Green and Lavender

I flew to Michigan yesterday, after 45 minutes of sleep. I had the best seatmates on the plane again and the flight was uneventful. I used to be completely terrified of turbulence. Now, if I don’t say so myself, I am almost entirely impervious to it. (Wait! Do “If I don’t say so” and “If I may say so” mean the exact same thing?)

I took the shuttle to Ypsilanti, sharing the back seat with a woman about my age who also grew up in Ann Arbor. She asked where I live, and I said defiantly, “San Francisco.” “Cool!” She asked what I do, and I told her I’m a hospital chaplain. “Cool!” (That’s what we used to say in the 1970s when something was cool.) Later I grumbled to my sister that no one is going to say “Cool!” when I say I live in Ypsilanti, MI, and weed my garden.

I had explained to the painter that I am sensitive to scents and chemicals, and asked him to paint at his earliest convenience after my prior departure from here. He assured me that his calendar was wide open and that he could schedule this as requested. By the time it actually rolled around, he was juggling other jobs, so I don’t know when he actually finished—in fact, there is still some drywall in the basement that needs painting—but when I walked in the door last night, after my 45 minutes of sleep and cross-country flight, I was unpleasantly overwhelmed by the smell of paint. It is all water based and it is all low VOC, but I’m acutely sensitive to this kind of thing. I got a mild headache pretty much right away.

I didn’t get quite as far as saying I could not buy the house (as far as I can recall), but I dramatically announced (to the realtor, my sister and my daily text group) that I would have to return to the airport and fly right back to San Francisco. I remember when Tom’s mother got a new apartment or had her apartment redone. It was maybe six months before I could go into it. We had several visits where we sat in the lobby together.

I didn’t exactly want to sleep in an airport hotel and fly right home, but I already had a headache and had to do something. The things I had taken out of my backpack I put back in, and I exited the house, locking the door. I might have actually called the shuttle then for lack of any better idea—sleeping in the car having been ruled out after I got here after the estate sale—but then I saw that my phone battery was down to four of whatever those units are called: I wasn’t going to get far. I guess you say your phone battery has four percent of its ingredients left. (No, I know: capacity.)

Back into the house I went. This was now well past my sister’s normal hours of operation, but I texted her and asked if she would come over. That was the smart thing that I did. She came over. She advised opening various windows and putting box fans in some of them blowing outward. We have a solid collection of those because of the wet basement. Her eye fell on the ceiling fans; I’d forgotten about those. I turned all of them on except for the one that for some reason makes the light bulb burn out. She said to turn the A/C way up (to 85) so that it wouldn’t be trying to cool the outdoors and set the HVAC fan to run all the time instead of just when needed. She speculated that maybe it would be good to, in a given room, open a window, deploy a fan in the other window, turn on the ceiling fan and then close the door, so all of the efforts / effects would be confined to that one space.

The one room that was perfectly habitable was my own bedroom, which used to be the library. My mother painted that years ago and it still looks fantastic. She did a very meticulous job. Tom’s brother, who used to be a painter, saw a photo and said she did “a crazy good job.” No new paint, and I also have a big HEPA air filter in there. I am keeping the door closed for now to keep all the nice, clean air in. The display on the filter says it is not detecting any PM2.5 (particles 2.5 microns in size or smaller), but if I open the door, soon it says there are 2 or 3: “3 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, not a percentage,” says the internet.

My sister said she had also gotten the garage door opener working. Someone had quoted me $800 for that. Next she is going to install a keypad to operate the door and also get a remote for it.

I went to bed last night without unpacking my suitcases, washing my face, or brushing my teeth, and I am giving some thought to doing the same tonight. I used to unpack my suitcase as soon as I arrived, but it has been nearly 24 hours and I have not done it. I am way, way out of steam. I brought a second suitcase this time, a carry-on containing sentimental items I would not want to lose. To get my father’s wedding ring across the country, I wore it. 

I did not sleep well last night. All of the furniture had been pushed into the center of the rooms for painting, so the first thing I did today was to set the office up again. I got my sister’s hand truck from the garage and used it to remove my mother’s 50-pound combination backup battery and speaker from the office. There is only one three-prong outlet in the office; my father made do with a network of long, thick extension cords. I still have one and am using it wrapped around the perimeter of the room, but called the electrician to see about getting more outlets. They are scheduling for November, but put me on the waiting list. That will give me a chance to figure out where else I need outlets.

