Week 22: How to Drive Yourself Crazy Buying a Car Long Distance

August 25, 2020

I have not been this stressed in a while.

A week and a day ago, I still believed that our middle child, Eli, would be moving into his dorm at Michigan State University this Friday.

Then we found out the school would be completely online, and the dorms would be closed to all but the neediest students. So maybe Eli would stay home. But then he and three friends got together and decided to rent a house. Only they couldn’t find a house. They thought as musicians they’d be too noisy for an apartment building — until they learned the practice rooms on campus would be open. So they looked for an apartment together. But all the four bedroom apartments turned out to be in buildings run by a company that has one-star ratings on Yelp (good job, Eli, checking that out before we signed a lease!). All seemed lost — until they realized they could split up, and rent a pair of two-bedroom apartments in the same building.

Saturday morning, he and his friend Juan (sax player, Florida) signed a lease on a two-bedroom, and Emma (bass, Sacramento) and Andrew (piano, South Dakota) committed to its twin in a neighboring building, after Emma’s dad checked out one of the units, because luckily, he happens to be in the area right now, tending to his mother who lives in Michigan.

The rent must be high for this part of the country, because from the pics, Eli will have a nicer kitchen than we do out here (this is not a super-high bar; our kitchen dates from 1952, but still, granite counter tops for a kid who just learned how to make tuna salad on Monday?). Anyway, it’s done. He has a place to live.

But that turned out to be only the start of our worries. He needs a bed. A frying pan. Dishes. Forks. Something to sit on. A way to vacuum the wall-to-wall carpet. A toilet brush, so that I can have the fantasy he will clean the bathroom from time to time. Oh, and a car. He’s 1.7 miles from campus, where he will need to go to practice, apparently, and the already-sketchy bus service has been further reduced due to the pandemic. Juan, the roommate, has a car, but they don’t know how their schedules will mesh.

I’m sure there are more challenging tasks in life, but that said, it is NOT easy trying to buy a used car in Michigan when you live in California. I know what you’re thinking — why not let Eli deal with it when he arrives? This is a perfectly sensible question. And here’s the honest answer: he’s already pretty stressed about this entire new life he finds himself in. All day long, he’s twitching, or tapping his fingers, or juggling his leg when he sits. He’s not there, in more ways than one.

Okay, that’s fine, I’ve bought numerous cars in my day, new and used. I’m up for the task. But here’s the big surprise: there are hardly any cars to be found. You find a used car with reasonable mileage, at a low price? You’d better be on that lot within the hour, cash in hand, or it is gone. I’ve literally never seen anything like this. One salesman told me this all goes back a few months, to the stimulus checks the government mailed out this spring. Lots of people, apparently, decided to use them to buy or lease cars. But because the automakers had shut down production due to the virus, there were no new cars coming onto the lots. So when buyers ran out of new cars, they started buying used. Meanwhile, people who wanted new cars, or who wanted to exchange older leased models for a brand new lease, were unable to do so, further limiting the used car inventory.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: I find a 2010 Honda CR-V with 65,000 miles on it and an excellent service record. It seems rather over-priced, but I’m confident I can bid them way down. I find a nearby mechanic who says he can look over the car for me, then I call the dealership to arrange the drop off at the mechanic’s shop. This is at 11 a.m. my time, yesterday. The guy says he’ll ring up the mechanic, then call me back. By 1:45 p.m., I still haven’t heard from him, so I call the salesman back. Someone’s looking at the car. By evening it’s sold. I ask about the 2009 on the lot, the one with 106,000 miles. Sold too, yesterday, but they haven’t had time to take it down online. I bet. Busy, busy over there.

I find an old Subaru at a different dealer, and call the next morning. Someone is just signing on the dotted line for that one, as we speak. Then the salesman for the 2010 Honda calls me back. Yesterday’s deal fell through. Am I still interested? Yes! Okay, he says, he’ll call me right back. When an hour passes, then two, I know what’s happened. It sold again, even as we were discussing it on the phone.

Meanwhile, have I worked? Have I caught up on my emails? Have I phoned GE to find out why our refrigerator says the water filter is 10 days expired, but its automatic replacement has not shown up in the mail? No, no and no (though as I write this, I realize the missing filter may be less about GE and more about the Post Office under President Trump).

