The Importance of Being Comfy

Once upon a time, there was a chair that had been in a hotel room for years.

Its fabric dulled over the years, and its matching ottoman began to look a bit ratty. The hotel dumped it, and all its brothers and sisters; a furniture dealer carried them all away and stacked them in a dusty warehouse that sold, on the cheap, used furniture.

One day a couple came in looking for cheap chairs to put in their TV room, and took home the dull chair and its twin, with their matching ratty ottomans. It was a good thing, and for the next nine years, the couple reveled in the comfiness of the old chair, guests got so comfy they fell asleep in the arms of the old chair, and the dog of the house loved the chair so much that he stopped sleeping beside his muvver and slept in the chair instead. Three novels, a bushel basket of short stories, and more than a few movie reviews were written from that chair. The chair was pleased that not only the dog loved to sleep in it, but the mistress also slept in its arms when she was sick, or needed to be near the fireplace to keep it going in the cold winter nights.

Alas! The upholstery could not last forever, and began to disintegrate. Time had its way with the chair and its twin; they were tired and worn out and ready to return to the earth.

When they were gone, the mistress of the house was inconsolable, because all that was left to sit in and write was a bony piece of lawn furniture brought in from the porch. (There was a set of living room furniture, but they were neither particularly comfortable nor well-situated for writing. Thus they were invisible to the mistress of the house.)

The woman knew that she had to find the proper successor to the position of Comfy Chair. She went into furniture stores and sat in every chair there was to offer. Some were too deep, so that she had no back support at all; some were so squooshy she gagged; others were just too high for her stubby legs and her feet dangled, a situation sure to cut off circulation to her legs. Some had backs too low to allow one to fall asleep in; some were just so butt-ugly that the woman knew that she would pour gasoline on them and burn them down within a fortnight.

Then, just the other day, weary with watching the rather lousy movie "Prince Caspian", the mistress of the house skidded to a stop in front of Pier 1 Imports, a store fabled for chairs designed for short people.

She went in and once again, sat in every chair in the store. And then it happened: her husband, knowing how short his wife was, and how comfort-oriented her rear end was, directed her to sit in a chair. The mistress of the house sat, and she and the chair fell immediately in love.

This is that chair, and its friend, the matching ottoman.

Difficult to tell in this humble photograph, the chair is smiling smugly that the woman has already fallen asleep in it several times while writing, and the dog cannot wait for the woman to go to bed so that he can climb up and snug in.

And amazingly, it's not only The Comfy Chair, it's beautiful, too.

No Pictures Yet

Last night, an amazing thing happened.

The novel, "Transitions", that I have been working on swelled to 42,250 words. And I was pleased with it. It was the last chapter before I would take the characters and dump their poor little lives into a blender.

Then the amazing thing happened. The mouse on my laptop started jumping all over the place; I couldn't 'select' ANYthing, couldn't 'refresh' anything, and when I went to my document, I had 41,390 words ... ending right where I'd started writing five hours before. 900 words ... GONE.

GONE.

I was so numbed by shock and disgust that I drank my glass of wine and went to bed. Even forgot to feed Howie, that's how upset I was.

Around 1 am I woke, sat straight upright, and fired up the laptop to see if I was lucky, and that I had only dreamed losing all those words. Nope, not a dream. And the thought of sleep was far from me. I fed the poor hungry How, and gritted my teeth, and began to hammer.

By 4:15 am, the word count was back up to 42,130 or so, and some of the sentences I remembered well enough to use, and I was compulsively hitting 'Save' after every paragraph, even though I had 'saved' the stuff that was lost, too.

By this evening I realized that I just couldn't risk having that happen again, so I spent my stash and bought a new laptop.

It's a pretty thing, but it sure is a pain in the ass getting to know a new machine.

A New Look to What Had Been a Mess

Well over a year ago, I got irritated by the sheer bulk of our "Breath-of-Heaven" shrub.

What had been sold to me as a small, compact shrub ("Oh, it will get about two, maybe three feet across") had grown five feet high and eight feet across and was killing everything around it. So I decided to remove it. I got about half-way through, got tired and left the job for another day.

Then life went to hell and gone, and what was left of the shrub died. The front yard looked like the remains of a toxic waste dump -- until a couple weekends ago when Bernie came to my rescue and removed the rest of the carcass.

After removal, we put down cedar bark mulch, and moved two pots into place; the bigger one will eventually hold English lavender, the smaller one seasonal color.

In spite of global warming, it has been so chilly and windy out that I haven't felt much like puttering in the garden, or even sitting out to gloat over how nice the front looks now.

Just a few more particulars on the Breath-of-Heaven (coleonema pulchra), variety "Sunset Gold": The foliage is light yellow-green, very soft to the touch, and smells wonderful when you run your hands over it.

However, it makes lousy greens in bouquets, as it just dries up -- a temperamental shrub. In keeping with that personality, the shrub is very touchy about the soil around it, at least when small. Pulling nearby weeds out killed two of the first ones I planted.

I've noticed that our city is planting them along walkways here and there. My guess is that someone told them that it was a small, compact shrub, too.

Wish It Were Different

About a year and a half ago, or maybe it was a hundred years -- it seems like that some days -- I left the house to walk in the early morning, trying desperately to shed the pain I felt after talking to my mother on the phone.

She hadn't yet been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, but I knew that something bad was happening to her. A few months before, I'd made a commitment to call her on the phone every day to keep tabs on her. With each passing day she vomited into my ear such bitterness and hateful memories that I would come away from each encounter shaking, feeling battered to the heart. I heard things about her life that I should never have been told; I would rather have gone to my grave without knowing the secret feelings she harbored.

Anyway, on that morning, a hundred years ago, I walked and walked, and cried, and prayed, because there was just nothing else I could do. After a while I turned to head home, and there in the sky was a rainbow, which the Bible tells us is God's promise to never again destroy the world in a flood. I really felt that the rainbow, for me, was a promise from God that eventually, everything would turn out all right.

I remember that rainbow every day, just about.

I remembered it last night when I got a call from the Pennsylvania State Police, asking me to please call my mother and "reassure" her. She'd called 9-1-1 to complain that she couldn't get her caregiver to leave the house. I explained to the trooper that she has Alzheimer's and doesn't understand that she must have 24-hour care. He was understanding, but I could imagine him rolling his eyes at the ceiling in exasperation.

So I called Mom's house, and she answered the phone, even though it was after 11pm her time, and she should have been in bed. I tried to "reassure" her, and she reacted just as I knew she would, with invective and curses, threats to cut me out of her will, loud and angry demands to be given a competency exam, and just plain old mean ass shit-talk. Nothing I could say made any difference in her anger. Finally I just gave up, and as she shouted, just said over and over again, "I love you, Mom," hoping that somewhere in that ravaged mind the woman I admired so when I was growing up would hear my words.

She hung up on me in her fury, and after a few minutes I called back and asked to speak to her caregiver, which she let me do, to my surprise. I had a long chat with the caregiver, a pleasant chat; the woman is surely earning a place in heaven putting up with this aggressive, nasty stage of Alzheimer's.

