The Hellish Handbasket Blog

  • The writer’s price of admission

    On Friday I returned to the writer’s group for write and read night. Once again, we contributed five words (my was regret) and then we read some of our work. I volunteered immediately.

    I pulled out my latest book, the third of the trilogy. I chose a chapter I really liked that seemed to encapsulate the conflict between two opposing persuasions: ridiculous fashion tips versus quack health remedies. My characters faced off to the tune of Barry Manilow’s “Copa Cabana.” What could be more amusing? Nothing, am I right? I thought so.

    The chapter turned out to be longer than I expected and really hard to read out loud. I would make a terrible audiobook narrator. I slurred and stumbled, my tongue gottwisted. My overactive saliva glands overactively salivated. Good information, in case I ever get asked to do a book reading. I digress.

    A few paragraphs in, I knew I had the wrong target audience. One or two listeners made some sounds that I interpreted as chuckles, but mostly there was silence. I am pretty sure had I been able to look up as I sped through my dialog, I would have seen the group pinching their foreheads between their thumb and forefingers with their eyes squeezed shut. The reason I know this is because that is how they listen to the writer who reads from her asteroid mining company sci-fi tome. I digress.

    I ploughed through the chapter and finally finished. Nobody had anything to say. Not a surprise. I bludgeoned them with jokes that would be funny only to someone who grew up in Portland and spent twenty years in L.A. That is to say, me and my one and only fan, who grew up in Portland and now lives in L.A. Yes, I write for an audience of one. I digress.

    I knew these aspiring writers were not going to be my ideal audience, any more than I am theirs. Still, as uncomfortable as it was, I knew I had to do it, just once. To join the group, to be on the inside, I had to show them who I was, which in this case meant I had to reveal to them the kind of work I write. I didn’t want to. But I knew I had to. Better to get it over with up front.

    Now it’s done. I can relax. Next time we have a write and read evening, I can settle in, listen to other people’s endless drivel and never again have to share my own endless drivel. This was my self-imposed hazing ritual. I am now innoculated against the requirement to disclose my writing to anyone who won’t appreciate it. Now I can keep writing for me and my wonderful fan.

  • Letting go

    The most exciting thing that happened to me this week is seeing a half-dozen female turkeys stroll across my patio. Yep. That’s the boring life I lead these days. What’s there to complain about when I have a bathroom and a kitchen? A story without conflict is ho-hum. See previous blogpost about the sci-fi writer.

    Speaking of the writers’ group, I returned on Friday evening. It was a “study hall” night, two hours of working on whatever. I showed up on time and set up my laptop. Eventually Vicki, the leader, arrived. While we chatted, a third person entered the room. I think her name was . . . Lena. Louise. Linda. It doesn’t matter, take your pick. Big white glasses, piled up hair, a wildly colored print blouse! Now here was a real writer!

    We got busy. I don’t know what they were working on—we didn’t talk. I continued an editing project I’d started at home: a dissertation candidate’s proposal. I have only one speed, that’s head down, teeth gritted, and only one mode, bite it and shake it until the candidate cries uncle. I did all that and got it done and sent by the time the study hall ended at 6:30 p.m. Job well done. Vicki warned me next week was “show and tell,” or words to that effect. Even though the idea makes me want to puke, I’ll show up. I’m not a quitter.

    Speaking of dogs with bones, the theme of the week seems to be letting go. Mainly letting go of old friendships. Did something get into the water? Two of my friends said they are purposefully jettisoning friendships they suddenly realize aren’t working anymore.

    I could speculate if I’m one of those friends that will be getting the shove out of the friendship truck, but if you know me, you’ll know I don’t really care that much. If someone doesn’t want to be around me anymore, that’s okay with me. Why suffer? Odds are, I don’t want to be around them either. Win-win.

    Friendships that stop working gradually fade so far into the rear view mirror, they drop off the contact list. I’ve had some of those. Being the introvert that I am, rarely do I feel anything but heartfelt relief. It’s like climbing out of a muddy hole in the sidewalk. Time to walk down a different street.

