It’s amazing what’s out there on the internet.

There’s a Big Storm crawling across this continent and I’m all bundled up in brain fog.* I had to cancel plans for the week but I thought I’d at least knit and listen to worthy podcasts while others fought the good fight. Alas, I couldn’t follow the audio. Doomscrolling has filled the time between getting out of bed and getting back in bed.

I can’t remember where Al Gorithm, my personal guide, started my trip. Early on, a friendly Texas real estate agent shared “Ten Things That are Red Flags on a Walk-Through” (ten years too late for us—our house had five of her Red Flags).

On to Detroit where a big white guy and his crew film walk-throughs of abandoned properties. There are some beautiful houses in Detroit and these guys are Divine Intervention with nail-guns. In one video, they checked out three Art Deco apartment buildings with intact intricate black and white tiled entryways and fire-charred beams stretching from the basement to the third floor. The furnace was stolen in the first building. In the third building, a second floor unit had discarded needles in a corner, piles of women’s clothing, and prices scrawled on a bedroom door. Not so jovial now, the crew took a Quick Look at the top floor and trundled down the stairs and out the door. Standing in the front room of a handsome brick house, the big guy casually talked about adding walls to make seven bedrooms. There are mothers with six kids looking for the space, he said.

Wait! Is this nice guy doing restoration? or just fix-ups good enough for Section 8? Shouldn’t we honor the bones of this house, its spacious rooms and big windows with the sunlight falling across the oak floor boards? On the other hand, any kid could be happy playing on that big porch if the floors inside were sound and the plumbing worked.

I should have known the deal. My own wallpaper and paint fantasies got in the way. Always follow the money.

Al picks me up and sets me down in a sunny Home Depot parking lot with an old coot eyeing prefab sheds for a tiny house. In the next video he makes the conversion itself and immediately after that is a somber man ponderously explaining proper installation of insulation and vapor barrier (apparently the first man got it wrong). Boring. I fall asleep.

But then cheap tiny house segues into van life! Not the aspirational van life of romping golden retrievers, glorious sunsets, and mountain peaks. Nope, these are people living in Walmart parking lots in campers and pick-up cabs. Or cars. They are coping. Some have jobs. They share safety tips and warn of increasingly prohibitive regulations. And rant about capitalism screwing them over.

Now Al introduces me to a homeless man on a wooded trail talking into his phone. The day before, he said, he’d seen a young Newbie couple watching Harry Potter on an iPad, their brand new tent pitched in plain sight beside the trail. He told them to hide. They told him to Eff off. So this morning, he said, he saw them with much cheaper tent and no iPad. This story excites his Unhoused followers. The comment section is jammed. Don’t trust anyone! You can get stabbed for your footwear! Hide from everybody, not just the police!

The final video Al Gorithm presented was “The 18 Creepiest Towns in the United States.” Maybe Al wanted to warn me away from homeless camping in the cemetery in Stull, Kansas, or anywhere near Mothman in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio.

So that’s where I’ve been this week while waiting for the fog to lift. Have I really been nowhere and done nothing? I’ve seen how housing for the poor enriches the well-off, a job doesn’t guarantee a roof, and it’s getting really crowded living out there on the edge.

Snowed in or not, I am very grateful for my comfortable house (even with five those Red Flags).

*Air pressure affects CFIDS/ME. My variety anyway.