No Move is Good Move: A Primer on What My Problem Is, Part II

If you're new to the No Move is Good Move saga, you'll find part one here, part two here, and part three here.

With just a few days between closing on our house in Ned and not having any place to live at all, I found what seemed like the last house in town with a yard and a short-term lease option. We moved into a pea green shack, the last one that hadn’t been razed or remodeled right in the center of Boulder County’s most expensive zip code.

We liked pretending that we were, like the bumper sticker says, keeping Boulder weird. We liked pretending that we were the bad element on the street that was keeping property values down. We liked pretending that we were representin’, that we were keepin’ it real and sticking it to the man, forgetting that it’s all relative. To some people, we are the man. But it was an easy act, considering that the historical mansions and monolithic homes occupying every square foot of third-acre lots hovered over us in every direction. Across one street sat a ten thousand square foot building that had been converted from an old schoolhouse into a single-family home. It was stunning, yes, but it had no driveway, much less a garage, which meant that after driving your Bentley home, you were parking your rich ass on the street, dahling. On the other corner, a palace that looked like a resort hotel—a dark one, as the family who owned it was rarely there. Not only does money not buy love, it looks like it doesn't buy good sense, either.

We laughed when we realized that were not used to getting fully dressed before going outside to flip the burgers on the grill, but according to our new neighbors, Rick and Kitty, neither were the last people who lived there. “We didn’t care they were naked, and neither did they,” said Rick in the thick Long Island accent that refused to resign even after fifteen years away from the coast. A few months later, Rick was bitten by a raccoon during his evening dog walk, thus ending the lesson that Boulder was already plenty weird without us.

The truth is, that million-dollar Boulder cracker box that we rented was where we reconnected with the old friends who dreaded the winding canyon drive to Ned. It was where we walked to dinner dates on the Pearl Street Mall, and found a preschool for our little girl—a place where she felt loved and appreciated and safe, and where her teachers called her Soaf without us telling them that's what we called her. It’s where we made new friends walking down the street; I guess even multimillionaires take their kids out for some fresh air now and then—on the days when they’re not having it imported on the backs of chinchillas, that is.

And when I wasn't marveling over the neighbor who went to jail for installing the wrong kind of garage door (at least she had a garage), I was looking feverishly for a permanent home for us in Boulder. The sticker shock was unbearable, and eventually, so was our REALTOR. A whole spring season of house hunting later, she was pulling all the stops, using all her powers, to sell us…something, anything to rid herself of clients so demanding that they wanted a house that was actually standing for their three-quarters of a million dollars.

“Well, it’s nice and all,” we practically said on our last outing with her, “but this house is on fire.” And she just about said, “Oh, ALL the houses in this neighborhood are on fire. I live here, and two of my bedrooms are on fire right now. You have to give up something if you want to live in this neighborhood.”

And she was right. We did have to give up something: Her.

Stay tuned for the conclusion, part three of No Move is Good Move: A Primer on What My Problem Is, coming next week. Probably.

No Move is Good Move: A Primer on What My Problem Is, Part I

When I was seven or eight years old, I drew a picture in crayon of a tropical island only big enough for one palm tree and me. “I love Hawaii,” I told my dad. I missed being there, and so did he, even though we’d just returned from a vacation on the island of Kauai. “I’m homesick,” I told him.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “We’re home right now.”
“I know,” I said. “And I’m sick of it.”

Famous last words.

Last week, my dad turned 82. He’s only ever lived in two houses: the one he grew up in, and the one I grew up in. When I left that home for college, I moved once or twice a year; by the time I graduated, one of my life goals was to own things without worrying about whether or not they would fit into the trunk of a Camaro. I was a natural at digging my heels in, growing some roots, and I spent the next five years renting an apartment located in a neighborhood in steady decline. One of my neighbors was one of those high-priced call girls with a full-page ad in one of the weekly alternative newspapers; another was a drug dealer with a full book of business. A stray bullet from a sale gone bad or a psychopathic John with the wrong address might have done me in, but I had furniture. Damned if I was going to strap my second-hand sectional to the roof of my econo-sized Toyota.

After that, it was three years in the first home I’d ever owned, a town home in a better neighborhood with a huge park across the street. I kicked out my boyfriend and adopted a dog. I was set. “Write down my phone number and address,” I said to every friend and relative. “And use a pen.” I was there, and there I was: that kooky dog lady with a Pier 1 credit card and a mountain bike and that’s all I needed. And this lamp. And this paddle ball game. And that’s all I needed. And this remote control. Uh-hem.

