I Might Be Moving!

Before I forget, a hard-sided carrier for air travel has to be even smaller than a soft-sided carrier; the latter mashes down but the hard one doesn’t, so it has to be 17” x 12” x 8”.

I am getting a fine tour of some of my very worst qualities; at least, according to my own understanding. My relatives can probably tell you others. I once came upon a note I had written a friend when I was five or six years old which announced that I might be moving! I was not moving. I just wanted someone to care and preferably to be distraught that I might be moving.

Odd that that was also about moving. I am now watching myself firmly seize the victim role, insist on being easily and immediately defeated, think well within the confines of a tiny box, be relentlessly negative and hopeless, be a drama queen (hoping and pining for attention), and finally, if necessary, just a little bit disingenuous if that is what is needed to convince someone of whatever I’m trying to convince them of; my mother once observed that I could be equally persuasive on either side of a topic. (She said I would have made a good lawyer.)

Oh, and self-pitying.

In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I emailed my realtor and told her I would not be moving to Ypsilanti after all, because I had realized I cannot move Marvin. She asked if I had spoken with a mutual friend who is a cat expert. It had crossed my mind, but her notifications were off last night, so I hadn’t, and I still haven’t, because it was a busy day and now it’s the middle of the night.

I woke up this morning to yet another gorgeous sunny day, while the lead story in The New York Times was about the thick Canadian wildfire smoke blanketing the upper Midwest. The photos included one taken in Ann Arbor.

In my kitchen, a clear, fresh breeze was blowing in from the Pacific. I pictured myself just staying here, enjoying that breeze, which is very frequent, and the year-round perfect weather; I could work just one day a week and, by starting to use the money I have saved up, not have to scrimp.

I can stand the neighbor who does this and the neighbor who does that. It would be a very agreeable life.

I began to tell other people I would not be moving after all. While there is no doubt that this is a nice place, that it would be cheaper in the short term to stay here, and that doing so is a perfectly plausible plan, I wanted someone to talk me out of it, to come to my rescue and restore my faith in the thing that sounded equally reasonable and even wonderful just a couple of days ago.

And people did try to do exactly that. Someone even offered to help me financially, even to co-sign a loan. No, no, no, I explained left and right, in a very persuasive manner: I can’t get a loan for this reason. I can’t do that for some other reason. I can’t do the other thing because I just can’t. 

Another aspect of this is that if someone offers support with something, my interpretation is that they think I should do that thing, and that I will be letting them down if I don’t do it.

Soon my other sister said she could see I’d made up my mind. I agreed I had, though I really hadn’t. (In other words, I lied to my sister; I suspect I told ten such lies today.) She said she was bummed out and that she had already picked out the housewarming gift she was going to send me. I told her that was very kind of her, and then I wept.

It’s a little bit murky, because when I say, “My life in San Francisco is great! I’ve decided to stay here,” it’s perfectly true and also absolutely false, a ploy to get my well-meaning friend or relative to feel sorry for me because I am being prevented from moving to Michigan by forces well, well beyond my control.

It has certainly become obvious that any given thought has rather little to do with what ends up happening. It is almost entertaining to watch the mental pronouncements flit past and to realize how insubstantial each is. And yet, of course it is a thought that inspires someone to do a magnificent thing or a dreadful one, so they are at once like a fleeting wisp of smoke and frighteningly powerful.

In the afternoon, I went to see my doctor at Kaiser, partly about a manifestation on my ankle but mainly about vestibular symptoms: dizziness, brain fog, vertigo, the floor tilting, nausea. I asked if she could refer me for vestibular testing, but she said that is “nonexistent” at Kaiser, and explained that they care for a lot of people, so they can’t offer everyone every little thing. Nothing against her; Kaiser always takes that tone.

Since my deductible is so high, this was only the second time I’d seen her in two and a half years. I message her now and then about some symptom, and she tells me what to do and then I don’t do it, or she tells me to come in, and then I don’t (because of the high deductible), so I took the opportunity today to apologize for being her worst patient, but she claimed I’m not and was very nice about it. I know from working in hospitals that it does not take much at all for a doctor to label a patient “noncompliant.” Like if a patient asks if they can take a medication after lunch rather than before, the doctor runs to the nearest computer and enters in the patient’s chart that they are “noncompliant with meds.”

