What Next?

Tuesday morning at 4am I woke up, feeling wave upon wave of excruciating pain in my left shoulder.

I sat up to ease it, and oh, no, that didn't work at all; the waves just turned into a stabbing, burning encampment. Wondering what the hell I had done in my sleep, I found a more or less comfortable position, and fell back into the nightmares that have been bugging me lately. By 7:15 I was out of bed, hugging my left side, trying to find any position that didn't scream of profound personal injury. I thought that moving around would ease it; I was wrong. By 8, I was watching the clock to see it turn to 9am, at which point I was going to call the chiropractor and beg to be seen.

A hot shower helped not at all. At 9:01, I called Dr. Jack's office ... only to find that they open at 11am on Tuesdays. At the least provocation, I knew I would break down and cry from the pain. Fortunately, no one else was around. I prepped stuff for lunch, caught up on blogs to distract myself. At 11 o'clock, I was dialing and re-dialing Dr. Jack's number, until I got through and his lovely wife answered the phone. They had an opening at 12:40 and I took it.

The pain radiated not only across my left shoulder blade, but into my ribs on both sides below the shoulder blade. Oh, and onto my upper arm and top of my lower arm. I considered briefly that arm pain can mean a heart attack, but the source of the pain was clearly spine. Dr. Jack began to straighten out the kinks in my spine, setting off muscle spasms here and there as nerves reconnected properly, and when he was done for the day, told me to come back Thursday -- he'd done as much as he could in one day.

"Your body is going to tell you to 'stop' -- when you've pushed past your limit to heal, you will have to stop doing what you were doing," he told me. "Looks like you're spending too many hours at the computer."

When I left his office, the pain was far less, and confined to the muscles at the top of my shoulder and various places on my left arm. The rib pain was completely gone. Thank you, Dr. Jack.

Today, in spite of gulping ibuprofen all day, the pain was relentless. Then, at 7pm, I remembered that I had a tube of arnica gel in the medicine cabinet. I smacked myself figuratively on the forehead, and put the stuff on all the spots that hurt. Like magic, within moments, the pain receded to a tolerable level. Arnica won't heal something that's out of place, but by golly, it does more for me than Flexall ever did.

I'm hoping that tomorrow, Dr. Jack will be able to put my shoulder to rights. But I keep wondering, what is going to break down next?

Weather in High Def

It could have been a day like many others we've seen lately.

At this time of year, we frequently have high 50's and see storm clouds go sailing overhead to clash with the Sierras to the east.

That's what I thought I was seeing when I opened the garage door to let the afternoon light into my studio. The clouds were varied and gorgeous, and to the south, there were even what looked like a couple tiny showers in the distance.

I was working on a particularly annoying pastel lesson when the first few drops splatted noisily down through the sunlight. I smiled and went back to my work.

Then the splatting came back, louder than before, and there was a flash of lightning to the northwest. A few seconds later a peal of thunder accompanied another wave of drops. I ran to tell the family that the show was on!

In the safety of the garage, we pulled up chairs and sat and watched the hardest rain of the year so far come plummeting down in spite of the sunshine. Thunderstorms are very unusual here, so we found the weather to be very entertaining.

Then Lillian, who was bundled under a blanket on her mother's lap, got the surprise of her life -- ice started falling out of the sky. "Is it real?" she asked, and I retrieved a few tiny hailstones to melt in her hand, the first she'd ever seen.

I've seen it hail a handful of times in the 20 years we've lived in California, passing sprays of little pellets. This time, along with the ongoing roar of the thunder, the hail kept coming down and down. There are more pictures of it here.

And the sun continued to shine, sparkling off the trees, illuminating the waves of hail as they flew through the air, making a rainbow to the east of us (we had to run through the house to see it fro the kitchen door), peeking in and out of the dark clouds.

Then Alex noted, "Look! You can see your breath!" The temperature had dropped rapidly and the wind had kicked up. Bernie had on his good-to-20-degrees faux fur robe, Lil and Alex had blankets, the dogs their fur (though Sebastian was starting to look a little uncomfortable) and I my trusty 20-year old indestructible sweatshirt that's too hot for any time of year except unheated January, so we were all willing to continue to watch the storm.

There was a huge lightning bolt that stretched from cloud to ground in the distance, a loud "boom" of near thunder, and the lights went out! Our lights, from yummy PG&E. Across the street, where they have MID (Modesto Irrigation District) power, windows glowed with light in the growing dark.

