to myself picturing him sitting on his couch with a worried look on his face hearing the chop-chop-chopping and my demented shrieks of pleasure when about 20 feet of vine pulled free. “OH YEAH!!!”

And guess what was behind all of those vines? Three nearly dead arbor vitae, separated from the edge of the grass by several feet of various kinds of greenery, whereas they used to be right at the edge of the grass.

It occurred to me that gardening is a perfect pursuit for someone who loves getting rid of things, as I do. There will always be something else that can be cut off or pulled up or dug out or dragged away.

My sister stopped by in the late afternoon, but we ended up neither climbing a tall ladder in the living room nor, thank god, crawling through the attic. The house will be painted soon and the painter can fix the little cracks from the room side. The cracks may or may not get fixed from the attic side. We set up a shorter ladder and my sister held the vacuum cleaner off the floor so that I could vacuum off the spider webs and crud near the cracks. I was able to reach all the way to the ceiling with her help. I’ll see how things are tomorrow. 

I was talking to my sister about something needing to be fixed every five minutes, part of the reason I actively never wanted to own a house, not to mention not wanting to clean a house. She said that that is kind of how it is, yes, but one thing I have going for me is that I am likely to be proactive about problems. A lot of things did not get addressed year after year when my father owned this house, and this is because he could do and / or fix everything. He could do electrical work, he could do plumbing, he could do any kind of mechanical thing, he could fix broken things, he could fabricate needed items out of metal or wood. Therefore, when a thing needed attention, he put it on his list of things to do. 

I, however, cannot fix or do anything, and so am forced to call someone, and this I do right away because I cannot stand to have tasks hanging over my head, so my sister is probably quite right.

It was very satisfying to look out the kitchen sink window this evening and not see burdock.

Basically Never

Much of the time in these months since my mother died, coming up on nine of them, and once I got past the initial phase of trying to think my way to a decision about moving to Michigan or not (the brute force method), I have felt that either choice will be fine and I have occasionally also remembered that these aren’t the only two choices on earth; there are probably 50 things I could do that would be fine. It’s a nice feeling.

But every once in a while, I snap over into the shadow side of that, in which it seems that either choice will be terrible. This is what happened in the past week, and it was awful, and I am glad it has faded away again, which happened after I accepted the fact that I was going to be beset with anxiety every minute for the rest of my life and simply tried to notice where I was feeling it in my body. I did not feel that anxiety at all today.

My mind is an unreliable friend, refusing to stick with any given story for very long. The noise of my neighbors in their apartments in the building I live in in San Francisco and the shouts of the soccer players in the park outside the window—is that annoying or is it nice to have those sounds of life nearby? (One practical consideration: If I fell and yelled for help in San Francisco, someone would hear me. In Ypsilanti, the mailman would have to smell rotting dead flesh before anyone realized something was wrong.)

The profound quiet in my bedroom in Ypsilanti: Is that peaceful and restorative or is it desolate and lonely?

The mental list of what I’d have to do to relocate is long and daunting:

Prepare the house to receive cats, in terms of supplies. Two litter boxes, two water bowls, two food bowls, two “moats” for the water bowls (square metal baking pans with water and a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid in them, to keep ants out of the drinking water), bags of cat litter, two poop scoopers, bags of dry food, cans of wet food, two forms of gabapentin (capsules for Marvin, tablets for Duckworth), two forms of Prozac (ditto), two or more flavors of Pill Pockets (no salmon for Marvin, any kind for Duckworth), psyllium (so as not to have overly firm poop), FortiFlora (so as not to have overly wet poop), and Nulo lickable treats (for the occasional medication crisis).

Prepare the house to receive cats, in terms of some minor renovations and one kind of major one: building a “cat lock” outside the front door—a new outer wall with a door in it so that if the cats got out the front door, they wouldn’t be entirely outside.

Quit my job. That’s a hard one.

Liberate sufficient assets to pay my sisters for their shares of the house.

Have a legal document drawn up re financial arrangement with sisters.

Find someone to help move the cats.

