The Final Day of the Best Summer

I keep coming up with blogging topics, then stashing them, telling myself I won’t blog until I finish chapter one of that manuscript I’m working on. Then this morning, I looked at the extended weather forecast and saw that today may be the last truly warm day (in the 80s) of the summer, so that merits a bookmark here. Someplace I can turn back to during bleak winter and feel the warmth of my happy words and colorful photos. 

Joys of Summer

This summer truly has been the most delightful I’ve ever had as an adult. I’ve figured out that I’m retired! I’ve learned to allow myself the joys of distraction, as I mentioned in my last post, and the joys of wasting time. The weather here in Madison has been extraordinarily hot, and if I can turn a blind eye to Global Warming, which I can, I’ve loved that. I spent the last five summers mostly in cold, wet places (Canada, Alaska), living out of that trailer where there was nowhere to hang dripping clothes. This has been more like the summer of my dreams, spent barefoot, not even having to do a few hours of editing each morning as I’ve had to do on every vacation of my life. 

When I haven’t been engaged in a slow roll inside this fuzzy state of sloth brain, I’ve been busy doing things I want to do, and last Thursday was it, Shelly’s penultimate busy day. I had to figure out how to get three activities’ worth of items on my back and in my bike basket (yoga mat & sneakers, ukulele, and packed lunch—no kayak paddle this time), but it worked. A truly engaging exercise class using those straps tied to the gym ceiling, then lunch by myself in a random neighborhood park (consisting of a grilled homegrown-tomato sandwich with egg and mayo), on to my ukulele strum group, where I surprised myself by belting out a Linda Ronstadt song at the top of my lungs because the actual singers in the mix didn’t know her (how can you not know her?). I’ve decide my octogenarian fellow strummers are an inspiration, not a bummer, and I’m leaning into them, as they say. I spent the day busy doing things I love doing, all by myself, which even that was okay. 

Banjo has learned that the newly fenced yard is hers to lounge in, so she moves from deep under the trees to the sunny grass and back at will, finally. And, Tracy is, right now at least, embracing the suburban old guy stereotype. After building the fence and my garden beds, he bought sod to even out the patchy grass in areas, and now he’s watering his sod and grouching at Banjo for not chasing the squirrels off it. The summer of tomato giving is nearly over, having given away my last big beautiful striped one to our young neighbor, who had the gall to ring our doorbell asking if he could buy one. Yes, Reynaldo, you may have my last tomato—you are that charming. 

Herein lies the big question that has started pecking at my lazy brain ever since happiness crept up on me this first summer in the house. Am I so happy that I’m actually glad we got off the road? I’m happy that I feel like myself again, in many ways. My health has been restored. I’m living my dream summer now that I’m retired. Tracy seems, if not resigned to life off the road, then at least at peace with it. 

What If It Were up to a Coin Toss?

This brings me to my favorite decision-making trick, lately. My old friend Karen was visiting earlier this summer, and right after her plane landed we biked out to a tattoo parlor to get matching tattoos of Tolkien’s hand-drawn map icon for Bag End. Karen went first, getting hers on her shoulder. I wanted mine on my ankle or the inside of my forearm, I just couldn’t decide. The lovely artist told me of their trick: assign your decision to a coin toss: for this example, heads is forearm and tails is ankle. I assigned, they flipped a coin, and as soon as it left their hand I knew which I wanted. The fear that the decision was going to be made for me forced my brain into admitting I’d already decided. (Ankle.) 

What would the decision be, if heads were life on the road in the Airstream and tails were life here in this house?

If it were summer year-round here in Madison, that would be the clear winner. No constant work with the trailer, standing on fire ant hills while shouting into a walkie talkie that Tracy was about to hit a stump with the rear bumper of the Airstream. No more unknowns in every element of my life. 

With winter in half the mix here, the call is much harder to make. Suddenly, all the times of enlightened ecstasy I felt when looking out over glaciers, or forests of saguaros, or my home shining in the sun against a pure backdrop of the glistening ocean and beach, not a soul in sight—they all weigh heavier than anything this house has to offer. 

