I WAS A Writer

One of the things I’ve struggled with the most since publishing my book is, ironically, continuing to write. I think I’ve gotten so stuck in my head about how to be busy marketing and promoting the book that I’ve actually frozen the creative part of my brain in an unfortunate place. I have been keeping so busy with my work with the LA Regional food bank and a new group, the San Fernando Valley Mutual Aid that the part of my brain that used to make up stories or see the ironic, whimsical, funny sides of daily encounters is now shopping at Costco and assembling brown bag meals on my dining room table. These are part of the new vocabulary for the Next Words.

I guess it’s fair to say the world has been it’s own distraction rodeo lately, with our feckless leader declaring war all by himself last Saturday and the fallout from that bringing chaos into our spheres this week.

I got one of those Ōura rings recently and I’m adjusting to it. I haven’t had it long enough for it to really register my stressors, but in the past few weeks there have been a few that even the new ring took notice of.

Last week, I agreed to help my elderly neighbor who was moving out of her apartment in my building. The movers were packing her out on Monday and taking her things on Tuesday, so she asked if she could stay with me for one night. “Of course you can! No problem.” Her move wasn’t as simple as leaving the first house and going to the second. She was moving on an interim basis to an assisted living home near the condo, which required a TB test for her to join the community. So, a technician with a large x-ray machine arrived Monday afternoon to take chest x-rays to determine she was not suffering from TB. I had arranged for a dinner party for her that evening with some other neighbors, which went well. We had a great time, and my one-night guest went off to sleep in the bedroom.

The next morning, when I got up, she called me into the guest bathroom and told me that she was unclear about what she was supposed to be doing that day.

“Your moving people are coming back at 8:30 to take all your things out of the apartment. Why don’t you come and have some breakfast before they arrive?”  She did and as the minutes passed, she claimed more clarity about where she was and where she was going and where she was supposed to be.  I went off to the food bank to volunteer and said I’d be back for lunch. We also needed a plumber because the guest toilet had given up the ghost. I called him before I left and arranged a mid-day visit.

When I returned, the plumbers had just arrived, and my steadfast neighbor, Dick, had allowed them into my apartment so they could begin the repairs which were extensive.

My downstairs neighbor’s movers finished around 4pm, and she returned to my apartment and took a call from the Assisted Living place from J, who had been helping her with her admissions process. My neighbor has a habit like my dad’s, I noted, of putting people on speaker phone so they can hear the caller. It doesn’t seem to matter where the call is being taken, or what the topic is, but I clearly heard J say “The Xray was inconclusive. Do you think your neighbor can put you up another night?”  My neighbor looked beseechingly at me, and I nodded, giving her a thumbs up. We had leftovers that night and Wednesday morning, she was up and at ‘em when I got up.

In the intervening days, I had developed a bad cold from God knows where, and Tuesday night I barely slept. It was somewhere during this time when I asked Siri, “Why is my Ōura ring red inside?”

I begged off my Wednesday morning walk with my brother at the Reservoir and lolled around the apartment having my tea and reading the paper while my houseguest made many calls. She was very anxious about the test and what would make it conclusive, beginning to call the assisted living place at 7:30 expecting to find J. “He won’t be in until about 9:30AM,” said the receptionist; “But he’s been texting me just now!” Under my breath from the kitchen, “yes, from his home, not at work.” For most of that day, Jason was working feverishly to find a doctor who could verify the results of the chest x-ray. No such luck.

I think it was Wednesday as my cold flared, my exhaustion creeped in, that I texted my neighbors to ask if they might take her for a night. They were unable to, but provided the handy solution of contacting her son, who lives near Long Beach.  Meanwhile, J advised her to go to CVS and get a TB blood test. She spent the next hour fixating on the hours of the Minute Clinic and when we could get an appointment. “We’ll just go over there at 9:00 when they open and see if they can take you,” I said, feeling hopeful.

At 9:30 we were at the CVS but there was no minute clinic happening, and in fact, no TB blood test available. I remembered the existence of Quest Diagnostics and found the closest one that did the TB test and made an appointment for 10:30AM. “We’ll just drive over there and get er done,” I said. Each development needed to be reported via text to both Jason and her realtor’s assistant, who was tracking her progress as well. When we were on our way over to the Glendale office of Quest, I said to her that she should find another place to stay after Thursday. “I’m sorry, but I was great with one night and now we’re at four.”

We got to the Quest office and checked in at the kiosk. I scanned her health cards and helped her set up an account online so she could check the results when she got them back. We were finally called by the technician, and we went into the room. “Do you have your doctor’s orders?” I think my head lost all buoyancy and my chin slammed into my chest. “Who’s your doctor? I asked my houseguest. She said the name and within thirty seconds I had her receptionist on the phone. “Hello, I’m with a patient of Dr. M’s and she is at quest lab to have a TB blood test for admission into the assisted living facility later today. Is it possible for the doctor to send over the order as soon as possible?”

“The doctor is out on vacation.” By now I’m almost ready to cry. “But I can send over a digital order in a few minutes.” “That would be magnificent! Thank you so much.” Back out to the waiting room, where my houseguest began informing Jason in a loud voice about the status of our visit to get the test. A good half hour went by, and we got word from the doctor’s office that the order had been sent. I stood by the door to the back and waited until the door opened and I asked if we could speak with Anna to let her know that the order had been sent. The phlebotomist smiled and said, I can help you with that as soon as I’m done with this patient and disappeared. Sure enough, about ten minutes later, she emerged and called my HG’s name and we went back. The test was done smoothly enough, and we headed back to the waiting room.

“I need to text J that I had the test,” she said sitting squarely in one of the waiting room chairs.

