Twigs

This morning I checked with the owner of the window washing company to see if I had chosen the right stuff to use on the deck, and he said he thought another thing would be more appropriate; he thought the Deck Correct would be overkill. The deck wood looks pretty bad to me, but worse must exist somewhere. I was on the deck pondering the colors for the other product, of which there appeared literally to be a thousand, when I got a text message from the realtor saying she had sent the closing paperwork. I’ll have to get back to deck colors tomorrow. It was off to Dad’s desk to read documents and make notes and talk to the realtor and examine my bank account and communicate with my siblings.

The paperwork included the Bill of Sale, indicating that Bugwalk (“Seller”) hereby sells to Bugwalk (“Buyer”) the property located at such-and-such spot. 

The plant had never sounded louder than on this day, of course, which fortunately was otherwise lovely, and of course anxiety arose and my head began to ache a little and a knot began to form in my gut, all to be expected as the momentous occasion approaches.

I wasn’t able to connect with the person at the title company today regarding the actual transfer of funds, so that will likely be tomorrow.

I went out for a walk in the afternoon and passed an apartment complex with a very loud piece of machinery running just outside the units of rent-paying tenants, likely an air conditioner. And then there are people who live right on Washtenaw and listen to the roar of traffic all day long. It could definitely be worse.

Except as noted above, I am on an even keel emotionally today, and I am trying to remember Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s words: Objects themselves (in this case, this sound) are not good or bad. The investigation is of what’s going on in our minds, noticing if there is aversion or grasping or if we had become lost in thought and are just now aware again.

My sister, that sly dog, very casually mentioned that our mother liked the power plant, feeling that it was a suitable object for an engineer to gaze upon. If she liked it, then (gulp) I like it!

My ritual after getting in bed includes offering gratitude to my parents. I say their whole names, then their less formal names, then “Dad” and “Mom.” This generally leads to my feeling sad or even very slightly panicked, or kind of shocked: How can this be? Last night I suddenly wanted to see a video of my mother, and alas then was up for 90 minutes in the middle of the night watching videos of my mother in memory care, but must say that some of those gave me joy without an ensuing wave of sorrow, which is what happens almost every time I think of either parent. She was so funny. In one video, she says something like, “Because I am young and beautiful, I do not need to grovel before a little pile of twigs.” I should think not.

Another Harrowing Day in Decisionland

Yesterday, that is. Today has been perfectly plausible.

The night before last, I lay awake until 6 a.m. and then got up yesterday after not enough sleep. Properly I should have stayed in bed until 4 p.m., but it doesn’t feel good to do that and also guarantees that the next day will be messed up, too. After I got up, I cried and cried, still obsessing about the power plant noise and the various unsatisfactory choices regarding the breeze and the smell and the air conditioner and all that, and my mother still seeming not to be here, though once in a while I hear a little noise just like the noise I might have heard when she walked past the closed library door.

After having promised my realtor I would not change my mind again, I texted her yesterday that I was reconsidering my decision. This had partly to do with the $10,000 for the tree, though my sister had offered to assist with that. I asked if there was any possibility of getting my earnest money back and she said this would probably work out, since I’m both the seller and the buyer.

Do I need professional help? I have decided to return to therapy at different times over the years with my main, almost lifelong therapist, and what inevitably happens is that I feel perfectly fine after two sessions and wonder why I’m spending all this money, or, and most customarily, she enrages me, and that’s the end of that.

This period of indecision (i.e., months of agonizing and catastrophizing) has been really difficult. It just sounds deranged to contemplate moving from San Francisco to Ypsilanti, MI, which is part of the very appeal of doing it: What a wacky thing! But that can also make it seem like I must be making a giant mistake. Leaving what is objectively the best city on the planet for southeastern Michigan just cannot be happening.

Have I lost touch with reality? I don’t see anyone else crying like a two-year-old for two straight hours, or maybe it was just 17 minutes, but it felt like a long time, but then, why would I see this? As they say in Al-Anon, compare and despair, and, along the same lines, that we would do well to avoid comparing our own insides to other people’s outsides. Maybe half the people on the planet are crying their eyes out right now.

I hadn’t made it to the grocery store on Friday and it was clear it wouldn’t happen yesterday, either, and that I would have to go today, so I texted my sister to see if she wanted to come over yesterday instead of today, as had been planned. I had a list of things to discuss with her (ladder, air conditioner filter replacements, etc.) and was going to ask for her help moving some furniture. She said she would be over in 15 minutes. I replied that there was no rush, as I hadn’t eaten yet and needed to do that. She didn’t see my reply and soon turned up at the door, so she ended up having to watch me construct my breakfast and said it was making her feel a little queasy. She said she’d never seen anyone put that much oil on toasted bread before. The tablespoon of walnut oil on each slice is to prepare the surface for the third of a cup of nut butter.

We didn’t end up moving furniture, since I was thinking of not buying the house. We did look at the brochures with the various possibilities for coating the deck. There were a couple of things that looked so beautiful, but I had to concede that nothing is going to make that old weathered wood look anything like the picture. I am thinking about Cabot’s Deck Correct. I’m going to ask the owner of the window place if he thinks that’s a good choice.