Not that I will need them. I’m going to be living in San Francisco, where I’m a hospital chaplain! I keep saying that, and yet somehow I find myself moving inexorably toward home ownership, like a person being sucked into quicksand.

Once I could sit at my father’ s desk again and type on my father’s keyboard, I worked on the various electronic signatures for the real estate transaction, the theory still being, even though it’s been a couple of days, that it doesn’t make sense not to buy a house I might want. I will say, and this I really mean: Under no circumstances will I rent it out and be a landlord. I don't want people calling me in the middle of the night about their toilet and I don't want them wiping boogers on the walls.

Most of the forms I just signed as the seller, but there was one I had to sign twice, once as seller and once as buyer. Then complications with the website for the earnest money, then paying the earnest money, then one form that wouldn’t work electronically, so receiving a PDF and printing, signing, scanning and emailing back. Many details. By the time it was all done, it was getting to be 3 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten yet.

My sister thought it was safe to set the A/C to 85 because she said it was not expected to be hot. Last night was pleasantly cool, not humid, with a fresh breeze blowing in windows that are usually closed. I noticed a big open-air gap at the bottom of one screen. That’s where the bugs are going to come in.

Today, however, was hot and humid and I felt extremely droopy. As recently as last summer, I prided myself on not using the air conditioner in the car and just rolling down the windows. Oh! “Roll.” There’s an anachronism, I guess, or are there still cars that have handles that you crank to lower the windows? There probably are, in Europe and for very rich people. Anyway, the heat is bothering me much more than it did last year. Even with all of the windows up in the car and the air conditioner on, it was too hot, and here back at home, with the A/C still set to 85, the same.

It's about 7:30 p.m., it’s 81 degrees outside now and 82 inside, and humid either place. Ah, that is one thing the air conditioner does which it isn’t doing right now: lower the humidity.

Around 3 p.m., I went out, happening to be wearing deep green pants and lavender socks. (Why was I wearing socks in this kind of weather? I have come to feel that if people can see my bare toes, it robs me of a commanding air.) I went to a pizza place in Ann Arbor that a friend had recommended. Its floor was big alternating tiles in almost exactly those two colors. It looked extremely loud and very old-fashioned on the floor but I trust looked fantastic on my person. Unfortunately, the place reeked of Pine Sol, so I continued on to Ricewood, where I had a Szechuan chicken bowl, which is a substantial meal with eight ounces of protein. I listened to the Ann Arbor people talk: PhD programs and upcoming sabbaticals to Croatia.

Just like the last time I was here, I could barely keep my eyes open in the warm car. I actually found myself wondering if it would be bad just to close my eyes for a teensy second, since the next traffic light was still three quarters of a block away. Because of that, I didn’t do several errands, but I did go to the hardware store for sponges and ant baits. I didn’t used to be an ant baits kind of person, but now I am. I went to Arbor Farms, already having changed my mind about having oatmeal instead of toast made with gluten-free bread. I will probably still have oatmeal, but if you just want a quick little snack, that’s a piece of toast, not cooking up a pot of oatmeal.

My sister lent me two air cleaners. I picked them up from her place on my way out earlier. I have them both running, and I think things are trending in the right direction.

Carol-Joy said that if you set a dead animal on the ground, even if you put it under a bush, birds of prey will locate it by smell and make it completely disappear. I found a dried-up mangled dead bird on the lawn today and put it in the daylily bed that is the designated repository for dead creatures, not expecting to see the dead robin I put there weeks ago, but it was still there, looking about the same.

I lately paid the summer property tax bill on behalf of the estate and saw on a summary of fees and costs today that I will be expected to pay the summer property tax myself, prorated, and then at closing, the estate will get back what it had paid earlier. This I expected, but was surprised to see the winter tax on there as well, a much smaller bill, but paid months ago. What does that have to do with anything? My realtor (now that I’ve forked over earnest money, she’s starting to seem like my realtor) said that both tax bills cover the whole year. I didn’t know that. What I have to pay now and what the estate will soon get back is indeed about half what was paid months ago. 

Another thing I used to be terrified of was being in a house by myself. When I was a child, there was generally someone else around, and after I was an adult, I always lived in apartment buildings. I mean, right now I live in an apartment building!