An NPR caller just asked something like, “What do 50-something people do when they lose their jobs and can’t afford housing? Do they move in with their 90-year-old parents?” It was kind of a sarcastic question but she was struggling and honestly wondering what to do. Since the wolf is nowhere near the door here at the Landfill, we are not in that situation. I didn’t lose my job last year and so there was no need to consider moving in with my 90-year-old mother. I did spend a lot of time squatting in my 90-year-old mother’s house hoping I still *had* a job waiting for me when our lives stabilized.

I can’t move in with my 90-year-old mother now because she isn’t around anymore but I can still squat at her house if I want because we haven’t gotten around to selling it yet. (And yes, we do have a real estate agent. He was a buddy of my dad. But we have quite a bit to do there and living a five-hour drive away complicates that a lot.) And at this time of year, I would prefer to squat at the moomincabin.

2012 has been some year so far. We lost The Commander. One BFF lost both parents. Another BFF lost her mother and then her mother-in-law. All nonagenarians. All under hospice care. We three are going forth on our own journeys without our elder generation. It’s true that I have some aunts and uncles left but maybe you get my point. Hopefully we are all finished exchanging emails about illness and hospice and death for the year. Knock on wood big time. Everybody be careful.

We all have different ways of processing this kind of stuff so I can’t speak for my friends but I *think* we are all pretty pragmatic about life at this point and I know that I am doing okay. Except for that batscope hour of the night and some of the crazy dreams I’ve been having. But I’ve always had crazy dreams so that’s familiar territory. Other than that, I am at least putting one foot in front of the other, going to work and picking away at de-hoarding in my spare time. And walking as many miles as I can find time to walk. It may not sound very exciting and it may look to an outsider like I am avoiding processing my mother’s death but in reality I am probably not.

My life may be on the boring side for the moment but plenty of others are in the midst of change. Moving across town. Moving across the country. Graduating. Having babies! Our next door neighbors are doing that. The neighbors that are the same age as the baby that *I* had a few months after moving into the Landfill. (In fact, her due date happened to be yesterday and I don’t see much going on over there today, so maybe…) Will any of these changes affect my life? In small, maybe even medium-sized ways, some will. Others will not affect my routine in the slightest.

But the NPR question intrigued me. I know there are 50-somethings who move back in with their 90-year-old parents for many reasons, financial hardship or to provide care for their parents or some combination of both. I am glad I never had to consider that option. I *visited* The Commander a lot over the years. I often stayed at the moomincabin with the parents for several weeks at a time and those parents were hugely significant [positive] influences on the beach urchins. But move in? On a permanent basis? I’m sure that would have been very difficult for both of us.

There is no real point to all of the above. 2012 has been a year of change and continues on that path and I am just rambling incoherently about stuff that I am still in the process of, uh, processing…

P.S. Hmm… Apparently Houghton Lake is looking for a Bottle Washer. Should I apply for the job? I wonder what it pays… 😉

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