So, About the Gravy

A long time ago, in a rundown Victorian house in a small town in Pennsylvania, a young mother was worrying about the gravy for her Thanksgiving dinner, especially because the family had a notable guest, Fr. John Schmalhofer, the assistant pastor at the church.

It was probably only the fifth or sixth Thanksgiving dinner the young woman had ever prepared by herself, and though she was a pretty good cook, gravy does not necessarily have a dependable result. Sometimes it can be lumpy, sometimes too thin, sometimes tasteless. Greasy? Scorched-tasting? Yes, it could turn out all those things.

Turkey gravy was made on top of the stove, in the roaster that the turkey would have just vacated, from the drippings of the roast turkey. Dry bird? Few drippings. Roasted too long? Burnt drippings. Over-basting? Oily drippings. 

To bring the short story to its long history, the young mother was me, getting concerned about screwing up a guest's Thanksgiving dinner by making a lousy batch of gravy. Fr. Schmalhofer was hovering around the stove watching me fiddle with the food when I told him that making gravy was the most stressful part of Thanksgiving preparation.

"Here," he said, "I'll help." And he extended his hands over the heated roasting pan with its pre-gravy substance, and said a prayer over it! 

I was surprised; I didn't really think priests had time or inclination to pray over such mundane things. And I don't remember what the prayer was that he said, just something along the lines of "Heavenly Father, please bless Sand's gravy and make it turn out well. Amen." 

Yesterday we celebrated our 33rd Thanksgiving together. The bird was delicious, the pie was exquisite ... and that gravy was so perfectly rich and delicious that guests asked for more of it to crown the meat and potatoes. Bernie and I both thanked Fr. Schmalhofer (wherever he may be these decades later)  for the continued efficacy of his blessing, just as we have every Thanksgiving since the one at which he was our guest.

This is a fact: I have never made a bad batch of gravy, be it beef or pork or chicken or turkey since Fr. Schmalhofer said his prayer. Bernie and I joke that maybe one day Fr. Schmalhofer will be known as the Patron Saint of Gravies. 

Silly story? Maybe. But it gives me the opportunity, every time I make a gravy, to reflect on the efficacy of prayer, and to be comforted that God cares about us so much -- even in the little stuff.

Thanksgiving

What with finishing up NaNoWriMo, I was left with one day to focus on preparing for Thanksgiving.

We don't get VERY elaborate with the day. We have a turkey, stuffing, a veggie, cranberry sauce (which Bernie makes from fresh berries), and pumpkin pie if I have the time and energy to make one. Close friends and we alternate where we'll eat a Thanksgiving meal; this time it was at our house.

THE question on everyone's lips was, "Are you going to make pumpkin pie?"

I honestly believe that I have the secret to the best pumpkin pie in the entire world, and I can also honestly say that everyone who has eaten it agrees. Thank God my mother made me learn how to make it, and thank God I figured out how to do it in the microwave for even more spectacular results than the original recipe.

Anyway, I managed to find a "banana squash" of substantial proportions, and yesterday, cut that sucker up and cooked it, drained it, pureed it and put it up for future use. (And baked four turkey thighs so that the family would not be fighting over dark meat.) Cutting up and peeling pumpkin is a pain in the ... back. By the time I was done, I was exhausted, and stressed, too, not knowing how the new microwave would do with the old recipe.

At this time, the grand dinner is done, the guests gone home; from first bites there was superlative praise for the turkey, and for the gravy, which was truly phenomenal (maybe that will be tomorrow's post) ... and then, the pumpkin pies absolutely knocked everyone off their feet. They were so perfect, so delicate, so flavorful that I could get a big head over the experience if I didn't know how much recipes like that leave to chance.

I'm tired, to be sure, but the feast was grand, and all of us -- all of us at the table knew how lucky and blessed we are, and were glad to give thanks to God for all that we have received.

Wealth!

There is something about brown eggs that I love.

Yesterday, when I went to buy eggs, Bernie 'egged' me on to spend the extra dollar to get brown eggs, and so I did, a lovely five dozen of them.

They're so pretty, with their subtle gradations of color, and these eggs are of a very good quality, from a local poultry farm -- the shells are clean and healthy, the taste excellent.

I note here that we shifted to buying locally produced eggs after we got two dozen from the supermarket whose shells were so fragile your fingers could go right through them if you weren't careful, and the cooked smell of which almost was fishy, quite unpalatable.

Bernie commented on the ride home that I, with my two flats of eggs in my lap, looked like a woman who counted brown eggs as "wealth."

I have to separate eggs tomorrow when I make my pumpkin pies ... I think Friday is a good morning to invest some of this wealth making taters and eggs with the egg whites. Mmmmm. Holiday!

The Climate Change

I don't have any image to go with this post, and I don't think I want one.

Everyone knows the country is struggling economically. The housing market has tanked, foreclosures are all around, people can't get credit, CEO's have stopped bragging about how much money they're able to steal from companies that they mismanage. Retail sales are 'way down for the start of the frenzied Christmas shopping season.

Since Bernie works for an auto manufacturing firm, we're watching the crash and burn with concern. His plant is a joint venture between GM and Toyota, sort of an entity unto itself. GM is dying, Toyota is just slowing down a little. A flip of the coin how we might land as this mess escalates.

The Grew-Up-Better-Off-Than-The-Great-Depression part of me says, "We'll be fine, things will be back to normal in no time." Once again people will start throwing money away like maniacs on things they neither need nor can effectively use; vacations will be planned for exotic Disneylands and gambling resorts. Birthday parties and kindergarten graduations will be lavishly bedecked with Jumpy-Rentals and goodie bags and storebought cakes with icing an inch thick.

The other part of me says, "Ouch."

I was at the grocery store today, and was drawn into a conversation, the first sentence of which that I heard was "You know, my wife was totally against it a couple months ago, but now she's done a complete turn, and thinks it might be the only way to go." The man looked at me and said, "Hey, we have to fight back with this. We can't just go under and lose everything."

Having no idea what he was talking about, I was sort of relieved to hear his companion say, "My sister had to do it. She lost her job when they just suddenly closed the gym she managed. She had an extra room, so they rented it out -- they had no choice. What are you going to do?"

Sort of relieved.

Here we are, in broad daylight, buying sustenance for the family, and the discussion turns to renting out a room in one's house to a stranger in order to make ends meet. In order to stay in one's house. You can be relieved that they weren't turning to prostitution or drug dealing to stay in their house, but it's hard to be completely at ease with the idea of people having to rent out part of their own house in order to stay in it.

The book that I've been writing this National Novel Writing Month puts a family directly in harm's way, set in these economic times. I thought it would be easy, and thought I could even work in some dark humor about bad cooking. But as I've written sentence after sentence, the real possibility of people ending up in such a situation has very few funny angles at all. It's a matter of survival, of doing whatever you have to do to keep afloat.

Talking to a lady the other day who just bought a house nearby, she mentioned that they had been looking for the "right" house for two years. "You can't believe what some of these places looked like," she said. "Appliances gone, fixtures just ripped out of the walls, the places trashed ... because when you get a foreclosure, well, they just take every thing they can possibly take."

Guess they take a form of revenge, too, destroying the place so that the bank takes a loss, as well.

I had a number of places I had to shop today, and one of them was Target. Business was so slow that employees were actually approaching customers to help them find stuff, which is just about stepping into some weird fantasy world. And there was a lot -- a lot of clothing that was marked down. Cutting prices to get any kind of profit ... wow.

Just wow.

First Fog of the Season

The deck around the pool was wetter than it had been for the last "rain."

The sky to the East was white.

The grass was wet, the trees dripping.

It was the first fog of the season, not a thick one, but reminding us of the solid white days ahead.

