Of waterworks, Gatorade spills and a Cape escape

You may or may not have noticed that the blog has taken a break.

This is due to a series of technical and emotional difficulties that began last week when I watched Joe pack up to move out after four years of living at home.

It is ALL GOOD, and he is not going far, just to Fairfield County, and I knew it would come shortly after his master's graduation from UMass, but still watching it happen underlined what I already knew – that he has taken care of me as much as I have taken care of him, literally picking me up off the ground and going with me to the emergency room on multiple occasions.

The waterworks started with something that I can laugh about and cry about at the same time.

Me: "I just bought you your last bag of baby carrots," accompanied by tears.

Joe: "Mom, you can buy them for me again."

But once I started, it was hard to stop, and I didn't want him to see me, but he did, and we had a good conversation where we brought up the theme from the movie we had both just seen, "Inside Out," in which sadness must be accepted as a part of life.

It was well into the afternoon on this moving out day last week when I got a call from a man with an Indian accent who said that he was from Microsoft and he had information about my computer being hacked. He he said he could show me that it was being hacked in Australia and Morocco and I would need to buy a something from him to protect against these hackers. So I asked him his name and his telephone number and said I would call him back. I forget the whole number, but it was area code 302 something, and as soon as I put it in google I saw that it was a scam from various numbers in the 302 area code offering debt relief, anti-virus protection, and all sorts of other things...for a price.

(The comments that came up after I put the number in provided comic relief, such as one person reporting that he said to the caller, "Your mother would be ashamed of you," and another saying, "Maybe Donald Trump can stop these calls, because nobody else can.'")

Absorbed by this, and not paying attention to anything else, I knocked a bottle of Gatorade mixed with water onto my Macbook Air, ruining basically everything but the keyboard and frame.

Sunset on the bay

In a panic I called Apple and learned that the genius bar takes walk-ins on a first come, first served basis, so the next day I was the first one there at 10 a.m. The geniuses must also be trained in counseling, because the one who helped me said he sees it frequently, with people watering their plants over their computer or spilling coffee.

I left it there and signed off on paying an arm and a leg to get a new hard drive. Luckily I had all my important work on a flash drive.

The same day I met Katie in Boston after my photopheresis, and just seeing her brightened my mood.  From there we took off for four nights at the Cape, staying in a cute bed and breakfast in Eastham. The sun- and fun-filled days included the ocean and the bay, the pond and the bike path (three successful rides!), Provincetown dinner and stroll, and sunset at Sunken Meadow Beach, where the small group of spectators applaud as the globe sinks behind the horizon.

Then, alas, it was back home Monday to deal with the mess that I left behind in my whirlwind departure and to unpack the bags that I had accumulated over the mini-vacation and to get used to the Joe-less house.

That night I played in a match in Holyoke with the summer team I am on, the Paper Dolls. Despite the heat and humidity, it was great tennis.

You can't be sad all the time.

Stimulating the economy, Part Two

A couple of posts ago I wrote about buying a new couch.
I also just bought a new car.

In the absence of any paycheck other than social security disability, it might seem strange to make such big purchases. But here's the thing: I hold on to my stuff for a long time and then I think about getting new stuff for a long time, so that by the time I actually make a big purchase, I have saved a lot of money during the thinking phase. Also, as my sister, Diane, pointed out in her recent comment, so-called "retail therapy" is an investment in the future. It is a sign that I plan to be alive to enjoy my new purchases.

Back to the car. It was hard to say good-bye to the nine-year-old Mommy Van with the Wellfleet and Eastham parking stickers in the window.

But last winter, when it got stuck in a snow ditch, I began to think seriously about getting something better in the snow. And with 162,000 miles on it, I figured I should quit while I was ahead.

It’s hard to go car shopping at the post-transplant stage when you still need to wear a mask inside. In fact, it's hard to do most kinds of shopping, as I wrote in my "couch" post. Earlier in the fall, when I bought a mattress sight-unseen, I had to explain to the salesman that the delivery people couldn’t come if they were sick. I could have left it at that, but the rest of the story just slipped out. “I had a bone marrow transplant and I have a weak immune system and I can’t be around germs,” I said.

He promised to send healthy delivery people only. We settled on a memory foam mattress.
“It’s really great on your bones,” he said.

Hmmmm. Well I guess I had never thought much about the meaning of a bone marrow transplant before I had one. I ended up hating the mattress, because I felt every night that I was getting stuck in the valley formed by my body. Recently I exchanged it for a normal mattress. But anyway.

As for the car, I settled on a Subaru Forester. I drove the car, figuring that there couldn’t be too many germs in a new car. Then I negotiated with salesmen from different dealerships. I told them only that I had recently gotten out of the hospital and wasn’t supposed to be around germs, and that we would need to have our preliminary conversations outside.

I’m not naturally suited to the price negotiating thing, so I tried extra hard to do a good job. I researched the car on Consumer Reports and paid $14 for a report telling me the price at which to start negotiating.

Dealer #1 was about $500 above that bottom line and said he could only go down $100. “You don’t have to believe me, but I’m only making $250 on that car. It’s a great deal,” he said. As for my van, valued at $2,800 in the Kelley Blue book, he said he’d give me $2,000. Harumph.

Dealer #2 went below the Consumer Reports bottom line on the car and gave me $3,500 for the van, for a total price of $2,000 less than Dealer #1.

Naturally, I bought the car from Dealer #2, who brought paperwork into the van and used the dashboard as his desk. I had told him that I could go inside if I wore a mask, but he said he didn’t mind sitting in the van. (And, really, he would have sat on top of the car to make the sale, right?)

We chatted a bit, and he told me he is from Greenfield (Mass.), where my aunt and uncle lived and my cousins grew up. I asked him if he knew my late uncle Milton. “Milt!” he said. “Everyone knew Milt!” And it’s true; every time I bump into someone from Greenfield, they have a story about Milt.

So there I was signing paperwork in the car and talking about Uncle Milt. Odd. Then the salesman asked to take a copy of my license. I was on a break from chemo when they took the license photo, and the registry wouldn’t let me use the old photo. So in the photo I’m wearing a headscarf and looking kind of thin and pale.

When I handed over my license, I blanched, as though I had been found out. (I know, I know, nothing to be ashamed of, but still…) “It really is me,” I said.

I told him I’d miss the van, and the stickers, and he said that if I wanted, he could get the stickers off and affix them to the new vehicle. “That’s kind of cheating,” I said. “I’ll have to get back to the Cape and get some new ones.”

Mission accomplished, I went home for a few last days with the van. The van is dark green, and for a change of pace, I picked a maroon car with a reddish hue. It's a more fun, lively, jazzy color.

Last time I was in the hospital, my friend Barry brought me a red toy car. It was his way of reminding me about the need to “keep the car on the road” when my mind starts to wander to the dark side.

The little red car is on my dresser. The big reddish car is in my driveway.

And really, it’s all about keeping the car on the road, isn’t it?