Category Archives: Anxious Adventuress

Getting Warm

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This morning I walked the Santa Fe Trace trail behind my sister’s house, armed with one of my father’s canes. I took it not to lean on but to use as a weapon against any cobwebs that might ensnare me.

I must have torn down 5 cobwebs on a trail about two blocks in length through a remnant forest. Maybe more. I scared away a fawn, and I puzzled over the call of a bird that might have been a woodpecker, but what I remember was the threat of cobwebs: wielding the cane horizontally and vertically across the path to clear the webs and yet still lurching to a stop when a spider in its intricate web entered my peripheral vision.

And I thought, I’m glad there is no one else on this path, watching me wave this cane around as if it were an overgrown dowsing rod. I have become such a chicken.

Truth be told, I’m less afraid of spiders than I used to be. Occasionally I even spare the ones in my house, in my space; the small ones. Those outside, in their space, I let alone.

But that doesn’t mean I want to walk into their webs.

There is more life east of the 100th meridian. More trees, the street canopy of my childhood; more bugs; definitely more humidity. It’s been about 18 years since I spent a summer in the Midwest.

And I thought, My life in Colorado is so sanitized.

Perhaps this is the visit of revelations, or at least the visit of shrugging at uncomfortable truths.

That my father can’t take care of himself anymore and doesn’t want to admit it. And I do so wish to indulge him because I’m used to having him be stronger.

That being the baby of my family has made my life easier. Living in another state, I don’t have to deal with my father’s decline on a daily or weekly basis. I can swoop in, feel useful, and go home. Must be nice, eh?

So why does it cause me so much anxiety?

The Feminist Versus the Electrician

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Finally this month I called an electrician to fix a switch that’s been going out for months. I come from a long line of procrastinators, but that’s not the only reason I took so long: I don’t like letting strangers into my house.

Not strangers at one of my parties (I meet them, and then they are friends), but specifically, strangers who arrive at my door to fix things.

In this case, I was anticipating embarrassment weeks in advance, because I wanted the electrician to investigate the mysterious, intermittent noise in my master bathroom (not a noise I’m making, thank you very much). It’s rhythmic, like a drip, but when I stand in the shower, I can clearly hear it coming from the fan over my head. And I never hear it when the shower is on.

I told this to the receptionist at WireNut, and she noted it. But she also talks in the reassuring voice one uses for children. I’m pretty sure she was talking that way before I mentioned the noise and the tiny entrance to my attic…

When E stepped into my house, he put hairnets on his shoes and I led him to the bathroom, where I explained that the switch was going out and that I would like him to investigate this noise. With a straight face, he said he would listen for it and that he would check out the attic. And then he gave me an estimate of $168.

The noise chose to be silent while E was here. Nevertheless, he climbed up through the closet into the attic (What is this, Narnia?) and looked at the fan from the top and discovered all the things amiss in the attic. He even had me climb up there and see how the duct from the shower had been taped to a hole in one of the main vents leading to the roof.

Great. Something else to fix. At first he said I should call a tinner, a word I didn’t know. But later he mentioned HVAC.

E went through WireNut’s standard spiel, called a “25-Point Electrical Safety/Energy Inspection.” He informed me that aluminum wiring was used in the 1970s because copper was needed for the Vietnam War and that the main problem with aluminum is its tendency to expand and contract, which loosens the connections. That was interesting.

I also learned I could replace the entire electrical panel because it’s maxed out ($2,000) and that the EMF levels in our house were 1,200 and should be 200.

I thought of asking whether reducing the radon levels wasn’t enough. By the time he was done, I was bored. Todd and I want to sell our house. We don’t want to put any more money into it than the inspector requires.

And then E made a fatal mistake: he began musing about his wife, who in discussing the renovation of their home asked him to remove a bearing wall. I was already feeling self-conscious about the noise in the bathroom that no one else hears. I didn’t need to be reminded how sexist fix-it guys can be.

His aside came between his presentation of all the things that were wrong with my house and my writing of the check. He had just explained why he’d changed the estimate to $217 (because he made the estimate before he took the cover off the switch and saw that the entire unit needed to be replaced). I asked, “Was this a binding estimate?” (The website implies that estimates are final.)