I'm trying to keep the rainbow foremost in my mind.

Mollissima

There, in the shadows of the lemon tree, a very fiend of the jungle lurks.

Yes! It is the scarlet macaw of the house, the dirty-fighting biting bee-yotch, Molly!

Alex and John adopted Molly last September, while I was gone at the other end of the country and could not say, "Do not bring a #@!!##! parrot into this house!" In chagrin and fear, I have tried to be friends with the bird, in spite of the fact that I still cannot forgive her for the nasty bite on a finger she gave me during the first couple days of NaNoWriMo, which caused me to limp while typing for the rest of the month.

If only she didn't bite, I would be crazy about her.

Today was her very first ever day OUTSIDE. John has a kind of leash to keep her from climbing too high, and Bernie let her climb up in the lemon tree. She was clearly bemused by the sounds and sights of the world, biting off the lemon blossoms, tasting tiny unripe lemons, gnawing on the grapevine that has looped over into the tree.

She wasn't too thrilled about the harness (called a "Feather Tether") but put up with it until she was indoors again, and then chomped it to bits.

Molly is only a little over a year old, a mere baby in a species that lives to be over 70. She has to be either indoors or on her leash: if she gets lost, like a little child, she might not be able to find her way home. And in this season, in this land, there isn't a year-round selection of fruits available in a jungle canopy.

She looks great against the green lemon leaves, though, and she had a great time climbing on a little clump of branches.

For me, the best part about her behavior was seeing her watch a bee that was buzzing from blossom to blossom. You could see INSTINCT kick in as her eyes focused on the bee, and she tracked that insect with such interest that I know macaws eat bugs.


Macaws do have expressions on their faces. This last picture is of Molly, La Mollissima, with a happy smile on her face about her first play-date with the great, wide world.

Poem In Your Pocket Day

I thought a lot about what poem I would like to share with someone today, almost too long as today is nearly gone.

But finally, I decided on an excerpt from Don Marquis' book Archy and Mehitabel, from the chapter entitled, "mehitabel dances with boreas." Mehitabel is a cat with loose morals and no home. She's a free spirit, who will not buy into conventional life. At times, that makes her suffer, but she's willing to suffer, just so she doesn't have to cave. Since I was in Junior High, Mehitabel's spirit (not her sexual morals) have been an inspiration to me in hard times.

"whirl mehitabel whirl
spin mehitable spin
thank god you re a lady still
if you have got a frozen skin

blow wind out of the north
to hell with being a pet
my left front foot is brittle
but there s life in the old dame yet

dance mehitabel dance
caper and shake a leg
what little blood is left
will fizz like wine in a keg

wind come out of the north
and piece to the guts within
but some day mehitabel s guts
will string a violin

moon you re as cold as a frozen
skin of a yellow banan
that sticks in the frost and the ice
on the top of a garbage can

and you throw a shadow so chilly
that it can barely leap
dance shadow dance
for you ve got no place to sleep

whistle a tune north wind
on my hollow marrow bones
i ll dance the time with three good feet
here on the alley stones

freeze you bloody december
i never could stay a pet
but i am a lady in spite of hell
and there s life in the old dame yet

whirl mehitabel whirl
flirt your tail and spin
dance to the tune your guts will cry
when they string a violin

eight of my lives are gone
it s years since my fur was slicked
but blow north wind blow
i m damned if i am licked

girls we was all of us ladies
we was o wotthehell
and once a lady always game
by crikey blood will tell

i might be somebody s pet
asleep by the fire on a rug
but me i was always romantic
i had the adventurous bug

caper mehitabel caper
leap shadow leap
you gotto dance till the sun comes up
for you got no place to sleep"

That's not all of it, by any means, but that last stanza has been a billboard for me, all my life. Hard times come. They hurt, and they're cold. But

"you gotto dance till the sun comes up
for you got no place to sleep"

Still dancin', Mehitabel.

Thanks for the thought, Don Marquis.

Gorgeous Weekend

A lovely weekend, it was indeed.

On Saturday we spent a day on a friend's patio beside his pool. He threw a grand barbecue for his wife's birthday, and Bernie's and my 33rd wedding anniversary. The temperature was in the 80's, the food was good, the company delightful. For a brief time, I got into the pool with the kids and swam around in the perfect water. (He had solar heating put in, just so he could stretch the season.)


Sunday was downright hot, and yet our pool was just a tad too cold for me to get in. I did wade a lot, and played water games with the dogs, fixed the north side sprinkler system (I do that when it's running -- a great job for a hot day), and made liberal use of the "mist" function on the hose.

Alex, after doing some heavy-duty cleaning, was hot and itchy enough to wade right in.

Later, Lil came out and spent about an hour in the pool, and her lips didn't even turn blue.

By time for bed, I was hot enough to brave anything, and took my skin out in the dark and yes! The pool was chill ... but oh, so nice.

Telemarketers and the F-word, Be Prepared

I truly hate using the phone; I have ever since I quit smoking cigarettes.

And that drawing of a phone really dates me, when the concept "phone" brings such an image to mind.

Phones have been on my mind for the last few days, after Bern started getting nuisance calls from heavily-accented women demanding he tell them what medications he was taking.

He hung up on them, of course. But after some days of being called twice a day, he got fed up on Monday morning, and when his phone woke him up and he heard the garbly voice, he just climbed out of bed, found me in the kitchen, and handed me the phone, saying, "It's for you."

There's a reason he would do that.

Because I hate the phone, and hate being required to answer the phone, I [hate squared] telemarketers. I have been known to revile them. On one memorable occasion, I delivered a long and intense lecture to a telemarketer about finding another job, a job with some honor to it, a job that would not accrue the bad karma that she was attracting to her soul. I'm not sure why she listened to me for 20 minutes. Maybe she went on to find another job.

In any event, Bernie's handing me his violated phone was exactly like pointing out an intruder to a junkyard dog and saying, "Sic' em."

And so, I did. I allowed all my inner Darth Vader to spill into my voice, and added to that my usual morning grouchiness (never have been a morning person), my fury at someone having disturbed my husband's sleep (over-protective -- well, yeah, a bit), and my hatred of telemarketers. I demanded the name of the company that was calling. I demanded that the caller speak slowly and clearly. I informed the caller that I was going to report them to the FCC for calling a phone number on the "Do Not Call" list. I explained forcefully that their company faced a $500,000 fine for violating the Do Not Call list. (I think I read that somewhere.)

Some time during the sentence that boomed "I want you to remove this phone number from your calling list right now and never call this number again," the caller hung up on me.

Heh, I said to myself.

And then the shitheads called Bernie again after he'd gone to work.

Clearly, some new strategy was necessary. If they could withstand my Roar of Anger, there was no point in me roaring at them again.

Oddly, they would call at specific times. 9am. 5pm. I kept Bernie's phone with me this morning, and when the phone rang at 9am, caller ID showed me it was our buddies at US Pharmacy (which Google identified as a source for "phentarmine"), I cleared my throat and answered, in my most professional receptionist voice, "Ruess Writers' Group, may I have your account number?"