When Alex and I married, we bought a home in the mountains, a move I agreed to make without a lot of fuss, considering I never thought I would own a free-standing, single-family home with enough space around it for a few dogs and, judging by our neighbors down the dirt road, two or three llamas. We lived there, in a crunchy little town called Nederland, for six years. The locals called it Ned, and we came to call it that, too, as a term of familiarity, endearment even. Ned was our friend; our flaky, weird friend who was loveably erratic in his behavior and most of all, valued a don’t-tread-on-me lifestyle above all others. As people who wanted to be left alone with their thoughts and dogs and mountain bikes and skis, we loved Ned and his collection of Viet Nam veterans, hippies, hermits, and real estate cheapskates. We loved him even during the winter, when the triple digit wind speeds kept us up nights.

Our first year there, we spent many evenings watching the way the wind would distort our reflections in the double-paned windows as they flexed and strained between the gusts and us. "I wonder what those people up the street who live in that tee-pee are doing right now?" I said to myself. Our second year there, we held contests to see who could make the house hotter with the wood burning stove. (I won with an indoor temperature of 89, despite the minus 25 conditions outdoors.) Our third year there, we survived the hundred-year snow storm by skiing to town for the barbeque the grocery store hosted as a way of kindly disposing of the meat that was going to expire anyway. They wouldn’t have power for their refrigerators for no telling how long, so why not?

It's the place where folks keep their dream-catcher-hammock-kinetic sculpture studios-slash-cannabis-growing-rooms in the front yard, and their dead grandfather on ice in the back. We knew the police chief personally. We watched a semi-organized uprising against those pesky laws that forbid drunk driving. We noticed that Ned is a very active incubator for stupid restaurant ideas. We never locked our doors.

And so on.

During year six it happened: Alex said, “I think I’ll take the baby for a walk to town.” Just like that. He said he was going to have a stroll, get some fresh air, take his time. I had just been diagnosed with Grave’s disease, and remember replying with something like, “I have Grave’s disease,” adding that I was going to curl up with a good goiter and have a nap.

Alex returned looking triumphant. He said that while he was out, he ran into our realtor, Candace, who said the time was right for us to sell our house. Inventory was low, but the market was about to flatten out, so we could make some money if we acted fast. “So,” he said, looking smug, “I listed our house.” Our house was on the market. For sale. Available now. If memory serves, I think I went back to bed. Two months later, we did something I wasn’t prepared to do: we moved downhill to Boulder. Flatlanders again we were, and soon I had to admit that such an act was so crazy that it just might work.

Stay tuned for next week's installment, the continuation of No Move is Good Move: A Primer on What My Problem Is