Dia de los Muertos

Whoa, it rained last night!

These are some of the drops that hung on my fern pine this morning, the dim light making me use a low-light exposure.

***

Today was Dia de los Muertos, and at Mass, our pastor talked about purgation and the afterlife. It's not popular nowadays to talk about death, or -- heaven help us -- purgation. No one believes they are going to die, and no one believes they will be held accountable for all the little shit (or big shit) they did in their lives. Popular media spouts that people become angels when they die, and all of them go to heaven.

If you study the religions of the world, you find that not one of them says that is the case. Instead, most of them talk about a period or journey that requires souls to leave behind them that which they think was important in life: beauty, wealth, associations; or to embark on a journey that strives to attain something that is beyond beauty, wealth, or associations. Only after leaving behind the earthly stuff, or striving for the non-earthly stuff, is completion, or Heaven, attained. 

The interim time between death and "heaven" is about purgation, if the soul hasn't bothered to deal with it before.

 (Yes, I believe there is a "Hell" -- a place without God for those who have no desire or interest to be with God. That's also what my church teaches. God is not a machine-gun pointed at every soul's head. God does not demand, "Love Me or I will kill you." But God will allow anyone the choice of existing outside of Heaven.)

What makes me fixate on Purgation today? Why, my mother's condition, wasting slowly away with Alzheimer's Syndrome. 

My mother was always a very proud (arrogant) person, always always always ragging and bragging about how she had raised the family up from poverty to prosperity. (We're talking small town prosperity here, not riches, BTW) Now, though she is declining in health with Alzheimers, she is well-kept with 24-hr care in her own home. Her financial acumen of her mid-years has borne fruit: she can live in her own home, amidst all her (meager) possessions, and need not go to a nursing home.

But all her pride is being taken away; this is her time of Purgation. Her ready wit, her savvy about money, her care for her property -- all gone. Her control over her estate, the doorways of her home, her ability to light a wood fire in the furnace and heat her home -- all gone. Her family -- God help us, all of us were her possessions -- is all beyond her reach to control and manipulate. 

Her care-givers make sure she dresses or is dressed appropriately; they take her where she might want to go; they take care of her property and her bills are all paid by a trust fund. She could smile and accept that she is in comfort, but she does not.

Instead, she pretends that there is nothing wrong with her, and fights every offer of help, and hates that she's been taken care off.

I watch her, in her purgation, and wonder what she'll let go before the end.

And I pray for her. 

Halloween, 2008

Hartley's Potato Chips.

Oooh, yeah. They arrived today, a couple days earlier than I expected them. I order them from a little town called Lewistown, Pennsylvania, at a ridiculous cost ... because they taste so yummy to me and they do not use sunflower oil, to which I have a hideously reactive allergy.

My Halloween treat was to open a bag and snag a couple mouthfuls. The Hartley's is to be my NaNoWriMo reward for when I get daily word count, but I couldn't wait. It's been so long since I had last snarfed the salty snacks...

I painted two extra eyeballs on my face tonight, by way of a costume, and I managed to freak my grand-daughter out when she saw me. That's a successful makeup job, I think. We took pics; if I can find one that doesn't make me look too aged or worn, I'll add it to this post tomorrow.

And rain is drizzling again.

P.S. There I am with my extra eyeballs.

Thunder!

Weather reports here have been changing hour to hour.

When I got up this morning, the weather report said it would rain tonight sometime. I went out to the ranch to ride mid-morning, and after riding, my friend and I cleaned the paddocks because rain looked to be close on our heels.

I wasn't home an hour before rain began to fall, and with the rain, lightning and thunder, which NONE of the weather services had predicted.

One of the few things I miss from Back East is thunderstorms. Bernie and I sat out on the front porch and watched the lightning and listened to the thunder for several hours. Glorious! And duh, so much for the weather services.

As I write, the rain continues to drizzle, though the thunder has moved away. Nevertheless, I feel pleasantly drowsy; I tend to sleep like the dead when a thunderstorm moves through. Maybe it is because I was born during a thunderstorm; maybe it's because while it thunders, I know I have nothing more that I have to accomplish.

Posers

After I'd taken a photo of my latest artwork, I took a break and tried to snap some pictures of the dogs. (Click on "latest artwork" for the link.)

It wasn't too hard to get them to lie down beside each other, but they would not look at me with my scary camera until I said, "Where is ball?"

Ears came up and I had their undivided attention.

Such good boys, Sebastian and Howie. They spent much of the morning with me in the garage studio, just peacefully lying on the carpet, watching people and cars pass by. (The garage door was open to warm it up in there a bit.) Even when a neighbor passed by with her dog, they didn't move.

My husband frequently asks me if I'm happy; I'm not sure why -- I hope I don't have a sad-looking face. Frankly, I think I am one of the most fortunate people in the world, and hugging these two big beasties reminds me of that in an instant.

Yuck, That's How Much Crud There Is in the Air

Oh, the hazy airs of autumn...

This tree is catty-corner across the street. I looked out the front window tonight and did a double take at the light. Grabbing the camera, I snapped a shot to record some very filthy air.

We're very nearly at the end of almond harvesting season here in the Valley; you can't see the mountains on either side of the Valley for the dust hazing the view, and everywhere you go, people are hacking.

Lillian is coughing at night; in the mornings I wake up and can't speak clearly until I get some hot tea down my throat. The cars, the sidewalks, the windows, the leaves on the trees -- everything is coated with dust kicked up by the shaking, sweeping, and vacuuming machines.

We had a trifling bit of rain the other week, and it dropped a lot of mud out of the sky. Everything looked splattered by mud. Amazing. We're hoping for a good hard cleansing rain in November, but the weather forecasters are changing their predictions from "rain" to "no rain" on an hourly basis.

I begged off going out to ride the horse this afternoon because it was too hot for this time of year. There wasn't a smidge of a breeze, the flies are insanely active before colder weather, and no amount of bug spray helps keep the biting flies off this old girl when she sweats. It was a grand afternoon to sit in the new studio and ply pigments instead.

This Then, Is the New Work Space

Look at that chair! All that expanse of table! Room for books and tools, and elbows ... heaven!

In this picture, the garage door is shut, because night had fallen, and I didn't want any more mosquitoes than necessary to drift in to gaze at my artwork, but for a good couple hours, that door was open, letting in a lovely afternoon light, and making my new "studio" seem tremendously airy and livable.

Today, I worked out there and kept an eye on Lillian as she drew on the driveway with chalk and played in and out of the garage until her mother arrived. It was wonderful, and I would be a liar if I said I wasn't longing to be out there from the time I got up.

The problem is going to be the cold. The area is neither heated nor insulated; eventually I may need to remedy that. But for now, I am in love with it.

Me and the Phoebe

Yesterday morning I saw these clouds at sunrise, and went outside to take a picture of them.

Not only were they pretty pink, but their shape made me suspicious -- they looked, to me, like the kind of clouds that bring a weather change ... like rain.

No rain was in the forecast either by The Weather Channel, or Accu-Weather, or Weather Underground, however, so I put it down as just one of those tricky sky-flukes. Later in the day, a black phoebe was diving at specks on the surface of the pool, which also is a frequent harbinger of rain. I checked the weather again. Same forecast, no rain in sight for the rest of the month.

This morning, I blearily peered out the back door to see a wet patio! It DID rain!

I was so pleased by my weather acumen that I didn't even mind that the rugs I put out to dry yesterday evening ... weren't.

Getting Closer

This morning, after vacuuming 600 tons of dog hair off the carpets and the furniture, and mopping the kitchen, I treated myself to the assembly of my new drafting stool.