Click.

They called back at 11:30 and I did the same. A man's voice expostulated some foreign word three times, then he hung up on me, too.

Tomorrow, when they call, if they call, I'm going to ask them which writer they have an account with, and when they futter around, I'm going to give them the number to our main office ... which will be the police department's non-emergency number.

If I can't get rid of them, I may as well fuck with them.

So to speak.

Water, Water, Everywhere

I'm dry now.

Today was the day I had been waiting for, for weeks. I am well again (though still experiencing a round of morning coughing): that's one criterion for The Day; two, I actually had some energy; and the third requirement was a genuinely warm day, because I knew that I would be soaked before I was done.

Today was Fix the Back Bank Sprinkler System Day.

Along the 60 foot stretch of garden, I have installed a "drip" irrigation system. None of it "drips", however, as each emitter is a sprayer of some sort. The ground doesn't freeze here, so I don't have to worry about split pipes except in freak years ... and in such a year I'd just replace the whole thing for about $30. No worries there.

The main line is 1/2" tubing, and little 1/4" flexible lines come off of that, each ending in a spray emitter of high or low flow as required. Easy. Kind of like plumbing tinkertoys. Every spring, once the need for watering returns, the system has to be checked, groomed, and if necessary, repaired. After an initial test run about two weeks ago, I knew I had some repairs that needed to be done; the streams of water spraying 20 feet across the garden gave me a hint that winter had been cruel to my emitters.

Today I donned my reading glasses, squinted at the automatic sprinkler instructions in the garage, and turned on the system. There's just no efficient way to find out and fix broken emitters and sprung tubing without the water running.

Some of the emitters had just fallen over, but others, being plastic and in the full California sun, had disintegrated. I started at the south end of the bank and carried my bucket of parts, pulling the emitters out from under weeds, setting them up where they had fallen down, replacing the ones which were dead-o. All of them, of course, were emitting water. Cold water. And if you try to replace a tube or an emitter while the water is running, of course, it sprays all over the place under high pressure.

Howie thought it was a wonderful project, water spraying everywhere, his Mama soaking wet and shouting "Aughhh!" every time a new emitter failed to make positive connection with the water line. He helped so much by following me along and pulling the emitters out of the ground the better to bite the spray.

But now it is done, and my cherry tree and my nectarine tree are assured of regular irrigation. Not to mention all the rest of the plants, too.

Refreshing.

I'm dry now.

Another Frackin' Cold

You gotta love the original "Battlestar Gallactica" series for their introduction into the language of the word "frack".

Yes. As in "Frack you," or "Those frackin' Cylons" ... we all knew what they meant.

At a low ebb, I am deep in the throes of yet ANOTHER frackin' cold. This has been the WORST frackin' winter for illness I think I have ever experienced. I can remember an illness as a small child that kept me bedridden for two weeks; I can remember one bout with the flu that convinced me of my mortality; but I cannot ever remember a fall-winter-spring when I was so sick for so long.

Can't sleep right, can't breathe right, can't do shit without sending myself into spasmodic hacking.

Also, the wind was up big time today here, and as we all know, I HATE THE WIND. So I didn't go outside and try to take pics of the new tulips and freesias and my neighbor's lilacs. Nor did I walk the dogs or ride the horse. It was Stay Indoors, Don't Move Too Much, and Read a Book Day.

The book is "Pretender" by C. J. Cherryh.

Sometimes I love her "Foreigner" series, and sometimes I resent that she's probably paid by the word. Or by the concept.

Later.

March Day: Equinox Eve

Gotta love a camera with macro capabilities.

This is a close up of an orange that was on the counter. The lens was closest to the side of the orange; but in the dim light of the morning kitchen, the camera insisted on flash, which illuminated the topside.

Still, it was a groovy picture, inspite of the strange streak of dust which contaminated the lens for many subsequent shots. I have no idea where the streak of dust came from, as I am obsessive about keeping the lens cap on the inactive camera.

Nor does the streak appear on the portrait of my first freesias in the planter in the back yard.

Who could figure? It's Spring, and cold weather is pretty much gone until next November. I'm a wuss; I won't miss it.

Seder was last night. It wasn't a bad Seder, as Seders go, but the foodstuffs were kind of lackluster. Mostly overcooked casseroles. A competitive Filthy Piker chef who also attends our Seder said that my legs of lamb had outdone him and other Seder chefs. That was kudos enough to last me until next year.

The singing was great, though the attendance was about half of what we planned for. Well, duh. That's what happens when you don't tell anyone that Seder is on -- three days hence.

Still, the light turnout was yet another moment of grace. I'm so emotionally fragile yet that preparing even for a small crowd gave me the shakes and mental gray-out. Alex was kind enough to sit at my left hand and lead the singing, and offer me support.

I think that Seder showed me not only that there is a grace in relying on others, but also how shattered I am. I literally could not pull together in my mind what needed to be done. By the time the next Seder rolls around, I hope to be in ... firmer control.

That's what the Control Freak part of me says.

The More Rational part says, "Time to start training someone to handle overseeing parish Seders in the future."

Stacking: Pot Feet

These are "pot feet," used to elevate a potted plant off the ground so that it will drain properly.

But that's not what's cool about them. When I swept off the patio the other day, and cleaned up the winter drift of leaves, I found the pot feet in amongst the plants, and put them to the side of the brick structure.

Later in the day, having sat at my desk listening to Lillian noisily playing on the back patio for an hour or so, I looked out to see that she had made lovely use of the clay items.

Perhaps she's a born rock stacker. Maybe that's why she's so madly in love with Jerry Seeger. (He's got rock stacking pics in his gallery.)

Lillian also gave me pause for thought as I passed by her room and saw her standing at her easel, drawing, the a couple days ago. She had a sheet of paper about 15 inches tall and as wide, and on it, she had drawn a figure that went from border to border, top to bottom.

I usually leave a lot of space around my sketches, and they are always in the middle of the paper. I even have a traceable grid to make sure I center the sketch.

Looking at Lil's off-center and stretched drawing, I was stunned. Why not? Why not use every bit of the dimension of the paper? If it looks drawn out (so to speak) -- so what?

I've got to experiment more.

A Wonderful Time of the Year

Back East, during the third month of the year, every morning, I would get up and look out the window and say, "I hate March."

When March was done, until the ground thawed from its frozen state, I would get up, look out the window, and say, " ... and I'm not too fond of April, either."

Not so my reaction to Central Valley months. Mid-February the almond blossoms dominate the vision of the farming landscape and the scent of the air. Then the plums, peaches and nectarines take the stage, raising March to a pinnacle of beauty.

No frozen ground here; I sat out in the afternoon sun for a goodly amount of time yesterday and got a bit of color to my undead-like winter skin. Not a burn, mind you, but color.

Our nectarine is loaded with blossoms, simply beautiful in the back yard. We might even get a fruit or two this year! (Last year the tree was 'way too little.)

