The Hellish Handbasket Blog

  • Time is like a big fat cat

    I wish we didn’t change clocks twice a year, but now that I’m not in Arizona, the amount of thought required to calculate time zones is not too hard, even for a time zone-challenged person like me. East coast is always three hours ahead. I can figure that out by counting on my fingers, like any normal person.

    Arizona, now, Arizona is another planet. I still refer to it as the Arizona time bubble. That’s because most of Arizona does not change clocks. I lived there for four years. It took me a long time to learn how to visualize Arizona time in relation to my geographical location. Finally I got it. Time is like a big fat cat. The Arizona cat gets up and moves twice a year. Her goal is to find the most comfortable ray of sunshine possible. That means, she seeks coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. So the Arizona cat sits in the Pacific time zone during the summer so she can get those cool ocean breezes. Then in November, the cat gets up, turns around a couple times, and settles in the Mountain time zone, back in the sunbelt. The Arizona cat is a latitudinal snowbird.

    The reason why I still care is because I sometimes attend a Zoom meeting that originates in Arizona. When I lived in Arizona, the meeting was always at 4:00 p.m. I didn’t have to think about it. Now that I’m in the Pacific time zone, half the year the meeting is at 4:00 p.m. and the other half it’s at 3:00 p.m. For a time zone-challenged person, the chore of keeping track of time zones is, well, challenging. I finally remembered to reset my alarm.

    On the other hand, changing clocks twice a year is a tedious chore. I have two clocks in the kitchen, counting the stove clock. I have one clock in the bathroom. In my main room, I have five clocks. What can I say, I like clocks. (BTW, not that it matters, but I don’t change the clocks on the microwave or in my car. It’s too much trouble. Changing the stove clock was hard enough.)

    Speaking of clock trouble, I remember one fall when I was a pre-teen, my overwhelmed mother forgot to change the clocks in our house. That means I showed up an hour early at my friend’s house to get a ride to church. (Yes, I went to Sunday School with her family for a while. I used to do that sometimes—Try on my friends’ worship preferences until I realized my preference was to have nothing to do with worship of any kind, and especially not anyone else’s worship preferences.)

    Anyway, there I was, knocking on their door an hour early. The image of the four of them (my friend, her brother, and her parents) in their pajamas standing in shock on the other side of their screen door is burned into a special portion of my brain reserved for memories of social humiliation.

    I walked home (two doors down) in a numb fog. I don’t recall what my mother did or said. She was probably embarrassed and expressed her chagrin by getting mad at me. I laid down on my bed, fully dressed in my Sunday School clothes, floating out of my body, and waited until it was time to stumble over there again.

    It’s typical of my emotionally stunted brain to forget my triumphs but remember every detail of my humiliations. Lucky for me, my brain is turning to Swiss cheese (like someone else’s brain I could mention). That means the memories of times when I wanted to retreat into the abyss have receded into a cozy gray blur. The reason for that is I turned 70 a few weeks ago. I know. I can’t believe it either. I’m still that 12-year-old socially anxious pre-teen I was so many years ago.

  • The epic fruit fly battle

    Have you ever read a familiar word that somehow becomes unfamiliar because you focused on for too long? Like you aren’t sure you’ve ever seen it before, even though you know you have? Maybe you’ve even written it or used it in conversation, but suddenly it’s as if you are meeting the word for the first time? It doesn’t matter what the word is. For instance, it can happen with little words like drove or off or cliff.

    For me, the unfamiliar familiar word of the week is infestation.

    As in, my apartment has been infested with fruit flies.

    I was going to talk more about the word infestation, but now I’m fixated on the word bored so I’m moving on.

    My kitchen sink has two sides, one of which I don’t use daily. I occasionally deluge the drain with baking soda + vinegar, but usually I just clean the strainer and call it good. A couple of fruit fly parents called it good too and raised a family down there in the nice fetid gooey swamp. A large family. One day my kitchen was pristine (as it ever gets) and the next day, I was greeted by a swarm of little black flies.

    Fruit flies don’t bite like no see-ums do but they are hard to see once they get moving. Like, now you see them, and then . . . they magically disappear. They’re stealth. But as soon as they land, there they are, sitting ducks, or in this case, sitting flies. That means they are fair game for a spritz of rubbing alcohol.

