The Hellish Handbasket Blog

  • The shock of stopping

    The reality of my new housing situation is starting to sink in. This week I closed out my storage unit in Portland. Yesterday I finished unloading the dregs from my car, leaving just the bare bed platform and empty shelves as testaments to my former life as a nomad. Eventually I will vacuum the dust, bugs, and fingernail clippings from the filthy rug and pretend like that time in my life happened to someone else.

    Since I left Portland in 2021, I have worked hard to streamline my life. Time and again, I gritted my pearlies and embraced successive waves of death cleaning. I donated my appliances to my roommate. I replaced my furniture with camping chairs. I traded in my shelves for plastic tote bins, solar panels, and portable power stations.

    I spent a lot of money turning my car into a liveable space. When I say “liveable,” I mean a space that could provide me the basics: kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, all packed into one soccer-mom minivan.

    I’ve always been able to cram my life into small spaces so turning my car into a home wasn’t all that difficult. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted and needed, and that uncertainty cost me a lot of money and time; however, after a year and a half, I’d worked out most of the kinks in the nomadic lifestyle. If housing hadn’t appeared, my next task would have been to add solar on the roof.

    Loading and unloading in Veneta was hard. Books! Sewing machine! I berate myself for keeping so much stuff. After all these years of downsizing! Possessions are a plague upon the land. Days later, my muscles are still protesting. On the other hand, my reward for unloading in the rain was a rainbow.

    Now I see what I have. Besides my camping gear, I have lots of blankets, a few clothes, some household goods, and the ashes of my two dead cats. It’s not a lot but I still feel overwhelmed with stuff.

    Now that I’m housed, the possession plague has deposited spores in my brain. I need a bed. I need a table and a chair, maybe a shelf. I definitely need some lamps. I dread getting more stuff, not just because this is the worst possible time of year for shopping but also because if this housing adventure becomes unaffordable, I will once again have to downsize. It’s heart wrenching to fall in love with a chair and then come to hate it when nobody will take it off your hands.

    How do I all of a sudden stop living one life and start living another? Who am I if I’m no longer the freedom-loving nomad? No longer the stealthy arthritic vehicle dwelling senior? No longer the resourceful intrepid roadtripper? Did I just stop being those people and become someone else?

    Ha. As usual, I still haven’t figured out who I am. This existential question seems to be a recurring theme in my blogposts. It’s ridiculous how a self-centered theme could provide me with fourteen years of musings, rants, diatribes, and complaints but that is what has happened. As long as I can keep writing, I don’t expect anything to change. Whatever I am now, I’m still a card-carrying chronic malcontent.

  • Joining the ranks of the housed population

    I am now in my new apartment in Veneta, Oregon. Up until a year and a half ago, I did not know Veneta existed. I applied to waitlists at several affordable senior housing facilities around the Willamette Valley. All I wanted was something affordable not in Portland. Veneta came up first.

    Veneta is a small town. I have not yet discovered with my own feet how small it is. I just got here yesterday. However, judging by Google Maps, this place is miniscule compared to other places I’ve lived, namely Portland, Los Angeles, Tucson, and Scottsdale. I hope I like small town living. More to be revealed on that issue.

    I pulled the mattress out of my car. I guess you could call it a mattress. It’s a 2-inch thick slab of foam rubber, 72 inches long and 24 inches wide. That is not much of a bed for the back of a minivan, but its true inadequacies are apparent when the mattress is on a cold hard floor. Warm air rises, cold air sinks. The heater works, and it’s got a flap to point the warm air downward, but I’m guessing I’d be a lot warmer if I got bunkbeds and slept on the top bunk.

    The kitchen style is tiny galley. The stove is missing two burner rings, but the two remaining burners work. One has something toxic on it, and the stove fan does not work, so that leaves one small burner. (Really, how many burners does a person need?) The other major component of the kitchen, the fridge, is doing a yeoman’s job of chilling a box of soymilk and one remaining apple. Are fridges supposed to sound like a babbling brook when they are running? It’s kind of like having an intermittent indoor water feature, without the water.

