Greetings from the beautiful state of Michigan, where I arrived on Monday after just two and a half weeks in San Francisco, where I felt impinged upon from all directions: the various unagreeable activities of my neighbors in my own building and next door, a vivacious new officemate at work. Since I arrived here, I also learned that the rats which are now and then observed running up and down at the apartment building next door have finally figured out that it is even nicer over on our property.
I feel a refreshing freedom here in Ypsilanti, a vast sense of spaciousness both within the house and without. I can listen to music without considering whether I’m bothering my downstairs neighbor, a mental exercise that is additionally exasperating as that same neighbor frequently plays music loud enough to make my floor vibrate. Yet if I end up going deaf because I can listen to my heavy metal as loud as I want, maybe that’s a bit too much freedom. For a reality check, I obtained an app-based decibel meter, but it proved to be useless because it can’t be used at the same time as my Bluetooth speaker, so I ordered an actual, physical decibel meter and plan to try it soon.
I told my sister where I’m thinking of planting several peony bushes (that is, causing someone else to plant several peony bushes—I have an irrational dread of doing the slightest thing in the yard, though I have added to my to-do list to go out back and dig up some burdock plants that are just getting going; surely I should be able to do that) and she asked if I had, then, decided to move here. I said I had 100 percent decided to move here, and also 100 percent decided to remain in San Francisco. I just haven’t yet figured out how to do both simultaneously.
For the time being, I’m proceeding in both directions, including that I have contacted a mortgage broker, one recommended by a friend here. I also asked my sister if she would feed the cats two times a day for three weeks while I’m back in San Francisco packing up my stuff, and she immediately said she would. Moving the cats is another thing I have outsized anxiety about. My hypothetical plan is to find professionals to do this; I will be on the same plane as the two professionals and the two gabapentin-saturated cats. I will be really hoping Marvin doesn’t regain sufficient consciousness to allow destroying the carrier he’s in. So as not to put the cats through watching me pack everything in my apartment up and having to listen to all that cursing, I will bring them first and then go back and get everything else.
At the same time, I decided to ask my boss if I could start working just one day a week instead of two. Maybe that would make life in SF tolerable? He said he had a feeling this was coming and that the answer was yes, but he also mentioned that of us four per diem chaplains, one does not exist (we have an open position), one wants to take all of May and June off, another wants to take all of July off, and now I want to cut my hours in half; he didn’t at all say it that way, and he said I can absolutely do whatever I want to do. He said he knows that when I’m working, he doesn’t have to worry about anything. I love my boss, who has been incredibly good to me.
Therefore, I decided to stick with my two days for now. My boss said he’d figure out how to make the one day work, but I don’t want to make his life harder. We agreed that on one of the two days each week, I will work as a campus where the office should be a lot quieter. Preferably morose if possible.
My main task during this visit to Ypsilanti is to prepare for the estate sale that is scheduled to happen after I leave again. It has been agonizing because we generally have to get rid of this stuff, and I know I shouldn’t keep all of it for reasons of psychological health, but if I end up buying the house, I’ll be mad that I don’t have X, Y and Z, which cannot fit into my apartment in SF but which could easily remain in the house. It will be weird to arrive here next time to find the house mostly empty.
The day after I arrived, I went to Arbor Farms for groceries, where I got to the end of an aisle with my cart and found a fellow sort of blocking the way there. I paused and tried to radiate patience. He explained that one of the clasps of his suspenders had come undone. I said, “That’s an emergency!” He agreed that it kind of was. I noticed that another shopper was perfectly color coordinated right down to his shoes and pointed this out; he beamingly agreed. Ann Arborites and Ypsilantians are extremely friendly people unless they’re in their cars, in which case four percent of them are unbelievable assholes.
Yesterday Ginny and I had lunch at Ricewood, and then I stopped by my father’s favorite gas station to try to put air in the car tires all by myself; the warning light was on. Usually when I see that warning light, I call my sister and she comes over with her air compressor, which is very kind of her but also ridiculous. I should be able to do more stuff on my own because I just should, but also the anxiety about things like this makes me think of the worries that set in for my mother as she began to sink into dementia, so it seems good on two fronts to try to man up. My mother, for instance, became afraid of putting the car window down, fearful she would somehow break it.
The air is two dollars for five minutes and the machine takes quarters only. (Which is to say this learning experience cost me twelve dollars.) At first, I succeeded only in causing the tire to have less and less air in it, and I pictured having to call my sister to ask her to rush home from her office in Detroit because the car was now undriveable and stuck right next to the air machine that other more competent motorists might want to use. But after enough tries, I figured out how to get air to go in rather than come out, and went home with all four tires reasonably close, in my opinion, to the recommended max psi. Victory!
I am enjoying fiddling with the smart thermostat for the new mini-split (A/C and heat pump) and noticing that it seems like a shame to gain expertise in all these various things only to hand it all over to some stranger. I also like the idea of having a perfectly regular schedule: sleeping from this time at night to that time in the morning every single day, meditating, doing my exercises, walking, having more time to read, and feeling well every day instead of feeling horrendous two nights a week. At the same time, I appreciate that there are many people who feel like that five nights a week, or seven, or every minute of every day. Just two nights is luxurious, considered from that perspective.
I guess the question is if it is inherently virtuous to keep at something that is difficult; I think that I do kind of think that. Yet there is actually such a thing as retiring and doing only what one feels like doing; there is precedent for this. And also I could volunteer somewhere.
Today the City of Ypsilanti sent a person to do the mechanical inspection of the new mini-split and another to do the electrical inspection, and I started (and finished) the process of finding movers to move some furniture from here to my sister’s, some other furniture from her place to here for the estate sale, and some other furniture yet just from one room of this house to another room of this house, so that everything not to be sold can be sequestered in two rooms.
My realtor suggested trying Dolly, which is part of TaskRabbit. I entered information about all the pieces of furniture, which was kind of a pain, and then called them to see if I can explain what goes where on the day of the move, the answer to which was: no. I needed to schedule one thing that was two-helpers-and-a-truck and another thing that was labor-only, though they could be on the same day.
The support person laboriously typed up the details, going over the list of pieces of furniture—precisely 11 things total—again and again and again. It took more than an hour, but this fellow was so sweet that every time I heard “two bookcases,” I tried to sound as excited as if I were hearing it for the first time. I went to measure a bookcase during our call and he said worriedly, as I unfurled the tape measure, “Don’t hurt yourself!” I suppose if one were careless enough, one could put out one’s own eye with a tape measure, the same injury I was afraid of incurring while putting air in the car’s tires. (Can the whole thing explode?)
In the end, I did schedule the two helpers and a truck, but it turned out we were outside the service area for labor only. How can that be? Can’t the two helpers just kind of move the other stuff while they’re here? The answer was: no. But my sister thinks we can certainly move those intra-house items ourselves, so I think we should be set in regard to movers.
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