I went on a dog walk with my friend Uttara today and talked her ear off about this car thing for a good 15 minutes before it occurred to me that I am trying to buy a car at one of the worst possible moments of the year, if not of the decade, and that Eli could simply make do until October. That’s when one of the salesmen told me the new cars will start arriving in dealerships again, freeing up the entire system. So unless some amazing deal falls into our lap, I informed Eli at lunchtime, we have officially put car buying on ice until later in the fall.

That gave me a moment to fire off a few emails for an article, and then turn to the next important matter at hand: the apartment itself. This was a walk in the park compared to the cars. Eli plopped down in a chair next to me, and we bought a mattress that will rest on a black wooden platform that the saleswoman at the local mattress store convinced him will be the essence of cool (I’m convinced there’s something in it for them, but I couldn’t figure out what). They’re delivering it the afternoon of the day he arrives in East Lansing. Then we went on the Bed Bath and Beyond site and bought pans and sheets and plates and a few other things that seemed essential. His friend Josh can take him there after he picks him up at the airport, and they can get it all curbside. The store was out of flatware, but Eli said don’t worry, he’ll make do with plastic for awhile. And a colander, as critical as it seemed to me for a pasta lover like himself, was something he says he can figure out down the line, along with a toaster and a trash can.

I was hoping — I crossed and double-crossed my fingers — that I was now done with my part of the move to an apartment in the Upper Midwest.

Then Eli came home from an errand and said he understood about waiting on the car buying thing, he totally got it. But he was stressed, worrying about how he would get around East Lansing when he was too scared to use Uber or Lyft, due to the virus. He didn’t want to be a burden on his friends. He didn’t think it was safe to try to ride a bike with the trombone strapped to his back. He was so, so stressed.

I saw where this was headed. I fired up my internet browser and typed in http://www.edmunds.com. Three hours later and we’re looking at cutting a check tomorrow to Dunning Toyota of Ann Arbor for a 2017 Toyota Corolla with 28K miles on it.

It’s a newer car than we planned on, but it turns out that if he gets Michigan insurance, they don’t ding you for newer model cars there like they do in California. Plus, the cost of the auto insurance in Michigan is less than half of what it would be here in L.A. It’s also a pricier car than we planned to get, but with all the money we’re saving on insurance, we can afford it.

So that’s it, right? I’m just about done with all this apartment stuff? All this spending, throwing the money away so fast it’s like the stuff is on fire and I’m trying not to burn my hands.

Well, after I get him renter’s insurance.

Then comes the hard part. We have to say good-bye.

Week 21: Pandemic Road Trip

August 20, 2020

I-5 through the Central Valley, smoke from NoCal fires in the air

There have been times during this pandemic when life seems to inch along at a glacial pace, everything so slow and so much the same that you can’t even remember which month it is, let alone which day.

Today is not one of those times.

I left Los Angeles yesterday, the minivan packed full of Liam’s bags and his bike, my eldest son next to me in the passenger seat. At home, Eli was awaiting a call from his friend, Emma, who lives in Sacramento but whose dad just happened to be visiting relatives this week in Michigan. Eli and his buddies found out Tuesday afternoon that Michigan State University would not let them move into the dorms, and now they were frantically trying to find a house together off-campus. Emma’s dad said he would stop by the prospective rental houses and check them out for the kids.

The drive up I-5 was uneventful until we descended the Grapevine and landed in Central Valley farmland, where the air was white with …. something. Liam insisted it was smoke from the Northern California fires. I refused to believe it. All the way in southern Kern County? It must be fog, I said (rather absurd, since the Valley is far inland), or dust kicked up by all those tractors.

We had to stop at a gas station near Kettleman City, and when I got out of the car, the acrid smell of smoke settled the question. But that wasn’t the end of the adventure at the gas station. I went inside, to pay and use the restroom, only to find myself greeted by a mask-less clerk with a big, goofy grin. I turned heel, paid at the pump, and waited on a bathroom until we got to the rest stop at Coalinga.

By the time we got to Coalinga, the air had turned from white to brown, and it stayed that way all the way to Livermore, on the edge of the Bay Area, where blue skies appeared again. I found this mystifying, since we were actually closer there to the fires, but perhaps the smoke in that area is blowing out to sea, while the Valley traps it? Who knows.