Now as to the scent of nectarines' and plums' and peaches' blossom, I cannot attest, for this is also the season that ornamental pears bloom richly, attracting hundreds of bees to their flowers, and turning my stomach with their aroma, which is exactly like rotting meat. And unfortunately, the idiot who landscaped this development went strictly for looks -- Ooh! Streets lined with poofy white blossoms of ornamental pears in the spring!

Beautiful, to be sure. But not the kind of air you want to open windows to.

Good Job, Crows!

I've been hearing the hawk screeching almost every morning, and it sounds like the bird is right above the back patio.

But every time I'd open the back door to see where the hawk was, he (or she) would shut up. Or I'd catch a glimpse of him gliding silently away.

This morning, before I heard the hawk, I heard the crows shouting up a storm, and could tell from their calls that they had found either an owl -- or a hawk!

Leery of being crapped on by a mob of crows, I grabbed my camera and went out the door. Crows were circling the neighbor's nearest palmetto, so I thumbed my zoom and went to the far end of the yard, and caught the hawk's image -- indistinctly, I must admit, but there he is. Or she. Shortly after, the hawk swooped away, and the crows went back to their own spring business.

Now I wonder if, because the crows have spotted the hawk, if the hawk will leave and find another place to live. I wouldn't mind a hawk for a denizen of the neighborhood, but I am glad that the crows cued where the hawk was perched.

A Man With Many Legacies

E. Gary Gygax died yesterday.

He was someone, he was no one. He didn't prevent George W. Bush from destroying our nation's reputation around the world; he didn't eradicate smallpox.

He invented "Dungeons and Dragons."

And had he not, there would be no "Aser Stories", as the stories found their inspiration as I listened to a bunch of maniacs playing D & D, and could not help laughing at their co-operational jokes.

My life without Aser would have been unimaginably poorer.

Thanks, Mr. Gygax, and may you be rewarded for the joy you gave countless individuals.

You can't see him, but he's in there somewhere.

For the last week or so, I've been hearing what sounded suspiciously like a hawk screeching in the neighborhood. At times it seemed as though it was just above the patio, it was so loud.

Yesterday I heard the clamor and scrambled out of bed to stare out the window to see if I could spot the vocalist. This time I did. A gorgeous red-tailed hawk sailed across the yards and landed in the palmetto tree in my neighbor's yard. I watched the bird for a few minutes, then walked to the kitchen to get my camera. By the time I got outside, of course, the hawk had moved, though I could still hear him calling.

Maybe resident hawks would be a good thing ... there is this one cat in the area who thinks my finches are snack food ...

Almost Six, with a Good Dog

Sebastian is Lillian's dog, and she's really starting to bond with him.

At 75 pounds, he weighs more than she does. Even so, one of their games is for her to sit in this comfy chair and call him. He then climbs onto her lap (and chest and legs) and sits on her. She thinks it's hysterically funny.

In this pic, he was helping her put on her shoes for school. I was hoping for a view that would give some perspective of her "puppy's" size, but he's so dark that you can't see his head clearly.

What I'd really like to catch is him dragging her across the carpet with his tug toy.

I had my reservations about a border collie - hound cross, but there is no denying that this dog is perfect for her.

Almonds and Riding

The weather continues to be perfect for almond blossom pollination.

The afternoon temperatures are in the mid- to high sixties, giving the bees a long warm stretch during the day to be active.

I did go riding on Thursday, and had a safe and pleasant ride, though I felt a bit stiff throwing my leg across the saddle.

Friday I was really sore, in spite of taking valerian before I went to bed. Sore legs? No, not much. Sore hand!

You see, Dink is shedding. It's that time of year, for horses to get rid of their shaggy fur and uncover the glossy summer coat. So I used the shedding blade on Dink, and got a ton of white and roany hair scattered about on the ground. Then I used the deeply toothed curry, that charmingly makes round waffle-like patties of hair and added lots more hair to the ground. Then I used the shedding blade again to take away more hair loosened but not picked up by the big curry. Then it was time to use the small curry. Finally I was able to use the stiff-bristled brush, and then it was time for the softer brush.

I made the mistake of putting lip balm on my lips before I went out to the ranch. I probably had enough horsehair sticking to my face that I could have passed for Santa Claus.

But it was a good ride, though we kept it short.

If there's any sweeter time of year to be riding, I'd be hard put to think of it.

Spring, and Almond Blossoms Once More

It's just a fact that you're going to hear about almond blossoms for a while.

The air is incredibly fragrant with them here in the Almond Capital of the World, and the orchards on all sides are gracing the landscape with flowers.

Today I took Howie and the Sony camera for a walk along one of the nearby orchards, and this was just about my favorite shot. I like how the blossoms are backlit by the sun, and I like the contrast between the shade on the stems and the white of the petals.

It was hazy today, not a harsh sunlight. The air was delightfully warm, and the bees were active enough that near the trees, the hum of their wings was the main sound to be heard.

I was ready for some sweet weather. I even shaved my legs today, preparing for some brief sitting in the sun in shorts.

Tomorrow I ride for the first time since my riding partner was thrown from her horse last October and had her wrist shattered. I have to say that seeing her fall, screaming as I thought the horse fell on top of her, and the ensuing drive to the hospital really have put me off riding. It's up to clever Dink to bring me back.

Flocking

This sinister crowd congregates in the evenings in my neighbor's sycamore tree.

It's a mixed flock, containing cowbirds and common grackles. When the evening deepens, and the time of perching approaches, the flock begins circling the neighborhood.

Why they circle the neighborhood is unknown to me; I know where they are going to finish up their swooping flight, surely they do, too?

They are going to end up in the blue gum eucalyptus in my front yard, which houses seasonal grackles, sparrows, warblers, finches, robins, a rude kinglet, and hummingbirds. The flock of grackles and cowbirds trace elliptical paths over our block, making tighter and tighter passes at the blue gum. As they swerve in the air above us, if there is no traffic on the street, if there isn't some moron blasting a car radio, we hear them change direction with an amazing swooshing sound, a sound you might expect to hear if you took a fan made of feathers and brushed it rapidly and gently over your ear.

Maybe it's a kind of dance for them to share with each other, a last pledge of flockdom for the night. "We fly together, we turn together, we hold together, and as the sun goes down, we rest together." At the end of the flight, all at once, they fly into the eucalyptus. There is a rattling of leaves as they settle themselves, a few complaintive chirps, and then they are done, home for the night, until the sun wakes them from the other side of the sky.

Pantsleg Grocery Bags

I know I've presented this material before, in the Piker Press, in an article called "Grocery Shopping: Panstlegs or Plastic."

However, I wanted to make the information as widely known as I know how to do, and Google is very interested in Blogger information; maybe other people can find this little demonstration more easily if it's on the blog as well as in the Press.

The first time checkout people see the denim shopping bags, I have to explain what they are; usually the checker picks them up and starts looking for a bar code to scan. After I explain that these are my shopping bags, the next question is "You MADE these?" (I don't know why that's so unusual.)

The baggers get really friendly with the bags then, and handle them a lot, stroking the fabric and opening them to look inside. The first time they load them, they seem a bit awkward and tentative -- it is a different shape of a bag for them, after all.