Move the cats. My giant worry.

Move my stuff. My second most giant worry. The internet says not to use a moving service. Everyone likes PODS. I guess you’re supposed to rent blankets from U-Haul, and then hire some people to wrap up your furniture and put it in the POD. I guess you’d have to apply for a permit to reserve a parking place or two on the street for the POD. Then I guess you’d have to hire some other people to unload the POD at the far end of the move.

Then I’d have to terminate my health care in California, find the same in Michigan, get Michigan ID, and find a doctor, a vet who is on board with all the cats’ medication, a chiropractor, and someone to cut my hair.

Plus there are all sorts of little things to be done in the house, like hooking up my drinking water filter.

It seems like a lot. I read not long ago that if something seems daunting, it’s because we haven’t broken it into small enough pieces. I guess I could do these things. I guess I might not be the first person ever to move across the country.

My idea about the clock worked wonderfully this morning. In case you already forgot my excellent idea, it was to use the alarm on a little freestanding clock instead of the alarm on my iPhone, which makes it all too easy to pick my phone up from the bedside table and look at it for hours if I can’t sleep. I thought maybe the alarm would be loud and jarring, but it was a quiet little peep-peep-peep that becomes louder if it is not shut off. Usually I turn off the alarm on my phone and then, since the phone is now in my hand, check my email, check my text messages, and often do Wordle right away and send the results to my Wordle buddy, inspired by her almost always already having sent me her results.

It was great to have the phone not reachable and therefore not to do all of those things right away.

After breakfast, I took a walk, and then I went to a birthday for an extremely cute little relative of mine who turned one today. It was a gorgeous day. The party was in Rockwood, MI, which entailed driving through Flat Rock. It took about 40 minutes. 

When I pulled up in my car, with license plate MTLHEAD, I was astounded to see that RCK HATER was parked in front of me! (Though could that possibly somehow be a reference to the name of the town or the neighboring town?)

It was a very nice party, with delicious pizza and tables set up under a big tent in the driveway. There were maybe 40 people there, including about 12 one-year-olds. The honoree is the first grandchild of my cousin. My cousin was there, and my uncle and his wife, and my cousin’s two sons and their wives.

I walked around and introduced myself to several people. I realized that, thanks to my cousin’s sons both having gotten married, and one couple having gone so far as to have this very cute baby, it greatly expands my pool of relations, however complicated it becomes to draw the connections: This is my cousin’s son’s wife’s grandmother! She is not actually “my” anything, and yet, most delightfully, she now belongs to me in some way.

I am continuing to practice in the style of Sayadaw U Tejaniya. I brought one of his books along and usually read a bit each day. I read something yesterday about a yogi saying she could not believe what she realized after just 15 or 20 minutes of continuous mindfulness. Not ferocious focus with gritted teeth, which would be ineffective and also tiring, but just remaining tuned in. Just the awareness needed to know “I see a tree” or “I’m holding this book.” Yet how challenging it is to maintain that for even ten seconds, for me, anyway. I can’t do it when doing formal sitting meditation, let alone at any other time, but I was kind of inspired by that 15- or 20-minutes thing, so every time I asked myself today, “What is awareness doing right now?”, which I ask myself quite frequently, I then tried to stay tuned in, but basically never did. 

Very Bad Thing

Sure enough, yesterday evening I could not sleep. I lay awake until 4 a.m. and then finally did the Very Bad Thing: I picked up my phone and lay in my camping cot scrolling and scrolling until 7:30 a.m., and then sort of slept for 90 minutes, and then texted the friend I was supposed to have brunch with today and asked if we could reschedule. Then I slept until about 1:30 p.m.

The New York Times alters their content just often enough that one can scroll like that for hours and keep finding something new to read. Oddly, somewhere along in there, I came upon a first-person account by a woman who had had to decide whether to live somewhere more bucolic, which required leaving the job she loved, or whether to stay in the city. She and her family did actually move to the quieter place, after which buyer’s remorse almost wrecked her marriage, she wrote. She specifically mentioned the importance of having regular contact with random people as being salubrious for mental health. Aha! I thought. That settles it.