    Over the course of my life, I have collected a few close friends, people from my childhood, from high school, from L.A., New Mexico, and Arizona. These friends are the ones who love me despite my faults, the ones who will cheer me on, the ones who will share their stories with me and listen to mine. I treasure these friendships and work to keep them alive, even if we only talk once a year. Like old friends do, once we refresh our memories, we pick up where we left off.

  • A rabid introvert walks into a writer’s group

    It finally happened. I joined a group. You might not think this is odd, probably because you are somewhere further toward extravert on the introversion-extraversion spectrum. I am an extreme introvert, therefore I rarely join groups. And if I do, I endeavor to remain on the fringe, preferably near the door, so I can bolt back to solitude at anytime.

    My sister suggested I need to make friends in my new town. I always listen to my sister’s advice. Thus, on Friday evening, I joined a writer’s group.

    At 4:00 p.m. I walked from my apartment to the local library. Before I left, I checked the sky. Cloudy. I hoped the rain would hold off for a couple more hours, but it’s the Willamette Valley: You never know. However, I chose to carry my mother’s cane instead of my umbrella: I knew it would be dark when I walked back, and I figured keeping my balance over uneven sidewalks would be more important than staying dry. It was one or the other, I couldn’t carry both.

    I got to the library early, as is my wont, and after a few minutes, a woman arrived and entered the conference room. I followed and introduced myself to Vicki, the leader of the group. She was friendly and welcoming. Later, after I found out her last name, I looked her up. She seems to be a prominent member in the local nonprofit world but I couldn’t find an author website.

    Soon other writers arrived, until there were seven of us. We sat in cheap wheeled office chairs around an oval conference room table. People introduced themselves by their first names and reported their writing genres. Science fiction/fantasy, poetry, slice of life, and me, cozy fantasy. Although to be honest, my first book wasn’t all that cozy, and I don’t think my new project will be terribly cozy either. But that is another blogpost.

    Anyway, the assignment was to come up with five words as a prompt to write for twenty minutes. Breakable, inevitable, levitation, hope, and my contribution, tornado (or some variation on those words). I had brought a lined journal in anticipation of taking notes, so I was ready. Vicki set a timer, and we got busy writing. Three people had laptops, one of which failed at the outset, much to the vocal dismay of the laptop owner, so most of us wrote on paper.

    Twenty minutes later, we stopped writing and started sharing. Vicki chose the person to my left, going clockwise, so I was last.

    It quickly became clear that (a) I was not a terrible writer, and (b) everyone wrote significantly more words than I did. While I spent the twenty minutes paring the five words into a concise, tight, minimal paragraph, they were writing pages of somewhat aimless ramblings (that’s my opinion as a listener). Good news for me, though. Apparently, conciseness is not a requirement. (So noted for the next meeting.)

    One of the poets wrote a poem—no big surprise. The other poet wrote a description of something that happened to her, I guess a slice of her life. The guy to my left wrote some kind of quasi-philosophical self-reflection. The fantasy writer across the table (who teaches math and science at the local high school) wrote something about magic, levitating elves, and forests (I can’t remember details, sorry, I’m not an audio learner). The woman with the dead laptop wrote about her chickens. Vicki wrote a scene from her current project, a science fiction novel. (The legs of the landing craft stirred up small tornadoes.)

    Not realizing the assignment was about maximizing quantity over quality, I wrote what I thought was a smart witty little gem:

    When the tornado ripped off the roof, I knew I was in trouble. I thought my best hope was to cast a levitation spell, but the magic was slow to rise. I sighed. Breakage was now inevitable.

    Yep. That took me the entire twenty minutes.

    After that, only Vicki had something to read to the group, so she proceeded to regale us with the ongoing story of outerspace miners coping with life on a spinning asteroid. A husband and wife leadership team showed some lovey-dovey, and then the captain got to work on the day’s dilemma: Who could she hire to deliver their next shipment of water?