The next time is quite different. They handle the bags confidently, and will even lecture a co-worker on how to load them for maximum efficiency.

Other customers have admired the bags, too, but most of them have no idea how simple the construction is. That's why I'm reprinting (with permission) the plans from the article in the Piker Press.

Cut the pants legs away from the rest of the pants.

Cut the weaker inside seam away.

Cut off the seam of the cuff. We cut off the seams because they are bulky bits our sewing machines will not want to deal with. I have known otherwise dependable sewing machines to go on strike and walk out of the house when asked to sew over blue jean seams.

Fold the bottom of the split leg to the top, inside out; even the top line if necessary.

Sew the sides together, top to bottom; don't worry if one side is wider than the other -- that just makes it more basket-like. Fold down a half inch along the top to make a hem and sew that.

Cut two denim strips about 2 1/2 inches wide by 27 inches long.

I sewed a line of stitching 1/4 inch away from each edge of the strips; these will be the handles, and I wanted to be able to stop the raw edges of the denim from raveling. Certainly I could have made the strips wider, turned the edges under and made proper hems on all sides, but my cheapie sewing machine hasn't that much power, I haven't that much patience, and we're talking grocery bags here, not red carpet accessories.

Attach the handles to the bag, giving them five inches of attachment for strength. I tested the prototype with a full large box of doggie treats, a small sack of apples, a box of tea, some canned goods from the pantry -- and the handles held, at that point secured only by four dressmaker's pins. Sewn onto the body of the bag, the handles could easily safely carry a watermelon.

I made four of the bags in an afternoon. They will take the place of six to eight paper grocery bags easily; probably take the place of ten or twelve plastic bags.

Just Because I Can!

What are those? Apples? Tomatoes?

Guess again, they are berries from nandina domestica, otherwise known as Heavenly Bamboo, and they are in real life, only about 3/8 of an inch across. Now, besides the fact that I like Heavenly Bamboo, with its colorful foliage and graceful habit, what does the size of the berries have to do with anything?

The "anything" is my new camera, the Sony Cybershot DSC-H7, and its fascinating "macro" feature.

I can set the camera to "macro" mode, and put the lens as close as 1/2 inch away from the subject, and it will focus.

The trick is to keep my hands from shaking! I went through the Jitters Phase with my first digital camera, thinking that apparently I was better off with film than with digital because all my pictures were coming out blurred. Eventually I got a few to come out well, and my confidence returned.

It rained here a few days ago ... all right, I'll be honest, it rained for a week here a few days back, and on the first sunny morning, I went out and played with the camera. The droplets on the fern pine (not a fern, not a pine, but rather podocarpus gracilior) came out unexpectedly well, considering that the area is in shade at that time of day.

That's the kind of shot I've always wanted to be able to take since I got my first cheapie B/W plastic camera when I was seven. (And couldn't, of course.)

Cheerfully, in the wet backyard, I went around snapping photos not only close up, but also to catch one of my favorite phenomena in this part of the world: the mysterious smoking fence.

The first spring I lived in California, I saw the smoking fence and rushed out the gate to see what vandals had set fire to my side yard, only to find that it was steam from the heat of the sun on the wet boards of the fence.

Such is the power of the California sun, and oh, how I welcome it again!

Last of the Sansanquas

Sasanqua camellias are so lovely.

I planted this one on the back bank in a spot that has become semi-shady due to the growth of the shrubs around it. It's been almost two years since I planted it; this year I wasn't sure it would bloom at all after the freezes of the year before, and my neglect of my gardens this past year.

Much to my surprise, a week before Halloween last year, I spotted a bright pink flash of color: the sasanqua had begun blooming.

October is a little early for their bloom; I usually think of them as being Thanksgiving color. When the blossoming began so soon, I thought surely that by Christmas all the color would be gone.

Not so, not so. True to form, the camellia continued blooming through January, and although I'll have to wait until next fall to see them again, these last flowers are welcome: their disappearance means ... it's Spring.

Whoa, I'm alive!

It's unbelievable how quickly time passes.

Three weeks have passed since I've posted on this blog. Now normally, when I follow a blog, I get really irritable if the blogger doesn't post more than once a week. This space of time that I've been distracted ought to teach me a sharp lesson: sometimes bloggers don't have the time or the inclination to post. And/or: bloggers need to get off their asses and post.

I've caught yet another cold. I can't remember a winter when I was sick so much since I was a little kid. Is it because I'm run down from last summer's travails, or because Lillian is bringing home every new virus her kindergarten buddies have to offer? At this point, I'm ready to do HazMat gear until summer.

I have a backlog of photos for this blog. Maybe tomorrow I'll find the energy to present them.

Brush Them Teefs!

If you have your veterinarian clean your dog's teeth, it requires a general anesthetic and about $300 or more.

However, if you buy a smoked ham bone, and let your dog chew it to bits, it cleans the dog's teeth to snowy whiteness for about $4.

Oddly enough, I opt for the $4 teeth cleaning, as the dog enjoys it far more than being dragged to the vet for shots and mauling.

In fact, the dog enjoys it so much he can't believe that he is in reality the recipient of such good fortune. Sebastian plainly felt that there had to be something innately immoral in the free gift of a smoked hambone. It's the legacy of his border collie daddy; a border collie has LAW graven on his heart, and that means juicy bones are probably people food and not to be eaten by dogs.

Sebastian spent the first twenty minutes with his prize asking, "If I touch this, are you going to beat me?" despite the fact that he has never been beaten for anything.

Howie, on the other hand, with not an ounce of border collie in him, made himself comfortable and promptly got his teeth cleaned. He's more of the opportunistic sort, possibly a second cousin several hundred times removed of hyenas.

Rainy January Days

I've lived in this house for almost 11 years now, and have hated this light fixture fervently for all that time ...

Until we were cleaning the house prior to my mother-in-law's Christmas week visit, and Alex, kind soul that she is, offered to do all the light fixture cleaning so that I didn't have to get the quakes from climbing a ladder. As she was teetering trying to get the accumulated dust of 11 years off the damn thing, I mentioned to her how much I hated it.

A bit later in the evening she called me into the front room, and turned the light on. She'd replaced the white fakey candle-shaped lights with two orange and one red Christmas light.

Now I love it and it's on all the time in these dim and rainy days. Casts a warm glow around the room without being obtrusive.

There wasn't much wind today, so I felt comfortable ducking out the back door to catch droplets of water on the papyrus.

There was rain early this afternoon, then a break with sunshine ... but then the rain returned, making the afternoon very dark and chilly.

The last picture in this entry is of our bottlebrush bush. My neighbor's perennial morning glory keeps crawling through and over the fence and trying to strangle everything in my yard; I'd made up my mind to cut the bottlebrush bush down and use Brush Strength Round-Up and kill that damned invasive bastard plant. But then I saw all the sparrows and delightful warblers using the bottlebrush bush for shelter ... how can I destroy that kind of habitat?