    I filled a little squirt bottle with what I had on hand (70%) and got busy in the kitchen. When I could, I caught them in mid-air. For sure, as soon as they perched on something, I blasted them into wet (but sterile) fly guts. Soon little black corpses dotted the ceiling and walls.

    I set out traps baited with apple cider vinegar. By the end of day 1 there were dozens of floaters. I don’t really care if they died happy.

    Then I discovered they had migrated into the living room, and thence into the hallway on their way to the holy land, the bathroom. I filled two more spray bottles with alcohol and set traps in the hallway and bathroom to entice the pilgrims to stop as they buzzed past. Kind of like supermarkets put the Snickers display at the checkout stand.

    I patrolled multiple times per hour, shooting them when they landed, not caring much what they were sitting on (except something for which alcohol is a solvent, for example, ink from a pen) and blasting them out of the sky when I could. After three days, my back and neck muscles ache from putting my head back to suveil the ceiling. A necessary sacrifice.

    I ran out of ammo by the end of day 2. The store only stocked two bottles of the 70% stuff, but they had numerous smaller bottles of green-colored 50%. It was a lovely shade of green but I soon found out the alcohol carried a pungent and disgusting perfume. If you’ve sprayed your apartment with rubbing alcohol, after a few hours, the place begins to reek. I can’t find a word to describe the stench of perfumed rubbing alcohol. I assume something similar would happen if you sprayed with vodka, but I don’t drink so I wouldn’t know.

    Today is day 4. I think I’ve turned the corner in the battle. Is that the right metaphor? Do you turn corners in a battle? I rode over the hill? How about I planted my flag? Whatever. Anyway, I have started sweeping dead bugs off the ceiling with my broom. Now is when I regret buying a carpet sweeper instead of shelling out for a proper vacuum cleaner with a hose and sucking-straw attachment. Oh well. Who knew I’d be attacked by fruit flies? I’m counting the blessings, though. It could have been cockroaches. I shudder to think.

    The palaver is over. Here are the five words from yesterday’s writing session:

    Solitude

    Drizzle

    Camera

    Elastic

    Obscure

    Last year I drove from Oregon to Massachusetts. Two months of solitude gave me time to think about where I belonged. Along the way, something unexpected happened. The further I went, the more I felt the line between Portland and my car stretching, until by the time I reached Boston, the rubberband had stretched until it had lost most of its elasticity. I wondered what would happen if the band broke and I kept going into the Atlantic. Ultimately, I stayed only two days before the band snapped me back. That’s when I realized two days is not long enough to visit my sister in person. As I crossed Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, with a side trip into Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and finally to Massachusetts, I took a lot of pictures with my cellphone camera—landmarks both famous and obscure— because I knew I would forget how it felt. Now back in the Pacific Northwest, enduring the drizzle that precedes winter, I look at the photos and remember. 

  • Never step on a stink bug

    In almost every horror flick, there’s a moment when our hero pierces the monster-slash-alien-slash zombie-slash-ghost with the appropriate weapon and walks away congratulating themselves on saving the day. When they bring their crew back to show off their conquest, they are dismayed to find not only has the villain risen but is now rushing straight at them to enact revenge.

    Similarly, in almost every murder mystery, there’s a moment when some unlucky fool stumbles upon a body and runs to tell the rest of the gang, “Aunt Ginny is dead!” Then, you guessed it, the fool returns with a crowd of looky-loos (one or more of whom are murderers) to discover Aunt Ginny’s “body” has disappeared.

    It’s classic.

    Something like that happened to me just now. I was fixing food in my kitchen (yes, I have a kitchen!). I glanced at the miniblind over the mini-window, and saw a stink bug perched in plain sight.

    If you were around when I wrote about being swarmed by stinkbugs at a rest stop in Wilsonville, you know they are on my most-wanted list. I’ve had a personal vendetta against stink bugs ever since hundreds of them landed like heavy, slow B-52s all over my car.

    First, I sprayed them with water. That didn’t faze them a bit. Next, I sprayed them with alcohol. Still no success. I couldn’t dislodge them. In fact, they seemed to like all the attention. Finally, in desperation, I consulted pest control (i.e., Google) and learned stink bugs (aka shield bugs) don’t like soap. Armed with new knowledge, I concocted my ammo and proceeded to retaliate.

