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.

Dry Run

To prepare for the estate sale in Ypsilanti, my sister and / or I moved almost everything not to be sold into one bathroom, the office, and my bedroom, which was once my mother’s library. What couldn’t be put into one of those rooms, I marked with blue tape. The basement, garage, another bedroom, another bathroom, the TV room, the living room, and the dining room feature things to be sold; this leaves the kitchen. Our estate sale lady said it is impossible to keep people from opening the kitchen cupboards, so she advised taking everything I don’t want sold out of there.

I took her advice, leaving the things to be sold inside various cupboards, so when I left last Thursday morning, the kitchen looked utterly abandoned (except for the photos and cartoons affixed to the front of the refrigerator with magnets), and so it was kind of a dry run for leaving the house for the last time if we sell it not to me.

I have dreaded saying goodbye to the house, and dreaded seeing my sister for what might well also be the last time, but maybe it’s not so smart basing a huge decision on the attempt to avoid one particular moment of emotion that may or may not even occur. Also, I have already been through the worst (I think). If I can say goodbye to my whole entire mother and father, I reckon I can say goodbye to a house.

When I got back to San Francisco, I noticed that I wasn’t having to be so extravagantly homesick for Michigan: I can move there any time I want. Knowing this also seemed to ease my hate affair with San Francisco: I am only here if I choose to be. I’m not trapped here.

I went to work at the hospital on Saturday and was full of zeal for about five hours. By two p.m., I was completely exhausted.

On Sunday, Tom and I went to a gathering of his family for the Memorial Day weekend. It was an utterly lovely day of overindulging in appetizers and watching the children splash in the pool in the dazzling sunshine. Our hostess gave us a tour of her yard, which is spectacular. Going there is one of my very favorite things to do.

On Monday I went to Rainbow, which is closed for Gay Pride Day but open on Memorial Day, and on Tuesday, it was back to work, where I again felt like I was dying by noon or so. I went to see my chiropractor for more treatment of my injured shoulder and to discuss various other problems. The clinic is located not far from work, so I just zipped up there during the day, with my boss’s permission. I asked my chiropractor if everyone feels like they’re dying by 2 p.m. on a workday, and it turns out that he, at least, doesn’t.

He suggested that maybe I’m eating too many carbs. I was startled. I eat an impeccable, in my opinion, Mediterranean diet and assume there is nothing better I could be doing, but maybe I’m wrong about that. My chiropractor said bread, even though whole grain, might be causing a problem and / or fruit might be. He said that either breakfast or lunch on work days should be only protein and fat: experiment. If that doesn’t help, he said he would suggest a supplement that helps to smooth out blood sugar, and after that, we could try herbs to address high cortisol: ashtanga was named.

I mentioned all of this to a co-worker whom I rely on for health advice at least as much as I rely on any MD. She recommended a book written by a doctor at the Institute for Health and Healing, which is where my chiropractor is. The book is The T.I.G.E.R. Protocol: An Integrative 5-Step Program to Treat and Heal Your Autoimmunity, by Akil Palanisamy, MD. I don’t have a diagnosis of autoimmune disease, but I ordered the book.

The last time I did laundry, I further injured my shoulder dragging my wheeled cart back up Guerrero St., and concluded I was going to have to start doing laundry every single week, so it doesn’t get to be so weighty. That is partly why I asked my boss if I could work one day a week instead of two. Lisa M. suggested having someone else do my laundry, but I told her I had tried that in the past and found it unsatisfactory, as I don’t want every last item folded.

But the idea stuck with me, not taking my laundry somewhere for wash and fold, in which case I might as well do it myself, but having someone come and fetch it. The problem is not hanging around the laundromat. I enjoy hanging around the laundromat. The problem is dragging the clothes to and fro and down and up the stairs, so I went looking for a laundry place with pickup and delivery. I found a couple of possibilities, and late last night, seizing the bull by the horns, put in a request to have my laundry picked up today.

It ended up being three giant plastic bags. I asked for some things to be returned damp so I can hang them to dry myself. The place said that when they bring my laundry back, they will include some reusable bags. It was a great feeling looking at that massive amount of laundry knowing someone else would be doing it. The pickup was perfectly smooth.

As if that weren’t enough, today I did something I have been trying to get to for a year and eight months, which was to go pick out new glasses. In September of 2024, I got a new prescription which didn’t differ much from the previous prescription, which has barely changed since the spring of 2017, nine years ago. In the course of that whole year, I could not find two hours to walk to the well-regarded eyewear and opticians place located two blocks from my apartment building. The reviews are stellar and they win award after award.

