What's Goin' On

I woke up at three and lay there all full of energy, half-dreaming of LED-festooned alligators. Decided something was being wasted and got up, went upstairs, pulled open this laptop, started typing. Started transcribing the notes I took in the Black Rock Desert. I kept a journal for the first week or so and it lies open next to me, a dusty notebook of mostly blank pages. There are a hundred jogs to memory in there, and they will be more useful if typed out.

I planned to go back to bed at four. Lo and behold, my wife appeared at four, having been awakened by my absence, and asked if I'd come back so she could get back to sleep.

"I'll have to get used to sleeping alone in a few weeks, but so long as you're here ..."

I lay in bed another two and a half hours thinking about Sac Decom ("decompression" in the Burning Man context is copyrighted by the Bmorg and they just gave us the go-ahead for ours to be the official regional decom party), albeit in a disjointed fashion. My phone alarm went off at six and I was requested to turn it off. The automatic tomato plant watering thing growled at six thirty. I said the monster under the floor needed to go pee and asked when the regular alarm was going to go off. That was another half hour away, so I got up.

Good morning.

Last night at midnight I was awakened by a phone call. My brother (New Orleans) had just gotten back from the hospital. His partner of some thirty years had an apparent stroke on Sunday, and my brother is faced with overwhelming waves of not knowing what's next. Will he recover? How much? Will he ever even come home? It's a terrible time for them both, and we sat up late talking about whatever he wanted to say. He's having to pull in his resources, which is difficult, as old age and Katrina pretty well scattered most of their friends. But he has to do it. I will fly down there upon the worst of news, but I am optimistic that won't be necessary.

Yesterday noon-ish I visited another apartment house. I'm beginning to get experienced. Even in the relatively nice neighborhood I am targeting there is great variety at the low end. Quiet and clean, quiet and dumpy, not so quiet or clean. I have to be as cheap as I can but I also have to be careful not to sign a six-month lease somewhere full of underemployed and bored young people. Barring a lot of further exploration, I've sort of made a selection, especially after googlemapping it to see there is easy access to a good route for bicycling to work. In terms of living environment quality it will be a step back about twenty eight years, but oh well.

My Jeep is 21 years old. It will be smart to have a good bike route to work.

Before that I took my wife to Kaiser for a breast exam follow-up. She got back from the Burn to a message to check in, they saw something. She was scared. Her family has a history. I hugged her into Kaiser's capable hands and waited. After awhile she came out with a smile and a thumbs-up. It was some squishable fibrous thing (that's the medical terminology as I remember it), and no worries.

Saturday I took my mother around to local independent living and assisted living centers. She's doing fine at 83 but is looking forward and wants an idea of her options. She is determined to hold out to 85 anyway and I think she'll make it. It was educational for us both. A growing industry, many options, but the places we saw are a little beyond her price range. I'm afraid a few years down the road that aspect of it will only be worse. Well, she'll be near me, anyway. That is why she is looking up here in Sacramento County and not down in Benicia where she lives.

Hopefully I will still be here. I'm losing patience with my corporate overlords and they potentially with me, and the majority of jobs are in other places. That is a bridge, however, not to be crossed before its time.

I love my wife's hugs and she mine, and I get emotional sometimes, and this plan of separation makes no sense to people who expect acrimony, anger, and a history of illicit relationships -- but I have listened to my heart and it is quite consistent. I could list out the elements (and being an engineer I just might) but the end result is: I have to go. The usual emotional calm is going to wither and there will be anger and frustration and who knows what all but there's no avoiding that. There's certainly no shying away from it. I've been looking down this other path for many years (in some senses, since the very beginning), and it is time.