Goiter Watch '06: All Clear

About a year ago, on a regular Thursday at home with the baby, I thought maybe I was having a heart attack. The heart palpitations had started at about 9:00 in the morning, and by 3:00 that afternoon were starting to freak me out. I’d become sweaty and nauseated, my hands were tingly and I decided not to wait around for neck and chest pains; I treated myself to a trip to the emergency room.
Weeks earlier, I’d called my regular doctor’s office with a laundry list of symptoms that was beginning to rain on my new-mom parade. I had headaches for the first time in my life, I was enduring 36-hour stretches without a wink of sleep and had become forgetful, confused and disoriented all the time. My eyes had always been predisposed to getting red, especially if I hadn’t slept enough, but they had become so perpetually red, they practically glowed. Move over, Rudolph, for a weirder, creepier kind of sleigh guide. When I told Alex that my heart was fluttering and my arms and legs shaking during and after a leisurely walk to the neighbor’s house down the street, he said, “That’s because you’re not getting enough exercise, of course.” Later, I would smite myself on the forehead for even asking him what he thought; Alex isn’t exactly the king of health sensibilities. I’ll stop there before I call him its village idiot. Too late.
I guess I was irritable, too.
I’ll admit that my fears started getting the best of me then, which didn’t help the insomnia. While I was up so late that MTV was playing music videos, I argued with myself over whether something awful was happening to my body, or if I was just making the whole thing up. Maybe the constant trembling of my extremities was Parkinson’s; the thinning hair and peeling nails impending dermatological catastrophe, and the headaches, complete with aural flashes, was an alien implant that had instigated the growth of a giant brain tumor. Screw you, aliens!
If there's an upside to every situation, and I'm not saying there is, the upside to the changes I noticed in my insides and outsides included the way my voice changed. Although I had to work to make myself heard, my voice took on a smoky, hoarse quality akin to Stevie Nicks'. I had also unintentionally adopted Warren Zevon’s philosophy on life and mortality. “He said ‘enjoy every sandwich,’ not enjoy every sandwich in existence,” Alex said as I was polishing off the rest of the lunchmeat in the fridge. And, in a decision to take Warren’s sage advice a step further, I was also regularly enjoying every French fry, every gallon of chocolate ice cream and every meatloaf. I didn’t care what anyone said, including my mother-in-law, who commented while watching me open a frozen lasagna that said, “Family-sized,” “You’re not going to be able to eat like that forever, you know.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, considering that I had just gone to the trouble of memorizing Wendy’s entire value meal menu. But I was certain that I was losing weight at the speed of light despite eating lunch three times a day and dinner twice because I was awesome. “I’m awesome!” I’d say to myself mid-casserole, and then I would collapse into a pile of mood-swinging, wailing woman. I'd become profoundly depressed most of the time, without being able to identify a reason. “Maybe I’m Goth and never knew it,” I told my friend Lisa after she’d asked me how I’d been. Lisa looked me up and down and said she’d never met a Goth who wore a size 2.
"I know," I told Lisa. "I'm awesome. Are you going to eat that?"
I’d started eating, but I had stopped making my bed. I’d stopped showering and getting dressed in the morning. I’d stopped writing. I couldn’t keep up with the MomsTown Guide to Getting it All; there was simply too much. And then one day I was in the middle of a silent monologue about how I was a slacker, when a novel thought jumped to the fore: Maybe I should see a doctor. I began making my list of symptoms and complaints, then shoved it into the drawer and promptly put off making an appointment for two weeks. “We can see you in four weeks,” the receptionist said. I’d put on my tinfoil hat to prevent the aliens from listening in. That’s all I needed was for one of them to disguise himself as a nurse and probe me during my physical. I said fine, I’d wait.
Two weeks later, I was hooked to an EKG machine and an IV at the Boulder Community Hospital Emergency Room. I was the only patient there. While I waited for the test results, I prepared myself for the worst by imagining the ER doc flinging the curtain back and saying, “I’m afraid it’s extremely serious.”
“What is it?”
“Your visible panty line, it just killed our receptionist, Belinda.” In fact, the daytime staff of Boulder Community Hospital hadn’t seen a deadly case of VPL like mine since Isaac and Gopher dared Charo to replace the Solid Gold Dancers’ g-strings with Wonder Woman Underoos just before show time. “I’m writing you a prescription immediately.” I heard him say. “There’s a thong-a-thon going on right now at Target. I beg you, if you want to save lives, including your own, spend everything you’ve got—stat!”
What he said instead was, “It’s your thyroid.” I could tell from the way he practically yawned when he said it that he couldn’t have been more bored with the whole thing. He’d been sitting around all afternoon, in the loneliest ER in three counties, and his big case for the day was a woman with a baby and a goiter. Forget gun shot wounds, I hadn’t even paper cut myself. “I’ll refer you to a good endocrinologist here in town, give you some medication and send you home.”
The good news is that I had Grave’s disease, a serious-ish but totally treatable condition that, with medication and good vibes, virtually disappears into remission within a year for twenty to thirty percent of patients. The better news was that I had an official disease that I could use as an excuse for any thing at any moment. Was I going to nap all day? Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. I have Grave’s disease. Did I have to watch “I Love the ‘80s” on TV again? Dude, come on, I have Grave’s disease. Had I been driving with the emergency break on all day? For heaven’s sake, give me a break already. I have Grave’s disease.
And now, after about a year of monthly visits to the endocrinologist who checks my throat, my eyes, my heart and blood, it looks like the aliens have lost. My Grave’s disease is in remission; my goiter is, to quote my doctor, much less “generous” than it was a year ago. Remission from Grave’s doesn’t last forever, but I’ll take what I can get. I am making my bed again, I’m writing again; I’m more cheerful and less hungry, but I still don’t always shower. It’s OK; I’m also trying to be nicer to myself. Hey, I have Grave's disease. It’s been a good year and a hard year, because, while Grave’s is a fantastic excuse for my behavior, it cost me about a year of sleep. And not only did I stop dreaming for that year, I stopped dreaming, which, as I’ve decided, is worth a trip to the ER in itself, in whatever kind of underpants I happen to be wearing at the time.
To a large extent, it seems we are chemical beings, and a good portion of our physical and mental health depends on good chemistry. In fact, it’s hard to put into words how strange it was to become someone I didn’t know, and then return to the person I used to be because of one pill in the morning and one at night. So, I’ll just tell you that I’m going to be ever vigilant to take care of my chemistry, and every other little component of this thing that constitutes Me.