Presence, Security

A Little Miscommunication

November 23, 2024
(We interrupt my chronic, daily worries about what will happen when Trump takes office to bring you a worry closer to home.)
This is a photo of a 2020 Honda CRV car.

Old Faithful: our Honda CRV

I have been worried about the election and have wasted a lot of my precious brain energy thinking about it. Except for a day earlier this week. Then I didn’t think about it much at all. Because that day my daughter was driving from our home up to the Lake Tahoe ski resort where she will be working this winter. It was a blustery day down here at the 3200 foot elevation where we live, and snow was forecast for the mountains. I worried about her safety on the road, and the car (more on that later), and the weather. Especially the weather. Basically, all thoughts of the election and my other chronic worries dissipate when someone I love is driving in bad weather. Maybe you can relate.

We have one AWD car. My daughter needs it, since she is relocating to Tahoe for the season. Unfortunately, I need it too, since snow often blankets my little town as well. Some years, we’ve gotten feet of it. We thought we had a brilliant solution to this dilemma: my nephew was wanting to sell his Subaru Forester. She had saved enough money to buy it. All Subarus have AWD. Problem solved!

First, a little story about that car and why my nephew was eager to get rid of it: he bought it from a private party on Facebook Marketplace (buyer beware of private party sales, I guess). The seller told him that the car had 145,000 miles on it and presented him with a valid smog certificate, which is mandatory with any car sale in California. My nephew was happy! But then the car lost power as he was driving home, and when he took it to the DMV to register it, he learned that the seller had rolled back the digital odometer 100,000 miles, so it actually had 245,000 miles. Also? The smog certificate was fake. It would not smog; it needed not one but two new catalytic converters and a host of other repairs. He spent a lot of money on this car that he now (understandably) detests. He hopes good might come out of this rotten situation if my daughter can drive it safely up in Tahoe.

We were going to pick the car up in the morning. Except when I talked with my sister the other night to finalize details, she mentioned something about the car’s clutch.

Excuse me?

The car has a clutch? Meaning it does not have an automatic transmission? Meaning that you have three pedals that you have to work to make the car run and not just a brake and a gas pedal? Meaning that your left foot actually has to do something while you are driving? My daughter unfortunately does not know how to drive a manual transmission. And this is not something that one can learn overnight, especially on a day when an atmospheric river of rain has settled over the area.

Problem not solved.

Continue Reading…

Presence, Security

Blackberry Therapy

November 16, 2024
(although I would certainly benefit from actual therapy with a genuine therapist, too. Because that’s the kind of month it’s been.)

Some of the weeds that I tackled this week. The one in the foreground? It’s possibly even more terrible than the blackberry vines! Its seeds have barbed ends that stick to everything: my clothes, my gloves, my hair!

I wonder how you are feeling now that the 2024 presidential election is over and more than a week has passed. I mentioned to someone the other day that I was terrified, and they looked a little puzzled and asked me why?

I was not brave at that moment. I did not say much. Just mumbled something about Elon Musk, that I didn’t think he should be part of meetings with officials from other countries, like Iran. Or Ukraine. But that was only a very small part of what is frightening me right now.

(That is something that I need to get better at: telling people outside of my trusted circle the truth about how the election affected me and why I am scared.)

Maybe whether or not you are terrified by the election results depends on who you love, who you know. If you love someone who is trans or is anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, or someone who is a legal immigrant, or someone who has a pregnancy that is threatening her life but who lives in a state with abortion restrictions? Then maybe you are terrified, too. Maybe you understand.

It has everything to do with the people that you love.

But here’s the thing. I think we are supposed to love everyone. One of the big commandments that Jesus gives is to “love your neighbor as yourself,” at which point he tells the story of the good Samaritan. Much to the disciples’ surprise (and possibly dismay), in Jesus’ playbook, neighbors care for strangers at personal expense, without regard to race, class, or religion. Without regard to anything. Basically, Jesus is saying that we are to be neighbors to everybody and that everybody is a neighbor. And also? This love is a good thing (though I wonder what it means to love the people who are enacting the policies that are frightening me now. Love for them probably means speaking truth to power, which is scary too, because historically folks who did this often ended up dead).

Anyway.

Lots of our neighbors will be hurt by the policies that Trump is pledging to enact. Also, the earth. The earth will continue to warm. Trump and his cronies apparently do not care.

It’s a lot.

So this week, when sadness and despair threatened to overwhelm me, when I could, I went outside. Outside is what is helping me now. I went outside with my clippers, and I worked again on the invasive blackberry vines that cover a good part of my property. When I am attacking invasive blackberry vines, I am not thinking about the election or who Trump is picking for his cabinet  (the ones he’s picked so far without exception make me sick to my stomach). I called the trash company last week and paid for an extra trash can until the end of the year. It’s about $5.00 extra a week, which pencils out to be cheap therapy for me. You can fit an amazing amount of blackberry vines in a regular outdoor trashcan if you cut them into tiny pieces and smash them down (the smashing and chopping  feel therapeutic, too, a nice way to get anger out). In past years, I paid somebody to come and haul away the piles I made. Feels like I’ve taken some of my power back, by doing the work myself and loading the waste into not one but two trash cans, and sending them off every Friday with the trash collectors.

My mantra these days: When in doubt, go outside.

When in despair? Go outside.

Just go.

I need a list of other things that help, since I can’t be outside every minute of the day. So far my list includes: friends (like all of you who are still here). Writing. Community. Community writing. Hot baths with Epsom salts. Sparkling water (I like Waterloo’s Blackberry Lemonade flavor.) Dark chocolate. Walks with Biscuit. Tea. The library. Chiropractic adjustments. Houseplants. Spreading California poppy and wildflower seeds.

I bet you have other things that you could add. Go ahead and add them below or drop me a note. Maybe we can help each other.

By the way, my friend gave me her surefire recipe for killing invasive blackberry plants. It’s a mixture of salt, strong vinegar like the kind you buy at Home Depot, and dish soap. I’m grateful it rained this week; after the ground dries a bit I’ll go out and spray some of that concoction on the vines’ roots. It will give me another good reason to be outside.