Daylilies

Maybe it’s not that I’m going insane but just that I’m doing an insanely poor job of taking care of myself. The basics, such as sleeping and eating regularly, but also doing what Howie calls remembering to “guard our sense doors,” of which the most treacherous by far is the mind, which in Buddhism is counted as a sense door, along with familiar favorites such as the eye and the ear. I have let my mind run amuck way too often, especially since all that is really needed is to notice that this is happening. “There it goes!”

I very nearly made the big mistake of deciding just to stay awake early this morning. Having come this far, and since it’s nearly time to start the day … . But instead I wisely got back into bed after putting on a flannel robe that once belonged to my father. Two or three winters ago, I could not get warm at bedtime no matter what I wore until I started wrapping that robe around me after I’d put on two or three other layers. It was comforting to wear something that had belonged to my father, almost to feel as if he were protecting me.

This morning it worked its same magic. I fell asleep right away and was jolted awake about four hours later by the first of several visitors today, two fix-it people. We toured the house and I pointed out all of the items on my long list of things that need attention. The biggest item is what my sister first described as a “cat lock”—a screen (AKA screened) porch outside the front door to give me a second chance to catch Marvin before he’s out in the street.

The next biggest item is whipping the deck into the shape, and after that, there are several doors to be installed or replaced (seven, now that I actually count), and then a lot of even smaller things. The fix-it people felt that all of the wood on the deck needed to be replaced, followed by oiling, staining or painting.

A bit later, two actual home renovation people arrived. We discussed the cat lock. I asked if it’s going to make the house look stupid, and to their credit, they said it will, though it might help to paint it the same color as the house. I didn’t want to show them all the other things, not wanting to waste their time, but they assured me that since they were doing something that is in their wheelhouse, they could potentially do everything else.

Regarding the deck, they thought the wood was fine and that it is just a matter of power washing and using a solid stain.

My mother’s bedroom door has not latched securely shut for a long time; maybe it was even that way when they bought the house in 2006. I envision that room as being off limits to cats, so I asked if the door could be made to stay closed. One of the fellows went back to their truck to get a drill and ten seconds later, it worked perfectly. I couldn’t believe it. I was thrilled and also sort of stricken that Mom lived without that working properly for so long. Maybe it was on Dad’s very lengthy to-do list, or maybe she didn’t even mention it and just lived with it. Unlike myself, she was not one to complain.

Her bathroom cold water faucet was broken, too; you had to kind of fit one piece atop another and press down and hope it would stay engaged long enough to turn the water on or off. I had that fixed while Dad was in the hospital or in rehab right afterward. It gave me great satisfaction, but she didn’t get to enjoy it for very long, since we soon moved them to the retirement community. My father had been in the process of planting two arbor vitaes, with one in the ground and its neighbor still in the pot. I hired someone to plant that second one before he came home. He was delighted.

Similar to yesterday, it got to be afternoon before I had a chance to eat: poor self-care, but I don’t know how it could have been otherwise with the various visitors and emails and phone calls and text messages. Cleaners are due to come tomorrow, so there was some discussion about that, and I spoke with the Ypsilanti utilities people and emailed with our insurance agent, and my realtor called. She said, with a soupçon of chagrin, that she realized she had never walked me through the steps a buyer follows, we had been so focused on me as the seller, and maybe that’s why there was some extra confusion yesterday. Tom’s financial advisor also got in touch, as he is unable to reach Tom, not an unheard-of problem. I would have been happy to walk upstairs and knock on his door, or alternatively to yell out my bathroom window, but the stairs and bathroom are far away right now. Tom texted that he is considering moving to Michigan, too, the neighbors are causing so much disturbance. I told him that Michigan welcomes him!