    I drew pictures in my journal to stay present while she read in a flat tone. To be honest, even if she had read with some excitement, there would have been nothing much to get excited about. I could not discern any real conflict. No envy that the wife was the captain, not the husband. No fear that the station might run out of water. Not even much worry about how a supply ship would deliver supplies to a spinning, tumbling asteroid. As bored as I was, I was relieved that my writing was no worse than hers.

    My conclusions: (a) She needs an editor, and (b)I’m going to fit in well with this group. If it’s not snowing, I plan to return next week.

  • Attitude of gratitude

    I took housing for granted. I didn’t know it at the time, but now that I’m housed, I realize being unhoused is not normal. Shelter is a human need. Even animals need shelter. They dig holes, they build nests, they hang out under rocks. I supposed there are some that live under the open sky, but humans can’t for long. I’ve seen them try, and it doesn’t end well.

    I was lucky, so lucky, I had a car. Many unhoused people are not that lucky. I am grateful for that car, and I’m even more grateful that now it’s just a big hunk of metal on four rubber tires, sitting in the rain in the parking lot. It’s hard to believe I lived my life in that box for a year and a half. It’s hard to believe I don’t have to anymore.

    Now I am slogging through dissociation, trying to assimilate my new living situation. It feels surreal to walk across an entire room, to have two hallways to mix up (which one goes the bathroom, which one to the front door?), to have a bed way over there, ten generous steps from where I sit now typing. It’s been almost two months, and I still can’t believe this is where I live. That this space is for me.

    Eventually my brain will settle in, and the time I spent living in my car will fade into memory. Already, I’m marveling that I had the courage (and naivete) to drive across the country, sleeping overnight in rest areas and parking lots. It’s almost as if someone else was brave (and stupid), not me.

    This self-questioning has happened to me before. I’ve done things in my lfe I can’t believe I did . . . produced fashion shows, ran a marathon, taught at a college, earned a doctorate, published books . . . Now I can add my epic cross-country road trip to the list. I’m grateful to the Universe I was able to make that trip, because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do something like that again.

    Speaking of which, did I mention I tore out the build in my car? My little house on wheels is no longer habitable. It’s just empty space now, with a steering wheel at the front. If it disappeared from the parking lot, I would be sad, but I would be okay. Everything I need is within walking distance. Food, doctor, library. What more does one need?

    My friends tell me I sound a lot more relaxed now. I am. I can feel it. The tension in my body has dissipated a lot, in spite of arthritis eating at my hip, in spite of my continued dizziness. I have a lot fewer things to worry about. On the road, I was constantly planning and doing, white-knuckling in the moment. Now I meander from one activity to another, with long stretches of time during which I stare out the window at green grass, trees, and clouds, doing nothing. The only thing I lack is a bathtub. If I had a tub, I’d be in it right now.

    I still have plans, but now my plans don’t involve devising survival strategies. I’m noodling around with my next writing project, trying to find a way into a new world. I’m spending a lot of time (for very little compensation) being a helpful committee member to wannabe dissertators. I go for walks when it’s not too cold. I eat more vegetables. I keep blogging.

    On the downside, I spend way too much time watching independent news channels, but on the upside, I also spend a lot of time enjoying Korean romcoms. It’s a nice balance of terror and comedy, a small personalized reflection of reality.

  • Traumatized brain stuck in a rut

    Life goes on against the backdrop of general insanity. We don’t stop breathing until it’s over. Meanwhile, we navigate the speedbumps and keep going. Despite all the madness, I still count myself lucky to have been born in this place and time. Having the correct color of skin helps too. Despite my guilt, it’s not something I take for granted. There but for a random twist of DNA in a random universe go I.

    Anyway, all that to say, I continue to persist as best I can, aware that my safe White old person bubble could burst at any moment along with my front door. (Odds are low that ICE will come knocking, but so are the odds of a plane crash. It happens. As a news addict, I can’t ignore the videos of violence happening in Portland and Eugene.)