    The onslaught was relentless, however, and even though I’d pulled my curtain closed, many fearless flyers breached my feeble defenses and found hiding places in my car. For the next year, they emerged like monsters from the depths to walk all over the place and drive me insane. In fact, long after I found housing, I found bugs dead on my dashboard. To this day, I keep their sun-faded desiccated bodies as a warning to other wanna-be invaders. Stink bugs not tolerated. Trespassers shot on sight.

    All that to say, it’s no wonder I have residual trauma, which rises up in me like a mummy digging out of its crypt when I see a stink bug. I go into hyper-vigilant, circle-the-wagons, Annie-get-your-gun mode. Suddenly my eyesight morphs into x-ray vision. I can spot movement behind a bottle from thirty feet away.

    So, you can imagine what happened when I saw one in my kitchen. I didn’t waste a moment. I grabbed all the nuclear footballs I could find.

    Unfortunately, survival skills fade once you have a kitchen. I forgot my basic training: Stink bugs wear armor, which is impervious to almost everything.

    First, like an idiot, I shot it with alcohol (which I always keep in a handy spray bottle, because you never know when you might have to shoot something). Alcohol did squat. Then I tried water, because, you know, why not. No effect.

    Finally my training kicked in. I remembered the secret weapon: soap!

    By this time, the bug had fallen to the floor. I added some dishwashing liquid to the soap bottle and sprayed the bug thoroughly, thinking, ha, take that, you disgusting vile creature. I win! I walked away from the crime scene, leaving the carcass on the floor (as a warning to other invaders), and returned to burning my dinner.

    When I finished with my cooking debacle, I checked out the bug (to bask in my glory) and barely refrained from screaming. You guessed it: The body was gone.

    At that point, I was, like, ah ah ah, where is it? Is it on me? After dancing in circles and tearing at my clothes, I got a grip. Blind rage took over. I was, like, you are going down, buster. If I catch you, you and ten generations of your family will be exterminated. You will never be allowed to reincarnate. Your disgusting buggy spirit will scatter to the four winds of hell. Show yourself, you creep, duke it out like a man. Bug. Manbug.

    I tore the place apart. I swept, I lifted, I bent over and stared under things, ammo loaded and locked. I couldn’t find it. I thought, oh, no, did he manage to shake off the soap and fly? What if he’s on the ceiling? What if he falls out of the sky onto my bed? (Notice how suddenly “it” has become a “he”? Yeah, that happens sometimes). Anyway, at this point, I’m turning on every light in the place, scanning the walls, ceilings, nooks, and crannies, and trying to ignore the heebie-jeebies that are running up and down my spine.

    Eventually, I gave up and returned to the scene of my cooking crime. A few minutes later, I looked down, and there he was, crawling up the wall under the window.

    I was on it. I shot him with soapy water once, twice, three times. Again and again, I shot that little you-know-what, and . . . he kept moving. I’d slowed him down, but I hadn’t stopped him. If I hadn’t been so intent on killing him, I might have admired his warrior prowess. Actually, I didn’t take time to admire anything. I was berating myself for (a) not killing him completely when I had the chance, and (b) not realizing this wasn’t an ordinary stink bug. This was a zombie stink bug.

    Knowing it was now or never, him or me, when I realized plain soapy water was just a warm shower for this demon, I went in for the kill with soap straight from the dispenser. Take that, squirt, squirt, roll over, ha, you can’t fool me. The old roll-over-and-play-dead ploy is old news: When my back is turned, you’ll scuttle off under the hot water heater where you will grow fat on spiders and plot your revenge.

    Yeah, we’ve all seen that movie before. So, just before I sat down to write this blogpost, I put a clear plastic cup over the icky effer, mostly so he can’t escape in case he comes back to life, but also so I can look at his belly-up carcass a few times and gloat before I scoop him up and throw him in the manbug cemetery, aka the trash. After checking for signs of life, of course.

  • If I had more time . . .