I went into the house and opened the woodstove (it's an insert, and uses a fan to put out much of the heat) so that the heat from the firebox would keep the kitchen warm; I put up the spark screen securely, and then Bernie and I returned to the garage with a flashlight kept near, and watched the rain until dark.

While John and Alex and Lil cuddled and played a board game tucked warmly on their bed, Bernie and I lit a couple candles in the kitchen, poured glasses of wine, and played vicious games of dice on the kitchen bar.

And though I grumble about the lesser reliability of PG&E's power, in fact, across the street people were probably watching TV, or surfing the net, or cooking; maybe they were even so virtuous as to be reading books or writing letters. We had the better fortune -- we had each other.

When the lights came back on several hours later, I was ... sort of ... glad.

Bad Kids

If I had done 45 years ago what I did today, my mother would have given me a walloping and grounded me for weeks.

Our rainy season finally arrived with a drenching, glorious rain. It poured all night, and poured all morning ... and tapered off to a gentle drizzle in the afternoon. Bernie did not have to work, as the plant is doing "planned non-production Fridays" this month; before we even had our lunch we were of one mind -- that was, to take the dogs for a walk in the rain.

The last time we did that, it was cold, and when we returned from the walk, we just dried the damp beasts off and all was fine.

Today the temperature was 56 degrees, if not more; I never did zip up my jacket over my t-shirt. We set off for Ripon's wonderful bike trail in the drizzle.

Along the trail there is a large field in which grow tumbleweeds, some phlox, grasses, and various other weeds. Since we were last there, the city had brought in a tractor and disked much of the weed life under.

Sebastian's sensibilities were inflamed by the loose dirt, and he galloped madly through the mud, churning up so much of it his underbelly and rear were caked with crud. Howie was not that interested in loose dirt, being of a more discerning nature. Howie's weakness is ... puddles of water. He found more than a few of them, and lay down in them to cool his belly, stretching out to maximize the mudpack experience.

Once the dogs realized that we were not angry with them for their peccadillos, they proceeded to find and splash through and roll in every mud puddle in the field they could find.

My god, they were filthy by the time we headed home.

I shouted in the door to John. "We got your dog really disgustingly dirty!"

He's so patient. "I need to take a shower anyway, send him in." (Sebastian loves to shower with his Daddy.)

Howie, with his longer, thicker hair, had to settle for a bath in the driveway, then a protracted combing and brushing in front of the fire.

So, had I done this with my dog when I was a kid, Mom would have gone berserk on me. But since Bernie and I are senior citizens ... heh -- we can be bad kids whenever we want.

Goodies and Baddies

The bad news is that Bernie went to his plant-wide announcement meeting this afternoon.

Not only will the auto plant have four-day weeks through February, and many of those days will be six hours (or less), but also, March will go to three-day weeks; in addition, there will be a minimum of three weeks of plant shutdown (planned non-production) before June.

Ow.

So much for getting the floor re-done any time soon. Concrete is about to become a way of life.

Oh, well. We've been through far worse.

The good news is that last night, I was able to sleep, finally. It was such a successful sleep that I slept for a whopping 10 hours. When I woke, I felt like a real live person.

This is, over all, good news.

It means that as we head into the most beautiful season of the year, Bernie won't be dead-ass exhausted from overwork. It means that I'll have an incentive to get my ass out to the yard and tend veggies. It means that I'll get my shit together and plan meals and put up foods to maximize our dollar power at the store. It means he'll have time to work on his new novel.

Less garbage food at restaurants; less junk spending. More time together. More time for walks. More weed-pulling, which costs nothing. More time together.

More time together.

I'm having a difficult time seeing that the first part of this post is bad news, after all.

Howie and I Are On the Mend

This morning when we arose, I from my nest in the corner of the couch, he from the loveseat nearby where he can keep an eye on me, I did not immediately cough my kidneys loose, and he didn't wince when he put his right front foot to the floor.

He took a big divot out of the top of his paw last Saturday, trying to outdo Sebastian in tennis-ball retrieving. That night he was limping on both his tender right hind paw, and on the front right. Two legged dogs look downright pathetic. Sunday he spent draped across my lap, limp and content. It was nice to pet him ... it was all the effort I was capable of!