In September of 2025, I got another prescription which again itself barely warranted getting new glasses, but it seemed that several tiny changes over the years must surely be adding up to some sort of need, and also, just appearance wise, I have been wearing my current glasses for quite a while now. According to my projected schedule for the day, I didn’t have time to go over there, but I decided just to do it, anyway. A lovely young man, with no one else to tend to in the middle of a weekday afternoon, brought me about 20 pairs of glasses to try. After a while, I started to feel a little overwhelmed and began to wonder if maybe I’d had enough glasses shopping for one day when I put on a pair that immediately made me think: this is them. These will be my new frames for glasses for distance, and I am going to use some frames I already had for reading glasses, which are definitely needed at this point.

So I am feeling great! Someone else is doing the laundry possibly right at this moment, I do not need to go to the laundromat every single week and can therefore stick with working two days a week and maybe even finally sew some pants, and both needed pairs of glasses have been picked out! And maybe this book and / or the advice of my chiropractor will result in my feeling a little less lousy. It might not have anything to do with food: I eat the exact same way in Ypsilanti and feel perfectly fine there, it seems to me. I have been blaming the job and may be quite right to do so, but we shall see. As a mentor once said, I’m not tired of empathizing, I’m tired from empathizing. And yet, I find it profoundly meaningful to have those conversations, so maybe it is fine to feel tired from empathizing twice a week, or then again, maybe it isn’t.

Enshittification of the Bike Lanes

I have not read Cory Doctorow’s book, but have lately heard many quotes from it from the other Lisa M., who was enthralled by it.

Due to a series of weather alerts yesterday, I did not walk until after dinner and so saw several people on the neighborhood streets I had never seen before: different shift. Probably a good idea to do one’s walking in the evening as summer approaches, come to think of it. When I was a child, my mother and I used to jog around our block in Ann Arbor at night. Maybe it was sometimes due to the weather, but I think it was mainly due to some sort of self-consciousness or, alas, shame about our bodies. Dementia did nothing to free my mother from dissatisfaction with her body. Even when she could no longer figure out who her immediate relatives were, she remembered that she needed to be on a diet. So sad.

As I walked yesterday evening—it was still rather uncomfortable out in terms of heat and humidity—I mulled over a minor climate control problem: It is certainly at the moment time for air conditioning, but since just a week ago it was in the 40s and I needed my winter coat to walk one day, it seemed premature to turn the A/C on.

I initially concluded that I could just leave the settings unchanged when I depart tomorrow: The heat is on, but it might not ever run. It does not matter if it is too hot, because I will not be here. But then I remembered that I have the estate sale lady and her crew to think of, along with the shoppers I hope will be here on sale day, and also my sister stopping by to get the last of her things out of the house, so I decided I’d better turn the air conditioning on.

I was delighted when I saw that there is a heat-cool auto setting! The thing will figure out for itself what to do when. I guess there would only be a problem if there were an overlap, like wanting the house heated to 72 but cooled to 70, but our settings do not overlap.

I saw an ominous article in The New York Times about Amazon using four-wheeled little trucks to make deliveries using bike lanes. They call these battery-powered vehicles which can hold more than 100 parcels “cargo bikes,” which is certainly a misnomer. It can only be about two weeks before these menaces become ubiquitous in San Francisco. If they are using the bike lanes to get from destination to destination, that presumably is also where they are going to park. On Valencia Street, the bike lane zigs and zags, making its way between and around outdoor dining areas and parked cars; in many places, it is between the curb and parked cars, meaning there can be people wandering into the lane from either side. The available space appears to have been apportioned among the various roadway users a half inch at a time. 

Along with actual bicycles, the bike lane is crammed with e-bikes, e-scooters, giant kid-carrying bikes with the big bin on the front, and of course tech bros shooting by at 40 miles an hour with an inch to spare. There are many stretches where if the bike lane gets blocked by, say, a car or a dumpster, there is not an easy way to get around the impediment. It feels far from safe; one just hopes for the best. (So far, so good.)

So the thought of adding ten Amazon mini delivery trucks per block is dispiriting.

I’m starting to give some thought to taking a cab to work and walking home to avoid cycling on Valencia. I’m not sure how long that walk would take. An hour? I will test it while I’m there.

Now that I might be about to be a property owner on this little block, I am more mindful of how others are taking care of their places: Is that shambles going to affect my property values? Most houses and yards on this block are nicely kept, definitely including mine. I regularly get compliments on the yard. There are maybe four places out of perhaps 20 houses total that are sort of disaster areas, including two houses owned by ex-spouses. You can get a sense of how they might have formed a couple; they had at least one thing in common. I had to smile yesterday evening when I saw a front yard that was occupied by nothing but thistles. They were nicely spaced out, almost as if someone had purposely landscaped with what most consider to be weeds. I’ll bet they don’t get too many trespassers on their thistle lawn; that could be a plus.