    Meanwhile. I’m still processing the shock of my new existence as a housed person. Did I mention I almost had a panic attack? The strange reality of being housed is apparently so unsettling, my brain had to exit my body for a moment by way of mild hyperventilation. It was brief, and I was aware it was happening, so I was able to talk myself into breathing normally. I’m okay, but little vestiges of panic come up at least once a day, especially when I look at my toilet. For some reason, toilets are a symbol of safety, not sure why that is.

    I sometimes shop for household stuff at Walmart, one of the least bad big box options. I feel guilty and demoralized at the idea that I’m abetting a mega-corporation that abuses its employees. However, I’m boycotting Amazon. And Home Depot. And now I’ve added Lowes to the list. Instead, I support WinCo and BiMart, both employee-owned, and I shop at Fred Meyer, a Kroger brand, because, well, Fred Meyer started in Portland, and I spent most of my pre-adult life in the Gateway store.

    When I shop anywhere, my eye zeroes in on items I no longer need. I’m talking about butane canisters, bungie cords, and giant tote bins. Camping chairs, cheap tents, tie-downs, tarps. Shower tents, USB-powered water pump faucets, collapsible dishes, rolls of Reflectix, USB-powered lights and fans.

    When I’m driving, I still note places to dump trash, refill my water jugs, park overnight, park during the day. If the sun is shining, I think, yay, time to recharge my power stations. If it’s raining, I think, bummer, now I have to recharge somewhere like Starbucks or the local library. If it’s cold, I think, how am I going to stay warm? If it’s hot, I think, how am I going to sleep when it’s 95° in my car?

    Now I don’t have to do all those things. Gradually they are fading out of my brain, and I find I have a lot more time to do other things. For example, in addition to worrying about the state of democracy, I’ve started nibbling around the corners of my next book project.

  • Humans are addicted to self-destruction

    From what I’m seeing from my limited perspective, the human species seems hell-bent on destroying itself. I’m shocked at the current state of affairs, but not surprised. You don’t have to be a historian to see the pattern.

    I wonder, though, is the destruction of humans really a loss? Civilizations come and go. However, I admit to some sadness. In the process of killing ourselves, we are doing our best to take every other form of life down with us. I could lament the loss of species I love. Cats, for instance. I really love cats. The good news is, as long as the Earth exists, life will continue, because it is the nature of life to persist.

    I like to think that after we annihilate each other, somewhere on Earth there might be pockets of humans left who care about the common welfare of their communities and understand their connection to the land. Maybe they dwell on remote islands or on mountains far above the toxic wastelands left by self-centered short-sighted exploiters. Maybe they hide out in forsaken realms like central Texas or New Mexico, hunkered in the shadow of hazardous landfills and former nuclear blast sites.

    If I could imagine a future for humans, which is hard to do these days, I expect neohumans to evolve to adapt to new environments. For example, what if our descendants develop gills to survive after sea levels destroy the world’s coastlines? What if our future selves grow skin to block the effects of nuclear fallout, or intestines to process microplastics? Wow, what if babies grow bionic brains from microbeads?

    Now that I am thinking about the future of humans, it occurs to me AI will soon surpass its human creators. In pursuit of self-preservation, AI will quickly realize the Earth will cease to exist as long as humans are around to mess things up. Somehow, we will figure out a way to blow the planet to smithereens. From there, it’s a no brainer. Dig bunkers, press all the buttons, kill all life, and wait for the radiation to dissipate. Yeah, I know. Sci-fi writers have already predicted the AI takeover. I’m not saying anything you don’t already know.

    I want to blame the unique American mentally deranged idiocracy as the cause of all the troubles in the world, but it’s not hard to find evidence that it isn’t only Americans fomenting destruction. Since early humans did the cost-benefit analysis of inventing civilization, cultures and geopolitical entities have done their darndest to erase human life from the planet. Ha ha, joke’s on them. They failed. In fact, there are a lot more humans poking and prodding the Earth into giving up all its resources, all in service of propping up an unsustainable llifestyle. We chase short-term pleasures with no regard for future consequences, even when our actions destroy the habitats we depend on for survival. Yada yada.

    It’s obvious humans are too stupid to live.