    The toilet hasn’t clogged so far, so that’s good news. However, I’m sad to report, the apartment is not equipped with a bathtub. I wasn’t surprised to see a huge fiberglas shower, complete with handrails. This is senior housing, after all. You get what you get when you are old and poor. I’m surprised there aren’t grab bars around the toilet. The shower turns on, and the water gets hot (I have my own water heater!), but I don’t have a shower curtain, so I’m sponging in the sink.

    No bugs to speak of, just a couple spiders and the desiccated carcass of a miniscule slug. Don’t ask me how the thing got in here, I don’t want to know.

    I have a back patio. It’s not huge, but it’s big enough for a patio chair. I will get morning sun next May if I’m lucky. The AC/heating unit releases its condensation across the concrete to the grass. I expect the pavement to be etched soon, if it isn’t already. On the bright side, if the water ices over, the critters in the backyard can use it as skating rink. There are critters. I know this because there are several piles of critter poop on the patio and one pile on top of the AC/heating unit. It’s not cat, dog, or coyote poop. Could it be raccoon poop? The piles remind me of duck or geese poop. I can’t imagine my patio was visited by a duck or a goose, but who knows? Something pooped back there, and it wasn’t me. I’ve only been here a day, though. Give me time.

    I’m relieved I didn’t put my camping table in storage. My office area consists of a camping table, a $9.99 Walmart camping chair, and essential office supplies scattered on the floor around me. Besides my floor mattress, these two items are my only furniture. I have another camping chair in storage, and it’s a nice one, let me tell you. However, camping chairs suck as office chairs. I will be making some trips to thrift stores in Eugene next week.

    Moving is hard. You know this, we’ve all moved at least once in our lives. It’s stressful to pack and schlep, even if you have very few possessions. I have PTSD from the move from Portland to Tucson. Downsizing, giving away so much, and still moving so much crap I thought I could not live without. Then the ultimate downsizing challenge, moving into my car. And I still have too much stuff, hence, the storage unit. I am loathe to start accumulating stuff again. Furniture, kitchen appliances and supplies, clothes, dishes, books . . . my heart rate speeds up just thinking about it. I dread the next downsize.

    Some of you will sleep better knowing I am now housed in a place with heat and running water. I’m not, but I am glad you are.

  • I’m already missing the sun

    My three-week attempt to pretend as if I belong here in paradise, AKA Scottsdale, Arizona, is coming to a close. In a few days, I’ll be making the trek back to Oregon. In other words, voluntarily turning myself in to begin my sentence in the gray cold rain prison known as the Willamette Valley. I’m spending a lot of time staring into blue sky, hoping I won’t forget what it looks and feels like when I’m trudging through sleet to get into the grocery store without slipping.

    Other than the weather, I don’t know what my new life as a housed person is going to look like. I have the keys to my new apartment, but I haven’t seen it yet. Nor have I spent time in my new town, other than one drive-by. I have a feeling my bleeding liberal heart will not be welcomed by most of the town folk. I just hope when they see my “No Kings” window stickers, they don’t choose me for the Lottery.

    Maybe I’ll like it there in my new town. Maybe I’ll decide I love the cold gray drizzly skies after all, that sunshine and blue skies are for babies and wimps. I met people in Portland who said they loved the gray drizzle. I looked at them as if they were curious misguided members of an exotic species. They were never from the Willamette Valley. That should tell you something.

    Maybe I’ll spend a month in the tub, assuming my new place has hot water. I have no idea if it has a tub. That wasn’t on my dealbreaker list. The only dealbreakers I stipulated were no cockroaches and no bedbugs. The property manager assured me the apartment complex had neither. I believe her about cockroaches. Like me, they don’t tend to favor cold climates. Bedbugs, on the other hand, will live anywhere there is a live human host. I guess an animal will do if starvation is imminent, but humans are the staple of the bedbut diet, not to mention the scourge of multifamily housing.

    Speaking of getting bitten, mosquitoes. Not surprising they like it here. Sprinklers plus shady grass equals delicious mud puddles that never evaporate. Plus there are two or three good sized ponds, small lakes, you could call them, full of turgid brown water. A few fountains and aerators do a haphazard job of mud mixing, but I’m sure if I were a mosquito looking for a nice place to dump my eggs, this is heaven. Divots of standing water abound.

