The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir (16 page)

That said, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that I crave a certain predictability in each day; my alarm will ring at just the right moment, my truck will start precisely like it did the day before, and I’ll drive to the office without incident, where I’ll tap away at my computer just like always, like I’m supposed to and want to, and hope to do tomorrow. I’ll return home and walk the dog, make a bit of dinner, chat with Rita, read a book, or watch an episode of
Glee
. Each day will present itself and end with a string of predictable events, safe and tidy, where I can float through life as the planet rotates (again) from winter into spring, and the only rebillious thing I’ll do for months is decide not to get a flu shot.

Therein lies the challenge: The trees don’t bud out of habit, and I don’t want to sleep through my life, which is why I appreciate my less-than-convenient conveniences—a compost toilet, a water jug filled up at Rita’s spigot, and 240 watts of electricity generated out of solar panels that I don’t understand. Whatever you call them, my systems keep me plugged into the day in a unique way. They keep me sober, and that’s a good thing.

Most of the time, I appreciate the way my house is set up,
but I still sometimes miss my shower. In my old house, it was my favorite place to think, and now, when I shower at work or at Rita’s, I seem more focused on getting things done as quickly as possible.

When I first arrived in the backyard, my friends would invite me over for dinner and a shower. I’d shower at Jenn and Kellie’s house, Hugh and Annie’s, Candyce and Paula’s, Justin’s, Liz’s, Jennifer’s, Mike’s, or Steve’s. Showering at work was also an easy solution; I had to go to work anyway, so why not go in early and take advantage of their hot water? The downside was that the shower looked and smelled just like the locker rooms of my youth, when I was forced to dress for gym or suit up for track practice amid twenty or thirty other girls who were just as self-conscious as me. That was thirty years ago, but the same self-conscious insecurity flared when I walked into the locker room at work for the first time. Fortunately, I’d planned right and arrived a half hour before the bike commuters arrived.

I stripped naked and placed all my clothes in an empty, open locker, wrapped myself in a towel, and donned my shower slippers. I slammed the locker closed and turned toward the showers, when I realized I’d just shut my clothes in a padlocked cabinet.

The lockers had a combination lock fixed to the front of the unit. When you signed up as a bike commuter, you were assigned a locker along with a secret combination. Apparently,
the locker I’d found open was an accident, and I was left standing there in a towel, feeling my chest sink just like it did in eighth grade. I sat down on a bench and tried to think. I mulled over a couple of options, including crawling through the ventilation system to my car.

I waited in my towel for about thirty minutes, occasionally spinning random numbers into the combination lock, hoping to get lucky, until the first biker arrived. I tried not to lunge at her when she walked in, and instead smiled. “Oh, hey,” I said, “I seem to have locked my clothes in this locker.” I played it off as nonchalant, like I walked around naked in the locker room all the time. She went into the hall and called Building Services, and laughed when I thanked her and explained that I had been thinking about tossing a flip-flop out the door with a note reading: “NAKED. SEND HELP!”

After that experience, I started showering at work only if absolutely necessary and instead showered fairly regularly at Rita’s house. It was less problematic, except for the occasional need to race across the backyard wearing nothing but a towel, and it became a habit—a routine that involved me checking in with Rita even though I knew, over time, that she didn’t give a hoot. But it was our way of living together, and my way of letting her know how much I appreciated her generosity. It went like this:

Me: “Rita, can I take a shower?”

Rita: “Yes. I don’t know why you keep asking.”

Me: “I like to ask.”

Rita: “Hummm,” she’d mutter as she poked her nose back into her book.

And then when I would pop out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, I’d chirp: “Who’s clean?” As I walked across her living room, wearing nothing but a towel, ready to launch myself nearly naked across the backyard and into my house.

Rita: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I forgot you were here.”

Me: “That was the best shower ever! In a thousand million years of people bathing and showering, that was the best!”

Rita: “Hummm,” she would say as she poked her nose back into her book.

So it started, and then continued for years.

T
here are seven Internet signals that radiate through the walls of my little house, squeezing into the living room, kitchen, and sleeping loft. I can’t access any of them because they require a password, so I trek over to Hugh and Annie’s house and ask them to plug a little forklike antenna into the Internet box that sits under their computer. Once the fork is in place and my laptop properly positioned, I can use the Internet to answer all my most important questions, like how many times does the human heart beat each day (about 100,000), is there really an island where everyone has six fingers on each hand (no), what is the average square footage of a home in America (2,349) versus the UK (815). After doing this vital research, I might watch a few videos of sleeping kittens and puppies, sitting there dumbfounded, sighing and laughing,
until I remember that I came over and had Hugh plug the fork into the box because I wanted to research how to take Rita’s kitchen faucet apart and replace the gaskets to make it stop dripping. So I watch three videos of a guy taking a faucet apart, and a fourth showing the same guy explaining how to fish small screws out of the drain after you’ve accidentally dropped them while fixing the faucet.