Today he was moved to give Sebastian a bit of a beating while I loaded the recyclables in the car; afterwards he was still fine. And I felt well enough to run the vacuum cleaner in the house. I had just finished three rooms when the vack died. I took that as a sign I'd done enough.

Both of us want to be able to get outside and play again.

Happy New Year

Along with a lovely chest-wracking virus from Lillian, I got two gorgeous fish for Christmas from Alex.

Fish were the theme for my Christmas treats, with the family all chipping in sinkers, snelled hooks, plastic baits, and a new reel.

I could not possibly eat any fish I caught if they were as cheerful and silly as these, however.

There are many more fish, and I'll link to them in my Flickr account in the next few days, as I recover from this horrid bug.

Bernie received these two fine birds to add to his collection of sightings.

In case you hadn't noticed, both birds and fish are crafted from eggshells; the birds, by some odd coincidence, have tailfeathers that look remarkably like the colors of a Scarlet Macaw. 

Oh Noes! Cement?

It was a sunny day.

Only a few weird clouds were in the sky.

When lunch was done, we flew into a vicious mood and -- TORE THE CARPET OUT OF THE KITCHEN DINING AREA!!!!

Eeeeeee! Alien spaceships landed! Godzilla went on a rampage! The ugly filthy disgusting cheap-ass housing tract beige carpeting went out the back door!

I've hated that carpeting since the day we first saw the house, but back in 1997, it wasn't in too bad shape. We lightened the paint on the walls from a dirty beige to a light white-pink to make it look like whoever chose the color of the walls and the carpet actually saw colors, but as the years have gone by, the carpet has begun to disintegrate at the seams, and tufts have begun to float along in the wake of dog toenails.

Anyway, today, we had at it, Bernie wielding a cutter and fortitude, Alex a wrecking bar and hammer (to take up the tack strips at the edge of the room), and I the trusty shop vac, for beneath the carpet and its carpet padding were drifts of gritty dirt.

This dusty climate is just not suited for carpeting. If this area could sell dusty stuff, we'd corner the world market. Ugh, as they say.

The dogs were shocked by our behavior. Howie growled and barked at Bernie when he heard the carpet ripping. Sebastian looked worried, certain that someone would come along and beat everyone in the house for tearing the carpet.
Alex and I purred with delight to see the clean, bare cement of the floor, even with all its dings and scuffs.

The top picture is with a flash. The bottom one is with the low-light setting, and more accurately portrays what I see. Either way, it looks a whole lot better to me.

We're going to have an estimate done for concrete refinishing, where the company comes in and adds a layer of cement or whatever and makes a textured and colored floor.

Anything will be better than that ugly, smelly filthy carpet.

Tomorrow, the front room, too!!!!

Christmas Day 2008

This was a memorable Christmas.

After 33 years of making turkeys for Christmas dinner, this year I dressed for church leisurely and after church, came home to nibble noshes and putter around with a scanning project until about 3pm.

My beloved daughter Alex stepped onto center stage and prepared the turkey dinner for the family, allowing me to just relax and enjoy the day. And she did just fine -- the meal was fabulous. (All I did was the gravy, which turned out delicious, thanks be to God.)

She made the family recipe oatmeal cookies the other day, and a big batch of chicken wings yesterday ... pretty soon, except for the Piker Press, I'm going to be a supernumerary. (I don't really mind at all, but that will be the topic in another entry in a few days.)

Opening presents was fun this morning, too. I was inundated with fishing gear -- there's a hint from the family! January 2nd, after the house is tidied, I'm going to go buy myself a fishing license! Howie was the surprise urchin... while we were still examining the contents of our stockings, he went to the presents under the tree and carried one off to open it. He's a smart boy; it was indeed a present wrapped in white tissue paper for the dogs. But he was awake with me at 4:30 am; he knew what was under the tree, all right, but he more or less politely waited until the festivities were under way before helping himself.

It's been a grand day.

Christmas Gifts

Wednesday, December 24th, dawned rainy.

Not a bucketing downpour, not a drizzle, but a gentle rain from a calmly cloudy gray sky. Around noon, Bernie and I found umbrellas and dog leashes, and the four of us went for a walk down by the river.

I don't know that we intended to go for a long walk, but the dripping overhanging branches and the view of the rain-speckled Stanislaus River drew us on. The dogs were content to run off leash and sniff every plant and post and tree trunk. It was simply beautiful, a rare gift to be able to spend time with my husband; a walk in greatly-needed rain, a flock of a dozen or more bluebirds chasing along with a crowd of yellow finches, seeing Howie running without a limp -- Christmas gifts aren't necessarily under a tree in wrapping paper.