My sister came over today bringing two bins of Christmas stuff our mother passed on to her years ago, maybe wanting not to store it any longer but not being able to bear to throw it out. It was fun again seeing all those familiar and colorful shiny objects from nearly 50 years ago.

The big day is finally here: Time to put blue tape on everything not to be sold! I took my car over to my sister’s so the driveway will be free for the estate sale workers and shoppers. I have felt a low-level anxiety creeping up over the past few days, that familiar knot in the gut. But I must say I have been free from a lot of unnecessary anguish, which I believe is thanks to re-devoting myself to the teachings of Sayadaw U Tejaniya. I think I would normally be a wreck at this juncture, but I am not at all. I am reading and savoring his book Relax and Be Aware: Mindfulness Meditations for Clarity, Confidence and Wisdom. I bumped into him many years ago and went on a retreat at Spirit Rock based on his teachings; I have never encountered him in person.

I am sorry I drifted away and plan never to do that again. I am pretty sure that I am hearing some of Tejaniya’s words of wisdom from Howie on Tuesday evenings in our online sangha; he has even mentioned Tejaniya’s name from time to time. 

Grand Finale Versus Grand Chore List

Yesterday after our walk, Amy mentioned some improvements she has made to her house, which she bought a year ago, and she talked about shoveling snow in the winter. This was inspiring: I could shovel! (Maybe; I have a chronically bad shoulder.) For that matter, I could probably do several of the things I currently pay a yard work person to do. I started listing them in my mind. Instead of paying someone to do such-and-such thing, I could buy the tool(s) needed and do it myself, though I felt a bit unsure about certain tasks: Could I prune a tree so that it doesn’t touch the house? (I did not even know this was a thing that needed to be done until my sister mentioned it a few years ago.)

But also, is this really how I want to spend my time and energy? Is this like Americans transforming from leading scientists into people who joyfully pick the strawberries immigrants used to pick (for 1/10 the hourly rate), as a member of the current administration described a few months ago? Is weeding alongside the path at the north end of the house and then doing that again and then doing that again going to be as interesting and meaningful as meeting new patients on the oncology unit at the hospital? I began to feel discouraged, deflated and overwhelmed.

Also, not to talk about money again, which once upon a time was bad form, but I had told my financial advisor that I am living fine on X salary, and he calculated that I could have Z income each month without problems, but Z is a little bit less than X, and actually, while I had been certain I was living fine on my salary, it appears that might not precisely be so (though how could I not be? The whole thing is a mystery).

I lived frugally for a very long time and in theory I could do so again, but maybe I couldn’t in practice, or maybe it would be an unpleasant source of stress. I decided to undertake a monthly analysis of my expenditures and just as quickly abandoned that tiresome-sounding idea. However, I have started adding up a given month’s expenditures once the next month starts, not putting it into categories or anything, but just getting an idea of the total and sort of noticing what I bought that maybe I could have not bought.

I think the money will work out, particularly if Social Security exists six years from now, which does not seem to be guaranteed. The premiums for my Obamacare are currently $1336 a month. I don’t know if it would be more or less in Michigan, but I guess I can hang on for one more year, at which point I should qualify for Medicare, if that still exists.

I was pondering how, when I am in San Francisco, feeling increasingly cramped and constrained in my studio apartment, I long to eat outside, but how could I do it? Setting up a folding chair near the trash chute and watching the neighbors’ rats run up and down doesn’t seem like it would be satisfying. In that regard, Ypsilanti is hugely better than San Francisco.

Another couple points of comparison: My apartment is full of light; many sectors of the house are dark. (Should be fixable.) I can have the windows open in my apartment pretty much every minute of the year: fresh air. There are screens on some of the windows in the house and I could open the inner window and have fresh air but I am transforming back into a Michigander: realizing there actually is hardly any minute when you would want a portal to the outside: In the winter, you don’t want to let the warm air out, and in the summer, you don’t want to let the heat and humidity in.

I am sure that my father, once upon a time, yearly replaced the screens with storm windows (these are an outer, second window) and later on vice versa. I don’t know if he kept up with that forever. It’s possible that at some point he just left the storm windows on all year, since you can hardly ever open the windows anyway, and since the storm windows would help with insulating the house in the winter.

My sister found the screens in the garage and installed a couple, taking off the storm windows. My approach to this is going to be that some of the windows have screens, some have storm windows, and that’s that.