I'm just going to have to make it a point to check on the invasive morning glory's encroachment every day. I used to check out my garden every day, I could do it again.

And keep it the hell off my trees.

I hate that plant worse than I ever did that light fixture.

Winter Storm

We had major rain and wind here today.

There was no chance of a photo -- the wind was blowing the rain in all directions and I would not subject my scrumptious new camera to that kind of weather. At one point this afternoon, the wind was gusting right out of the west, and hit our front windows in spite of the porch. I opened the front door to look out, and rain blew into the house! That's never happened before.

We had a river of water flowing off the porch, and the sidewalk was under water. I went out several times (no thunderstorms to worry about) to rake leaves off the storm sewer, getting soaked each time. It was wonderful. The dogs went out with me and "helped" clear the gutter by grabbing sticks and leaves from the water.

The scrub jays who beg for peanuts on a regular basis didn't venture to our back patio today, and we only had three or four sparrows. However, the Hog Finches showed up en masse and gobbled down all four freshly filled sock feeders. They were all drenched, too, looking like they had all come from a bath.

One good thing, for sure: the heavy rain washed most of the birdshit off everything.

The Middle Two Gens Hate Photos

Four generations in one picture.

We invited Bernie's 87-year-old mother to visit us for a week at Christmas. She had a miserable travel experience flying from the East Coast to the West Coast (and equally horrid going back, I might add) but she was delighted to see and spend time with her great-grand-daughter.

The oldest generation in the pic is finally starting to slow down a little and show her age. Nevertheless she can still dominate a conversation from the git-go, and has a lot more energy than the next generation.

The next generation cannot believe how fat she's become, or how much of a toll the last year took on her.

The next youngest generation was about half pissed about the photo, as she was interrupted while messily painting a room. She understood the desire for the picture, but ...

The youngest is thrilled to have her great-grandmother's attention, and the camera's attention, and the chance to smile and show that she has lost her first tooth (a bottom one.)

Four generations, two lineages. And there was not one argument the whole visit. We're cool.

2008 - The Year I Get Whitewashed

Happy New Year! Look at all those hog finches!

I started last Christmas with one sock, wondering if I would be able to attract any goldfinches to my back yard. Hah! When I saw 12 goldfinches hanging from that one sock, I went out and bought another.

This Christmas, in an orgy of finchiness, I bought two more, wondering how many finches would show up. (Only three of the socks are in this picture; the fourth is outside the window above my desk.)

It's amazing how much nyger seed these little piggies eat. I'm now buying it by the 20-lb sack, and the finches easily empty the socks in a day, especially if a storm is on the way. That's okay. I never tire of watching them.

When I was a kid, I used to walk through the shoulder-high grass of a small field across the street, and see flocks of goldfinches fly up and swoop away ahead of me. They were one of my favorite birds back then, and still are.

The only problem I see with my finch addiction is the birdshit that speckles the patio, the lemon tree, the barbecue, the front walk, the window above my desk, the outdoor fireplace, the lawn furniture ...

Being Dutiful

I called my mother on Christmas Day.

She did recognize my voice, or at least she seemed to. During our twenty-minute conversation, at times she thanked me for the flowers I'd sent to her, at times she thanked me for the pointsettia she thought I'd sent to her.

Mostly she bitched about the people who "visit" her and how they only come to her house because there are no other elderly people to visit. She has no understanding that the in-home aides are there to take care of her. She is still (as she was from the earliest memories I have) utterly without ability to accept gift, or compliment, or help with gratitude. I refrained from telling her that the people were there because I ordered them to be there -- she wouldn't be able to understand that, so there's no point.

I listened to her repetitive rant until my temples were throbbing, then extricated myself from the conversation.

Talking to her was like looking at a cicada moult and trying to figure out the bug's mind from it. She has convinced herself from her core of being that there is nothing wrong with her, and that she needs no one's help.

Nothing that she says is reliable. What she apprehends from minute to minute is malleable, it might be real, it might be imagined. She said she was alone, although the agency we've retained says it is there 24/7. I don't know if that's true or not.

I began to froth at the mouth that she had been left alone on Christmas Day, but then had to sigh, and wonder. Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn't. And though I might rage at what might happen to her if she was alone, isn't some incident that she, in her incapacity, might bring upon herself the foot in the door that I've been praying for to get her into a nursing home?

Wishing her no ill, I still have to accept that her Alzheimer's is a death sentence that cannot be commuted.

May God have mercy on her.

In Love

I know that I thought the first picture I took would be of Howie, but the sun was peeking through the trees and struck the papyrus by the patio with a remarkable effect. This is the first picture taken with the Sony Cybershot DSC-H7.

I only took a couple pics the first time through the instruction manual. As I began to realize the potential of this camera, my hands started to shake and my nerves were done for the day.

This morning, after breakfast, I sat down with the BIG instruction manual and started going through it page by page. I found out I could take pictures of the yard through the window while I was seated in my comfy chair in the bedroom!

One of the "demands" I had on a new camera was a zoom. What I didn't expect (whee!!!) is that this camera can function well in low light without a flash. I zoomed in on the dozing Howie.


Another thing I lusted for was closeup stuff. The Sony has a "macro" feature that allows me to take pictures as close as half an inch. Not having any pretty flowers growing in my bedroom, I had to be content with experimenting with the arm of my chair.

To avoid taking up too much space on this blog, I reduced the size of the photos, but with the original in Photoshop, I can zoom in even closer to the point of seeing the fibers in the threads.

I love this camera already.

Watch This Space for More Developments

A new pet entered the household tonight. I've been wanting a companion like this since the old pet died. And now it's resting in the quiet of my bedroom, waiting for my hands to touch it gently and make it do tricks.

It's a Sony Cybershot DSC-H7 digital camera. 8.1 megapixels, 15x optical zoom.

No way am I even going to try to play with it tonight. I read as much of the manual as I could easily retain, and by the time I was done gulping with astonishment about all the things this camera can do (that I didn't even know about) my hands were shaking so badly that I'd never be able to get a clear shot.

When I bought my dearly departed Olympus 765 Ultra Zoom, a week went by before I had more than one clear shot per shoot due to the shaky nature of my appendages when nervous.

And I want the battery to have a full charge when I start to play, tomorrow, you betcha.

AND how much do you want to bet that my first subject is the sweet, soft, striped Howie?

Even One Little Life

This finch has just had a quick snack and is debating whether or not to tell the other 20 members of his flock about the freshly-hung finch food.

Eventually, he returned to the flock with nyger seed on his breath, and they all beat the location of the tasty treats out of him. And then they all came to dinner.

This evening I got an early Christmas gift. While sitting at my computer station (now in the kitchen with this pictured window in front of me, and a patio glass slider to my left) I heard a loud "Whonk!" and turned to see a little finch lying on the wet patio about 3 1/2 feet away from me on the other side of the glass. The poor little idiot had flown into the patio door and knocked himself simple.

One wing trailed on the ground, allowing me to see the exquisite pattern of darks and whites on his wing; but the bird's head listed to the left, eyes half closed, beak open as he panted in distress. "Not good," I thought. "If he dies, I'll toss him over the fence to where a neighbor's cat will eat him." (No life should be wasted. His little lifeless body could provide a meal for something.)