    My inventory of blog posts includes many I wrote while I was a nomad. I wrote what was happening, what was on my mind, not really imagining anyone might be reading them (other than you guys, my five to ten loyal blogbots). This week I was reviewing a few posts from my wandering period and wondered if I should read them during the share-and-sweat-like-a-pig portion of the writers’ group meeting.

    Just like I haven’t told them about my various ho-hum medical maladies, I haven’t disclosed the fact that I lived in my car before I arrived in this small town. I have a lot of stories to tell, as you know, but is that the audience I want to tell them to?

    I admit, part of me wants to shock them. I think they would be shocked, and that could be fun. Another part of me wants their sympathy. Oh, poor Carol, what a hard time that must have been. I also just want to tell my story. If I had to guess which part of me has the upperhand, I probably would say the first part. I want to see the looks on their friendly faces when I let them in on my socially unacceptable secret.

    Some of my roadtrip stories are funny (to me, anyway), but I’m predicting if I read them, I won’t be mentally prepared for the audience responses. So far, I’ve just been reading my stuff without much thought to how they would respond, other than I hope they laugh once in a while. I’m always surprised when they remark on the content. I actually don’t want feedback. I just want to yuk it up for a minute and move on. I am my best audience, after all.

    So, all that to say, they might not think a story about an older woman coping with homelessness would be all that entertaining, no matter how much I laugh at getting lost in the forest or having my gas tank drilled by cretinous hoodlums. It’s all part of the story to me, but I can’t control listener reactions, and based on my experience so far sharing with them the blogposts I wrote during my 30-day self-imposed writing punishment, I might not like what they say. I mean, I might not like the shocked look on their faces as they recalibrate their concept of who I am.

    So, yesterday was Five-word Friday, which means I must now reveal what I wrote.

    Menacing

    Support

    Love

    Provident

    Collapse

    I was walking along Santa Monica Blvd between Highland and LaBrea when I bumped into a guy, well, he bumped into me. I stopped to apologize even though it was his fault, because you never know when a pedestrian will come at you with an umbrella. He stopped too  but he didn’t look at me. I heard him mutter, “Love schmuv.” His tone was more regretful than menacing so I figured he had just gotten dumped, and then I jumped back a step as he collapsed at my feet. “That’s not something you see everyday,” I said to myself. To him, I said, “Buddy, bro, mister dude, are you okay?” He opened his eyes and then said all the usual things a person says when they wake up and find themselves lying on the sidewalk. You know, “where am I, who are you, how did I end up down here….” I hoped he’d say something like, “Wow, you came by at a provident moment, help me up, let me pay you for not stealing my wallet.” He said none of those things. I thought about stealing his wallet, but that’s not something I do anymore, not often, anyway. Instead I asked,  “Can you get up?” He sort of nodded so I helped him to his feet and supported his arm until he stopped wobbling. “Thanks,” he mumbled. I said, “That’s it, that’s all you have to say?” He frowned. Then he said, “Wait. I have some advice. You can take it or leave it, but here it is.” He whispered something I didn’t quite catch, something about love or shove or glove, I don’t know. In L.A., strangers routinely say a lot of random things. I watched him stumble across the street and turn a corner before I continued on my way.

    Yeah, I know. It goes nowhere. However, I think I wrote a lot in twenty minutes–for me, anyway. I fixed some typos for you before I pasted it here, but you can probably imagine my work is not polished when the buzzer goes off.

    You know what they say: if I had more time, I would write a shorter book.

    PS: I know it’s not Halloween yet, but I found this drawing in my folder and figured I wouldn’t find it again until next year, so I’d better use it now.

  • Art is for everyone

    I went looking for inspiration just now among the repository of scanned images I’ve uploaded to the Hellish Handbasket blog since it began in 2012. Approximately 800 images are in the “already used” folder. If you’ve been a follower since then, you might seen some of them. I also have approximately 900 images I haven’t used yet. All together, the images represent about 30 years of sitting in meetings drawing silly caricatures to stay awake.

    I’ve never tried to quantify my “artistic” output before this. I’m a little bit . . . what’s the word–chagrined. Imagine what I could have done with all that time spent drawing. For example, I could have been engaging in discussions or sharing with the group. Yech. No, now that I think about it, I made the right choice.