I've been pining for my studio, which I gave up in trade for the master bedroom; Alex took pity on me and tackled the horrid mess in the garage and cleared me a workspace that is wonderful ... but it's a standing-height workspace -- no way to sit. Until I got this drafting chair, which moves up and down at the touch of a lever.

The other problem with the garage workspace was the lighting. There's an incandescent bulb over the tool workbench (ugly) and a fluorescent fixture on the ceiling that doesn't like working and that was it. To see anything clearly out there, you have to open the garage door.

Today, in addition to construction of the chair, I de-structed my total spectrum floor lamp and converted it to a tall table lamp. Now I have the space, and the light. Unfortunately, I had to open the garage to get enough light in there to tear the lamp apart ... and so now I have not only the space, and the light, but also about 50 flies who wandered in to see what was happening.

As a side incident, the box the chair came in was large enough for a six-year-old to play in. The box, by turns, became a space ship, a dog house, a dog bed, a tree house, and a swimming pool. If I paid the box to entertain Lil for as many hours today as she played with it on the back patio, the chair would have been free.

Toys and Snacks

This, then, would be why my house is always cluttered with wood chips and twigs.

I try to keep an eye on Sebastian so that he doesn't drag in chunks of wood from the woodstack or shreds of papyrus, or stuff we've stacked for kindling and never got around to putting in the kindling barrel. But he managed to slip this one into the house without me knowing about it.

He knows he's not supposed to do this, and that is why the picture shows him lying very still: if he doesn't move, maybe I will not have seen him with the stick and won't take it away from him.

There was a spot of evening sun that I wanted to catch on the front porch, so I took my camera and went, leaving the dog with the stick.

I didn't have to take the stick away from the young hound: when I came back in from the front porch, Howie had taken it away from him.

Even though Howie hates the camera, he was jealous that I stopped to snap a picture, and so stole Seb's toy and crunched a good bit of it to smithereens. Jealous? My darling Howie? You betcha. He doesn't even like it if I look at Sebastian too long. Nothing can convince Howie that he is foremost in my heart, as far as dogs go.

Gee, thanks, How, for adding to the wood chips in the kitchen and living room.



Both dogs were disappointed when I refused to give them any of the chicken wings whose smell perfumed the house.

Can it be that their wood-chipping was a kind of revenge?

Thursday is Garbage Day

There's garbage, and then there's garbage.

The City of Ripon has this great idea: make a central recycling area where people can bring their glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, and electronic dinosaurs ... and recycle them, the proceeds from which go to the local schools. At first they only did paper and cardboard, but added the others not so very long ago.

From my point of view, it's highly successful. We went, as a household, from having an overflowing garbage can (and they are big suckers that the City provides) to having less than half a can per week. That's a lot of trash that DOESN'T go to the landfill.

Pickle jars, wine bottles, dish detergent bottles, even Oscar Mayer bologna wrappers -- all are recyclable. Plastic cups you can use for parties, the plastic foam platters meat is purchased in, mayonnaise jars, not to mention newspapers, drawing papers, cereal boxes, plastic bags for groceries and vegetables ... can be put to use if recycled.

I check everything now, searching for that little triangle on every plastic container. And frankly, if I don't find it, I won't buy the product again. Just today I turned down a plastic container of cookies because it was not recyclable.

Years and years ago, when I was still riding my first horse, the mighty and handsome Crow, a friend and I rode up Austin Road the next town up the highway, just to see how far we could go. We rode to the county landfill, which you can see from Highway 99 as a mountain -- something we don't really, naturally have in this valley. A mountain -- of systematically buried trash. It was amazing to see, that high, wide hill, and disgusting to think that it was all trash. I think of that ride, and that mountain, every time I take the recyclables down town to the Recycle Center.

I'm trying not to make that mountain any higher than I absolutely have to.

Learning About Creation

My granddaughter's artwork continues to amaze and inspire me. And to teach me something about creativity.

Lillian presented me with this picture of a jack o' lantern yesterday. She's almost always proud of her drawings, or at least enjoys doing them, but this one she knew was good.

I was struck by the sheer raw power of it. It arrests. It draws one's eye around and around. It makes me wonder just exactly how this little artist sees the world around her.

And then, after she had brought me this gem, delighted that I told her I was going to scan it in for posterity. She went back to drawing.

Lillian comes to me regularly to beg paper for drawing; that's why we keep a case of copy paper in the garage, because although she always asks for "a piece" of paper, I hand her anywhere from five to twenty sheets. She uses them up, one after another. A few minutes after she did the jack o' lantern, she presented me with a vivid picture of Molly the Macaw.

It's a cheerful picture, in spite of the numerous times that damned bird has bitten her. "This is Molly," Lillian told me, "but not in a cage -- in the jungle."

The white surrounding the parrot's eye, the scarlet and blue, the mix of colors in the tail ... impressive.

Every couple minutes for about an hour, Lil brought me picture after picture. Some of them were small, some filled the paper. The set of markers her parents bought her seems to have taken her fancy as a medium.

I suppose that I can see that; like the markers, Lil is a loud, intense, immediate presence in the world. No shrinking violet this one.

"Why don't you draw Molly flapping her wings?" her father asked her. It was inspiration enough, and she promptly got another sheet of paper and started, just like that. In short order, she brought the next one for me to see.

It's a very good representation of the macaw flapping, her wings moving so fast they blur. Again, I was impressed by Lil's willingness to attempt a subject she'd never done before ... and by her decision to include her own thought in the picture: Molly has a bow in her "hair."

Why am I so taken with a child's scribbles? Well that's really what this blog entry is supposed to be about, but I'm having a hard time ... admitting? ... confessing? ...realizing what a coward I am?

Lillian just DOES her art. She loves the praise she gets for it, but it's not WHY she does it. She is just as likely to draw and draw and draw by herself, and when done, cheerfully bundle up the used paper and stuff it all unceremoniously into the recycle bin. The closest I've come to that is playing with lines and colors in the computer Paint program. All one has to do is shut down the computer, and the evidence of playful artwork is gone. It says rather a lot about my artwork, doesn't it? Somehow I've internalized a little shadow voice that I can hear say, "Don't waste paper! Don't waste your talent with scribbling! Come on, do it right or don't do it at all!"

Lil brought me picture after picture, asking if I was going to scan them all. "No, just some," I told her, and she wasn't too disappointed.

However, when I picked up the pictures for scanning this morning, I found that she had slipped a fourth one in on the bottom. And this one is what prompted this post.

From colorful portraits of Molly, Lil had switched to pencil, and then back to markers with no hesitation. I know this drawing has a story that Lillian was telling to herself while she drew; there is a man-macaw in a sober hat, and a lady macaw with a fancy hat and lipstick. I believe that their egg is behind them.

The woman behind them has one long-lashed eye -- there may not have been room for two, but that wasn't important. She does have lipstick, also.

All three figures are in motion; they're not just standing there.

Creativity should be in motion, too, not just huddled in a drawer waiting for reincarnation in a new life. Whether it's writing, or drawing, or singing, it should be being done. Experiments should blow up the laboratory, over and over. Strange creatures ought to have the chance to see the light of day. Words should be sounded out, set in patterns to bring new thoughts to life, to freshen old thoughts to fit the world like new garments.

Lillian is teaching me to ... move!

Winds of Change?

The stock market fiasco and Everyone-Is-Bankrupt thing has me stumped.

I don't know much about money, except that you have it and buy stuff, or you don't have it, and you don't buy stuff. Most of what I'm hearing these days is that not too many people in the world have that sense of what money is about.

I appreciate credit; but I've always assumed that "credit" is an amount that you KNOW will be paid back to you, or that you KNOW you CAN pay back. Not speculation. KNOW. Not a gamble. KNOW. But then, I hate gambling, whether it is for pennies or peanuts. Calculating odds has no hold on my mind at all, thank God it wasn't a course in university.