Meanwhile, Eli called with updates. One of the two houses had already been rented by the time Emma’s dad got to the Lansing area, but he’d toured the other. It was down a dirt road, with a lake on the property, and everything inside was decent but on the edge of falling apart. It seemed like a heavy lift for a group of kids who up until the day before thought living on their own meant a dorm room and a meal plan. But! They had a lead on an apartment.

Where Eli goes to school, there is Lansing, the state capital, which has good neighborhoods and neighborhoods where you wouldn’t want to walk alone at night. And then there is East Lansing, a separate city, where Michigan State is located, and which is fairly prosperous. The falling-down house was in Okemos, a bedroom community of East Lansing. The apartment was in downtown Lansing, which Eli assured me was a safe neighborhood, but I wasn’t convinced he knew that for a fact. Anyway, wouldn’t they be at risk of getting kicked out once the neighbors tired of their practice schedules?

We hung up the phone as we arrived in Berkeley. Liam moved his things into his fraternity house and I slipped inside to take a look at his room, then raced back out again. I didn’t race out because I was worried about the virus. The boys who lived there this spring and summer got tested on campus all the time, and so far, no outbreaks. I raced out because the house is so so gross, and his room was littered with other people’s things. He has a job on his hands that I do not envy. I don’t understand how any of them can live that way.

But not my problem.

We decided to take a short stroll around Berkeley, and it was as dispiriting as I’d anticipated. Berkeley is a town where it’s usually impossible to find an apartment near campus for rent the week before school starts. And yet, nearly every building had a “For Rent” sign up, right in the center of town. We walked the campus. All the beautiful libraries were shut up tight. Sproul Plaza, always jammed with students and visitors and protesters and people trying to get you to vote for something or sign up for something — was empty. No one hawked cheap earrings from stands on Telegraph Avenue. Nobody sold falafel or ramen from trucks parked on the curb alongside the south end of campus.

Pro tip: don’t visit a town you love during the pandemic. If you want to travel, go somewhere new, or at least, a place where you lack a strong emotional attachment. Otherwise, the full force of the quarantine will hit you like it is March all over again, and you will remember that even though good things have come of this time, at the core of it is a loss and a sadness that is impossible to describe or quantify.

Onward. We drove east to Orinda, just over the mountains from Berkeley, where we spent a lovely, socially-distanced hour in the backyard of my college roommate, Deborah, and her husband, Dan. Liam and I were both excited about this visit, me for obvious reasons and Liam because her husband is an avid bicyclist. Liam and Dan now have plans to ride around the East Bay together. This was something I’m pretty sure neither Deborah nor I pictured when we shared a room with apple-green duvets in our sorority house (a building two streets and a world of cleanliness removed from Liam’s current place of residence).

Because of Air Bnb snafus, we ended up renting a house for the night in Concord, thirty minutes east of Berkeley. The place turned out to be lovely, and the carne asada I ordered from a local Mexican place was one of the best carne asadas I’ve ever had (in a Bay Area suburb half an hour east of Oakland? go figure).

At 10 p.m., Eli called. Nothing was working out. He was going to have to stay home for the semester. He said he was okay with that, but it sure didn’t sound like it.

I went to bed early because I wanted to be rested for my long, lonely drive home the next morning. But I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep. Finally hit the road at 9 a.m., after picking up lunch for later at a Whole Foods, and dropping Liam at the frat, and hugging him twice because I don’t know how long it will be until I can hug him again.

The drive was as smoky as the day before. My throat still feels raw. Eli called when I was eating the sandwich at the Coalinga rest stop (no more Central Valley gas stations for me!). The music department at MSU was hoping to make practice rooms on campus available to them, which meant maybe they could take an apartment, and guess what? They’d found one three blocks from campus.

By the time I got home, around 3 p.m., Liam had learned that someone commandeered his old bed, but he’d managed to purchase a mattress from a newly-minted graduate (and frat brother) for $40, and he was at Bed Bath and Beyond buying sheets. Eli was signing a lease on the three-blocks-from-campus apartment, listing me as a guarantor.

The dog was frantically happy to see me. I figured she found my leaving stressful. But then I happened to walk by her water dish. Bone dry. I refilled it, and she drank and drank and drank.

Now Georgie is all hydrated and settled. I’m trying to get resettled too. It’s been a long week, and it’s still only Thursday.

Week 21: Cancelled

August 18, 2020

I cannot get used to this time we are living through. I’m trying to refocus and recalibrate and reconfigure — my life, my expectations, all of it. But 2020 keeps throwing me off balance, no matter how flexible I attempt to be.