Amy has groovy newer vintage windows where both things are available in the upper half of the window, and you just slide down the one you want to use. I would love to have those, but I would also love to have some caulk applied near a low brick wall out front, the lighting improved, the house rewired if necessary for improving the lighting, the deck power washed and painted, the wet basement fixed, maybe even the exterior of the house painted someday and much more. I may never be able to afford to do most of these things and so they will hang over me forever as undone to-dos. My father said the one good thing about moving to the retirement community after he was diagnosed with cancer was that it made his to-do list vanish. He said there were items on that list that had been there for 50 years.

Does it make sense to start a to-do list that will only ever get longer and never get shorter? I guess one approach would be never to say I’m going to repair or improve anything, though I’m not sure that’s the right idea, either. I think it is prudent to keep up with home maintenance.

I have never, ever wanted to own a house. I didn’t want to take care of a house, and I didn’t want to clean a house, but now here I find myself planning to do both of those things, at a relatively advanced age, which I had envisioned being devoted to my Grand Finale. Increasingly, being stuck in that little apartment watching the rats run up and down seems unendurable, especially when just a plane ride away is my very own unpainted deck and very own broken but you can still sit on it plastic deck chair.

I don’t know if these are reliable life lessons, but the two times I’ve seen a centipede in this house, they were in the bathroom. (Are centipedes always in the bathroom? Does a bathroom always contain a centipede, even if not in plain view?) Also, when I most recently saw a centipede in the bathroom, it occurred simultaneously with seeing a giant ant. (Does the presence of one imply the presence of the other?) 

Centipede

Today I had lunch at Seva: the vegan version of their tempeh Reuben, and crispy French fries with ketchup. I went over to Amy’s in Chelsea and we walked up and down part of Washtenaw County’s Border to Border Trail. This non-motorized trail will be 55 miles long when it is finished; nearly 43 miles are complete now.

Mosquito season has begun, so we walked not in the woods but along a paved walkway that went alongside a cemetery for a while, and crossed over a creek. Afterward, we sat in Amy’s pleasant living room drinking water and chatting while our phones broadcast various storm alerts: thunderstorm warning, lightning in the area. There was a brief period of heavy rain, and there were flashes of lightning while I was still at Amy’s and while I was driving back home along I-94.

I stopped at ACE to get, among other things, a plain light-colored apron for eating on the deck, and I got a few groceries at Arbor Farms next door.

Amy texted me later that we had walked 5.53 miles.

It was hot and sticky during our walk, so I took a quick shower after I got home. I found four or five enormous ants in the tub, most right near the drain. Yesterday evening I escorted two giant ants and a centipede out of the bathroom and through the front door; the latter shot out along the counter from behind the hand towel, eliciting a shriek from me and a mumbled, “This is not my favorite part.” 

I Hereby Unvolunteer

I had booked helpers from Dolly to move several items today, but saw a note this morning saying that our helper had “relisted.” (I never saw anything about the second helper, but there were going to be two.) I guess that’s a nice way of saying that the person said, “Instead of being on the work list, I’d like to be on the non-work list!” I called Dolly and the pleasant customer service person said he would get busy trying to find another person, though he pointed out that this would have to be someone who chose the task; they can’t assign work. I politely said I would prefer to cancel the project, as it was supposed to have started 15 minutes prior, and to receive a refund, which was no problem.

I texted our estate sale lady to see if she had an idea regarding movers, on the theory that she probably knows a thing or two about getting an object from Point A to Point B, and I also started looking around online. I had been thinking Two Men and a Truck could be a possibility, but the reviews for the ones in this area were pretty awful. Then an app called Thumbtack came into view. Whereas booking the Dolly had literally taken more than an hour, as each thing to be moved had to be specified in detail and then double-checked, triple-checked … 75 times checked, all I had to do at Thumbtack was to describe in a freeform field the nature of my needs.

Along with downloading the app and setting up my account, the whole thing can’t have taken more than five or ten minutes. Immediately after I pressed the submit button, Thumbtack suggested three possible vendors. Two of them sent electronic messages within about 60 seconds, and one of the two also telephoned. I arranged to have the latter come today at 2 p.m. They arrived at 2:30, having advised by text in a timely manner that they had had “a lil truck problem.”

They moved a dresser, Mom’s exercycle, and Dad’s air compressor over to my sister’s, and brought back an enormous toolbox and La-Z-Boy loveseat to put with the items for the estate sale. I asked my sister if the dresser had arrived intact, and she said it had, but that she wasn’t sure if she would use these movers again. They had arrived without straps to secure things, and the U-Haul van they were using didn’t have a ramp. She had noted, as had I, that one of them—these were college students—was wearing Birkenstocks. So was I, but I wasn’t going to move a toolbox that weighed about 200 pounds.