However, they went on to move back to the city, and finally back to the other place, by which time the writer had learned that encountering lots of weak connections was not actually essential to her mental health. She quotes Thoreau: “There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.”

When I got up this afternoon, I had the meal I refer to as breakfast, whatever time it may occur, and then I went out in the car to pick up a package and to go back to the grocery store, because I forgot to bring my empty water jugs yesterday. It was a stunningly lovely afternoon, with puffy white clouds against a brilliant blue sky.

I remembered something my sister once said, which is that I could buy the house and then sell the house. This is true.

After I got back from my errands, I went for walk. It was wonderful out, but the main thing I could feel was the persistent knot of worry in my stomach. I guess it’s time to abandon the idea that I’m a person in decent mental health. Based on my (nonexistent) training in clinical psychology, I would have to say I am awash in anxiety and depression, as I so often see in the charts of patients.

It is still my working hypothesis that I will depart from Michigan for the last time in mid-August, and that this is a pleasant vacation, and I have told my sister this, as I think it’s only fair to allow time for things to sink in and for any related process to occur.

I am periodically reminding myself that one day this whole horrible thing will be in the past. It feels literally harder than the illnesses and deaths of my parents.

I did a good thing this early evening, which was to have dinner without looking at my phone. For years, I ate without reading, but things got fuzzy during my parents’ illnesses. It takes me a long time to eat a salad, like an hour. Since my parents nearly always had the TV on (MSNBC), I decided it would be fine to eat my salad while watching TV rather than to go into another room and sit there by myself for so long.

I still eat breakfast without reading, but I look at my phone during dinner. (Lunch isn’t; if I had lunch, I would hardly be able to do anything other than prepare, eat, and clean up after meals.)

I thought it would be very difficult to sit on the deck for so long just eating (boring!), but it turned out to be delightful. The colors and smells and tastes and the feeling of the breeze and the sounds of Lloyd and his sister playing in their back yard were so vivid that it immediately seemed way more enjoyable than reading while eating. My compromise was to make a cup of tea for after dinner and look at the news while having my tea.

Tonight, I plan to put my phone across the room and use the alarm on a little freestanding clock.  

Will Not Be Fine

Three days ago, it was my firm decision that I would return to San Francisco full time and continue with my life, though two days prior to that, I had decided to buy the house in Ypsilanti and enjoy life as a Lady Gardener. Part of the reason I firmly decided not to buy the house after all is the idea that it’s better for my physical and cognitive health to have two days a week of getting to work and home again by bicycle built in, along with a weekly bike ride to the grocery store and schlepping my provisions home in panniers; most medical or dental appointments also involve a bike ride.

The reason I think I would have a less active lifestyle in Ypsilanti is that I’d have to make a point of moving, and I might get out of the mood from time to time.

I also see lots and lots of people in San Francisco, at least the two days a week that I work. I am pretty sure this is essential for my mental health as long as it’s balanced out by plenty of alone time.

Or am I wrong that continuing with my work would be salubrious? Maybe it is simply a source of dementia-causing stress. This thing of feeling like I’m dying by 1 or 2 pm every workday worries me.

Basically, I’m worried that either ceasing to work or continuing to will lead to dementia.

After my firm decision three days ago to return to San Francisco, I observed that I nonetheless seemed to be proceeding as if I will be buying a house, or something, in that I’m marshaling financial resources.

Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe what I need to do is to take two months off work while I’m in San Francisco to see if I feel equally crappy if I don’t work. I’m not sure what it would prove if I did feel just as lousy or if I felt better, but in trying to identify which two months to take off, things became so complicated, what with canceling / rescheduling / booking this and that that I again decided just to leave Ypsilanti for the last time in mid-August, as currently scheduled, and then I immediately felt heartbroken, as I do every time I decide not to buy the house.

Whereas every time I decide to buy the house, I feel anxious.

It has been my intuition from the first iteration of that not-buying-the-house sorrow that it doesn’t mean I’m supposed to buy the house. It’s grief because this chapter will close, in a way. (Though it will never close in that my mother will never be undead.)