After I ate yesterday and after my sister departed, I went out for a walk and then I went out to pick up the plant material I’d cautioned the window guys not to trip over. I wanted to get it off the ground before the fellows who mow the lawn turn up again (because they would probably toss it into the underbrush and then I would not be able to locate it). That was the one thing I was going to do, but then I saw vines that needed pulling down, and some vine branches to be cut, and burdock that needed digging up, and thistles that needed to be uprooted, and an eye-poking honeysuckle branch or two that needed to be cut back. I ended up being out there for several hours, until it was so dark I could barely make out my clippers lying on the ground.

When I first went outside, I was displeased to see Digby’s dog in my back yard yet again, this time chasing a rabbit.

While I was doing the various tasks outdoors, my elastic-waistband pants kept falling down, not all the way down, but I kept having to yank them back up. I was trying to think later what to do about that: suspenders? I remembered that when I was a kid, I went through a long phase, maybe years, where I always wore overalls. The store where I got them still exists: Sam’s, in Ann Arbor. I will go there and get some overalls!

A couple of weeks or so ago, I went to see my doctor at Kaiser about the vestibular symptoms. She said calcium and magnesium might be the problem and to discontinue all supplements for two weeks. The symptoms completely cleared up. Today, for the first time since beginning that experiment, I took vitamin D, Jarrow’s BroccoMax, and oregano oil, and the symptoms came back within a few hours. I don’t need to ask my doctor which she thinks the culprit is. I will stop taking all three, wait to feel fine again, and try them one at a time. It’s probably the vitamin D, which is too bad, as that helps with absorption of calcium and magnesium, and I do have near-osteopenia and don’t eat dairy because it gives me a horrible cough and then, reliably, a cold.

I spent some time today picking out possible deck colors, considering what will or won’t attract bees, what will look nice next to my feet if I lean forward and look at my feet, what will be pleasing adjacent to the house color. Tomorrow I will ask for some samples to be dropped off.

I got a text message from my cat sitter today saying that she had smelled gas in my apartment and found one burner turned partway on. I hope this was a freak occurrence and not Marvin’s new hobby.

After breakfast today, I went to my sister’s to pick up some packages that had been delivered there and to drop off a couple of things she had lent me. Despite knowing better, it is hard not assume that the plant is full of mean people with whom I’m going to get in a fight after they refuse to close the windows. I am purposely trying to pretend that 50 people just like my uncle work there: kindly, benevolent, easygoing sorts who would recoil from doing another the slightest harm.

Also, given the problem with Digby’s dog, there is the danger of ending up in conflict with all of my neighbors, which would be good to avoid. My parents didn’t want to have conflict with their neighbors, some of whom are now my neighbors, so they just didn’t. Whatever happened, they did not remark upon it, let alone file a complaint with the city or send a letter threatening legal action. My father and I are very similar, but one giant difference between us is that he was a person of profound equanimity. If people had loud parties until 2 a.m., if they grilled with charcoal, if their extremely excitable dog ran up and down the fence barking loudly at my father while he did yard work, so be it. One day, two pit bulls escaped a neighbor’s yard and menaced my father. One tore the downspout off the house, leaving streaks of blood on the wall. My father’s only response was to describe the incident to his own family members. (Oddly, it was the loudly barking dog that seemed to bother him the most, even though it posed no physical threat.)

When my father returned home from visiting me in San Francisco in 2015, he accidentally forgot to retrieve his beloved iPad from luggage claim at the Detroit airport. As I recall it, my sister, mother and I were beside ourselves: that favorite object, perhaps gone for good! My father didn’t turn a hair. He and my mother drove back to the airport. The iPad was still there. It’s three feet from me as I type this.

It is a beautiful day today. On a day like this, with the sun shining down and the puffy white clouds and the gorgeous blue sky, I wonder how anyone can bear to live anywhere else. But when it’s not so nice, I wonder, as my friend Lisa M. put it on the phone yesterday, “What on earth possessed people to settle here?”

I went today to ACE to exchange an item, to Stadium Hardware for work gloves, to Arbor Farms and Plum Market for groceries.

I texted the realtor to say I am planning to close on the house on Thursday. When my parents were alive but living over at the retirement community and it was just me here, I enjoyed taking the trash and recycling out to the curb. I would pretend that I was a grown-up and that this was my house. Now it is about to be my house. (I’m not sure if the grown-up part is achievable.)

There is a woman, presumably homeless, often seen walking up and down in the center divider of Washtenaw near the Arborland shopping center. She used to have grey hair but now it’s brown. She’s diminutive in size, and has the use of only one arm, though, not wanting to peer closely enough to get an exact understanding of the situation, I’m not sure if she is missing a hand or everything from the elbow down or if it’s all there but doesn’t work.

I hadn’t seen her for weeks and was relieved when there she was today, a block farther west. I was stopped at a red light and rushed to get some money to give her. She must be very well practiced at identifying when someone is preparing to do this, and she must many times have watched people drive off before making any gift because the light turned green too soon. So she came right over to the car window as I was digging in the pocket of my backpack. I gave her a twenty-dollar bill, and she thanked me. I said it was good to see her and she said it is always good to see me. I said, “I didn’t see you for a while. I was worried,” and for a moment, it looked like she might be about to cry.