Anyway, the headlines are full of dropping stocks, and bankruptcies, and economists and politicians with their hair on fire, and all I could think of was how gas prices skyrocketed this past spring and summer, and now oil is going for 40 % less and so OPEC wants to cut back production -- or so I was told. If true, why didn't gasoline at the pump drop 40% also?

If the producers of oil want to rape and pillage, are the producers of wheat and corn far behind? And that will require the producers of beef and pork to follow suit, perhaps not to rape and pillage, but to keep dem profits rollin' in to the max?

What a world. Greed and profiteering make the world go 'round, and that abstract, unimportant factor of "other people" is dust under the stony wheels of $$$$$$$. At the top of the market, our house could have sold for about $550,000. Bernie sputtered when he saw the realtor's suggestion that we sell our house for that, and "upgrade."

"That's immoral," he said. "I would never do that."

Good for him. He was right. Mortgaging yourself out into the blue because of a falsely inflated market is a stupid thing to do. (Add in that none of us want to give up this total peach of a property due to comfort and location and amenities.)

Nevertheless, the times seem to be in doubt, and I did not -- did not -- panic and buy stuff at the grocer's, but did pad the larder just a bit ... just in case.

And maybe I'm not the only one. There were only five bags of unbleached flour on the shelf. Coincidence? Mebbe.

Winds

Have I ever mentioned in this blog how I hate the wind?

Every time we get a windstorm, I ask Bernie if I've ever told him how much I hate the wind. He changes the subject, because to encourage me in any way is to invite a diatribe on dust, and sinuses, and detritus blown onto the back patio to be tracked through the house.

(Note from an Editor, however reluctant a one: had I not put a comma after "sinuses", the implication would have been that I had sinuses blown onto the back patio and tracked into the house. Commas are really, really important.)

Yesterday and today were very windy, with gusts to 40 mph. That's 'Blows over the garbage can' mph. 'Ripped the sun-shade off the bedroom window and destroyed it' mph. And 'Drops a film of dust over every single thing' mph.

This evening, the wind is roaring in the trees in the neighborhood, a sound that makes my skin prickle and shudder. I'm wearing my favorite cotton knit jacket to stay comfortably warm -- not a hardship; after so many years it is as soft and sweet as a baby blanket. But it is in sharp contrast to yesterday, when I had to wear shorts to keep cool enough to be comfortable. But that's the temperature gradient that is responsible for the wind, and such is life.




I woke this morning around 4:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep; I tried, but kept twitching awake, and finally got up around 5:45 am. When it was reasonably light, and the wind was not in evidence, I put Howie's collar on him and went for a walk. Gloves would have been nice, as it was very chilly.

He's a happy, tired dog tonight, and it felt good to be able to walk in the morning light... before the wind.

Perhaps I'll pretend that the sound of the wind in the trees is the surf-sound at Cape Hatteras, and sleep in deep, happy peace.

The Weekend, and Stuff

My black bamboo still looks pretty ratty after its spring adventure.

The bamboo resided in a terracotta pot until this past spring, when the plant's roots simply shattered the thing. Naturally it happened during a hot spell, and by the time we got it repotted into a half-whiskey-barrel, it was fair to middlin' dehydrated. That Bernie had to take an axe to it and chop off the bottom half of its roots didn't help much, either.

But this post isn't really about plants, it's about the season, and people.

Cooler weather has arrived, just in time for us to host a pot luck with three other couples. We try to get together for pot lucks every other week, but damn, life is busy for everyone all the time, and this past year was just a doozy. On Saturday, we were all free and met at our house.

Three of the kids had never been to our house before, and they were fascinated by the sound of Molly the macaw squawking from the interior of the house. Alex decided to bring out Molly's perch and let the kids admire her, and let Molly know what all the jolly sounds were about.

That lasted about three minutes -- and then Molly launched herself from the perch, and FLEW through the front room into the kitchen, circled the screaming, ducking adults, and then landed on John's arm quite daintily, very pleased with herself for the panic she caused.

Who knew that dirty bitch could fly? She never did before!

Yet the shared surprise and terror cemented the group in heart and soul, so the rest of the party was filled with laughter and comfort. The kids played nicely and noisily until well after dark, and the food was delicious (one couple brought a savory bean soup, and another roasted veggies, and the last one brought two enormous pies for dessert).

As always, after everyone had left, and the next day dawned, I felt a sense of loss. For more than a year after the first (and only, sad to say) Piker Press Writers Conference held here, I missed the Pikers so much that I dreamt about them almost every night. Ah, I should live in a commune, I guess.

The Horse Is An Ass

An evil scientist removed my good horse's brain and replaced it with the brain of a wild jackass.

When I got up this morning, I had in mind a route for the morning ride. We'd go down to the apple orchards and get away from the almond harvesting, which is in full frantic mode trying to beat the big rainstorm allegedly heading this way.

Once we got underway, however, the path to the apple orchards was a no-go; the harvesting machines were working away in the almond orchard we'd have to skirt. We turned to the east, and rode along a paved road until we could hit an orchard road to go south again. We were halted on the south leg along the walnut orchard when a harvester zoomed out of the adjacent almond orchard, stirring up so much dust that we couldn't see through the cloud -- no way would the horses have walked through that murk.

We turned back, and headed north, paused to exchange shouted hellos to a man with another harvesting machine, and went on. It was at that point that Dink decided he was fed up with me trying to slow down his fast walk (the older horse with us was relaxed and wanted to take his time) and began to fight me.

Now it is a fact that he wasn't being REALLY bad; he just wanted to walk fast and get back to his breakfast. Or something. Maybe the pretty pinto filly who thinks he's a hunk. Maybe the safety of his paddock with this storm approaching.

He pranced. He tossed his head. He tried to shove himself into the other horse to hurry him up. He walked sideways, he growled, he puffed. As I told my husband after my shower, "I had to ride like I knew what I was doing."

Instead of just sitting on my fat butt in the saddle, gaping around at the scenery, I had to put my heels down, listen to what the horse was doing -- with my legs, not my ears, sit deeply and securely in the saddle, sit up straight and keep those reins under control.

Whoo.

After a while he figured out that I'm more stubborn than he is and settled down, and the last leg of the ride back to the ranch was at a quiet walk. He is a good horse, after all.

But my God, I'm tired tonight.

More momentous things happened today, but they will have to wait for tomorrow, or maybe next week. And I HAVE to get up the gumption to install Photoshop on this computer one of these days.

Puzzle Pieces: Living in Community

One day, years ago, someone who didn't know me well was talking about a man who lived with his parents. "What a loser!" she exclaimed.

An article in a magazine I read some time ago spoke of a trend: young adults moving back in with their parents. The point was that these younger people didn't know how to live on their own, and/or were not able to earn enough money to live on their own. The article didn't actually sneer, but came close, and seemed to view the trend with alarm.

An identically set-up house to ours in this tract was for sale about five years ago; four bedrooms, 1700 square feet. It was described as "quaint" -- most of the other houses around here are much, much larger, with game rooms and home theaters and dual or triple master suites ... and still called "single family dwellings."

Most days we have to search through this "quaint"-sized house to find one another. Hmm.

When I was pregnant, and near my time to give birth, my mother suggested we come stay at her house; her own mother had come to stay with her when my sister and I were about to be born. And so it was not at all odd to me to invite Alex and her husband John to come live with us until their baby was born.

What had been a quiet, little-used house was filled with life: John ranting about politics, a baby wailing, dogs and cats trying to get along. Laughter and conversation, shared meals, roaring at football games together. It's been six years and some, and I cannot imagine what an empty cave this would seem without my daughter and son-in-law and grand-daughter living here.