I turned off the kitchen light so that I would be less visible to the traumatized bird. After about five minutes, I noticed that he had stopped panting, though he was still looking over his dragging wing to keep an eye on me. I read another article on the BBC, and then was pleased to see that the bird's wing was back in its proper position. In a matter of seconds, the bird was looking around, eyes fully open. I watched and waited for him to hop away, but instead, he burst into the air and flew madly away over the fence to the east.

He was only a lowly finch, but I was glad for his recovery.

Broken Toy

I still have no pictures to share on this blog recently because I still have no camera.

There is no new camera in my life yet because until the last couple days, I was too sick to entertain thoughts of researching cameras. And then when I started to feel better, there was too much to do trying to make the house look less like an abandoned land fill.

This next week will be different, I suspect. I miss having a camera. I miss specifically MY camera, and haven't grown past the realization it is dead-o. Prior to owning my Olympus C-765, having a camera was a convenience; a camera was something one ought to have on hand in case one needed it. After splurging my stash on the Olympus, however, that appliance became as much of an extension of my creativity as my pens and pastels and paints. Without it, I feel as though I'm missing a limb -- something should be there ... and isn't.

The evenings I've spent sitting in the comfy chair in the bedroom, with my laptop warming my legs, keeping one eye on the back garden to watch the yellow-rumped warblers, kinglets, and white-crowned sparrows frolicking in the weedy overgrowth I've neglected this past year, I really miss the camera. Though the winter light is probably too dim for photos, I fancy that I could get a kickass image of a yellow-rump if only my camera was working.

Gotta get me one.

Where Are These Terrorists When I Want to Kiss Them?

Seriously.

If I could just give all of them a nice big kiss, most of them would be dead within two weeks.

This damn virus has still got me housebound and feeling like shit, after ten days. I haven't slept for more than 20 minutes at a time for six days at least -- oh, now that's not true, either, because this morning I slept for nearly an hour this morning before the damn phone woke me up. (You had better believe that tiny machine will be turned off before I attempt to sleep again!) Plus, my throat is still sore from coughing for all those days (and especially nights).

Bernie and I were talking on his lunch break today, and decided that this one is in the Top Ten Worst Bugs we've ever encountered. The absolutely wracking cough, the inability to rest, the physical weakness that have accompanied it -- for so many days -- yup, it's a prime contender.

I can remember when I was a kid, and got the measles or some such, and spent two weeks on the couch in the living room because my parents were afraid to let me out of their sight. The room had all the windows covered, I remember that, but not much else of that time, so it must have been pretty bad. I also remember how happy my dad's face looked when he brought me a couple of tiny pieces of pork chop and I ate them, at the end of that illness. So that one probably takes the top of the Top Ten list.

About thirteen years ago, I caught the flu, and thought I would die from it, especially after the long, long night I spent in fever hallucinations, thinking that I was an overstuffed chair that had been mistakenly created with sentience. I really thought I was a chair, and I really was dispairing for the voiceless existence I'd been given. That bout is probably Numbah Two, and convinced me of the necessity of getting flu shots each year since.

I haven't felt in danger of dying from this one, so I can't say that it's "Number Three" -- but I honestly can't remember feeling this crappy from a plain old cold virus. The wrenched muscles from coughing were alleviated by taking a couple doses of valerian; the nausea and diarrhea were (blessedly) short-lived; the coughing is disgusting, of course, and makes my throat hurt; but I think the worst is the inability to sleep. (No, Nyquil doesn't even touch it.)

Yesterday was Sunday, with Alex and John and Bernie all off to San Francisco to accompany Alex to the airport for her trip to Chicago. Though I had coughed myself awake for most of the night, I did have a lovely half hour of sleep, in which I dreamed.

I dreamt that I had somehow gotten shit all over the legs of my pants. Not my own shit, this was like peanut butter-colored cow shit. I cleaned myself off with paper towels as best I could (I was at an informal gathering of some sort) and then looked down to find myself covered with shit again. For a moment, I was horrified, and then, in the dream, turned to Bernie and said, "Do you know what this means? It means this is a dream, and I'm ASLEEP!" And for the rest of the dream, which involved more piles of shit in doorways and stacks of forgotten papers I had to go through, I was in joyous spirits because I knew I was asleep.

When that's the high point of your week, you know next week has GOT to be better.

Tis the Season

That could be a picture of our Christmas tree this year, but isn't.

We don't have one yet, and won't for at least another week. Bernie found an article about respiratory illness spikes during the Christmas season, and how they're apparently often linked to the mold spore content of the air around cut Christmas trees. The longer the tree is up, the higher the mold spore count, and thus the more likely to trigger respiratory illness.

And that, O World, is something this household does not need any more of. Four out of the five of us have been treated for pneumonia this autumn, so we're going to wait a week and some before setting off to cut our tree.

I have the dubious honor of being the final Coughing-The-Lungs-Out victim in this latest germy import. The doctor, when I saw her today, pitied me greatly, but informed me it was "just" a horrible hacking, wracking, nauseating, achy virus and that I'd live through it, bitterly perhaps, but in time I'd feel like a human being again.

Good news, eh?

Unlike some friends, who can turn sick-time into productive channels, I'm too much of a bitchy baby when I'm ill. Writing and art work are far from whatever side of my brain I use for those things, and all I can think of are mean things to say about the person who passed this freakin' bug on to me. (Hint: He had the gall to chuckle at me when my voice disappeared today.)

I did, however, find that the time went by more quickly when I had something to read. I'd ordered Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Prestige by Christopher Priest a few weeks ago, so I picked them up, turned on my reading lamp, and had at them. I won't do a review on them here -- I'm really not a good reviewer of books. It's enough to say that I read them through, and enjoyed their distraction, though I probably won't read them again.

The only other new books I have at hand are too creepy and depressing. Someday, but not on a rainy winter night when I'm alone in the house feeling like crap.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Fish -- Solved!

Paris, Swishy, Face, Sully, Margaret -- only two of the fish in this picture are still there, the two all-orange ones on the left, Rosie and Oslo.

The five named, along with Lord Patu disappeared. The first to go were Swishy and Margaret; they disappeared last winter. Why they were gone, we couldn't tell. We never found their fishy bodies.

An acquaintance gave us nine HUGE goldfish to grace our pond; it wasn't long before two of them were killed, and their bodies we did find, but uneaten. That sounds like a cat to me, and I still believe that's what happened to the big fat fish.

But when Paris (the white one) disappeared, I was very puzzled, because Paris was too dumb to even come to the surface for food. Then Lord Patu, who was quite handsome, being half black and half orange, was suddenly gone, too. And the water plants had been knocked over. A raccoon?

The mystery was solved last Sunday as we watched football in the front room, whose front windows overlook the fish pond. Suddenly Alex shouted "Look at the pond!" and we turned to see a Great Egret in our little front yard, stalking the fish.