    I won’t have to miss the mud. I’m sure there will be plenty where I’m going. But I will miss the intense blue sky and the sun glittering on the lakes. I’ll miss the little dog, who constantly makes me laugh, even when she’s being an annoying manipulative pill. I’ll miss the leafy trees and colorful flowers. I’ll miss the huge marble-surfaced kitchen island, twice as bigger in square footage as my minivan. I’ll miss the stainless steel fridge that generously dispenses not just water but also ice cubes and crushed ice. I’ll miss the skylights that glow at night with light from the full moon.

    I’m sadder by the minute when I think of leaving Arizona. It’s likely I won’t be back.

  • A lifetime of waiting for life to begin

    When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t wait for summer. The closer to June, the more impatient I became. I loved summer, not just because the pressures of school eased, but because summer in Portland was much better for a person with undiagnosed S.A.D.

    The balance of my life has unfolded pretty much the same way. Couldn’t wait to graduate from high school to get to college, couldn’t wait to abandon college and leave Portland for California sunshine, couldn’t wait to quit the tedium of sewing for a living to go back to college. It’s a series of couldn’t waits. Couldn’t wait to leave one relationship and start another. Couldn’t wait to leave the teaching job after ten long tedious years, couldn’t wait to finish my doctorate.

    Couldn’t wait for my mother to die. Couldn’t wait to leave Portland for Arizona sunshine. Couldn’t wait to escape the cockroach-infested, homicide-plagued apartment for a safer living situation, couldn’t wait to leave the financial burden of the safer living situation for the adventure of van life.

    I could go on, and I will.

    Couldn’t wait to find safe, stable, affordable housing, until I finally found it. So, what’s my next couldn’t wait? Today, I can’t wait to leave Arizona for my new apartment in Oregon. My next couldn’t wait will probably be can’t wait to leave this stupid apartment in Oregon for sunshine somewhere else.

    The pattern is obvious. I’m not present. I’ve never been present. I’ve lived in the wreckage of the future my entire life, and I’m still doing it. I’ve learned nothing.

  • Look back but don’t stare

    This week I have access to electricity. If you have ever lived long without it, you know how great it is. I’m lucky enough to have been born in the U.S., where most of the time, most of us have access to electricity, if we choose to connect. I know in many places around the world, electricity is not available or nonexistent.

    When I’m on the road, I keep track of the power levels on my three power boxes. They are all baby power boxes, compared to some of the monsters van lifers talk about on their van life YouTube channels. When I say monster, I mean, back-breaking space hogs that can power a microwave, a fridge, a laptop, and a television—all at the same time!

    I can power my portable camping fridge for three days and two nights with my 800 wh power box. My little 240 wh box will run my laptop for a solid 6 hours. Any appliance that generates serious heat, like a heater, for instance, will chew through power like this dog I’m babysitting chews through her breakfast, that is to say, the box won’t last long. This is why van lifers who heat their vans use propane, butane, or diesel.

    I’ve forgotten why I started writing this blogpost.

    Oh, yeah. Electricity.

    Having unlimited access to electricity for a couple weeks has meant I can get some tasks done that I can’t easily do on the road. For example, I can do a massive file backup to the solid state drive I cannibalized from my old desktop computer before I donated it to the e-recyling nonprofit in Tucson. That might make my laptop happy. On the downside, I’ll never be able to find anything. Which is kind of the theme of living in one’s car.

    I can cull the songs on the flashdrive I plug into the USB port in my car. I’ve decided I no longer care for Zydeco. There are a few Doors songs that came with an album I ripped some years back that I’d rather not listen to again. I’m really sick of hearing Pleasant Valley Sunday. The shuffle option on the USB drive is stuck in some stupid algorithm that serves up songs in the same order. Thankfully, I figured out I can press the >>> button on the radio to skip to the next track. But it will be better if the offending songs are removed altogether.

    For the past couple days, I’ve been archiving the blogposts from the Hellish Handbasket blog, which has been hosted on Blogger since 2012. As I was going through the files, I tried not to read any of the text, but was hard not to notice references to my mother, because there are so many. And to my cat, whose demise still breaks my heart. I carry the ashes of my two dead cats in my car. Leaving them in storage for so long was weighing on me. I figure if I drive the car off a bridge, at least we’ll all go down together.