My doctor said that calcium and magnesium can cause vestibular symptoms. (As can the lack of these, according to the internet.) I said I’ve been taking calcium and magnesium for forty years, but she said our ability to process and metabolize things can change, so she said to try discontinuing all supplements for two weeks and if the symptoms haven’t cleared up, she will order a brain scan. Besides the symptoms listed above, there is often a weird feeling behind my right eye; that’s probably where the brain tumor is. (However, that eye sees considerably less well than the other one, so maybe it’s something to do with that.)

I got a vaccine I was due for and went to have blood drawn. I was shocked when I got home and saw how soaked with blood the gauze was, maybe due to regular consumption of garlic.

After dinner, I walked over to Valencia Street for a knife sharpening class using Japanese whetstones. I brought along my honing steel to see if it has a continued place in my kitchen and was assured that it does, and that it is of good quality. The class was very interesting. There were five students. Afterward, I decided just to drop my knives off at that same place for sharpening, even though the last time I did that, about a quarter-inch of metal was removed from a knife with great sentimental value to me. 

Doing it myself, as per the class, would require a fairly large metal bin to soak whetstones in, at least two whetstones, a clamp to hold the whetstone, a leather strop, a diamond flattening stone for maintaining the whetstones, and some compound to put on the leather strop, at the least. I don’t have space for all that, and it’s not like I’m going to spend a lot of time doing this. Though, hmm, I can think of a place where I do have space for all that.

When I got home, it was a bit before 9 p.m. and my plan was to do my evening exercises, perform my ablutions, and meditate, allowing an hour for each and then bedtime at midnight. It is now nearly 4:00 a.m. and I have done few of those things. Instead I found myself online reading about cat carriers, cat harnesses, how to use Excel to figure out how long your money will last if you get this much interest and withdraw this amount each month, what whetstones to buy if you’re only going to buy two, how to figure out what number less twenty-five percent is another number of pressing interest, and so forth.

Another thing I was reflecting on earlier today, along with noticing various thoughts passing by, was that I don’t have to recommence struggling with whether to move or not: It is going to happen the way it’s going to happen.

One thing I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do is pay $8000 for professional cat transport. I had a long email exchange with the professional cat mover fellow, who kept telling me not to worry about Marvin getting out of his carrier on the plane. He said this has never happened (which tells me they don’t exactly have a protocol for it), and he kept saying, almost in these words, “Trust us! We’re professionals.” As soon as I hear someone say that, my trust in them immediately plummets by twenty-five percent and I have heard that approximately six times from the same person in the past couple of days, so we are now in the red as far as trust. 

He assured me that they travel with zip ties! I asked how they fix shredded mesh with zip ties and that was the end of the conversation.

I almost felt a little sorry for him; he clearly did not know what to do other than to doggedly repeat his talking points. I liked him when we met.

In sum: If they can move a cat, I can move a cat. Or, at any rate, I can make a list of teeny-tiny steps and start doing them.

I was thinking I was going to have to liquidate twice as much money as my financial advisor said would be perfectly fine, but it’s really not twice as much, and now it’s $8000 less. 

As for sharpening my own knives, I also rethought that and ordered two whetstones, a diamond sharpening stone, a leather strop and some compound to put on the leather strop. These stones don’t have to be soaked. You can just splash water on them. I didn’t invest in a clamp to hold the stone because at least one reviewer said the plastic holder the stone comes in is working just fine for him. I just spent probably ten times as much on knife sharpening equipment as I would have spent in the entire rest of my life to have someone else sharpen my knives, since that occurs only about every 20 years.

I saw that my favorite dental floss, Dr. Tung’s, also comes in mint! I ordered several packets of that, and yes, I ordered a cat carrier, after extensive research. Certainly not the one the professional cat transport people use. The carrier I ordered did not have one single review saying the reviewer’s cat had been able to escape from it, whereas every single other cat carrier I looked at did have at least one review like that.

I almost emailed my realtor to say we can go ahead with closing on the house on the day I picked, after all, but decided I’d better proceed with caution there.