Tomorrow, we are supposed to take Liam, our 21-year-old, back to his fraternity house in Berkeley (I would say back to college, but the campus is closed). That plan is intact. I can’t imagine what would cause that to change, short of a literal earthquake. The guy is determined to return to his friends and whatever semblance of a collegiate existence he can muster.

The following week, Eli was supposed to return to Michigan State, which had opened the dorms and was planning on a hybrid learning experience. Then, at around 3 p.m. today, the university’s president sent an email that announced:

It has become evident to me that, despite our best efforts and strong planning, it is unlikely we can prevent widespread transmission of COVID-19 between students if our undergraduates return to campus. So, effective immediately, we are asking undergraduate students who planned to live in our residence halls this fall to stay home and continue their education with MSU remotely.

He ran into my bedroom, where I was about to take a nap, yelling that it was all off, he would be home, school was over. Kind of with a wild look in his eyes, hair ruffled, glasses askew. I sat there for a few minutes, absorbing that news, wondering if my fall was about to get emotional in ways I hadn’t managed to predict despite all my attempts to predict every possible fall scenario. I mean, I’d figured he’d at least get a few weeks in the dorms before they kicked them all out, you know? I guess the news about UNC yesterday did it.

Anyway, I sat there for a few minutes, thinking all this, then I went down the hall to find him. He shooed me away, on the phone with his friends. I went back to my room, locked the door and tried to fall asleep, because I was really very tired. It’s been a long week around here, helping my mother process her grief and planning a Zoom memorial service for her longtime partner, Richard, who died of cancer a week ago. We still don’t have a funeral date, because he was a veteran and will be buried at the National Cemetery, on Wilshire Boulevard, and they appear to be backed up. But everything connected with the funeral business seems backed up these days. The mortuary can’t even cremate the body for ten days. There’s much that’s unsettled, and it has a wearing effect. Plus, Richard’s gone, and we all miss him.

So despite the drama, I fell asleep. When I woke up a half hour later, Eli was buzzing about a new plan. He and three other friends would head out to Michigan anyway, and rent a place off-campus. There’s Emma, the bass player from Sacramento, and Andrew, the pianist from South Dakota, and Juan, the sax player from Florida, and Eli, who plays trombone. They are all finding it increasingly challenging to focus on their music after months of being disconnected from each other and their music program. At least, they thought, if they were together in Michigan, they could feed off of and encourage each other.

Students are vacating East Lansing apartments right and left today, opting to stay home rather than take their chances with a pandemic. But a household of four musicians would not make great apartment neighbors. They wouldn’t even make great townhome, or duplex neighbors. To ensure they don’t get banned from practicing at all hours, they need a house.

There are exactly two houses left that fit their need. One has 23 other applicants on it. The other one … well, they’re crossing their fingers.

I thought I had mastered this pandemic thing. But that’s an absurd idea. It’s the nature of this time to throw us curve ball after curve ball.

Meanwhile, I’m nervous about this road trip tomorrow. I also went to college at Cal, and the campus and its surroundings are one of my favorite places on Earth. One of the things I’ve always loved about Berkeley is the people — so many people. A crush of people. A cascade of characters. Berkeley is fun, exciting, invigorating, always fascinating. But I’m scared that tomorrow, I’ll just find it depressing.

Eli was supposed to come up with us, mostly so I didn’t have to drive home on I-5 alone on Thursday. Now he’s too busy trying to figure out housing 2,500 miles away. But it’ll be okay. I have an audiobook downloaded to my phone, plus an endless supply of podcasts. I figure as long as I don’t stop in the Central Valley, a Trump zone where the residents apparently don’t believe in masks and the virus is running rampant, I should be fine.

I just wish I could make this year okay for Eli. I wish I could make a house appear out of the ether. I wish I could do something as simple as providing him the tools he needed — at this point, money for tuition and rent — and let him use them to build a bridge from childhood to adulthood. But thanks to the coronavirus, I may not be able to do that.

Twenty-four hours ago, I had two sons going away to school this month. Now I have one son going and the other in limbo. Oh, and my daughter started 11th grade today, online. Then promptly got a migraine and lost hours of the afternoon to it. We’re all kind of reeling around here. At least we’re not alone. It feels the rest of the nation is spinning right along with us.