    Let’s see, what else? I can finish editing and formatting the third book of the trilogy I’ve been working on for two years. In my defense, the book has been delayed because my characters’ ideas were different from mine. When your characters jump off the page, it’s hard to get them back within the margins. It took me a while to figure out who they were and what they wanted to say. I’ve always loved to write, even if no one ever reads my work. I write for myself. Which is a good thing, because I don’t see my own typos anymore.

    Scottsdale weather this week has been like Willamette Valley weather but 20 degrees warmer. It’s been cloudy and wet here. The dog and I are both sunloving creatures, so we’ve had to compete for whatever patch of sun we can find. She always wins. I’ve learned to tolerate rain showers, but I’m lucky. I have an umbrella and a great rain jacket. The dog has neither. She doesn’t mind getting her paws wet or dirty, but she despises rain on her back. She would hate living in Oregon.

    Once again, I realize why I left Oregon for Arizona, and before that, for California. I was born in Oregon, but I never felt I belonged there. Soon I will be returning to Oregon to live. I’m relieved that I’ll have stable housing for the next year, but I’m anxious about the gray skies and frequent showers. Winter is not my favorite time of year, and returning to Oregon in December doesn’t sound like fun. Still, I have to go. I’m paying rent for a place I haven’t even seen yet. I suppose I should at least find out if it has cockroaches.

    And electricity.

  • How to know if your mother has dementia

    My mother had a particular way of folding towels. No matter what type of towel—bath towel, dish towel, wash cloth—she laid the item flat, folded in one long side, then the other, and then folded in the short sides, one then the other. When the folding was complete, the towel showed no raw edges, only folds on all sides.

    This is the way I learned to fold towels. I don’t always stick to it. Sometimes I fold in the long sides and then roll the thing up in a ball, kind of like a Hostess Ho-Ho wraps chocolate cake around the creamy white filling. But most of the time, I follow the towel-folding ritual the way my mother taught me.

    The day I visited my mother and found her towel cupboard held nothing but badly folded towels was the day I came to accept that she had dementia.

    Dementia started slowly, picking at her brain, changing her behaviors, stealing her words, but the decline didn’t happen overnight, so it was easy to miss. Plus, who wants to contemplate the idea that the person you have known your entire life is morphing into a stranger? Acceptance for me was a rocky road of denial, anger, fear, and despair.

    Even so, I came to accept my mother’s decline before the rest of my family did because I visited her so often. During the last few years of her life, I visited her daily. When she moved into the retirement home, she wasn’t driving anymore but she could still walk upright, play the piano, eat meals with other residents in the dining room, send emails, go out to the smoking area with her smoking buddy, and use her microwave without blowing up her blueberry muffins. Once her brain cells began to die, so did the woman I’d come to know, the one who was so much more fun after her kids were grown and gone.

    A bout of pneumonia took away her favorite addiction. Even though smoking cigarettes made her cough, like a true addict, she couldn’t have stopped unless someone made her. The nurse at the retirement home made the decision for her. Dementia was a kind of blessing. Mom couldn’t remember she used to smoke. A couple months of nicotine patches, and she stopped coughing.

    Over the course of three years, she graduated to a walker, quit being able to read music, couldn’t figure out how to use her computer, and gave up on the microwave.

    Then COVID happened. I visited her from outside, through her window. My brother and I set up a baby monitor so she could hear my voice. I taped photographs to the outside of the window to remind her of who she used to be.

    She begged me to get her out of there. The family didn’t have much choice. The retirement home didn’t accept Medicaid, so we would have had to move her anyway. I organized all her furniture into keep, give away, discard. I arranged for the movers to haul things to their various destinations: the new carehome, my brother’s garage, the dump.

    My mother slept on her couch the entire time the movers, all masked, came and went. She slept while the new caregiver and I, both masked, sorted her clothes into keep and discard. We arranged her new room: couch, nightstand, armchair, tiny round table—all that was left from her previous life, all the previous lives. I rescued the photos from the outside of her windows and taped them to her new mirrored closet doors.