We walked for almost two hours. Aside from not being allowed to go jump in the river, Howie was thrilled, but Sebastian, who has no undercoat at all under his smooth hound hair, was starting to look like he thought we were insane for the last half hour of the walk. He was very glad of the woodstove's heat.

I wasn't! After the brisk air, the house felt like a furnace to me. I opted to go out to the studio and work on a pastel project for a while before warning the rest of the family off so that I could wrap gifts.

This morning, at 4:30 am, I woke to the sound of pouring rain. "That's the best Christmas gift," I thought. "Thank you, God."

Santa Drops in to Make Lillian's Christmas

Unexpectedly, Santa Claus dropped by the house yesterday to pay a visit to Lillian.

He had heard, he told her, that she was a very special little girl, and that he wanted to meet her in person.

She was thrilled -- especially after a conversation the week prior with her mother about St. Nicholas and whether or not the Santa at a school fundraiser was the REAL Santa Claus. While her mother tried to explain that the real St. Nicholas was known for his generosity to others, what Lil came away with was her shocked question, "Santa Claus is DEAD???"

Her mother spent the next half hour reassuring her child that the spirit of St. Nicholas lives on in each of us who give to others, but Lil was broken-hearted.

And then Santa arrived, serendipitously when Mommy and Daddy had gone to the store. He was a truly amazing Santa, with a real white beard and a huggably plush red coat. He had to be six feet five, not the jolly little elf from the poem.

When Mommy got back from the supermarket, Lillian shouted, "He's not dead, Mama! Santa Claus is alive!!"

Guess so. 

That the man in the red suit knew about Lillian is true.  He is the father of a family friend; indeed, he donated a number of large fish to our pond, though we haven't had the heart to tell him the egret has eaten a substantial portion of them. 

Merry Christmas, Lil.

And to all who read this blog, have a beautiful holiday season.

Studio Fun

Look at all the colored pencils, arranged in color groups!

And see the lovely, lovely holder Bernie made for me this evening, so that I can array my pencils by color group and learn to use them more effectively.

He used a pencil-sized drill bit and then a counter-sink bit (to take the splinters off) over a grid he drew on a two by four end left over from the construction of our redwood fence.

When he was done with it, he took a rasp to it and removed every sharp edge, so that I would never scrape my hands on it. It's beeoootiful.

The buzzard that peers at my works in progress likes it, too.

When I saw this vulture in a store, marked down after Halloween, I could think of no reason whatsoever to NOT have a buzzard in my studio.

It's possible the buzzard is one of the reasons I love the new studio so much.

Finches on the Feeders

I do love my little finches.

If there's seed in the sacks, up to a dozen finches could be on it, chomping away, fighting over who gets the best position.

Today I stalked them with my camera, standing outside on the patio, waiting for them to get comfortable with my presence.

To be honest, it didn't take them long. The cold weather has made them very hungry. They've nearly emptied both seed sacks and it's not even 4 pm!

And then I realized, while I was watching the little creatures flit and flutter, that I could be making a MOVIE of them! And so, I did.

Limping Dog

On Tuesday, Howie began limping, holding his right hind foot off the ground.

There's the tootsie in question; we've examined it with a flashlight and full sunlight, and can find no injury. There's a crack in the pad, but he has one on the other foot, too. The center pad is a little swollen, but there's no sign of puncture or infection.

Yesterday I was so worried about him, pitying him as he followed me from room to room, holding his foot off the ground.

He hasn't seemed in any distress, however, and I've only seen him lick the foot twice over the past three days. He still wants to play ball and tussle with Sebastian. In fact the only thing that he's been unhappy about is us all trying to get him to stay off the foot and relax.

Today he insisted on coming outside with me and puttering about the patio while I swept up leaves and stuff in advance of rain.  While I scooped detritus up with a dustpan, he went walking past me ... walking nearly normally, with hardly a trace of a limp.

Maybe the cold cement made it feel better. He walked around for a while, and even was ready to trot after Sebastian when someone let the younger dog out. Maybe in another day he'll be ready to go for a gentle walk.