Which would pop up as the winner if I assigned one life to heads and the other to tails, and Tracy (and my methadone prescriber and diesel prices and the housing market) were to send that fateful coin up in the air?

Prepping for House Renovations

We were in the office of the builder who’s doing our house renovations, deciding on some mundane but maybe long-term irritating decision like kitchen countertops, when the main builder guy walked by and asked if I were getting nervous, yet. No? Well, then, excited? Erm, no? I realized, my god, time to shake the summer fog from my brain and get ready!

You may remember that we’ll be living upstairs entirely for the renovation. It’s true that if anyone’s used to living in a small space, it’s us, but you may also remember that I freaking hate living in a small space when I can’t spend all my waking minutes outside. Small spaces, even gorgeously appointed Airstreams much less crappy second floors of 100-year-old houses, suck after five days of cold rain. So, we’re working at planning.

Planning for the upstairs kitchen, sink and cabinets left over from when it was a real apartment, is coming along. We bought a fridge from someone on Facebook Marketplace who’d had it in his man cave. It’s even smaller than the small propane one we had in the Airstream, but we’ll put our current fridge in the basement forever, which we’ll have access to during the renovation. Next up is a two-burner induction cooktop. No oven for us for five months, but we rarely used the one in the trailer. Maybe I’ll get a small blow torch for broiling! Kitchen = sorted.

I think we can fit our little camp table in our weird bedroom space under the attic staircase, and that will be where we eat meals. 

I know we can fit the IKEA streamlined recliner we bought for the apartment upstairs in the little guestroom-turned-TV room, along with the coffee table we also used in the apartment, and my folding pink chair. Plus, the blasted TV. Den = sorted.

Having just one bathroom, yet again like in the Airstream and just as small, will be a big pain. We’re trading our trailer’s tiny stand-up shower we hardly ever used for this old cast-iron tub shower, which we’ll both hate just as much because, EW PLASTIC SHOWER CURTAINS. But, there’s nothing to be done. I’m for sure never going back to showering in campground or truck stop showers.

The rest of the crap we somehow acquired in the one year we’ve been off the road—without paying more than $200 for anything other than the infamous red sofa? What a mystery, and a mystery we will have to deal with, perhaps by getting yet another storage unit. The plan was to put the sofa in The Cottage, but we’re using the bikes so much, and if El Niño strikes as they say he will, winter might give us a few surprise biking days. So, no room in the inn for you, Red Sofa. 

The basement will be a hotbed of contractor activity, what with all the mechanicals down there (electric, water, yadda yadda). Tracy tells me nothing can be down there that I’m not willing to move to another corner at the spur of the moment. That leaves us with several pieces of furniture on the first floor, a bunch of stuff in The Cottage, and a crap-load of memorabilia Paul brought to me in the basement, all that needs to get out of here.  

Five weeks until Finn is here for a week; he’s attending an Ice Cube collaboration meeting in Madison and staying with us, yay! Maybe I’ll see him for ten minutes a day. Then he’s staying an extra day to help us move the larger items of furniture. Then, voila, demolition begins. Before then we need to have picked out paint colors, countertops (Tracy is making the island one), cabinet pulls and lighting fixtures (we’re buying several from ReStore), that kind of stuff. 

Five more weeks of living downstairs, of me sitting on the front porch late at night knitting. (I’ve seen all the Star Trek, Original Series episodes over and over, so I’ve moved to enjoying eavesdropping on the groups of young people walking to and from the bars on Atwood Ave. They’re so danged polite, even in their drunkenness.) Oh wait, I can sit on the front porch even during renovations, so nix that. Let’s see: one more neighborhood festival, one more concert, many more weeks of biking to my new exercise classes, of letting laundry dry on the line, I sure do hope. Oh wait, the concert is indoors, so nix that. 

Just like during our other big transitions, it’s so hard to imagine what this will be like. But, just like with the specter of my coin toss, I will turn away from this useless worry, toward the last day of this joy-filled summer.