    My friend occasionally reminds me that writers sometimes have to follow the recommendation of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and “murder their darlings.” I suppose that goes for art too, which is why almost all my drawings are on lined notebook paper rather than in proper sketchbooks. Some people would call that murder. I don’t consider art sacred, at least, not my art. For me, survivor of my own personal “art depart,” I know all art is ephemeral, precious today, landfill tomorrow.

    Back in college (the first time around), I was so desperate to produce perfect art that I became paralyzed when confronted with a blank canvas. If it wasn’t perfect on my first attempt, I gave up. It felt safer to pretend I didn’t care. That’s why I stopped making art for 20 years. I also stopped writing.

    You could say I quit on myself for a while. You could also say I was protecting fallow ground in preparation for future cultivation. But since 1995, I have never stopped drawing. To me, it’s not art. That gave me the ultimate freedom to create.

    So, back to quantity over quality. Ignoring quality isn’t always the best approach (I’m thinking of, well, you name it, aiming for a half-assed crappy outcome is probably not a good idea). But in art and writing, aiming for quantity, not quality, is a sneaky way to avoid blockages. I don’t mean constipation, I mean artists’ block, writers’ block. Some people say there’s no such thing, and after some years of avoiding my creative self, I agree. It’s all about butt in seat, or whatever your preferred mode of creating might be. But still, even now, it’s easy to pursue distractions when the pressure to produce is too much. For me, that means binge-watching historical Chinese costume dramas when I can’t figure out what my characters are trying to tell me.

    So, back to quality. I mentioned I draw on lined paper. That means I have to do some editing to produce a drawing that doesn’t have umpteen lines across it. Back when I had a scanner, it was a little easier. Now I use my phone to take a photo and upload it to my computer, where I open it in Paint (yes, Paint), reduce the file size, and start cleaning. Partway through, I save it as a jpg file and open it in an old version of Microsoft Office 2010 (I’m not kidding), which I use to adjust the contrast and middle tones. Then I go back to Paint to erase the remaining detritus.

    Most artists would use a professional design program that costs a fortune. Not me. I’m all about quantity, not quality, remember? That means good enough is good enough. I recommend trying that approach if you ever feel constipated by a pursuit of perfection.

    If you made it to the end of this post, stop distracting yourself and get back to making your art.

  • I kind of hope we get annihilated first

    A new guy attended the writers’ group this week. His name was Dave. Ralph. Benny. Something like that. I can’t remember. I’ll call him Dudley. Dudley rode a wheelchair and wore a face mask, which he pulled below his nose and took off completely when he read an essay he’d written. The essay was a poignant, funny description of a fight with a backyard squirrel. His story alluded to some health issues. As he read, his voice choked with emotion. He had to pause for a few seconds before he could go on. A couple writers shifted in their seats, a sign they might have been uncomfortable.

    Not me. As a former teacher and mentor, I’m used to hearing people express emotions. For example, when a student said, but this is too hard and burst out weeping, and I replied do you want to pass the class or not, or when an artist said, marketing my art is impossible, I need you to do it for me, and I replied in your dreams, and they started bawling and never came back—all that tearful whining slid off me like rainwater off a duck’s back. In other words, I care about other peoples’ feelings but listening to their complaints doesn’t faze me, even if they cry.

    Wait, I take that back. Other peoples’ feelings don’t faze me unless they are the lead female character in a Chinese historical drama whose valiant love is dying in her arms. When she sobs, I sob. But that is the only exception. The rest of the time, I’m like, go ahead and cry. It will be good for you.

    Most of the members of the group are in their 70s or even 80s so it’s not surprising most of them have health issues. However, they are intrepid. For example, the leader parks in the blue square spot because she walks with a cane, and she beat breast cancer recently. Plus, she manages the local theatre and a self-storage business. See? Intrepid. I can only aspire.

    Another member just had unsuccessful cataract surgery. Now she is in the process of sueing her eye doctor. A 50-something member often mows 10 acres of wild pasture and calls it “meditation.” She’s definitely intrepid. A woman who raises chickens has various mental and physical health conditions and sisters who think they know how to fix her. I know she’s intrepid.

    I don’t talk about my own health issues. I don’t care much what they think of me but the conversation changes when people know you are sick. I don’t want to suck sympathy from their bones when they need sympathy themselves. I’d rather give it than get it.