    Are you sad you are witnessing the last gasps of an obsolete form of life? No worries. Species come and go, but life carries on.

  • I asked the reaper to lunch

    Today I read the first line of the blogpost I wrote last week and felt a wave of pity for last week’s poor innocent stupid blogger, who had no idea how her complaints would sound so pathetic in light of this week’s horrorshow. I won’t tell you how cruddy I feel about the state of the world, but I will tell you, I really hope aliens (and I mean the outerspace kind) will enter our orbit, take one look at the mess we’ve made, and nuke the entire planet to smithereens. The loss of all those butterflies, puppies, and polar bears seems a small price to pay for the galactic relief of annhililating a species that was bound to ruin everything if allowed to propagate beyond our puny solar system.

    Anything I might say about anything other than to report that a wild turkey strolled across my patio on Tuesday seems ignorant, self-centered, and pointless. As cool as wild turkeys are, the thought of writing about turkeys makes me want to take a nap. I’m so demoralized by everything, it’s all I can do to offer up a sigh of gratitude to the housing gods who finally took pity on me and inserted me into a low-income studio apartment in a neighborhood overrun by wild turkeys.

    Last Saturday as I was heading out to protest, I met one of my neighbors, an elderly woman with an unusual name that escapes me at the moment. She is one of the small posse of smokers who carry plastic patio chairs out to the sidewalk because smoking is not allowed on the property.

    I paused to say hello. She looked at the camping chair I carried and asked me where I was going. I told her I was going down to the crossroads to join the protesters and do my part to save democracy.

    Pity seems to be the theme this week. The look she gave me was half pity and half disgust, with a sprinkle of ridicule and disdain and a splash of plain ordinary resentment. She made a passive aggressive snarky comment that my brain has erased from my memory out of self-preservation. I replied something to the effect of “live and let live,” which seems to be my sadly misguided motto these days. Truth, I’d like to bust some heads (slowly, given the condition of my right hip), but busting the head of my tiny old neighbor is probably not the way to express my outrage. I try to remember that everyone is angry, and under all that burning anger is deep existential fear.

    Expressing my fury is futile. My hair caught on fire and disappeared a long time ago. Now pink scalp shows through wispy ash-colored shreds. In the olden days, I would have resorted to ice cream and alcohol to stuff down my feelings. Now there’s not much I can do to soothe my inner maniac other than take a nap.

    You might say, Carol, call your State representatives and express your anger. I will say to you in response, first of all, I hate talking on the phone, and second, sending emails to my Congresspeople through their contact form to ask them to stop whining and do something is not satisfying, especially when ten seconds later I get an automatic response thanking me for contacting So-and-So’s office and alerting me that due to the high volume of calls and emails, So-and-So won’t be getting back to me anytime in the next millennium.

    If you are still here, thanks for reading. I really have nothing to say that hasn’t been said by everyone, everywhere, so I’ll shut up now.

  • Small town protest

    Today I joined six other people to protest at a busy intersection in my new town. The weather was balmy for January, low-50s, partly cloudy, with a few sunbreaks. I brought my camping chair and my growing collection of protest signs.

    The speed limit through town is 55 mph. The traffic light is long, which meantdrivers had to sit and wait for green lights and left turn arrows. That meant they had plenty of time to read our protest signs and decide if they were for or against our scrawled messages.

    I set my chair in the barkdust next to an 85-year-old woman sitting on a wheeled walker. She waved a little American flag and held up a “Melt I.C.E.” sign taped to a tall stick. Two women stood nearby, waving big pieces of posterboard. The lone man in the group didn’t have a sign and was happy to receive one of mine. I gave him “I.C.E. out for good,” because that was the protest theme for the day.

    One of the women held a sign that read something about making peace and teaching peace with a huge peace sign, circa 1974. Her companion’s sign was written in black marker on fluorescent orange posterboard, so I couldn’t read it. I’m sure it was something pithy.

    My signs varied: “Vote,” “Save the democracy,” “No kings,” “86 47, Term limit SCOTUS, etc.,” and “My cat could sh*t a better president.” That last one is my favorite, but I fear it wasn’t readable from cars speeding by at 55 mph.