It's not the money. It's not the dependence. It's because we like it. We have each other's backs.

For instance, today. I came back filthy and exhausted from a two-hour trail ride through the dust of almond harvesting in the orchards. After getting cleaned up and having a hearty lunch, I found that Alex had tackled the hideous shithole our garage had become -- and carved out a workspace for me...so that I could get back to painting. It's wonderful, and she even hung a corkboard so that I could pin up reference photos. I could not have done that; she did it.

Her lunch, when she was done organizing me for myself, was a cabbage soup I made yesterday. My heart was warmed that she liked it, as it was a new project for me.

We help each other as we can.

And in the late afternoon, while I was doing laundry and shifting sprinklers on the back bank (auto sprinklers back there are totally destroyed after the new fence install), there was a knock on the door. I disappeared from the front of the house and went back to my haven in the bedroom. A few moments later, Alex appeared to tell me that the caller was none other than Mr. Nitpick (see post about a new fence a week or so ago), who wanted to give us money for his section of the fence.

Had I answered the door and had to see that rat-shit nitpicking miserable toad, the neighborhood would have heard me tell him to shove his money up his obsessive-compulsive ass, or me roaring, "Yes, your unpleasantness got you a free fence! Tell all your friends!"

But Alex, so smooth and calm, said, "No thanks," to his offer of money, and when he protested, she sweetly said, "Oh, no, you weren't happy with the result. Bye."

In fact, I knew who it was at the door. I could "hear" it. As I had walked away from the front of the house, I imagined asking my son-in-law to punch that jerk's face off his collarbones.

We mesh well here; we don't fight or argue. We fit together. I think this is the way to live. In community, helping and supporting each other. These puzzle pieces that match give us a better picture of what life is about.

Hard Day at Work

Yesterday morning I was sleeping deeply, probably more deeply and peacefully than I have for a couple years.

I was dreaming that I was swimming in a river (a warm river, so it must have been back east where I grew up) and simultaneously narrating how to collect "freshwater mussels." I explained that all you had to do was wade along the chest-deep river, watch for a colony, then kick the herrings out of the way and dive in and harvest the mussels.

Ludicrous? Of course, it was a dream. But it felt so peaceful and good to dive over and over, swimming in the clear river's current.

Unfortunately, Bernie had to wake me out of my deep, deep sleep before I was ready to leave the dream.

This morning, I could have slept in until the sun was high, but instead, I was wakeful before the sun was up. Rats.

But then I started working on putting up the new issue of the Piker Press. And worked. And worked. Some glitch with an author's link to Amazon put me in the hole in terms of time, and then I found that another author did not have a link to an online store for a book, and so had to make an advertisement from scratch, which not only ate up another hour as I had to figure out how to do so, but also made me sweat and itch with anxiety.

Then the cover image had to be worked up in Photoshop, which was fun, but the sun was on its way down by the time I finished it.

I thought I was retired.

And while the San Diego Chargers chew up and spit out the New York Jets, I am reminded that I really should be reading submissions instead of watching NFL Football. This game is almost as horrible as the Pittsburgh Steelers' game yesterday, in which they stumbled and bumbled and handed the win to the Philadelphia Eagles. That game made me hate watching football for the day. In fact, remembering it, I think I would rather go hide in my room and sit in my comfy chair and read.

Here I go.

The River Today

This locust tree lives down along the dirt levee road by the river.

The tree isn't blooming now, it being fall, rather than spring, but I always look for these branches when we're down there for a walk, which we were today.

The Stanislaus River is low right now, but crystal clear, and we stood along a curve of it above a deep pool and watched fish prowling back and forth. We must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes, just watching fish drift in and out of the shadows, in silence, except for the faint rustle of the trees at noon.

On the walk back, a big blue dragonfly kept us company while we were in his territory. Once again we stopped and stood and watched, as the insect flew back and forth a few feet away from us, obviously watching us as we were watching him.

Bernie and I met in September, back in 1974. I remember being puzzled that the blond Polish boy seemed to have the same opinions about life and living that I did; I remember the fear I felt when I realized that I was in love with him. And then there was Love. A whole 34-year bloc of it so far.

Holding hands with him as we walked through the cottonwoods and bamboo and grape vine tangles, I still could not believe my good fortune in finding such a perfect mate. What other woman can boast that her love will watch fish and flying insects with her after so many years?

I hope, I truly hope, that there are many.

Ding Dong the Tecomaria Is Dead!

Some time ago I wrote an article for the Piker Press about tecomaria capensis.

When the fence guys came to finish the fence yesterday, I greeted them covered with leaf bits and cobwebs, my face raked and itchy from vining branches, grimly stuffing tecomaria bits into an enormous yard waste can. While they efficiently removed the south-side fence, I continued to hack at that damned plant, appalled at how gnarly and tangled the thick stems were.

The taller of the two fence guys came over and apologetically told me, "This plant is in the way."

"I know it," I told him. "I've been trying to kill it for years."

Maybe I looked desperate in my disheveled condition, or old and feeble -- because he said, "Don't worry, we'll take it out for you." Maybe he just didn't want to see me knocking myself out with the pick I had placed on the patio, thinking I could take the thing out while they were working on another part of the fence.

And take it out they did, and it took both of them, and they got filthy and sweat-soaked, too. When that bastard tecomaria came out of the soil, it was a tangled mass of roots the size of a Harley, only longer. I'm glad they were willing to take it out, because from the size of it, I never would have been able to do it myself.

Now the new fence on the east and south sides is done, and simply gorgeous. The part off the front porch looks bare and beautiful without the tecomaria. Bernie told me when he looked at it that replacing the fence was well worth having someone rid us of that damned plant. I agree.

The only low point about the fence replacement was that one of the neighbors across the fence (the one with the smallest adjacent section) called to say he thought the fence was three inches too tall, and it didn't look good "at all". He put it in such a way that I was sickened by his nit-pickiness -- after all, when the fence was down, I could see what his yard looked like and his fence looked like shit. True, the 6 foot privacy fence was actually 6 feet tall, where as the alleged 6 foot privacy fence on the north side of our property measured in at 5 feet 7 inches -- builders always cheat on tract homes. We'll try to make things as amenable as possible to him, but I'm NOT cutting that fence down to match his crap. The other neighbor on that side loves the fence and wants the rest of his property to have the same quality fence. Good luck with that, dude, as his property line marches between him and Mr. Nitpick.

Next spring, Bernie says, we're going to do the north-side fence. I can hardly wait.

And ... the tecomaria is gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The New Fence

At the far end of the pool, you can see a diagonal post from the ground to the fence. The post is what is holding the fence up.

All along the back bank (right hand side of the pool) similar poles were holding the fence up, too, both on our side of the fence, and the neighbor's. A windstorm last December nearly took it all down; only the poles saved the day.

So when we happened to be driving past a local "pocket park" and saw that a new fence had been installed -- a beeeoooootifully-made fence -- we pulled over and saw a little sign on it that proclaimed it had been built by "Richter Fence". Feverishly we copied down the phone number.

Richter Fence arrived today and in a matter of minutes -- literally, it did not take even half an hour -- the old fence was removed. They chainsawed out huge chunks and carried them away.

Chunks that big!

When the fence was gone, they ran a line of string between the ends, and measured off spots for post holes. Then they dragged in an enormous two-man ground auger, and dug all the holes for the posts, again in minutes! Digging out the old cement post-hole supports took much longer.

Then they took a short break for ice water while the new posts were firming up in their quick-set cement. Then they did the top rail, or I should say, one man did the top rail while the other was setting the grass board at the bottom. (No, I do not know why it is called a grass board.)