I still can’t believe I pushed that question out of my mouth. Todd, who was sitting downstairs at his work computer, was also impressed.

I remember my tone as polite, but maybe it was mean. Maybe it was the tone that inspired a former roommate to tell me I went for the jugular.

In any case, he caved almost instantly. I didn’t expect that.

The switch works now. I might even call WireNut again, because dealing with E was better than dealing with Jared, the last electrician I let in my house (in 2002). I think he worked for Candlelight Electric, which was recommended by Tom Martino.

I wish I could find an electrician I like as much as Brothers Plumbing. Their employees are always nice.

A Family Gathers. Will the Children Break Their Heads?

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The day my brother flew back to Kansas City, Todd and I drove to Angel Fire, New Mexico. Bradleys from Texas and Colorado were meeting there for a family reunion.

From Friday morning until Monday night, I was with at least one person. That’s unusual for me. I spend most days working in my office, either editing or writing on my computer. In fact, I spend so much time alone that by Friday night, I’m ready to go out just as Todd begins to savor being at home for two days.

And it was rainy and cool all weekend. So there were 12 adults and 12 kids in two houses. A recipe for disaster, you say?

It wasn’t. I like being in a crowd, but I tend to stay near the edge, watch events, move from person to person. There’s so much going on I find it hard to concentrate.

In the past, I’ve blamed myself for not being a cocktail party playah. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve accepted my tendency to withdraw, find a way to be by myself, even when surrounded by people. It’s my way of resting in plain sight.

What I liked best was the swirl of children. There were two groups of four from two families, one group of three from another, and one new boy, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s son. I got to hold the newest baby several times, and she was kind enough not to cry when passed around from person to person.

My favorite part was watching the four-year-olds play together. Ring around the rosy (the adults warned them about hitting their heads against the rock hearth). Hiding in a nook under the coffee table. Head-butting the sofa (the adults worried about their brains spilling out before they managed to grow up).

In between were meals and the fixing of meals and the cleanup of meals, trips to Taos on a festival weekend, and one muddy hike. The schedule went out the window, mostly thanks to the weather.

The most shocking moment came when my brother-in-law, who organized the reunion, declared, “I am not a team player.” He was reminiscing about how much he had hated team-player activities in school and how he only participated because he had to. I had always thought he was a team player. And I, who never was a team player either, was stunned someone had the courage to say that out loud.

Stealing Toilets

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It seems fitting that the first post on a blog recently retooled for the anxious middle-aged adventuress should be about losing things.

I have an active imagination. It’s one of the things that makes me a writer, but in everyday life it can be troublesome.

More than a decade ago, my husband and I redid all the bathrooms in the fixer-upper we bought. We were going out for dinner after shopping at Home Depot and had a new toilet in the back of the truck. I suggested we lock the shell, and he laughed at me. “What, you think someone’s going to steal a toilet?”

It seemed plausible to me. People steal copper from construction sites. Why not a brand-new toilet?

It’s become our private joke, but laughing about it hasn’t made me stop worrying. The other day I was digging up the yarrow infesting my backyard and decided to take a break. I slid my blue-and-gray work gloves onto the handles of the wheelbarrow and leaned the shovel up against it. Then I asked myself, “Should I move the wheelbarrow over by the compost pile? It’s so close to the fence here.”

In my defense, my house is surrounded by only a chain-link fence and looks out onto a park and open space. I’m glad I don’t have a privacy fence blocking my view of the mountains, but the low fence doesn’t keep anything out of my yard that wants to get in.

Still, would someone reach over the fence to grab a 14-year-old shovel? A wheelbarrow? The weeds?

No one did, of course, and if I put some of my garden decorations near the fence, they would probably stay put too. If someone did steal them, though, I would remember that—not the weeks or months or years they were there, but the moment they disappeared.

What does this have to do with adventure, you ask?

I still think about the short coat I left in a hostel in Paris when I was doing my junior year abroad. I still wonder how I lost my mother’s class ring.

If I’m going to travel extensively, I will lose things. It’s inevitable that one day I’ll set something down and it will be snatched up (like the backpack my young neighbor stepped too far away from on her tour of South America).

My question is, can I accept this loss?