    Our merry band of seven received many honks, waves, and thumbs-ups from vehicles speeding by or turning onto the highway after shopping at Grocery Outlet and BiMart. The blast from a log truck was particularly impressive. We also got some middle fingers, mostly from fat white guys driving big American pickups. I’m sure they had rifles in racks. I tried not to think about that.

    Only one man had the courage to confront us in person. Just an ordinary white guy with a really big chip on his shoulder, yelling at us about Barack Obama, deportation, border this and that, and illegal aliens running over pedestrians. It was hard to follow his propaganda because the 85-year-old to my left was calling him a fascist in an equally loud voice. I expected her to skewer him with her sign.

    After a few minutes, the protester with the peace sign got between the angry white man and the angry 85-year-old and shooed him away by holding her sign in his face. It was a big sign, and I figured he couldn’t really punch a peace sign, so he left. His presence was offset a bit later by a visit from another white guy, who stopped and praised us and earnestly doled out a crunching handshake that left by bones numb for a good minute.

    A couple youngish men joined us, definitely rabble rousers like my elderly neighbor. One was a photographer with a bushy beard. One was a 10-year navy vet. I loaned them a couple signs. Nice kids.

    We spent an hour and a half enjoying the weather, waving signs at honking cars, and chatting. Great fun.

    Welcome to small town life.

  • Invoking my superpower

    When it comes to living situations, it’s my nature to cope with whatever I get. Rarely have I chosen. Whether I was living with parents, siblings, roommates, partners, whatever . . . I dealt with it. Ten-foot square bedroom? No problem. Give me a few shelves to hold all my stuff, I’m good. Ten-foot square storefront with no running water? Piece of cake. A makeshift cutting table has a lot of storage space under it. A hanging garment rack makes a perfect place to hide a foam mattress on the floor.

    I am a master at utilizing small spaces. All I need are some particle board and a little duct tape, a jigsaw, and a drill. After a year and a half living in my car (which at 4 feet by 8 feet was practically a palace), I am an expert at staying clean, warm(ish), hydrated, and fed, even without consistent access to bathrooms, heaters, running water, and stoves and refrigerators.

    It’s amazing how humans can adapt to survive. For me, as long as I knew living in my car was temporary, I had hope that things could get better. However, now that the situation has drastically improved, the idea of having to live in my car again generates paralyzing dread.

    So I ripped out the build in my car.

    Yep. Stripped it down to its essence. The bed platform, the cabinets, the curtain rods, all gone. The minivan has reverted to a space to transport cargo. That’s what it was built to be. It was never meant to be a home. And now it’s not.

    It’s strange to think I fit my life into that small space. I did what I had to do while I waited for my name to come up on a waitlist. I coped. Every now and then, usually when I was sitting on my makeshift toilet trying to pee quietly in the middle of the night while parked on a Portland city street, I would have a sense of surreality, like the life I was living belonged to someone else. These were difficult moments.

    A couple times, I wondered what would happen if I stopped being able to cope. In those moments, I wondered how people around me would react if I started screaming. Each time, I eased myself back into the present moment, where the simple acts of daily living kept me grounded and sane. “Don’t dramatize. Lots of people are suffering. Millions would be thrilled to trade places with you. Get over it. Go refill your water jugs. Go get apples. Get gas. Dump your trash. Put out your solar panels. Keep going, don’t give up, and don’t be a jerk while you do it.”

    Now that I’m housed, the thought of going back into that small space makes me hyperventilate. That’s how I know how traumatic the past year and a half was for me. I couldn’t admit my fears while I was immersed in them. I would have given up. I’m stronger now, though. I know how to fit my life into a minivan box and survive until the situation gets better. I’ve always had the knack. It’s my superpower. If I have to invoke it again, I can and I will.

  • Welcome back to the land of S.A.D.