As we all rose to our feet, the bird saw us through the window and took off, looking as big as a house, snowy white against the blue-green shadows of the eucalyptus.

I guess I can't begrudge the loss of a few 10-cent feeder fish to an egret -- it was more of a tribute to our attempt at making a living habitat than an affront.

I wonder if that's why we didn't have any GPS toads in the pool this year?

And Now What Do You Do?

I probably could have finished NaNoWriMo on Thanksgiving, but instead we went to have dinner with good friends.

There was plenty of leeway, and much of the night before last I spent thinking, dreamily, about what I would write yesterday, and that was plenty of subject matter -- more than enough to reach the requisite 50,000 words. I reached 50,517 last night by the time the Steelers-Dolphins game began. After champagne to celebrate, we watched that mud-wrestling match for a while, then said, "Pfft," and went to bed.

This was my seventh attempt at NaNoWriMo. My daughter talked me into the first one; after that I was hooked. November has become a kind of "retreat" time -- a time to take stock of my hands and my brain and my ability to follow through with a project, and that is just all good, and it feels good to be done, the story (such as it was) told.

That story was garbage with a capital G. I had no beginning, no ending, just started from where last year's NaNovel left off and started rattling, letting the words pour out. Too many of them echoed the tragedy and sadness of this past year; more than once I found myself spilling tears as I wrote, even though the venue of silly fantasy should have been light-hearted and laughable.

It wasn't hard writing this year. I would just ensconce in my favorite comfy chair, open the laptop, and go away, to a different dimension, leaving all else behind -- except for the word counter, of course. When I would reach 2000 words, I'd find an "ending sentence" for a chapter, and then go back and name the chapter I had just written. And then shut down the machine and walk away.

Now done, re-reading what I wrote over the last month, I see how much I still miss my sister, and how her death left me with a well of loss. I also see echoes of my desire to help people, to let them know how precious they are in the scheme of things.

Informed thus, it will be interesting to see how this next year unfurls.

*Still wordy after NaNoWriMo, oh well.*

Garlic Weekend

It was the breakthrough.

Back east, one of the few consolations I had each day was Tony's Cottage Inn. Not only did they have some of the tastiest meatballs I ever had in my life (and I savored Tony's food since I was a little kid -- 40 years or more ago) but their salad with house dressing burned itself deep into my psyche. While I was nearly dying of heartbreak back there so much of the summer, I ate at Tony's often, the distinctive taste of the salad -- with chicken, with fried calamari rings -- soothing my stomach and my soul. While all else was going to hell in a rickety wheelbarrow, Tony's flavors remained the same.

Gooooood.

All my teenage and adult life, I'd tried to reproduce that incredibly savory house salad dressing. And failed. I tried a little wine vinegar with oil, salt, and pepper; I tried garlic powder and olive oil and salt (and sometimes a little vinegar); I tried oil and minced Christopher Ranch garlic in a jar with a bit of salt ... nada. Didn't taste the same.

Saturday, on a hunch, I ground up 6 cloves of garlic, covered them with extra light olive oil, added a teaspoon of salt, and added enough water to make about a third of a cup of dressing. Shook it well, and waited for it to steep in the fridge for about an hour and a half ...

I NAILED IT!

Tony's apparently uses freshly crushed, mushed garlic for that incredible taste. I made a salad with it for our every-two-weeks potluck yesterday, and only a few shreds came back, for Alex to taste, and demand that we have it for dinner today.

Well, that was a bit after Bernie came out to observe me readying a "chuck cross rib roast" for the oven. "Could you put some garlic in that?" he asked.

"Sure," I answered, and proceeded to make a slurry of jarred minced garlic and water and inject it into the roast.

I made the new salad dressing and drizzled it over the salad.

Oh, garlic.

No vampires for us, and damn, it all turned out so good.

Something To Look Forward To

Only four months away.

The almond harvest is wrapping up; the air is a lot cleaner. We've had to close the bedroom window almost the whole way because the nights have been so chilly.

Waking up and walking around the house with cold feet make me dread the true onset of Autumn weather and then :-- ugh -- Winter, so I console myself with remembering that our "winter" is really pretty short, and that by next mid-February, all kinds of stuff will be blooming, and the air will be thickly scented by almond blossoms.

Cruelly, I noted this to a good friend in Pennsylvania, and she bitterly replied to my email thus: "Four months from now we'll be wondering when the next snowstorm is going to hit."

Well, that's why I'm here in Central California, now isn't it?

The Time of Year: Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

When life hands you lemons .... You know it's just about time for National Novel Writing Month!

The first year I tried the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November, I had an opening scene and an ending paragraph, and some ideas for filler -- "word count" -- and that was it. The journey was sheer drama as I was freed to write dreck such as I had never imagined ... well, no. I had imagined it, I just never would have had the gall to type it out, if not for the promise that no one else would ever have to see it. It became autobiographical in spots, wildly romantic in others, and though it ended up being a good book, that first whack in November of 2001 STUNK.

2002's prospect was decided on in December of 2001, when I suddenly had become a writer and had nothing to urge me on. The Piker Press was founded the next spring, and having had that encouragement, NaNoWriMo 2002 was a welcome activity. I wrote "Time Traveler" in 21 days, buffeted by the passion to tell the tale.

In 2003, I vowed to have fun with NaNoWriMo, and wrote "Character Assassin," which remains my favorite book. It needed almost no editing -- just a spell check. It's also a great example of a writer's retreat: for nearly 30 days I just spent examining what my characters in various stories were like. (And it was indeed fun!)

2004 I breezed through "Out With The Trash" thanks to Wendy Robards, who gave me her mornings to work on character development. OWTT still needs a final edit, and a strengthening of one chapter, but you know how editing goes. Especially when you're writing other stuff, and that year, I was working on the second volume of Aser Stories.

NaNoWriMo 2005 I started one self-indulgent story, switched to one that would provide the Press with material, and then just gave up. I regretted that a lot for the next year.

2006 I thought about a serious venue, then opted in favor of following Aser and Danner to a bar. I figured I could go from bar to bar in Midgardian realms and get a lot of beer and word count. Little did I realize that Aser and Danner would run right into a murder mystery! It was really an exciting and amusing month, following them around and writing down their adventures.

I'm tempted to do that again this year. I like Danner and Aser, and Aser's friend Margot the Troll. And I never got around to spa-hopping with them last year, as the murder mystery delayed the start of their journey. And at the end of the book I wrote last fall, they'd managed to pick up a new ensemble character, Harn Ashwood, who became fascinated by the shaman way of life and probably needs an education on what that really means ...

Hoo. Now I can really hardly wait.

Remembering

Purple beans.

Are they edible? I don't know. But when I saw them, I was intrigued. The flower is purple and lavender, and sweetly beautiful.

I saw these when we were back in Pennsylvania for my sister's funeral. I have always associated purples and lavenders with her; I don't remember if she said that was her favorite color back when we were kids, or that her chocolate-colored hair and blue eyes just were set off by the color.

Anyway, I found this photo tonight while going through my pictures, and thought of her, and told her I loved her, and cried again.