    When she finally woke up, she sat in her armchair and looked at me through the window. She said, “Why did you do this to me?”

    The human brain is a marvelous miracle when it’s working. When it begins to fail, the brain is just a spoiled piece of meat.

    So, watch your mother. Pay attention. She might not be an OCD towel-folder like my mother was, but when your mom starts avoiding doing things she used to do because she can’t figure out how to do them anymore, that’s when you know.

    If you loved her, treasure the time you have left with the mother you used to know. However, even if you didn’t love her, either way, prepare to meet a stranger.

  • Still chronically malcontented after all these years

    I’m never satisfied. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, I admit, I’m rarely content. I’m not always conscious that I’m not content. Lately I’m just taking life as it comes, but sometimes I wake up and realize things in the world, and in my life, could be better.

    I can’t do anything about the world’s problems, and my only choices to improve my own life are (a) change my attitude or (b) change my situation. I’m ruled by fear, I know. I fall repeately into the wreckage of the future.

    Speaking of future wrecking, this week, I signed a lease on a studio apartment in a low-income senior housing . . . what do you call it? A facility? A complex? It’s not a nursing home, I don’t think. It’s not big enough to be called a complex, whatever that is.

    I’ve seen the apartments from the outside, but I haven’t actually seen the apartment I’m renting. That’s nuts, right? At this point, I don’t care. As long as it has hot water, heat, and no cockroaches, I’m good. Mainly, I’m looking forward to making my family happy.

    So what did I do? I paid my rent, deposit, and the electricity deposit, and immediately left town.

    Actually I had a preplanned gig to babysit the little dog Maddie. I left Portland on Wednesday, stopped in Coos Bay to sign the lease and hand over a large amount of money, and then I hit the road, heading south toward the desert.

    Did you know that California hates travelers? I’d forgotten. California has arranged the rest areas along I-5 to be (a) stuck in endless renovation, (b) limited to an eight-hour stay, or (c) barred to overnight parking. I experienced this lack of courtesy on the drive north, which is why I ended up driving from the Cracker Barrel in Bakersfield all the way to the Welcome Center in Ashland, Oregon.

    This time, I made the trip in reverse. From Medford, I drove south on I-5, assuming I would come to a rest area that would put me up for the night. Closed, time limit, no overnight parking, yada yada. So I kept going south, heading toward the only place I knew I could park without a hassle. Yep. Cracker Barrel in Bakersfield.

    On the bright side, literally: the Beaver Moon. On the downside, I can’t see well at night. Plus, I wasn’t familiar with the road from I-5 to Bakersfield. Lots of irate drivers stacked up behind me. I’m always the pilot car. I put a handmade sticker on my back window: Go around me. It’s probably only readable when the semi behind me is about to crawl up my tail pipe.

    Remind me never to eat at Cracker Barrel again. What was I thinking? In my defense, I know I ate there once before, and I forgot that I had vowed not to repeat the horrors. Second worst coffee ever. I forget where I had the worst coffee. I won’t remember until I go there again.

    So now I’m sitting in my car, which is parked in the desert outside of Quartzsite, where everyone around me is doing the same thing, a hundred yards away in all directions, spread out like galaxies in the expanding universe. The breeze is light, the sun is shining, the sky is brilliant blue, and the temperature is heading up, up, up. Perfect. I’d stay here forever if it weren’t so dang hot in the summer. And if I had proper housing with air conditioning.

    But my life is about to change. Soon I will be housed, at least for the next year. My savings will drain away slowly, as they have since I left Portland in 2021. This trajectory can only go one way, unless I win the lottery, which is unlikely.

    I’m going to take contrary action and refuse to succumb to my chronically malcontented self. Out here, with the dome of blue sky overhead, I almost feel content. Soon I will be loading my stuff out of the storage unit and into my car to make the two-hour drive to my new town. I hope the apartment will not be too dark or depressing. I hope the people are nice, and more important, quiet. I hope I can find some cheap used furniture (the kind that doesn’t come with bedbugs). Mainly, I hope I have enough savings to last the year.

    If it all goes sideways . . . and if I my car still works, and if I can still drive, I can always come back to the desert.