    Enough palaver. Here are the five words and what I managed to glean from them.

    Family

    Denizen

    Slice

    Foggy

    Choice

    I woke up last Sunday to find a dozen bald interlopers had infiltrated the family while I was sleeping. The concierge told me these unwelcome denizens had beat on the door, begging for sanctuary, and now pretended they belonged here, like they were relatives or something. I tried to explain that demanding to join a family wasn’t how it worked. You couldn’t just show up one day and expect to be served breakfast. They complained piteously that they’d had no choice. Their neighbors had sliced off their hair to sell on the black market. Hence they had to beat feet to a new town. I wasn’t buying it. Their explanations seemed way too foggy to me. Besides, I said, you could always wear wigs. They ignored me, and now it appears they will be moving in.

    I can’t tell you what that paragraph is all about. Not because you don’t have privileges but because I don’t actually know myself. I mean, I know myself, but I myself do not know what the story is about. Wait. I mean, I think I know myself. But I might be deluded by my own thinking. That happens to me a lot. Not to you, I’m sure. That’s because you are way smarter than me.

    Anyhoo, the word of the week is annihilate. I used to love smithereens until you-know-who started using it. Like, we can annihilate you to smithereens. Which probably isn’t really true, especially if they annihilate us to smithereens first.

    Did I mention I’m learning Chinese? It seems like the prudent thing to do.

  • Future cloudy, try again later

    After watching dozens of Chinese historical TV dramas (consisting of some combination of rom-com-drom-fantasy, preferably all four), I have finally wised up. After three episodes, if the male and female lead characters aren’t clicking, I tap into the zeitgeist to find out if a series is worth watching. That means, does it have a happy ending? There are Reddit fans for every series, and they aren’t afraid to tell it like it is. If they say the ending sucks, I bail.

    I wish I could look ahead to find out the endings of the disasters unfolding in real life, but alas alackaday woe is all of us, the future remains unknown. As it always does, dang it. Just once, I’d like to have a Magic 8 ball that says something more useful than Future Cloudy Try Again Later.

    Other than tearing my hair out before it catches fire, compared to last year at this time, my day-to-day life is so uneventful, it’s downright boring. There’s not much to write home about (especially given I’m at home pretty much all the time). Turkeys roam past, demanding peanuts. Students upload papers, demanding feedback. Clouds roll in, making my head spin, and then they roll out, making my head spin even more. In other words, all systems normal.

    I could try to emulate what other liberals do. For example, I could give in and set what’s left of my hair on fire and watch it go up in smoke. I could rend my garments (although I doubt anyone would notice given they are already well-rended). I could run screaming into the abyss (actually, I would have done that already if I knew where it was).

    Truth, my current writing project is stuck, which means most days I don’t have the energy to do much but distract myself binge-watching Chinese TV series. I’ll tell you what really pisses me off, though, is when the provider puts the final episodes behind a paywall. Boy, that really makes me want to march on Washington.

    On the staving-off-dementia side, I’m attempting to learn simplified Chinese. A minute ago, I knew how to say tea, soup, coffee, water, this is, porridge, hot, China, America, and South Korea. You probably know those already. I’m slow to the party. I can sort of write the pinyon versions of some of those words, although I find the accents and pronunciations challenging. And for a couple minutes this week, I could write tea and coffee in Hanzi. Sadly, graphic images don’t linger long in my memory anymore, especially when the images look like random lines to my limited Western mind. I have to accept it, the same way I have to accept the fact that I will soon be turning seventy.

    Excuse me while I go outside to barf in the grass.

    Speaking of barfing, I was reading some of my blogposts from years past. The original version of the Hellish Handbasket is gone but I downloaded all the posts from the first to the final, from 2012 to 2025. I wrote a lot. Some of you actually read it. What a wild ride on the road less traveled.

    Gotta go. The turkeys are here.

  • If you aren’t antifascist, what are you?

    Here we are again. I wasn’t really feeling the five words last Friday, but who cares what I feel, right? Writing is writing. Ass in seat.

    Here are the five words:

    Light

    Sun

    Guess

    Inept

    Wander

    Here’s my uninspired contribution.