I discussed the matter with my Zen teacher, saying that I know that whichever I do, it will be fine. He said that actually, there is no guarantee it will be fine. Things will fall apart, but whatever happens, we can meet it. He suggested that I inquire of myself what the exhaustion is telling me, and also what identity I have latched onto.

But at this point, I can’t figure out what anything means. Does it just mean what it seems to mean? Or the opposite? Or both? Or neither? Have I latched onto the identity of San Francisco Chaplain, or that of Michigander?

Maybe the exhaustion is telling me I’m done being a chaplain. Maybe it’s telling me I’ve had enough of flying back and forth. I spoke with our Healing Harpist yesterday and she said that maybe making a decision sooner rather than later would be good, as it would end flying, which in itself is tiring.

Somewhere along in the past several days, I had a perfect day: I did my morning stretches, had breakfast, got ready to go out, went for a walk, did some reading and writing for work, had dinner, did my evening exercises, washed my face and brushed my teeth, meditated, and went to sleep. In San Francisco, there is virtually never a day where morning stretches, taking a walk and evening exercises all occur. One falls, or two or three of those fall by the wayside every single day. And yet the day in Michigan when I did all three seemed oddly vacant: It’s nighttime already? Is that all there is going to be to my life? It seemed kind of empty and lonely.

Often at the end of a day in San Francisco, it seems as if breakfast happened a million years ago.

Last night I was so sick and tired of the whole thing that at bedtime I (probably not whole-heartedly) offered the hope that I might die peacefully and painlessly in my sleep. I didn’t set an alarm and found this morning that I had slept for 12 hours, which sounds good except that sleeping absolutely enough makes it impossible to get to sleep the following night and then the whole schedule goes completely off the rails.

I remembered yesterday’s decision not to buy the house and cried and cried. I think the decision to buy the house is a form of bargaining, of trying to forestall a terrible grief (not that there has not been a spectacular amount of that). It is the grief of not having anyone, specifically my mother, to take care of any more. Though my father had cancer and went through treatment for cancer and went on hospice and died, he didn’t really ever need that much taking care of. I drove him to his chemotherapy and radiation appointments and sat there with him during them, but the truth is that he could easily have driven himself and also could have sat there on his own without the slightest distress. One month before he died, he drove himself to the grocery store without incident. One day before he died, his phone rang and he almost but not quite succeeded in answering it, while smiling at his own haplessness. He noticed that I was videoing and pointed at me as if to say, “Oh, you.” It is the most charming little video.

(When he was in the hospital once due to side effects from chemo, I asked if it was good that I was there. He thought for a moment and politely said, “Neutral.”)

But my mother had dementia and needed every kind of help eventually. Taking care of her house lets me feel I am somehow still taking care of her. I don’t want to not be taking care of her because then it would mean she was dead, which I could not endure and hope I never fully understand has already happened. 

Roundup Roundup

I thought the empty house might inspire me to want to own it: Look at all this space where I could put my stuff! But it’s actually just making it look like it’s meant for someone else. For one thing, I hardly have any stuff. My table would replace the dining room table here that my sister wants; my bed would replace the camping cot. My two filing cabinets could go in the office. I’d still have three completely empty rooms, plus a huge empty basement, plus a largely empty garage, and it’s not like it would make sense to go buy a lot of stuff at age 64 that someone else will soonish have to get rid of.

I’m worried that a less active lifestyle might hasten dementia, and I’m also worried that four years of intense stress and lack of sleep have set the stage for me to end up with dementia. I would be delighted, relatively speaking, to get a cancer diagnosis (I don’t mean today, just to be clear); I fear ending up with dementia, because I don’t have a me to take charge of everything.