  • The secret life of coyotes

    One of the trails I walk almost daily is called Coyote Way. I thought it was just a cute name for a gravel trail in a wannabe tough nature park. But no, there really are coyotes traipsing along their namesake trail, and all the other trails in the park as well. That includes the paved path leading across the entire park, from the parking lot to the neighborhood of mansions on the other side.

    I’m not a poop expert, but as far as I can tell, there are two types of poop on the paved path. I used to think all the little piles were deposited by dogs being walked by owners who either aren’t paying attention to what little Muffy does or who don’t give a crap what their precious Muffy does. I’m pretty sure it’s the first. This park is in Wilsonville, where everyone is fastidious about doing the right thing.

    Now I know almost all the piles of poop were left there by coyotes. How do I know? I’ve become an astute observer of poop piles, mainly because I want to avoid stepping in them. However, over the past weeks, I’ve noticed that the piles of poop don’t look like the poop I pick up when I’m dogsitting the little dog who lives in Scottsdale. In fact, dogs who eat dog food (or possibly human food) don’t poop out tiny fragments of bone. Unless they’ve been munching on rabbits, birds, squirrels, and mice. And the occasional deer.

    One day I was walking the paved path, which runs in places between dense thickets of trees and bushes. I heard a violent shaking in the leaves. The noise was close enough that I put my hands up, expecting something large to burst out of the bushes right at me. The noise veered away, and then through a clearing in the bushes I saw two large dog-like creatures running fast and silent after something too small for me to see.

    In my limited experience, domestic dogs do not run silently when they are chasing something. They are apt to wake up the neighborhood, bellowing about how they’ve treed a squirrel. I’ve spent some time in the southern Arizona desert. I know what coyotes look like. These two creatures were definitely coyotes, bushy with winter coats, and dashing flat out amongst the trees.

    Now I know how Coyote Way got its name.

    Back to the poop thing. At first I wondered why I didn’t see much poop on the gravel trails. For some reason, the coyotes preferred to poop on the paved path. Then I realized. Would you want to poop on harsh wet gravel, or worse, in tall wet grass? Me neither. I mean, I’m not all that discerning about where I poop, given my lifestyle, but even I draw the line at wet grass tickling my butt.

    Poop mystery solved. However, lately I’ve noticed little loosely woven bundles of slimy wet grass, some on the gravel trails, but mostly on the paved path. No mystery here. I recognize these little grass bundles. Any cat or dog with access to green grass will at some point upchuck one of these slimy green bundles. Hopefully not on your rug, where hopefully you will not step in it with your bare feet.

    As you might imagine, I watch where I’m walking.

    The coyotes in this park may be shy about being seen but they aren’t shy about making their presence known. Sometimes I start walking early in the morning, and some of the piles are fresh, as if the coyotes have sauntered across the path just minutes ahead of me. They see me coming, poop right where I might step, and then continue on into the tall grass. I bet they hunker behind bushes, watching and waiting to see if I am not paying attention.

    So far, I’ve managed to keep my shoes poop-free. But if there’s anything I know about coyotes, it’s that they are wily.

  • What happens if the internet goes down?

    As I was hiking in the forest, I was thinking about life before we had the internet. It seems so long ago, but I remember when Ma Bell was a thing. We had a party line that started with Alpine 4. I memorized our phone number when I was in kindergarten. My mother had that phone number almost until the day she died.

    Now she’s gone, and so is Ma Bell, but we have lots of other monopolies that have insinuated themselves into the fabric of our lives so thoroughly that it is hard to imagine life without them. I’m thinking of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Walmart . . . I used to live without these things. What would my life would be like if I didn’t have them anymore?

    Or if I chose not to have them?

    Some pundits are recommending boycotts. Boycotting Disney for cancelling one of my favorite late night talk show hosts is one thing. Boycotting Google would be like deciding not to breathe. For one thing, it would kill me. For another, Google would not care. One dead user means nothing. There are a billion more where I came from.

    I’m not an Apple person, but I am a Microsoft person. I’ve researched alternatives to Windows and Office. Learning new software would be a challenge given the unwillingness of my tired brain, but I could do it. If Microsoft went bankrupt, I’d figure out something.