    In my previous lives, I have always been a cat. That means I do a lot of cat things. For example, no matter where  I’ve wandered, I have sought warmth and light. Plus, people have noticed I lick myself when I think no one is watching.  I admit, even after several lives of practice, I’m still inept at getting at those hard-to-reach places. I keep trying. However, in this go round, I’m a bit stiff. I guess in my past lives I was pretty good at it. So they tell me, anyway. Now, in my ninth life, I spend most of my time basking in the sun, usually in a bed of catnip.

    Hey, they can’t all be gems. I should get credit for being willing to look stupid. Although I probably don’t need credits anymore for that particular degree. I’ve gone all the way to the top, multiple times. I could teach the class. Remember, the terminal degree is the one that kills you.

    Speaking of teaching, I often wonder if the students I’m ostensibly teaching how to do research ever do research on me. I mean, do they do an online search on my name? Assuming they spell it right, they will find a lot of sludge about me on the internet, most of which I uploaded myself and would like to take down if only I could remember the passwords. (Don’t tell me to try a password reset, please. I don’t have those phone numbers anymore, and the do-no-evil guys don’t have a phone.)

    In cyberyears, I’ve been around a while. In fact, I still have a yahoo email address. Although there are still people I’ve encountered who have hotmail and aol accounts, if you can believe it. So funny how the do-no-evil guys have infiltrated virtually every part of my life. Funny, not funny. Talk about invasion of the brain snatchers. You could say it’s pathetic, but let me go online and make sure I’m spelling pathetic correctly. Argh.

    Anyway, if you look me up, you’ll find a lot of random crap that has accumulated over the years, like soggy brown leaves clogging a Portland storm drain in the fall. The tired images, insipid blogposts, and mildewy dreams haved piled up, decayed, and been covered by new expired uninspired content until my whole online life is a clumpy dripping mess. I’m looking forward to the day when I can no longer remember how to turn on my computer. If the earth still exists, I’m sure it will heave a sigh of relief. One down, 8 billion to go.

    In my most recent spasm of Swedish death cleaning, I’ve been attempting to shovel out some of the soggy online data I’ve let clutter my web footprint. For example, this blog is no longer hosted by the evil-doers. Now it’s hosted by another quasi-evil doer. I don’t actually know how to measure evilness, so I could be wrong about that. I’m thinking any entity with an inc. after it’s name is probably up to no good.

    Lately I’ve been wondering if I should grow vegetables in pots on my patio. Then I think, it’s almost winter, what would be the point? As long as Grocery Outlet still stocks somewhat-fresh produce, I’ll forego the gardening, keep working on my novel, and hope my muse can clear the soggy slimy drippy moldy mess clogging my mental storm drains.

    P.S. Yes, I know the headline has nothing to do with the blogpost. I was feeling a bit salty tonight. Also, I’m testing slogans for the next street-corner protest. What do you think?

  • Living today for a better past

    Today as I was driving into town to the pharmacy (8 miles), I found myself looking for a free dumpster. You might wonder, Carol, why do you need a free dumpster? Do you have a lot of garbage to offload? Do you need an ADU in the backyard? Thanks for asking. The answer is no to both questions. Actually, I don’t need a dumpster at all. I have access to a very fine dumpster at my apartment complex.

    Free dumpsters are not the only things I search for. As I’m driving neighborhood streets, I scout out places that might be safe to park overnight. When I’m shopping in a grocery store, I look to see if they have a water refill machine and how much the water is per gallon. Inside the store, I think to myself, do I need trash bags, alcohol, baby wipes, white vinegar? Do I need boxed soymilk? (Not the kind you get in the refrigerated section.) Do I need to dump trash and use the restroom before I hit the road?

    I’m reliving survival mode.

    Now, like most of us, I still buy some of those things. I do think about whether or not I need them while I’m shopping. That much has not changed, and as long as I have a trash bin that needs lining, I probably will continue to think about them and buy them as needed.

    The moments I find myself falling back into survival mode are becoming less frequent. After nine months of shelter, I’m calmer and less deperate than I was when I was living in my car. When people ask me how I am, I can say I’m fine and mean it. I no longer have to pretend I’m coping. I’m doing better than just coping. Overall, I’m doing great.