I could spend hours doing this sort of thing, hopping from one video or fascinating bit of information to another, until suddenly I get a cramp in my calf or my eyes feel gritty, and I realize I’ve spent the past two hours hovering over my computer with my back curled like a question mark. Given that—my weak mind and my ability to follow the shiny ball of more and more and more information—it’s probably best that there’s no Internet connection in my house.

Sometimes I wonder what we’d all be doing if we weren’t spending so much time hovering over our electronic gadgets, watching videos, playing games, confirming that our eyes do not fog up in the shower because they are warm and salty (a fact that I recently looked up on the Internet). Here’s what I have to remind myself of, what I have to tell myself when I’m pining to quickly grab a computer to see what time the sun rises in the morning: The Internet is dumb.

The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can’t begin to map the complexity of our lives,
or how we each affect others. Last week, a guy made my day by telling me he couldn’t believe I was forty-nine years old. Bless his soul.

Similarly, despite all its millions of data points and access to academic journals, Animal Planet, and thousands of short videos showing pets doing funny things, the Internet can’t begin to articulate the confusion that comes with nature, how it is both stunning and brutal.

A few years ago, I stepped out of my little house, reveling in the way the sky was so blue it looked fake, like a filtered photo doctored to make you feel an immense sense of optimism—and then, a few minutes later, a bit of horror. I found a cathead near my truck. It was just the head, lying there like a tennis ball. No arms or legs or tail or collar with a name tag. There was no explanation other than a guess that maybe a raccoon or a fox had gotten to it. It made me scream and then nearly cry, and then I put it in a shoe box and buried it in the woods. I would never have the courage to go looking for something so gruesome, although I still can’t explain why all these years later I still study “Cat Missing” signs posted on telephone poles or at the co-op, wondering if someone is missing the cat (head) I put in the shoe box.

Nature is confounding in the way it pulls us apart and then puts us back together again. If you Google “cathead,” all you’ll find is references to ships and large hats.

All that said, I’m a total sucker for Netflix, a website where
you can watch movies and television shows instantly on your computer. I try not to mention this fetish or any of my absentminded dillydallying when people ask how I spend my free time now that I’m not working as much. Instead, I might mention that I recently helped someone tear down an old garage, and that I’ve been volunteering at the Salvation Army soup kitchen; and then I’ll talk about my other amazing volunteer activities like installing grip bars along the kitchen counter at Rita’s house. And all of that is true: I enjoy pitching in on various projects and hope that I’m being helpful, but I also spend an awful lot of time goofing off.

I spent almost an hour trying to recondition an oscillating fan that I found in a junk pile. I’m not certain, but I think it was tossed out because it had a frightening wad of human hair wrapped around the spindle where the fan blades connect to the motor. It was disgusting and curious, and exactly the sort of thing you find on junk day in Olympia.

I love junk day. Everyone puts out their rubbish—their busted-up washing machines and hot water heaters, dysfunctional blenders and vacuum cleaners—so everything can be hauled off to the dump. But before they go, passersby like me can walk around scanning for useful goods, occasionally lunging into the debris piles like pearl divers. Last year, I found a perfectly good electric lawn mower that I was able to rewire and repair with a couple rolls of duct tape; today I found this hairy fan.

I took everything apart in the garage, cut the toupee out of the machinery, and repaired a break in the electric cord. I sprayed the fan with vinegar and swabbed the plastic, dabbing here and there, and flipping the unit like it was a newborn and I was a neonatal surgeon.

I have a keen respect for fans. I grew up in the Midwest, where the summer heat can turn your car seat into a waffle iron, where people stroke out from sun poisoning and everyone owns a box fan even if they have air-conditioning. On hot days, my friend Chinn and I would pedal over to the 7-Eleven, where we’d sneak into the walk-in cooler and sit around on the beer cases until we shivered. At night, my siblings and I would fall asleep on top of our covers, listening to the chatter of a box fan drowning out the whip-poor-wills and cicadas, my father’s snoring, and the ten-o’clock news saying it would be just as hot tomorrow.

In the Pacific Northwest, fans are an afterthought. They move moisture and odors, and only serve to cool things down when you’re doing something weird like canning beans or drying fruit, or running your stove to full capacity in the middle of the summer. So it doesn’t surprise me that I’d find a perfectly good fan among a pile of old curled-up shoes and stained T-shirts. People here don’t understand how a fan can save your life.

Usually, I’ll fix something and set it on a shelf in the garage, where it will sit, orphaned next to the half-empty paint cans
and bicycle parts, until a few weeks later, when I’ll open the door and realize I don’t really need a light-up Santa, so I’ll take it to Goodwill or walk it over to the “Free” box near the food co-op, where I’ll have a moment of anxiety wondering if I really should keep the item because maybe, someday, I’ll decide I really
do
want a festive Santa, no matter how disfigured.

I’m telling you this because I’ve found that even when you have your freedom—when you’ve liberated yourself from your debt, and are happy enough living like a polar bear in winter—even then, you’re still stuck with who you are.

Fortunately, I’m also stuck with awesome friends.