Today I staged all of the household hazardous waste in the garage, putting it in plastic bins that hopefully won’t be too heavy for me and my sister to move into the truck I realize we are going to have to rent. Twenty-six bins, two big red plastic gasoline containers, and three fire extinguishers, one from 1979. I joked that since the estate is paying for it, maybe instead of getting a U-Haul, we should spring for a limousine and liveried driver. We would of course want the champagne fountain and an ice sculpture of Pete Hegseth. (It’s also a joke to say “the estate” is paying for something. That just means we three heiresses are sharing the cost.)

I was dispirited to see how much Roundup we have. I think of my parents as being people who would avoid chemicals, but they weren’t. My mother drank hundreds of gallons of diet soda, even thought it says right on the bottles and cans what’s in it; her wish to lose weight (lose weight, lose weight … ) trumped any other consideration.

They are not sure what causes Parkinson’s disease, but certain toxins are thought to play a role. I thought I had read that about half of people with Parkinson’s will get dementia, but now I see something from UCSF that says 80% of people with PD will eventually have dementia. “The average time from the onset of movement problems to the development of dementia is approximately 10 years.”

So I don’t know about that. It’s hard to distinguish Lewy body dementia, which can come with Parkinson’s-like movement problems, from Parkinson’s dementia. One thought is that you can tell them apart by whether cognitive or motor symptoms arose first, but I noticed the personality changes first, whereas my sister noticed motor problems first. Certainly movement problems did not precede personality / cognitive changes by 10 years, so maybe our mother had Lewy body dementia.

Carrying bin after bin up from the basement, with my tricky knee and aching shoulder, I was just glad not to fall backward down the stairs with five gallons of Roundup sloshing over me. 

In the Name of Mulch

I arrived in Michigan Monday evening expecting the house to be completely empty; I expected to feel very sad about this: All my mother’s sewing stuff, all my father’s workshop stuff, all my parents’ gardening stuff and much else: gone. One estate sale person I spoke with said more than once, “Everything sells.” So I was rather perplexed to find the house surprisingly full of stuff, every room. And beyond perplexed to find my bathroom filthy, with poop smeared along several inches of the underside of the toilet seat.

I texted our estate sale lady to inquire what had gone wrong. I started by pointing out that I had marked that room not to enter, but ended on a breezier note, not wanting to be a jerk: “Anyway, if that can get a thorough cleaning on Wednesday, that would be good.”

The estate sale lady was so upset to hear about this that I almost felt sorry I had even mentioned it. She said she had made every effort to keep that bathroom off limits, but that one visitor had snuck in there. I replied that if one person had managed to make that kind of mess, that was pretty impressive. I assured her that it was not the end of the world and that she should not give it another thought. (I also ended up cleaning the bathroom myself, as the alternative was to walk clear to the other end of the house.) 

This house has a dark central hallway that starts near the dining room and living room and ends at my bathroom, passing three bedrooms and the linen closet en route. It’s not a giant house, but because of that hallway, you do feel like you’re going on a trek. Sometimes my father would be in the TV room and I would ask him a question whose answer required a trip to the office and he would say something like, “Doopty doopty doop” as he traversed the hallway.

Originally, the plan had been that the estate sale would be on a Saturday, which it was, and then normally nothing happens on Sunday, in case the family wants to gather in the post-sale house and reminisce and take, after all, anything that might be remaining. The final cleaning is normally on Monday, but it turned out that ours would not be until Tuesday for some reason, and then that got changed to Wednesday.

I was disappointed about this, as my initial thought was that it would be ideal if the cleaning happened before I arrived Monday evening. When I found the house with so much stuff still in it, I initially couldn’t figure out what to do with all the items I’d stuffed into my bedroom, and the kitchen was also completely unusable, with items for sale covering every flat surface. In a fit of pique, I announced to myself that I guess I’d just have to sleep in the car, and I actually went outside and got in the car, first trying the driver’s seat fully reclined (not comfortable) and then the back seat (really not comfortable). I felt a little vulnerable out there just several feet from the sidewalk, and decided I would feel pretty foolish if I were to be raped and murdered while doing such a stupid thing as to sleep in a car when there was a house several feet away, so I went back inside and moved things from my bedroom to the office and sank into my camping cot (that which I sleep on here) and felt extra grateful to be sleeping indoors, in a bed. This is a thing I give thanks for nearly every night.

