My Personal Crickets

Today I signed up for a fraud prevention program administered by the county that has to do with the title to the house, and attended to a huge number of banking tasks and details in regard to the utilities and internet service and home and auto insurance and the yard care, figuring out whether the estate overpaid or underpaid and who owes whom what. 

I did feel a new ease, but I’m not sure it’s the feeling of owning a house; it’s probably the feeling of not having to think any more about whether to do this or not. Given that a Buddhist is supposed to bear in mind that “nothing whatsoever should be clung to as I, me or mine,” it may not be seemly, anyway, to go around thinking “My house!” “My deck!” “My chipmunk!”

Today I also packaged up for shipping some things my other sister wants, which came with its own pleasant feeling: Wrapping things up, no pun intended.

I think there was even some extra good feeling I wouldn’t have anticipated: Could this whole entire thing that began in April of 2022 be coming to an end? My sister and I were responsible for our father, our mother, and their house. We may have dispatched all of our duties. I feel a lightness that suggests this may be so. I might or might not buy a floor lamp for the living room in the exact same house, but it’s not the same thing as feeling responsible for taking care of someone else’s place.

Not one single piece of furniture here belongs to me, nor the toaster, nor the computer, nor the calculator, nor either ladder, nor any rug, and I don’t want to buy anything if it is possible I might send my own stuff from San Francisco later, so there is sort of a feeling of camping; I literally sleep on a hammock-shaped camping cot.

I went for a walk this afternoon, on another quite humid day. I saw a woman I saw a day or two ago with her two dogs and said hello. She said where she lives and I said where I live, and she said, “I love that house! You take such good care of it.” 

Now I am feeling a little pressure to get outside and shape the hedge.