Earlier on, I was thinking about all the things I could have fixed around here now that I know about Thumbtack! The movers were perfectly fine for what we needed today, but not top-notch professional movers, so that tempered my enthusiasm a little, but it still seems like a good app to have. I told my sister it was a life-changing moment: “It’s okay to be an old lady!” There will be help for the things I need help with.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees at all, though for some reason, the lady bee keeps starting her hole-making operation over in a new spot. I warned the movers about the bees, and one of the two looked alarmed. I dislike bees myself—that is, I’m afraid of them—but I do not want these bees, or any bees, purposely harmed. I advised the movers not to swing at them. These particular bees are very large. It occurred to me that this might bee (sic) a problem on estate sale day. Someone might swat at our bees and get stung; maybe someone would kill one of the bees.

A couple of years ago, I noticed a pile of sawdust underneath that bench just as someone was arriving to fix a little gas leak in the basement. He pointed out the hole in the bench, and before I could speak a syllable, he sprayed into the hole with the can he was holding in his hand. The bee burst out of the hole in agony and died just outside it, on the driveway. It was awful. That’s how I knew what this was when sawdust appeared again lately.

I am planning to leave here on Thursday, so I offered my sister the opportunity to undertake an exciting special assignment: Using Thumbtack to find someone to get started painting that bench ASAP, before the hole is complete and the eggs laid, in which case we would have bees hanging around until maybe September. We agreed that I would undertake the exciting special assignment, and that she would oversee the phases of the operation that occur after I’m gone. I ran the whole thing by our meticulous interior painter, assuming this would be outside his purview, but just wanting to see, or perhaps he would know of the right painter, but he offered to pick it up and take it home and paint it in his garage. That is absolutely ideal: If there is no bench for a while, there should be no bees, and when it comes back, it should no longer be of interest to them, though I am definitely prepared to deploy clanging wind chimes; I might do that anyway.

It was 89 degrees today, sunny, humid, breezy. The breeze makes a big difference when it is hot and humid.

I scattered the grass seed I bought the other day and watered the lawn, and I took a walk, followed by dinner on the deck.

Burdock

This morning I spent some time picking out individual paper clips that I would like to keep, with the thought that I might literally be losing my mind. I went through the junk drawer in the kitchen, setting aside to keep only things that are habitually in use, and putting several tools with the items for the sale, tools I will probably need two weeks from now, but I feel kind of bad that the estate sale lady might just barely make her standard fee from our little sale, so I want to leave as many things for her as possible.

My sister came over and we, mostly her, did more furniture moving. After she left, I spent an hour in the yard weeding and clipping dead brown stalks and ivy, of which there is much. I had wanted in particular to get rid of some burdock that springs up outside the kitchen sink window, but it proved to be difficult to uproot. A weeder was useless, and even a trowel could get only the smallest couple of plants. I’ll have to go out there with an actual shovel if there’s time. This time I wore gloves, and along with the paper lawn and leaf bag, I brought a big bucket for carrying my few tools in and to put any bits of trash in. My glasses kept sliding down my face, so I will get something to keep them in place. I saw two live worms, but they didn’t hurt me.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees; at least, I saw the lady bee this afternoon. I think it was the female because she went under the bench presumably to continue her efforts at making a hole for baby bees. I swept the sawdust out from under the bench yesterday, but there was more there today. Painting the bench might cause the bees to look elsewhere for shelter and apparently they also dislike wind chimes that make a robust clanging sound, not due to the sound itself but because of the vibration. Myself, I am partial to wind chimes, so that might be good all around.

It was sunny and humid today, about 80 degrees and with a nice breeze. In the late afternoon, I went for a walk. I exchanged names with a woman gardening on my own block, and I ran into my next door neighbor, Javier, walking his dog.

I had dinner on the deck, my customary salad, and was visited by two or three bees, one at a time. I think it’s because I was wearing a yellow apron of my mother’s, because my own was in the laundry. I consulted the internet and learned that bees are attracted to yellow, while good colors to wear if you don’t want bees hanging around are plain white, plain tan, or plain pale blue. Supposedly people who work with bees always wear plain white.

Squawk

Yesterday I ran errands and also bought yet another pair of shoes, at Ann Arbor Running Company, just to demonstrate that there will not be any problem living frugally when I am a retiree. These shoes are Altra Torin 8s: wide toe box, zero drop, but plenty of padding. I have such high hopes for them that yesterday evening I ordered a second pair online in a different color. Super frugal! 