On Tuesday I went out to lunch at Knight’s and did some reading for work; I kept falling asleep. It was hot and humid that day, ditto on Wednesday, the day the estate sale lady came with her crew to do the cleanout. It turned out to be good that I was there because there were several questions that arose, though it was also hard to see so much identifiable stuff walking out the door. Part of the point of having an estate sale was not to have to see that. I found myself snatching things off the tops of piles that someone was carrying by just because I recognized them, even though that could be said of nearly everything in the house.

I told the crew that if there was anything they personally wanted, at this point they should by all means take it. It turned out that one fellow scraps metal; he took a bunch of metal away, including lots and lots of nails. Another fellow is a worm farmer. He took a wooden frame maybe a foot and a half by two and a half feet that enclosed coarse metal grating. I thought it might have been the top of the cage of a long-ago pet; my sister said maybe our mother used it for sifting dirt pursuant to finding rocks, one of her many, many interests. Whatever it had been used for in the past, it was something the worm farmer thought he could use, and he also took our massive 1933 dictionary. I joked that he’ll be saying a lot of interesting things by the time he gets done reading the whole thing.

Among our holdings were two shoeboxes of rocks collected by our mother, each with a note saying what it was and where and when it had been found. She had also made, no doubt for classes she took, two posterboard displays with many rocks glued to them. I had long ago resigned myself to those ending up in the trash, but it turned out that the fellow who scraps metal also collects rocks, and he took all of those things. So that’s why it was on the whole good that I was there on Wednesday. Otherwise, I would have pictured all those rocks and all those nails and maybe even the giant dictionary in the trash.

The estate sale lady said she actually never puts a rock in the trash; she takes them home and tosses them near her own pond. Her crew works for other estate sale companies besides hers. When she asked them if it’s true that she puts less in the trash than other companies do, her crew confirmed that this is so. This was what made me and my sister choose her. We liked the idea of things going out into the world to be enjoyed or used by others, and we hated the idea of having a massive Dumpster backed up to the house.

My mother left behind her journals, along with strict instructions not to read them. The New York Times’ Ethicist said in answer to a question about something like this that the living have a compelling interest in reading such documents and that it is not unethical to do so even if the deceased prefer not, which surprised me. The main reason I’m not going to read my mother’s journals is that I don’t even have time to read my own old journals, but every now and then, I read a couple of pages. Written well before she got dementia, they bring her vividly back to life. I will always keep them.

Toward the end of my last visit here, I read a couple of pages and found myself quite surprised and even a little upset by certain revelations. How little we really know about others. In retrospect, I think maybe I was a bit angry with her or maybe with my father, or maybe just generally roiled up, but I decided it was time to move on with my life and thus to let go of a couple items I had meant to keep, which were kitchen utensils that anyone in our family would recognize: a slotted spoon and a ladle.

Later I really lamented having let those go, but it turned out that this lamentation was needless, as those items were among the many things still here when I arrived this time, and they are now safely in a kitchen drawer.

My sister inherited all of our father’s tools, which we interpreted to mean everything in his basement workshop. She invited me to pick out a sentimental item, and I chose a hammer with a slender wooden handle meant for a use I am ignorant of. I could tell my father had used it a lot. It felt nice in my hand. But I didn’t specifically remember it, so did it really count as a sentimental item? I decided it didn’t and left it with the things to be sold, and now I really regret that. I didn’t remember it, but I liked it, and now it’s gone.

Wednesday, cleanout day, was miserably hot and humid. In the afternoon, I went out for lunch at Ricewood and then to Arbor Farms for groceries. When I got home, the place was really and truly darn near empty, just as I had mistakenly thought it would be Monday night. That was a terrible day to do so much physical labor. That crew was heroic.

Twice that day I was complimented on my license plate (MTLHEAD), including by a fellow who pulled up next to me at a red light and yelled over that he loved it. A flurry of devil’s horns ensued.