“Can we do that in the car?” (Peevishly.) “I need to get out of here if you don’t mind.”

I think it was during this ride back from the Quest office that my HG dropped an important wallet with Passport, ID and something else on the floor of the car. We didn’t see that it was there when we got back to the building and went upstairs.

That night I didn’t want to cook so called for pizza and salad and had enough to share with my neighbors across the hall.

Another uneventful night and I didn’t go to the food bank the next day, but lounged in the apartment and worked on cleaning off my desk, etc. while my HG hung out in the living room. At dinner time, my neighbor called to see if she could pick up something for us for dinner from Sharky’s. That was perfect and I shared the menu with HG and we put in our order

Thursday night was uneventful and the next day, late morning, my HG got the results of the blood test. She passed! I felt proud and relieved. My HG told me her son was picking her up at 6 and taking her to the hotel where she would spend one night until she could check into the Assisted Living facility.

He arrived at 7:15 and barely spoke to me when he came in. As he was taking out her bags, he said casually, “Thanks for hanging out with my mom today.” His lack of accuracy for the timeline was more than annoying. One, you want to be thanked for what you’ve done, and two, it revealed that he had had no clue what his eight-six-year-old mom was doing in the week when she moved out of her home for the last twenty-three years. I think I gave Chris a talking to that night about being there when it comes time for me to move out of here. If I don’t go out feet first. Cheery, Els.  About a half hour later, I was surprised to see my HG’s name pop up on my phone, and she was distraught. “I’ve lost my important documents, Els, my passport and ID. They are in a little brown leather wallet and they must be at your house. We’re coming back to look.” Which they did, and both her son David and I got down on our knees to look under the sofa where she’d been sitting all day. They left without finding the documents. (It wasn’t until I got in my car on Friday to go to the Taper to see “Here Lies Love,” that I spotted the documents on the floor of the passenger seat. I rushed them over to my HG’s assisted living spot and dropped them off.)

My four days with my neighbor created a writing opportunity for me because I am planning a 21 day trip to Italy this summer and intend to stay with two sets of friends. I am schooled on How To Be A Delightful House Guest. Here are my ten rules:

• Rule #1: Don’t stay longer than a week regardless of what your host says. (I routinely break this rule but have been invited back, which seems like a sign that I am on my way to becoming a DHG.
• Rule #2: Don’t hang your unmentionables in the bathroom to dry.
• Rule #3: Eat whatever is put in front of you and help prepare it first. “Yes, I love beef tongue” is always the correct response.
• Rule #4: Take the smallest room available and don’t spill out into the hallway. If there is a closet, put your clothes away and zip up your suitcase.
• Rule #5: Speak the predominant language spoken in the group. If you don’t know the language or can’t follow at the speed of your hosts and their friends, smile a lot.
• Rule #6: Read the room. Listen and learn. Take interest in everything that’s happening unless it is a marital spat and then take a walk instead.
• Rule #7: Go with the flow. Initiate day trips from your research. Choose things your hosts will like to see and get to the ticket window before they do.
• Rule #8: Offer to source and cook several meals for your hosts. Offer to/insist that you take them out to lunch or dinner several times if not all the times you go out.
• Rule #9: If you bring a house gift, make it a book or something to eat. Your hosts do not want trinkets.
• Rule #10: Be as resourceful as you can be about getting to and coming away from your host’s house. Self-sufficiency is one of the most key aspects of being a DHG.

Anyway, that was Thursday, and Sunday, while at Costco with my friend Leah, my phone rang and my Dad appeared on FaceTime and told me he’d had an incident involving soup and his couch and he thought he needed some alcohol to clean a cut on his head. After going home and putting away the food, I drove over to Dad’s and looked at the scene which was a little like one of the opening crime scenes from The Closer – tomato soup residue on the celedon green couch cushions, and about an inch long gash in Dad’s head, which was bleeding onto the white recliner.

“Dad, I’m sorry but you need stitches. We have to go to the ER which is right down the street.”   This unleashed a string of invectives aimed at himself for his stupidity and complaints about how long it would take.

“Yes, it will probably take a few hours, but you need to get it cleaned out and stitched up. Let’s go.” We started out the door of his apartment and unfortunately left without a sweater.

This Sherman Oaks Emergency room is familiar to me. Our son had to come in there on a Saturday night when he was about 16 and had let his “friend” drive away from a mansion in Sherman Oaks where an unsupervised party of teens was happening. At the time, he’d jammed his thumb into the stick shift on the car and needed stitches. His “friend” disappeared as soon as it happened so wasn’t involved when the police came. They didn’t really believe his story about how the injury had happened. Suffice it to say this ER doesn’t solicit happy parental thoughts. But in we went, I as the “new parent” to my Dad, filling out the paperwork and sitting with the other unhappy denizens of the ER on a Sunday evening at dinner time. We had missed dinner at the Village, but I planned to get us some when we got out. Three and a half hours, a tetanus shot, CT scan and applied glue to the wound later, we drove back to the Village and got the dinner and ate it in his room. Highlights of the visit – the adorable doctor who bounded into the room and said, “I hear there’s a ninety-five-year-old man around here but I can’t find him!”

All of these events my Ōura ring recorded to itself without passing judgement. All of these events I recorded to you while passing significant judgement, because after all, I WAS a writer once. With all the excitement of these days, who has time to write? Please visit my Author’s webpage and while you’re there, pick up a copy of my book!

The Huntington Gardens are spectacular these days if you get a chance to go. Everything is in bloom. Had a lovely outing there Sunday. I’m on the hunt for California native plants for our new landscaping at my condo so I enjoyed the stroll and the company of my friend, Melinda!