    I have very little to complain about these days. It’s a strange way to live after so many years of complaining about everything, everyone, all the time. Maybe getting old would have done that anyway. My brain can’t hold resentment for very long. After a few days, or even a few hours, I forget what I resented. I used to chuckle at my mother’s zen-like detachment. I could say I almost envied her ability to rise above the trivia of life. Of course, I knew it was dementia that let her ascend to a higher spiritual level. If genetics play a role, I’m sure my own elevation to nirvana is coming soon.

    Meanwhile, I’m still attached to planet earth, one day at a time.

    P.S. Yes, I know, I forgot to blog yesterday. It happens.

  • On the continuum

    Have you ever seen a stranger doing something that makes you wonder if they are functioning with a different operating system than other people you know? For example, once I was on the bus, and I saw a young man with a large book on his lap, I think it was a dictionary, and he was methodically crossing out line after line with a black marker. As if he were erasing language. It was kind of mesmerizing to watch and wonder what world he lived in.

    Something similar happened at the writer’s group on Friday. While a member (I’ll call him Gerald) was reading a short but deep essay about the nature of a box, another member of the group (I’ll call her Maggie) appeared to be listening intently with her head turned toward him. As Gerald’s voice rose and fell in a poet’s cadence, Maggie nibbled on a wrinkle on the shoulder of her T-shirt shirt. Not once or twice, but for at least a minute, she pensively tasted the wrinkle. At times she seemed to be looking in my direction but I could not say if she saw me. In any case, she did not stop nibbling.

    I felt like I was looking through a window into an exotic foreign land, where a green cotton T-shirt could be considered food.

    I wonder what else I’ve been missing.

    Here are the five words from last week’s meeting, followed by my contribution.

    Search

    Recollection

    Myth

    Manipulate

    Find

    I searched my recollection archives, looking for a spell small enough to manipulate but not large enough to kill me. I thought I’d stored something reasonably bite-sized last week when I was looking up how to live the slacker life after retirement. Apparently my filing system went haywire when my cat knocked over the myth-maker in the corner. (Note to self: That seems to be happening more often. Time to take the cat to the vet and find out why it hates me). Anyway, I went deep into the archives. I searched in all the corners, honest, but the smaller spells seemed to be hiding under drifts of cat hair. All I found was a box of expired Dinomite Magic Flakes, which taste like crap without some Millennium Soymilk to wash them down. Anyhoo, the upshot of my futile search was I chewed on a spell that was too big for me. It blew a hole in my mother’s roof, and that’s why I have to go back to work.

    Some of the members write a lot more than I do in twenty minutes, which I find amazing. They apparently don’t edit themselves like I do. I write into a Google Doc on a dinky off-brand tablet. That means I can easily chop my words down to something resembling a succinct story. But some of the members write on laptops, so presumably they could do that too.

    In my defense (as if I needed to defend myself), I write something original every time. In other words, I base my writing on the five words. The words are the thread that inspires the subject and the action. So maybe it’s not surprising I don’t write as much as others.

    Gerald writes the same way, and he manages to write a lot. Maybe it’s because he’s a poet, and his words sound like music. In contrast, the other three members in attendance set their stories in worlds they have already created, with characters they know well. I am guessing that approach is easier than starting from scratch.

    I wonder if I should try that next time? What world would be the backdrop for my story? What characters from past novels would I bring back to life? Or would I try to present the world I’m building in my current novel before it’s ready to debut?

    After two seconds of pondering, I conclude it’s much less painful to pull something out of the air each time than to expose my half-formed world to the scrutiny of strangers. Unexpected responses could happen. For example, what if they all starting nibbling on their shirts or blouses? I’m not prepared to see my work whet their appetite for cotton—or any other fabric, for that matter. What if they chewed on polyester and got explosive diarrhea, right there in the library conference room? I’m guessing it wouldn’t be cheap to hose off those Pepto Bismol-colored Pleather chairs.

    No, I’ll wait until I’m ready. Meanwhile, I will continue to glean inspiration from five random words. It’s the safer highwire.

The Hellish Handbasket Blog

Self-expression on a stick

If you lived in your car, you’d be home by now

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