I decided to wipe the kitchen cupboards before I reshelve my stuff. As I wiped out one cupboard yesterday morning, I realized my mother undoubtedly did the exact same thing 20 years ago when they moved into this house (and then never again). To the extent that the cupboards were wiped after that, it would have almost certainly have been my father doing it.

It’s fun playing house, deciding what to put where.

Sifting through what is still here, I was relieved to discover that I had kept both of the quilts my mother made. I also for some reason kept 15 place mats, give or take, though only one person lives here, and I also have about six brooms.

Today the weather was very pleasant indeed, not as hot and not detectably humid. I went over to my sister’s to pick up some yard tools she’d taken to her place for safekeeping. I was intending to dig out some burdock and needed my shovel.

Several months ago, a utility pole on my lot was replaced. It is obvious that before the pole was stood up, it was dropped on my yew hedge, because parts of the hedge have turned a sickly dead orange and there are visible broken branches.

I am just starting out as a gardener, but I am learning. My glasses kept sliding down my face last visit, so I ordered a strap to keep them in position, and found today that the new strap worked perfectly. In no time at all, I learned that it’s a very good idea to wear gloves when weeding thistles. I have learned that a lawn and leaf bag on its own is unwieldy; it’s better to stand it up in a plastic garbage bin.

I decided that, before I dug up burdock, I would cut the dead parts out of the yew hedge in hopes that maybe the holes will fill in next year. Close up, I could see a place where a main branch had been broken right above the ground by the wayward utility pole. I meant to spend an hour, but ended up spending two just on the hedge and only finished a bit more than half the job. It was very satisfying to see the orange parts going away and just green remaining, and to hear the snick-snick of the same clippers my mother used. I also pulled some ivy out from underneath the hedge, and pulled a few weeds out of the cracks in the sidewalk.

I fetched the broom to tidy up and realized there were a lot of dead leaves under the hedge. I wasn’t sure whether to sweep them out in the name of tidiness, or leave them there in the name of mulch. I compromised by sweeping away most of the leaves in the areas I tackled, but sweeping the final bits back under the hedge.

When I was done for the day, I lay down in the grass. It all seemed swooningly idyllic, the sun shining down and the beautiful blue sky and all the green and the smell of green. I’m starting to have a mystical feeling about this whole thing, like maybe my parents purposely left the birds and the dirt and the thistles that need to be pulled, all these things that are so beautiful and bring so much pleasure and satisfaction. Things that nourish and heal after four years that were so exhausting and difficult, though I would not have missed one second of any of it. The hardwood floor gleaming in the sun, the stately hawthorn in the front yard, the roots easily coming up when the weed is pulled. (Maybe I’m more a weeder and pruner than a gardener per se. I think my father might at heart have been a pruner.)

I called our realtor today to see about getting updated comps, as there is not much more to do to the house, just painting the interior, cleaning, and washing the windows.

Didn’t Totally Suck!

Didn’t even mostly suck.

Having someone else wash the clothes: Initial grade: B. The pickup and delivery were perfectly smooth, which was one source of anxiety after a series of horrible experiences with one particular laundry-unrelated business. My t-shirts came back folded, as requested, and spectacularly wrinkled, as not requested, but I guess there is no way to avoid that. My own laundry procedure results in beautifully smooth t-shirts and work shirts (mock turtlenecks in a cotton knit), but my own laundry procedure also takes an entire day, caused me to fall down the stairs, and was hurting my shoulder. My dark work pants came back from the laundry service speckled in white bits of dust, but that is fixable. They did not attempt to fold my handkerchiefs: good. This is a specialized skill not to be undertaken by just anybody.

As for price, I told myself that if it was less than one thousand dollars, that would be okay, and it was less than one thousand dollars. There is some folding left to do of handkerchiefs and towels, which is fine. I also told myself that if the experience didn’t totally suck, it was probably fine, and it didn’t totally suck. It was noticeably more good than bad, and I have just ordered a steamer / iron for touching up the t-shirts and work shirts, and so am optimistic that I have successfully reclaimed a good amount of time and eliminated one source of shoulder strain.