This morning the place that installed our new mini-split (air conditioner + heat pump) sent a technician to investigate the low-frequency hum the system is producing. He kept saying how extremely quiet these systems are—so quiet you can hear the coolant flowing through the pipes. He explained that the various noises, some of them loud enough that I’m worried they are annoying the neighbors, and including the low-frequency hum that is annoying me, are just the normal operation of the system. I guess the idea is that the system is so quiet that you can now hear all its loud sounds? That doesn’t really make any sense. As for today’s visit, I expected that the upshot would be: live with it, which I had already decided to do, so that was fine.

It is quite lovely to have nice, warm air blow out of the ceiling vents that previously only cold air came out of, though, since heat rises, it doesn’t seem like the best place for the vents. They were installed for an air conditioner and have been repurposed for the heat pump. I’m not sure where they would be if they were being installed from scratch, but possibly still the ceiling.

Next! Watering of the new grass. I went out and started the sprinkler and watered the first area without incident. I moved the sprinkler to the next area and fiddled with the hoses. One hose comes from the back of the house and then a splitter, or whatever you call it, attaches to two other hoses, one for the front yard and one for the end of the house. My sister set that up.

Somewhere along in here, I noticed that two carpenter bees had come along. I saw the two very large bees and I also saw the telltale fresh piles of sawdust underneath the sturdy wooden bench in front of the house. I remember my father sitting on that bench on a lovely day in June, a couple of months after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He and I and my mother took a walk in the neighborhood. He was exhausted when we got back, I think. I remember his angry, upset expression as he sat on the bench.

I read today online that it is the lady carpenter bee who makes the holes; she is not aggressive unless she feels threatened. The man bee is aggressive, but lacks the ability to sting.

As for the new grass, I found that no water was coming out of the sprinkler in its new location, so I went and twisted the thingies on the two ball valves this way and that, tromping over our new grass repeatedly: If you have this one this way and that one that way? If you have them both this way? If you have them both that way? I swear I tried every possible thing but could not get the sprinkler to work. I finally had to text my sister and say I had done my best to pretend I’m an orphan, as our parents sometimes advised, but was stuck. (When my sister arrived later, she swaggered in the front door and said, “What seems to be the problem with the sprinkler, little lady?”) (I scarcely need mention that five minutes after she took up the problem, the sprinkler was working fine.)

After wrestling with the sprinkler for however long, it was getting to be time for me to leave for my appointment with the key place. I needed a spare key to the garage to put in the lockbox for the estate sale lady, but neither ACE nor Stadium Hardware had the right blank. They suggested a place that is just a locksmith. I had to leave without brushing my teeth or washing my face, due to all the fruitless fiddling with the sprinkler.

I got in my car and noticed that there seemed to be some people standing in my yard, which I could scarcely make sense of. I called over to them, “Hey!” It was a man and woman who looked at me blankly, like, “Why is that lady yelling at us?” They did not move an inch, as they clearly felt themselves to be on public property. I informed them that they were standing in my yard and they reluctantly began to step toward the sidewalk, not without sneering, “Oh, it’s the end of the world!” (The man did that.)

They were walking a dog who evidently had wanted to inspect my father’s daylilies close up. I said that I had just today picked up a dog turd from that area. The woman said, “It wasn’t us,” as they huffily departed. Perhaps it is that if you own a dog, all property is suddenly, magically public?

I consulted my associates: Was I the asshole here? One said no, people standing in her yard would not be acceptable. Another said that he would have said, “Get off my fucking lawn before I give you a lump on your forehead with my 9-iron.”

I drove over to the locksmiths, noticing that I was less patient with tailgating drivers than usual. They used to gravely irritate me, but now I just say to myself, “That is not a bad person. It’s just that someone taught them to drive in a ridiculous manner.” But today when I noticed someone not more than two inches behind me as I was making ready to turn off Stadium Blvd. to go to the hardware store, I came nearly to a dead stop on purpose before I made the turn, while mumbling, “Get off my ass.”

At the hardware store I got a small squirt bottle and a pound of grass seed to try to repair all the damage I did this morning, and next door at Arbor Farms I got some orange essential oil. Back at home, I put a little oil in the new squirt bottle, added water, shook the bottle, took the cover off the wooden bench and sprayed it with orange oil. While I was doing this, I noticed hundreds of small-medium-sized ants trooping into the house, but only one could be spotted inside, so they are disappearing into the bowels of the house for now. 