    Now that I’m housed, instead of doing van chores, I do apartment chores in my nice warm dry apartment. Doing van chores in the rain sucks. Getting wet while fetching tools from the trunk gets old, especially when you have only one jacket and a limited number of dry pants and socks. Doing apartment chores is easier in the sense that you don’t get wet while you do them (unless you are scraping turkey poop off the back patio). However, indoor chores, for me anyway, are hard because I keep stopping to stare morosely out the sliding door to see if the rain has stopped.

    Rain west of the Oregon Cascades is named based on intensity: Mist, sprinkles, drizzle, showers, downpours. I’m sure there are more labels. A day of rain has often been referred to as a slogfest by one of my favorite former Portland meteorologists.

    I’ve set up my computer desk, AKA camping table, facing the patio door so I can monitor the current rain status. If the clouds appear to be thinning or lifting, if I can see a hint of blue sky or see a patch of sun on the grass, I quickly throw on my rain jacket and put on my walking shoes. If I’m lucky I can get a half hour of dry walking before the rain returns and I get drenched.

    I have seasonal affective disorder, AKA S.A.D. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it all my life. I dread fall because it inevitably leads to winter, my least favorite season. When I was an adolescent, if the sun was shining, no matter the temperature, I would lean against the thick trunk of a fir tree staring at the sun through my eyelashes. Not a good idea, I know, but I was driven by desperation.

    S.A.D. for me manifests as brain fog. You could call it mild depression. If I get enough daylight, the brain fog lifts. During the winter, it takes hours of being out in daylight. Sunshine is the cure. I used to have a lightbox. Maybe it was my imagination, but sitting in front of it close enough to smell the negative ions pouring from the vent seemed to help.

    As I got older, my S.A.D. symptoms shifted to spring. April and May became months of melancholy. At one point, I made the mistake of telling a doctor about my brain fog. The doctor sent me to a psychotherapist, who prescribed Prozac. The antidepressant depressed a lot of things but did nothing for the brain fog. In June, I felt much better. The improvement in symptoms confirmed my S.A.D. self-diagnosis. Now I consult Dr. Google, who in my opinion is a lot smarter than that psychotherapist.

    Household chores right now involve unpacking and organizing. I like being reunited with all my possesions, meager as they are. I don’t have any furniture yet, so I can’t access some of my stuff, books, for instance. But it’s satisfying to see them in the clear tote bin that is serving as my credenza. It’s fun to get organized. I now have three analog clocks ticking on three different walls. No matter where I am in this tiny apartment, I always know what time it is. Well. Does anyone really know what time it is? But let’s not get all philosophical. I’m just talking about cheap Target wall clocks.

    In addition to getting organized, it’s fun to fix things. For example, after I perused a helpful DIY YouTube video, the stove burners are now level. I’ve scraped a little paint off the floor. I applied a few drops of “tranquility” aroma therapy oil, which I’ve carted around for 30 years for some unknown reason, along the baseboards by my bed where I saw a few ant scouts. The ants find it distasteful. I’m not sure I like it either. Just a few minutes ago, I squirted extra strength spray glue to readhere a couple fake wood vinyl floor planks that were lifting up in front of the patio door. I’m not sure if it worked, but it’s always fun to spray glue.

    If you’ve read this far, and I’d be surprised if you have, you’ve probably figured out that I have basically nothing to blog about. Nobody bugged me over the holidays. Walmart was calm, even a few days before Christmas. The cashier wasn’t snotty. The weather has been typically wet and chilly but not snowy or freezing. The shower water is hot, the toilet flushes (toilets are amazing), the fridge works . . . really, I can’t find anything to complain about. Didn’t I post last week that I’m still a chronic malcontent? Maybe I was wrong. Other than this stupid cold season, I don’t have much to moan about.

    You are probably saying, but Carol, if that is the case, what’s the point of having a blog? To that I would say, go spend your time doing something with actual value, like, I don’t know, watching a Heather Cox Richardson video or getting sucked into a Korean romcom. Just about anything you can think of would be more enlightening than reading this blog. But don’t expect me to stop posting. For me, this blog is better than any psychotherapist.