Earlier today, out of the blue, Hugh and Annie’s daughter, Keeva, set up a slack line (a flat strap similar to a tightrope wire but wider and friendlier) between her house and mine, and proceeded to walk heel to toe across the backyard without ever stepping foot on the grass. She was so good at this particular task that I decided to put a garden sprinkler in her path, wondering if she could maneuver past the wet strap even with water spraying up into her eyes like a blindfold, but she defied the odds and performed like a champion, and then gave me several lessons for bounding up on the line and taking a few steps. We were about to take things to a whole new level, whistling while we walked or juggling knives and chain saws, when we noticed that the anchoring post closest to Hugh and Annie’s house was starting to cleave forward. We both screamed and seemed to run in slow motion toward the post, laughing when
we got there, and then quickly dismantled the contraption before either of us landed on our ear as the carport post dove forward into the backyard, quickly followed by the entire roof structure.

Years ago, when I met Hugh and Annie, I never would have guessed that they would become two of my closest friends, let alone that their daughter would grow up before my eyes and turn into someone who would know how to engineer a slack line.

When I first moved into the backyard, there weren’t any Internet signals infiltrating my house, and Hugh and Annie didn’t have the box with its fork accessory; instead, they had a thick cable that connected their computer to their phone line, which then connected to some massive tower that seemed to fail every week or so as it struggled to keep up with everyone’s desire to check their e-mail. Back then (in “ye old days,” eight years ago), if we wanted to watch a video we’d huddle together in their living room and watch a movie through a DVD player attached to a very small portable television, or we’d cram together around their kitchen table and watch something on their computer that sat on an adjacent desk. The whole experience was very similar to how people used to listen to the radio, where they’d gather up and some would knit or whittle while others would lean on their elbows and daydream themselves into whatever story was being told at the moment.

In “ye old days,” we would occasionally pull the television and DVD player outside onto Rita’s patio, so we could watch a movie or an episode of
Gilmore Girls
while Rita got ready for bed. At those times, everything in the backyard seemed to pull together—the trees and bushes, the garage and the smell of raw, freshly turned dirt in the garden would step forward, lean in, and watch the movie with us. Cinema night on the patio was always a highlight for me.

Game night was equally awesome.

Occasionally, we’d have an impromptu steely-eyed game of Clue, where each of us would collect information like a detective as we moved our little pieces around the board, trying to determine who killed the subject with what weapon in what room. It was very challenging, and as a state investigator, I found myself personally challenged to be at my best, which most often looked like me sitting there with a squishy look on my face while Hugh, Annie, Keeva, and Kellen took copious notes.

“Hummm,” they would mutter as, heads down, they would scribble something into their notepads to describe my latest play in the game.

It was a level of intellectual competition I’d never experienced before, and I found myself feeling the need to cheat, to suddenly break everyone’s concentration by declaring a “tea break,” when I’d wander off to the kitchen to make a snack before Kellen (only nine, then ten, then thirteen years old) could beat me.

The last time we played Clue was in the middle of a snowstorm, huddled in Rita’s house, which was slowly dropping in temperature because the power was out. Hugh, Annie, Keeva, Kellen, and I sat around the game board with our headlamps, holding our cards and trying to navigate our playing pieces, while Rita sat nearby, bundled in a stocking cap, a down coat, and two blankets. It was 69 degrees in her house. A heat wave compared with mine, but Rita sat in her arctic outerwear. She nearly froze to death as we sat around in light sweaters, enjoying the 67-degree then 62-degree temperatures while taking notes (or not). It was a bit sad when the electricity came back on; we all liked the ad-libbed slumber party that was developing in Rita’s living room.

At holidays and birthdays, we’d coordinate our schedules for dinner and gift-giving. A few months after I moved into the backyard, I started shopping for Rita, wandering back and forth down the aisles, looking for everything on her list: the largest, most obnoxiously massive box of Rice Krispies ever produced, frozen mac and cheese, Kleenex, milk. Everything was very specific; I wasn’t supposed to get any sort of toilet paper but the Charmin “mega soft,” and I couldn’t just get the denture powder on sale but only the Top Care brand of tablets. It was awkward at first, making me eye-roll when Rita would bristle at my choice of an alternative brand of frozen lasagna, but then, over time, I realized I too was extra-picky about what type of bread I ate, the kind of toothpaste, coffee, half-and-half,
and beer I wanted—it was all very personal and, depending on the item, brought varying degrees of excited anticipation, which registered by me humming or whistling while I unloaded groceries, sticking the perishables in my blue ice chest, the canned goods above the dinner dishes, and the dry goods in the drawer to the left of the kitchen sink.

On occasion, I became Rita’s chauffeur, taking her to Kellen’s baseball games, to graduation ceremonies, her hairdresser’s wedding, and the occasional doctor’s appointment. I liked doing this stuff, parking in a restricted space close to the front door of the optometrist’s office, unloading the wheelchair, helping Rita stand and then shuffle into the chair. I liked learning how to buckle her into the car seat, reaching across her the way I used to do with my four-year-old niece, and coming to understand the physics of supporting her as she teetered forward out of the car from a seated position to standing, trying to perfect the subtle art of providing dignity and grace in a moment of awkwardness.