Then came the middle and bottom rails, all of these pieces of wood being set in place with the use of a pneumatic hammer loaded with nails. I could say that I wish I had one of those, but I really don't. I know I would find it too heavy and would end up shooting myself in the foot.

Three and a half hours after they arrived, voila! New section of fence! They had to quit early, probably much to their annoyance, because they ran out of nails, having come from a job in the morning that used up a lot of supplies.

Tomorrow morning, they'll come back at 8 am, and probably I will have a complete back fence by 8:30 and a new southside fence by noon.

And, through the incomplete bit right off the back patio, I finally (after 10 years) met the neighbor across the fence. He's nice! And he already wants the rest of HIS fencing replaced by Richter. Can't blame him. It's a beeeoootiful fence!

**P.S. The dogs had an absolute fit about strange mens being in the back yard. Such stomping and growling and hackling from two sissy dogs you never did see!

Football Season

I don't know a lot about football.

For a while I watched the alley games at recess in grade school; there was a virtually unused alley behind the school, and steps all along it like a planned stadium. Watching the older kids play, I felt sure that I had a future in football; I could run faster than any other kid in the school, so if I could get someone to let me play, and get me the ball, I could score points and assure my team victory.

Fifth grade saw me get a chance to play, and sure enough, if I could get the ball, I could get it across the goal line without being tagged. But playing alley football is more than running -- you have to be able to throw the football back and forth if you can't muster enough kids to play a game.

I moaned to my dad that I was no good at tossing, so he and Mom went and bought me my own football. With his big hand wrapping the football, Dad taught me how to throw from the shoulder and put a tight spin on the ball. Before long, I went from being a running back and receiver to playing quarterback, and being a welcomed participant in the alley games, even though I was a pathetic girl.

The next two years I saw a lot of play, a bookish girl in thick glasses and dresses, skipping the jump-rope and giggle crowd for the ol' pigskin; then we were off to the junior high school and no opportunity to play. The boys were all sprouting whiskers, and the girls had discovered boobs on themselves, and football was not that important except as an extracurricular activity reserved for boys.

Later on, there was 4-H camp, and I was rediscovered as a talent during the pickup games at Junior Leadership Camps. During that time, perhaps my favorite memory of a game was when the counselors didn't make us go to sleep, but let us stay up and play football under the light of a full moon until we were exhausted. It was a game full of mistakes, but giddy fun in dark shadows and bluish highlights.

I remember the feeling of sending the ball down the field, the spin pouring out from my elbow down my arm to my hand, and seeing the football drill through the air to a receiver; I remember the capture of the power of a throw as I'd catch a football and let its inertia press it close into my arms and side so that it could not be swatted away, moving with it so that it wouldn't hurt to catch it. I remember numerous occasions of having my fingers taped together to heal after being stoved by scuffles over a pass.

Like I said, I don't know a lot about football, but I do know a stinko game when I see one, and that would be the San Francisco 49's against Arizona Cardinals. What a horrible time those teams must have had, leaving the field, SF players thinking, "Wow, I really suck" and Cardinals thinking, "Hey, we won ... but I really suck."

And they did, all of them. Sorry, guys. Made me wish I could still play.

Hot Air Balloon Launch

Eventually, I'll get the hang of making better videos.

I shot this one at the Color The Skies Balloon Launch 2008. I had great hopes for the picture, but the happening just seemed to be mighty slow this year. Still, it gives some idea of how gorgeous the event was, and how cool to be so close to the launching.



All the videos I took that morning are on YouTube.

A Dog and His Log

Many are the times when Sebastian has tried Howie's patience to the max.

Sebastian stalks him, staring intensely with his border collie gaze. Howie pretends that Seb is beneath his notice, and refuses to look at him. Sebastian gets closer and closer ... and then POKES Howie with his nose and runs, usually with the outraged Howie hot on his heels.

Then Howie turns and runs back to his former spot, only to find Sebastian back at the same game. Then they tussle, Howie growling fiercely while Sebastian tries to climb all over him.

On this particular day, Sebastian was trying to get Howie to play with him and his newest toy, a chunk of eucalyptus log.



It was also a very hot day, so they were relatively subdued. One day I'll capture on film their vigorous play, in better lighting.

How Stupid Do We Have To Be?

This is the Central Valley of California. It's HOT.

I was returning from the round of errands I had to run this afternoon, and thanking God that the air conditioner in the Prizm still works. It was, according to the temperature sensor in the car, 100 degrees.

As I stopped at the traffic light a few blocks from my home, a herd of teenagers jogged by, wet with sweat. Track team practice from one of the local high schools.

A hundred degrees. Asphalt road. Make the youngsters run for an extended period, sucking the fever-heat air (and the almond dust -- the air is filthy right now) into their lungs. This is going to make them better athletes.

Right.

If it's good for them to run, and perhaps it is, after a long day at school, why, then, is it not better for them to run at the start of the day, say between 6am and 8am, before school starts, and when the temperature is between 55 and 70 degrees?

Oh, well, the answer is simple, and utterly logical for the American educational system. No one wants to run that early, because it would mean having to skip television and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Coach wouldn't want that. Kids wouldn't want that. It's far more sensible to risk heat stroke.

And you can see, if they're that damned stupid about heat and heatstroke, it's no wonder the little morons can't read or do fractions by the time they graduate.

Memory Trigger

One of our talented Piker Press authors sent me a new story this afternoon, about a woman caught in public in less than dress-code attire.

The story is great, about how she works on NOT being seen by her nosy neighbors. I could identify with the main character, having grown up in a town where everyone knew everyone, and were all too worried about what everyone else was doing. Anything out of the ordinary was suspected of being evil, or at least a subject for gasps and bosoms heaving in indignation. Growing up trying hard to stay beneath the radar and avoid that doo-dah, paranoia was ingrained in my soul and I tried to be as circumspect as possible. This story shot me back more than 25 years, making me chuckle...

The LAST time I went berry-picking without tucking my jeans inside my socks was when I decided I COULD reach a particularly tempting stand of raspberries off the path. Two steps and I trod on a ground nest of sweat bees, several of which went straight up my pantsleg. I could not run without being stung, I couldn't stay there and swat, so I jumped back onto the path and kicked off my shoes and pants in record time, sure that Mrs. Price or Mrs. Ritter could see me from their kitchen windows. It seemed to take forever to turn the pants inside out and remove the tiny bees and a couple stingers from my legs.

As I stood there in my bikini undies, pants in hand, I rather rapidly lost my embarrassment and began to get angry. I wasn't an immoral slut, I just had bees up my britches. I wasn't corrupting the youth of America, I was rescuing my physical ass. Why should anyone gasp and puff and call my mother and ask her if she knew I was in the woods with my pants off in front of "everyone" -- for the neighbors surely would have had they spotted me.

My fortune was with the powers of good, however, at least on that day. No one called my mother or the police, and after assuring myself of insectless pants, dressed my bare legs again, tucked the hems into my socks, and resumed picking enough black raspberries for a fine fat pie and handfuls of snacking heaven to boot.

My mother laughed at me when I recounted the tale, and my father snorted and muttered, "Serves you right," (he had no sympathy for lack of foresight about tramping around in the woods).

Certainly I permanently learned to tuck the pantslegs into the socks when picking raspberries. But I also learned that day, that should I need to shuck clothing in public to save myself, I wouldn't spare a single thought before doing so. It's all just me under there, after all.

Color The Skies 2008

Over at the Piker Press, I have an article about the Color The Skies event in Ripon, CA.

This morning I went to the 2008 launch, and it was just as wonderful as last year's. More so, really, because I knew where to stand and what to look for.

Once again, I got some grand photos, and a couple videos, too. Photos can be seen here, and I'll post the link to the videos tomorrow, when I'm not so brain-weary.