Right after I ate for what will be the only time today because it was so late in the day, Digby the tree guy came over to discuss vines / creepers that are too high for me to reach, a couple of deadish and also remarkably unsightly hawthorns in the back yard (one of them possibly literally the world’s ugliest tree), and the enormous and quite lovely silver maple that needs to be taken out before it falls on my house and / or the house of my plant-loving neighbor. Digby had talked earlier on about hiring a crane to deal with the maple, but today said maybe I’d better get quotes from a few larger operations, though he said to let him know after I get those quotes. “Maybe we’ll throw our hat in the ring.”

At some point, it sounded like his phone rang and I heard him talking, so I tuned out. I heard him say, “Hey, buddy?” and realized he might be talking to me.

“Did you just call me ‘Buddy’?!?”

He sheepishly allowed that he had.

“I love it!” I thought that was very funny.

Next, the painter came by to discuss various remaining tasks. It was a lovely day: sunny, not too hot, not noticeably humid, and with a fresh breeze that seemed to move the project of airing out the paint smell forward a step or two, so I’m not mad at the painter any more. This being the first time I ever had a house painted (and it had also better be the last), I did not realize that “window trim” does not also mean the windows and their sashes. Those will need to be painted, too. I asked the painter to wait to do that until I depart again, and tried to impress upon him that it should happen soon after I depart and not right before I return. I reiterated this after he said, “Oh, then I’ve got plenty of time!” No, you do not.

He was going to paint the soffits, but thinks there could be some rot, so I need to look into that. If so, I guess they will have to be replaced; if not, the painter can proceed.

So it was not a lonely day. I just hope all of these people breathe enough solvents that they can’t tell when they’re with someone who can’t remember the last time she took a shower. All right, I will check my records: It was a week ago, and I only did it then because I got my bald fade that day, which leaves a lot of coarse itchy tiny snippets of hair stuck all over me like glitter.

Both of my parents stopped bathing later in life. My mother knocked off ten years before she died, give or take, I suspect out of boredom: I did that already. Later she had trouble stepping into the tub and keeping her balance. We had gotten a quote for a walk-in shower about a week before my father fell ill, so that never happened. My father as a rule was quite attentive to his skin and hair and nails, with a fine collection of lotions and clippers and such, and only discontinued these efforts after he became ill. He was so skinny that he never smelled unbathed. There just wasn’t enough of him to emanate an odor. My mother had a reasonable amount of flesh, but she also never smelled bad that I could detect.

I am not good at all at interior decorating. I can never figure out what might be a nice thing to have or what might be a pleasing place to put a thing, but I am actually limping toward an aesthetic now, the thought being that, from as many points as possible, there should be nothing between the viewer and a window. There should be an open, empty, spacious feeling, but if you poke your head around the corner, voila, there should a nice, long couch there, or a chest of drawers or filing cabinet.

Speaking of lovely things, I have a neighbor who was doing something on her lawn extension that didn’t look like much for a long time. I thought maybe she’d just given up on it. When I most recently walked by there, I saw that she had obviously carefully planned and executed something really transporting: There are puffs of greenery reminiscent of clouds throughout, interspersed with expanses of a textured plant closer to the ground, and popping up everywhere in random spots are brightly colored wildflowers. How did she think of doing such a thing, and how did she learn how? Maybe one of these years I can do something like that. (Fortunately, my yard looks gorgeous thanks to my father’s many daylilies in different colors, all blooming now, all by themselves. Digby said he loves them and that he takes pictures of them regularly; he took one today.)

The living room picture window has ancient drapes; it is actually one big window with two narrower windows on either side; the latter can be opened. Those drapes have to have been there since prior to my parents’ occupancy; maybe even prior to the person before them. They are in poor condition and don’t close all the way. I started to think maybe I would just get rid of them. I’m not sure what I would put over a window that big, but I also don’t really care if a passerby espies me seated upon my sister’s couch reading a magazine, or seated at my sister’s table having dinner. I pulled the drapes aside yesterday and bunched them up with string, whereupon I realized that they extend well beyond the ends of the actual windows. The drapes make it look much more horsey than it actually is. The windows aren’t really that enormous, so now I definitely plan to get rid of the drapes. (Almost sounds like I’m going to be living here, eh?)