It was nearly 80 degrees by this time, a gorgeous, sunny day with a pleasant breeze. I took a walk and then it was time for dinner on the deck. Whereas breakfast is eaten mindfully and lunch doesn’t exist, I have taken to familiarizing myself with the events of the day during dinner. The sun was just about in my eyes as I sat down on the deck, so I thought I would see if darkening my iPhone would somehow help. I turned it all the way down to completely black as a starting point—and then could not see the controls to turn the light on again. Nothing I did made it be anything other than completely black. I finally had to try to turn it off and restart it without being able to see anything on the screen, and somewhere along in there, I heard a high-pitched squawk. Eventually the screen became not quite black, and I could turn the light up again, whereupon I saw that I had accidentally made an emergency SOS call; that’s what the squawk was.

If you’ve ever wondered if that actually works, it doesn’t.

Item by item, the proof that my parents were once here is disappearing, including the heated bird bath from the back yard. I therefore also put the sturdy yellow brush used to clean the shallow basin with the things for the sale, but then decided that might make a subtle memento. After my father returned from his three weeks in the hospital and then three weeks in rehab, I cleaned that bird bath with that yellow brush every single day so that when my father sat at the dining room table and looked out the window, he would see a pristine bird bath. One day I came in from that task, and found my father sitting at the table. He made an admiring remark about my zealous bird bath cleaning.

As she left today, my sister said I’m doing a good job of being a homeowner. It certainly does afford an endless supply of things to do that you didn’t think you’d be doing. I am laughing now, remembering how three years ago, give or take, I asked the people doing the fall cleanup of the yard if they would be sure to pick up twigs and branches that had fallen into the yard. They said they would. They didn’t. They said the spring cleanup people would do it for sure. The spring cleanup people didn’t do it, either. I asked this yard guy, that yard guy, and the other yard guy and for some reason, it proved to be impossible to get anyone to pick up a twig.

I would have picked them up myself, except I didn’t know what I would do with a twig once I had picked it up. I have now, with the help of my sister, grasped in what kind of bag you are supposed to place a twig, should you pick one up, and also where you are supposed to place this bag and on what days of the month you may do this. Sheesh. From now on, we will be twig free, unless I don’t buy this house. Then there might be twigs.

Ypsilanti: All of the Weirdos, None of the Waymos

In the mirror the other day, I noticed that my belly was sticking way out, while my butt has become increasingly flat: They have swapped the ideal characteristics, which makes it look like my head is on backward.

A couple of days ago, the woman who is putting on our estate sale came over to discuss details and answer questions. I’m sorry now that we donated so many things earlier on. I’m afraid this sale is going to just barely be worth doing. The estate sale lady said the tools in the basement and garage are what is making it worth doing. She said she might bring some of her own stuff over to include in the sale, which is very kind of her.

The sale will happen after I leave here next week. Unfortunately, the after-sale cleanup can’t be done until after I get back, so I will return to find a house that is forlornly empty except for recognizable family items that no one would take even for free, plus maybe some things belonging to the estate sale lady, which might create a moment of perplexity: I didn’t know we had one of those.

I had a perplexing phone conversation with a mortgage loan officer who helped a friend of mine. She said that the only funds that can be considered when issuing a mortgage are a paycheck and / or a 401(k), and that I might do better just to sell some stocks and pay cash for the house, if possible. After we hung up, I realized there must be a missing piece in there somewhere: Don’t retirees buy houses? Indeed they do. You can potentially get a “portfolio loan” or a “pledged asset credit line.” A portfolio loan is like a HELOC—home equity line of credit—but secured by your hillock of stocks and bonds rather than by your house.

It was odd that this person didn’t mention any of these possibilities. She works for a particular bank as opposed to being someone who might approach any number of lenders on behalf of a client, so maybe it is just that her particular bank prefers to lend based on income-related assets.

Yesterday I went to the monthly lunch of my father’s high school classmates at Knight’s. I was finding it extremely difficult to hear in the noisy restaurant, which I think can be an early sign of hearing loss. I intend to be an early adopter of hearing aids, as difficulty hearing is associated with dementia. I asked Kay, to my left, if I was going deaf faster than usual or if it was just very loud in there. She said she had just been asking herself the same question and said it was that there was a very loud group of lunchers near us; she said it appeared they were about to leave.

A bit later, she said, “Oh, no!” I turned to see a herd of children trooping in, about six years old, eight or ten of them. However, I noticed later that they didn’t seem to be making it hard for me to hear. I told Kay that the children didn’t seem to be very loud, after all. Kay’s face lit up as she said, “That’s because they’re gone!” Sure enough.

Kay often has a joke or two to tell at lunch. A couple of months ago, one was slightly off color. The following month, I said, “I’m going to sit next to Kay so I can hear another X-rated joke.” Tom, formerly of the military, said virtuously, “I don’t listen to those. I cover my ears.”