Bernie came home around four, and rather than miss the event, stayed up instead of going to bed. We were at the Mistlin Sports fields by 5am, standing in line for breakfast. Then we went to hang out by the balloons as they were unpacked and laid out on the ground.

Not only did we have the thrill of seeing the propane burners tested -- in the dark before dawn, so impressive! -- but got to stand right in among the balloons as they were being inflated. They are so huge that our sky was literally filled with color.

After the Piker Press article was up last week, I dropped a line to Jessica Coleman, the founder of the event, and let her know where to view it on line. She wrote back a very encouraging message, saying she liked the article a lot.

This morning, I happened to recognize her from her website photos, and as she walked by, I called out her name, and introduced myself to her. One of the coolest things I've ever heard myself say was, "Jessica?" (I extended my hand) "I'm Sand Pilarski. I wrote the story on the Piker Press."

I'm still giggling over her enthusiastic thank you.

Weather Change

On Friday afternoon the sky was filled with this kind of cloud.

They always make me nervous, as sometimes they precede horrible wind storms, sometimes nasty heat waves.

24 hours later, the wind has picked up, not too badly, and the temperature is about 10 degrees cooler than it was yesterday at this time.

Tomorrow, they say, will be 10 degrees cooler still.

Glad I got my swimming in yesterday.

10k for Labor Day, 2008

I have no idea why I think I can write ten thousand words over Labor Day Weekend.

I've never succeeded; I can't even remember where the idea came from. This weekend is loaded with visitors, the balloon launch, the pledge to start cleaning out the garage so that I can set up my studio there ... I think that pledge was from last fall, wasn't it? ... the purchase and installation of new mini-blinds in the kitchen.

It's a stupid idea, and now I've opened a blank document and am going to start. What a sucker for punishment.

Increments

Still continuing to write each day. Today was a measley 457 words.

I still have to fix the timeline of this project. When I began it, I didn't plan out a timeline, and thus, gave myself weeks of agonizing over how to repair the temporal gaffes.

Hint to self and others: do a timeline before you get into serious keystrokes.

A Morning Gift

There is not a lot I have to say in this post, except that I looked up from my morning prayers and saw this exquisite bit of lighting outside the window.

This is what it's all about, not money, or toys, or what people think of you. Life is all about Joy in Existence. I believe that is why we were created, to find those instances of Joy in Existence, and delight in them when we can find them.

If everyone could look for them, there wouldn't be crimes of violence and crimes of greed, or even crimes of neglect, because we would all look for them all the time, and in the process, see in each other the light of life, itself a joy to behold.

The Good Horse

Just the other day I came across pictures from the Pre-Digital days, and found this one of my friend Cathy and her horse Rusty, and Dink and me. We had wickedly ridden from the ranch into town and onto my front lawn. Bernie brought us glasses of ice water; the 2 1/2 hours of riding along orchard roads had left us parched.

Taken in April of 2003, the picture shows that neither Dink nor I have changed our looks much, although I don't have that shaggy blond mane any more.

I was out at the ranch to ride Dink this morning; he was eager to get out and be the horse.

I've been a pig lately, and haven't been riding much. I don't know why, unless it's sheer laziness. Inertia. By the time I read the morning comics and look at email, I think I should go to the store or play a couple games of Spider Solitaire, or do something repellent like clean up the kitchen. And when a rider is a pig, and stops riding regularly, bad things can happen. The horse may decide that he has retired from being a mount and refuse to go anywhere, or the horse may give the lazy rider a really hard time, which only makes it more miserable to want to go ride.

When I approached Dink's paddock, I saw that a bunch of fillies had been let loose in the paddock area to play. I shooed them into a paddock, and went to get Dink's halter and lead rope. When I rounded the corner, he called to me to come back. Awww. Any thought I had about just turning him out into the arena to walk around left my mind.

He draped his head over the fence for me to put the halter on him, and when I took him across the road so that I could step from the bank right onto the saddle, he stepped down into the lower area and stood like a statue without me even asking. We set off, and he was so thrilled to be going out that he broke into a little jog as we turned east toward the orchards.

No bucks, no conniptions, no reluctance. He was as perfect as if I had been riding him every day.

He's a genius. Halfway down the orchard road, there was a hole with a bunch of stakes in it, and each stake had long, brightly-colored plastic ribbon on it. The breeze lifted the ribbons and made them wave. To a horse, such a sight is exactly equal to seeing Medusa raise her head and let her hair-snakes all wave around. I wondered if I would have to dismount and lead Dink past -- my first horse would have been snorting and fighting to run away as soon as he saw the Monster Ribbons. I began counting out loud, both so that Dink would hear my voice, and so that I would focus on the count rather than tensing up my legs. (That would convince the horse I was afraid of the ribbons, too.)

He stopped and stared at the floating ribbons, then went on when I told him to walk forward. He stopped again a little closer, and we watched. And then, though he kept an eye on the Medusa, he walked on by. When we saw another batch of ribbon-stakes on another road, he never even twitched.

This gave me pause for thought. What would I have to pay to get another horse like him? He doesn't buck, doesn't kick, doesn't bolt or balk; unlike many horses, he can be ridden out on a trail by himself with no problem. Riding out with other horses, he's a gentleman. He's got a really comfortable gait for me. He's in good health. He has a great personality, too. And he's a handsome little fellow.

Good, good horse. Priceless little horse.

Sebastian, the Self-Drowning Dog

He really does swim like this, and although he looks like a dog in a washing machine, he really does love it.


.
He will swim and splash and bite his splashes until he's trembling with exhaustion. Then he has to go pee every fifteen minutes for the rest of the evening.

Unlike our previous border collie mix, the smooth and debonair Desi, Sebastian loves to swim. Des hated the water, and could only be induced to swim if one of us shoved him into the shallows of the river and the other held out cheese puffies as a reward. Even then, he'd swim to me, gulp the cheese puffies, and grasp my leg in both front paws, loathing the swim back to shore.

Not Sebastian. He wasn't even invited into the pool today. Howie led the way, hopping into the pool uninvited, to sit on the top step and cool his buns, and Sebastian plunged in and proceeded to splash the pool water into a fountain.

If we ever want to get rid of Sebastian, all we have to do is throw a tennis ball into the river. He'd splash and chase the ball all the way to the ocean.

But not wanting to get rid of him, we keep a close eye on his antics in the pool. We know he's an idiot for water.

My Husband, The Hero

We were headed up to Manteca late this afternoon to pick up the Vibe from Phillips Automotive Repair -- the Vibe having developed the loud hiccups in its air conditioning and needing some routine maintenance work -- when Bernie pulled the Prizm over unexpectedly to the berm, and did a U-turn, and sped back down the road.

I was confused, of course, and a bit jarred by the change in direction. Bern mumbled something about "smoke" and I immediately was alert. This is fire season, when the golden dried grass can catch fire at any time, and everyone in the dry Central Valley would do well to be alert to any instance of fire.

Another U-turn, and then he saw again what had alerted him: a small plume of smoke by the side of the road!

We pulled over, and he jumped out of the car to see if he could stomp out the burning grass before it went wildfire. We'd just come from the grocery store, where I'd bought two gallons of drinking water; I opened the trunk and got one of them. We stomped and doused the smoldering fire until it was out.

Out: watch and wait for any tendrils of smoke to reappear.

Douse and stomp again and wait: any tiny spark can ignite the super-dry grass chaff and weeds.

Satisfied that we had quenched the fire, we went on our way. Driving home, however, I noted that the fire, had we not put it out, would have been blown along on the west wind and traveled for a long way along Moffat Blvd. and the railroad tracks; maybe it would have been stopped by the intersection of Woodward Road, but maybe the west wind and the fire's energy would have allowed the sparks to jump the road and continue south, toward the orchards and a propane gas store.