    If Google failed, I’d devise a workaround somehow. Some other calendar system, some other search engine. Email would be okay: I still use yahoo, which is only a few days newer than aol. As long as I have internet access, I could live without Google.

    What about Amazon? I remember when Amazon was an online bookstore. Nobody thought people would buy books online. Look at us now. Amazon sells everything, literally everything. You can buy a house on Amazon. Shopping would be more difficult without Amazon, but it could be done. Imagine going to local business to shop everyday, not just one day a year. I’m not including Walmart in that group of small businesses. If Amazon went down, I personally would be affected: Amazon KDP sells my books. But there are alternatives, as long as I have access to the internet.

    But what if the entire internet collapsed? What would not be affected, considering many sectors of the world infrastructure and economy depend on the internet to function? Electrical grids would fail, causing gasoline pumps to cease pumping. What else would stop working? Communications, banking and finance, air traffic control, modern hospitals, modern schools, and horror of horrors, social media, streaming, and online shopping. So says an AI summary.

    We wouldn’t have telephones anymore, at least not ones that rely on the internet or the power grid. Corded landline phones would work until the phone companies’ backup generators stopped producing power. By then, I expect all the phone company employees would have gone home to circle their wagons.

    Maybe I should consider brushing up on my siphoning skills. Or I could just punch a hole in someone else’s gas tank, assuming they still had gas, of course. I used to watch the Walking Dead, until I couldn’t anymore. Besides running from walkers, the characters spent a lot of time searching for food, water, and gas. Maybe consider watching old episodes yourself, for research purposes.

    I am thinking I need to get one of those survival books that show how we can survive after the apocalypse. You know, how to forage for wild plants, how to grow and process our own food, how to generate our own energy without destroying the environment. Pioneers figured out how to do it, maybe not gracefully but they survived to pass on their genes to us. Of course, they killed a lot of native people in the process, but we don’t have to do that, right?

    One thing that will keep working is guns. Until we run out of ammo, which probably won’t happen in my lifetime, we should be able to defend our gas supplies, our patch of land, our water cisterns, and our food stores. Not to mention our child-bearing women, so we can repopulate after the apocalypse is over.

    You might be saying, Carol, what is your problem? How about looking on the bright side for a change? My response, besides asking you why you care what I think, is to look around and tell me what you are seeing. Because if you aren’t seeing what is happening, then you won’t survive the apocalypse. Assuming you want to, of course.

  • Every moment is a new chance to mess things up

    It’s tempting to let someone else take over. It’s hard to always be responsible, to be nice, to show up, to get it done. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just ask someone else to take the reins for a while, go back to a time when we were told when to go to bed, what to eat, what shoes to wear, who to hang out with? Life would be so much simpler.

    Children eventually rebel, though. Not many kids would let someone tell them what to do when they figure out they could make their own choices. So they go out and try things, and if they survive, they learn. Then they find out how fricking hard it is to show up to the job, maintain the house, keep the family together . . . and there we go again, ready to let someone else take charge for a while. Not forever, just until we catch our breath, regroup, rest.

    Then we find out the people we ceded our authority to aren’t helping us, they are only helping themselves. In fact, they don’t care about us at all! The nerve. We get all indignant, how could they do this, have they no shame, how dare they, yada yada yada. Do we ever stop to remember we chose to turn the keys to the kingdom over to someone who promised we would not lose what we have or that we would not get what we want?

    Joke’s on us. Most of us won’t live to see the punchline, but our kids and grandkids will be cleaning up our mess for decades. Then they’ll have their little revolution, throw off the reins, declare their independence from tyranny, congratulate themselves, maybe even tolerate their neighbors for a few halcyon years . . . until one group begins to fear they will lose what they have or not get what they want, and they start pointing fingers at the outgroup and say you can’t have the spoils of our hard-won independence anymore. We want it for ourselves. Go play in the corner.

    Not everyone wants to give up their independence, but the ones who do often outnumber the ones who don’t. And so those of us in the margins have no choice but to slink offstage, lick our wounds, and plot our takeover, dreaming of our future glorious triumph.

    Free at last! Until the moment we start pointing fingers at whatever other happens to stoke our fear that we are going to lose what we have or not get what we want.

    And round and round it goes.