I had met with a couple of painters, one who by the accounts available to me is very meticulous but who thought the whole thing might take him three weeks, and another who said his crew could get it done in four days or so. I decided to go with the zippy painter, but over the weeks found that communicating with him was rather frustrating; it could take him 24 or 48 hours to answer a text message with, “What is it you need?”

Time is somewhat of the essence because I’d like to get the painting done and preferably also have the house cleaned while I’m away, which will be for about two and a half weeks, but then I remembered that the three-week estimate included doing the basement and garage, which had to be eliminated due to a checking account whose balance for some reason only goes down (the one for the estate), so I texted the meticulous painter to ask if he would give me a call.

He called ten seconds later. I said, “I’m crawling back to you,” which made him laugh. Thank goodness, he has taken us back and he is also available at the needed time. He came over again today and we walked through the house discussing types of paint and colors and repairs he said he can do. I asked what he does about window coverings and he said he takes them down temporarily. I asked him to just put a couple of them in the trash after he does that.

Right after I spoke with him yesterday, I texted the speedy painter to say I had decided to go with someone else.

It is painful to get rid of my mother’s stuff, but at the same time, every area that is cleared out is suddenly a space with any number of possibilities and makes the house feel more like it’s mine. I could have a couch! I must have tried 50 times to figure out how to fit a couch into my studio apartment in San Francisco and have never been able to do it. Tom, right above me, has a small one, but he doesn’t have an easy chair and two bookcases. I want a nice long couch that you can read on until you fall soundly asleep on the couch with a blanket over you. We had a couch like that when I was a child.

Also, it is a choice to get rid of the things in the house. There is nothing stopping me from getting a storage space and putting every last item in it.

I read yesterday that we are apparently on the verge of a stock market crash. The warning signs are supposedly flashing. It crossed my mind that maybe this isn’t the best time to quit my job, but I reminded myself to make decisions based on what I love rather than on my fears.

I called my friend who used to work for the Humane Society of the United States to ask her about one of my cat-related anxieties. As soon as I got the first two words out, she said, “Everything will be okay, everything will be okay, everything will be okay.”

In an earlier conversation, she said that there are no wrong answers. I think there indeed are, but that was still helpful in that it made me realize I have been approaching this as if there is a right answer—because I’m an Enneagram One, I assume everything has a right answer, from where to put an apostrophe on up to whether to continue with cancer treatment—and completely disregarding that it might be fine just to do what I want. (You can just do what you want?) (Though let’s not forget that my Zen teacher did say it is not cheating to use our brains to foresee the results of our decisions.)

With the stock market on the verge of crashing, I decided I’d better extract some cash on this very day, and soon realized I had absolutely no idea how to go about liquidating any asset nor any idea which one I should liberate. Liberating an asset sounds better than liquidating it, which suggests someone tying a stock certificate to a brick and dropping it in the lake. Sell what? Using what cost basis? Should I stop reinvesting dividends? What’s a settlement fund? Do I need one? My financial adviser was just going out of town and can’t talk for a couple of weeks, so I decided to let it go for now. Alcoholics Anonymous saying: When in doubt, leave it out. If the stock market crashes between today and two weeks from now, that isn’t a sign per se, but it will affect my choices.

It was a cold, windy, gloomy, overcast day. I had to wear my winter coat when I went out walking. It was so dark overhead that it looked like it was going to rain at any moment, but it never did, so I watered the new grass in the yard.

Yesterday at lunch, one person asked another an odd question: “Did you put your boat in?” Context revealed that this is a question to be asked in the spring and pertains to the relationship between one’s boat and the lake, which varies by the season. 

As for what I’m going to do here after my financial adviser helps me liberate enough money to get started buying the house, I plan to volunteer two afternoons a week, once with old people. If possible, I will do this at the memory care unit where my mother lived. The other afternoon, I’d like to volunteer with children, perhaps teaching reading and the right place to put an apostrophe. This will be while I’m looking for a job in my field; this job, if it turns up, might be a hospice job, which are way more plentiful than hospital jobs. Then I will keep my eyes open for a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job. If I can get one, it might well require a commute, maybe into Detroit, but the hope is that eventually I could have a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job in Ypsilanti or Ann Arbor. 

Holy crap! I almost forgot the most important thing, which is that when I was coming back from my walk several days ago, I saw my tree guy walking toward his giant car from the 1970s, which was parked at the curb. He introduced me to the three new neighbors whose house he was just leaving; they’re friends. He said they’re in a metal band, and he told them what my license plate says (MTLHEAD), and we exchanged devil’s horns. These people live together, are in a band together which is actually findable on Spotify, and all of their cars are the same color. They looked like very interesting people. They must have a rehearsal space elsewhere, as I have not heard a note. This is good; I don't want groupies camping on my new grass.