I didn't see the smoke when we passed, even though this is a season to worry about fires, and I do. I was looking at the other side of the road, and missed it.

Bernie didn't.

His sharp eyes caught the filmy wisps of smoke, thereby saving local taxpayers thousands of dollars in emergency responses, and avoiding horrible traffic backups on Moffat Blvd. and Highway 99 during the heavy commute hours.

He's not only a good man, he's a brilliant one, and I love him so much, and I'm proud that he's such a humble hero.

And yes, we found the fire-starter: a Marlboro Light cigarette butt, callously* tossed into the dried grass and chaff at the side of the road. Heaven knows I smoked for 20 years, but I ground out all my butts and pocketed them, not flinging them into brush or out a car window. Though I never smoked a cigarette I didn't enjoy, I would gladly support the banning of them altogether for how many wildfires they have started in our local community.

Kudos to Bernie Pilarski!

*Callously, stupidly, moronically, insensitively, irresponsibly, (did I mention fucking stupidly?), childishly, gormlessly, idiodically ... can we enact a law somehow that prevents cigarette-butt flingers from reproducing?... dangerously inadequate for living in this state or any other during other than a monsoon season.

So Much for Blogging

Well, I was going to blog about pesto today, but by the time I was done indulging my fancy, the blog entry turned into a Piker Press article which will appear next week, I guess.

Instead, I'm trying to think of the first time I ever saw pesto.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania -- rural means the county seat had a population of 1000 -- amidst an ethnic mix of German/Scotch-Irish/GodAloneKnowsWhatButTheyWereWhiteAndAtePotatoes, I never even heard the term "pesto" let alone saw it. It's quite possible that the first time I ever dealt with pesto was when my 8-year-old daughter ordered a dish called "Prawns Genovese" at a restaurant in San Francisco and recoiled at the shrimps lolling in a puddle of it.

It was GREEN. EEEE! Nothing in the mountains of Pennsylvania is served GREEN!!!

I have no memory of what I had ordered, but I traded her plates, and gingerly tasted the concoction. Whoa! It was so tasty that I could hardly talk during the meal; pesto became my bridge partner, my jogging buddy, my pen pal, and my daughter was so amazed that she tried a bite of it and became from that moment onward, a lifelong afficionado. I did not trade her plate back. She was to be bitterly shown what the consequences of choices were about. You choose, you lose. Heh.

Anyway, that was the first time I ever saw pesto, and I have never forgotten it. It is with me always.

But as good as it was, it did not even come close to holding a candle to the pesto I made today, from fresh organic basil. Wow. Yum.

Fireworks.

I'll link to the Piker Press article when it appears, for the recipe.

Twenty Years!

The Valley air is filthy with agricultural dust and smog, the temperatures today are in the 100's, and the almond orchards are full of branches cracking from the weight of their fruit.

A hazy mountain range borders the Valley to the west, today barely visible through the dirt in the air; the Sierras to the east are invisible until the weather changes in a few days. The Valley itself is flat, and dry, and its culture is that of farming and commuting.

I was thinking about these things today as I drove along the Stanislaus River, taking "back" roads to Modesto to avoid the freeways.

The first time I encountered the Central Valley was in 1985, when my husband took a year-long job assignment here. Instead of the lush green wild fruitfulness of Pennsylvania, I found sere dried grasses in the pastures. Instead of compact little (nearly) self-sufficient towns, I gazed upon tasteless, wasteful sprawl. Instead of my towering four-bedroom Victorian, I set our luggage down in a dumpy three-bedroom ranch style house with an ugly carpet and hard-water-stained bathrooms.

A year passed; the work assignment was done. We went back to Pennsylvania, to fishing, to berry-picking in July, to walking through magical nights when snow fell through the streetlights in a dizzying dance ...

And remembered how instead of towns of 12,000 white people, most of whom were related, there were every imaginable color of people in the sprawling towns of California, and how Yosemite National Park was only an hour or so away, and how San Francisco used to welcome us, with its glorious smells and smiles and celebration.

This morning I remembered again the Friday in 1988 when my husband came home from work after a harrowing week of arguing with his bosses about whether or not to be honest, with an ultimatum that he'd been given, three choices: knuckle under, come to work at the corporate offices where his penchant for honesty and fairness could be subdued, or quit.

There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind when he told me. My heart leaped and my eyes filled with tears. "Quit!!!!!!!! Then we can go home again!!!!"

In two weeks, both of us had been offered jobs here in the Valley. It was a time of grace and blessing, being brought to where we had come to love more than any other place.

Twenty years later, I still remember, and still thank God for bringing us home. Hot and dusty, flat and crazy ... hey, Dorothy, there's no place like Home.

Real Live Girl

Yesterday morning, before this picture was taken, the foxtail asparagus fern was invisible, and bindweed nearly obscured the yellow euonymus.

Truly, it was a mess. But yesterday, something wonderful happened: I felt good, and healthy, and ambitious. Ta-daa! The weeds are gone!

I can't wait for the fern pine to grow tall. Should be in about 4 years. It's grown four feet this past year.

Eventually, after I gain control of this garden, and kill off the bindweed and nutgrass, I want to plant geraniums in those bare spaces.

On the right is my shovel with its yellow handle; the blue thing is a "Garden Claw" for breaking up soil for easier weed-pulling, and in back of that is a wooden pole that keeps the fence from blowing down in the storms.

We DO have to replace that fence.

Soon.

Heaps of Horseshit

Yes, I could have said "meadow muffins", but there were few muffins in the mix.

I could have said "droppings" but there were few of those as well.

"Poop", "excrement", "waste", "doodie" ...

This morning I went out to the ranch to check on Dink. He was moved from a little pasture back into a paddock a week or so ago, so I knew the paddock would need to be cleaned and he could be let out into the big arena for some exercise and a nice roll in the dirt. Pasture is always nicer than paddock, but I wasn't upset that they brought him in ... he's an easy keeper and he was getting really fat again on pasturage.

I found out that wasn't the reason they brought him in, though. They'd put a young filly out there with him, and the sassy little snot beat the hell out of her, chasing her around the pasture like a tyrant. The owner of the ranch said, "So that's why he's in jail."

Unfortunately, the paddock they bunged him up in was NOT cleaned, so that paddock was pretty deep in ... doodie.

Now before you gasp and think that's horrid, let me say that Dink didn't care. His food is out of the doodie, and anyway, out here in the hot summer valley, horse doodie dries and crumbles to a non-icky powder much the consistency of dry sawdust.

Nevertheless, no matter how other people let their paddocks get deep, I don't like it, and so I went to shovel the stuff out. With a wheelbarrow and a tined scoop, I began moving manure. It's not a particularly hard job, but when the wind blows the crumbled dung-dust, well, you better hope you're upwind.

After ten wheelbarrow loads, there is no euphemism in one's head. It is shit.

I don't know how many wheelbarrow loads I took out; more than ten, I know, but I wasn't really keeping track. I've never minded the smell of horseshit in my whole life, and really, oddly enough, in the quiet of the ranch, with just the sounds of horses moving around and no task to have to worry about, shoveling the paddock clean was a peaceful exercise. The enormous draft horse in the next paddock watched me, his great head over the rail so that I could occasionally stroke his nose. A couple times Dink thundered across the arena, head and tail in the air, to see if I was ready to let him back in to finish his breakfast; when he did, I took a break to watch how beautifully he gallops.

On Sunday, the shoer will come by and trim Dink's feet and put new shoes on him; now his paddock is clean; and if I am tired out by the morning's labor, I can take satisfaction in knowing that it was a way of restoring some order to the world. And it was a hell of a lot easier than stacking wood, which I would have had to work on had I not opted to move horseshit.