The day before he began limping, I let him out to run a neighbor's cat out of the yard. When he does that, he goes all out, toenails scrabbling, charging heedlessly over the retaining wall to stomp at the base of the fence. Where the cat went back over the fence is a pile of wood that the fence installers left for me; I suspect Howie didn't see the pieces in the weeds and went right over them, bruising his sweet striped foot in the process.

Watching him walk using all four feet is such a relief.

Lois

Lois Munger was an example of how to welcome strangers.

When we were escaping the hell of our existence in Houston, Texas, we went to stay with our dear friends John and Melissa for a while. We met their families, and I was particularly impressed with Lois and Virgil -- John's parents. Though we were strangers, they accepted us into their kitchen and at their table as though we were family, by virtue of our friendship with John and Melissa. 

I found out tonight that Lois had a stroke on Monday, and is not expected to last long. She was part of the best of people, and though I haven't seen her in twenty years, knowing that she's leaving the world has me in tears. When she gets to the other side, she'll know how much I loved her for being an icon of welcome and fortitude.

I've tried to be like her.

Foggy Day and Hard Work

This morning was so foggy I refused to take my camera out in that slop, so I had to do a picture in Photoshop.

Dink was my concern today; it's supposed to be rain-prone tonight, and the only thing worse than a dirty paddock is a soaked dirty paddock, so my friend and I opted to clean the horses' paddocks rather than ride.

 

Ugh, what a heavy mess. With all the fog, nothing dries out. Including dung. We turned the horses out into the arena to roll and stretch their legs, and while Dink occasionally thundered across the arena, and Peanut quietly stood, trying to ignore Dink's rudeness, my friend and I shoveled horse poop for almost two hours. 

She has a bum wrist from a horsey accident over a year ago; my back is pretty iffy. We've found, though, that if we help each other, the job of mucking out the paddocks isn't as bad, and we don't get ... quite ... so tired.

As in, just too tired to go find something to eat so I can take some ibuprofen, but not so tired I won't be able to stand up and stagger over to the bed before falling asleep.

The Biting Poltergeist

Back in 1972, I drew a cartoon episode called "The Biting Poltergeist."

It was drawn on a cheap newsprint pad, 24" x 30", and I've carried that pad along with me back and forth across the country. This past few years, I couldn't help but admit that the paper was crumbling, that the cartoon in blue Bic ink was in danger of disappearing into dust. I knew I had to figure out a way to preserve it, even though it's really not very funny. 

The process is being discussed in my other blog, Resolution Every Day, in which I goad myself to create something ... duh, every day. But here, I'd just like to talk about the thing.

My friend Bill and I played role-playing games before we knew there was such a thing. Or maybe we imagined mini-series. Or maybe it was story-volleyball. We didn't worry about it, we just constructed a castle on the Rhine River, and peopled it with Helmuth de Witt (the Elder -- that was me) and Cousin Siegfried (that was Bill), and a myriad of characters. He has a pasteboard Christmas tableau of a veritable forest of characters that he still keeps (he's a better archiver than I), and I have a couple of cartoons.

Nearly forty years later, I can't honestly remember what made us cackle about a biting poltergeist; it might have been a headline from a tabloid, or a book of ghost stories. Nevertheless, the cartoon was drawn, and eventually I hope to put it in the Piker Press so that it gets that little copyright symbol on it.

Helmuth de Witt the Elder and Cousin Siegfried were both "old fogeys" back in 1972; although I'm not as fat as I drew Helmuth, and Bill is not at all as bald as Cousin Siegfried, I can almost recognize us NOW from the old cartoon. This is a pic of Bill and me in 2007.

We've been friends since we were both in first grade together, and admired each other's artwork since then, too. He says he can't wait to see "The Biting Poltergeist" again.

Colored Pencils

The other week when I spent a day in bed trying to keep from getting sicker than I was, I perused a book on art with colored pencils. 

One of the first things the book mentioned was to find a way to stage one's colored pencils so that one knew just what colors one had, and what one needed to purchase.

My colored pencils are cheapies; it's not a medium that entralls me. I think they're Crayolas, for heaven's sake. They have lived in a small cardboard box that at one time was packaging for some computer gewgaw, in a disordered pile, blues with purples and grays and oranges and what not.

Yesterday I made an effort to sort them into basic color groups: the reds, the oranges, the yellows, the greens, the blues ... and the plethoras of blue-greens and of pinks. (Lillian observed the end result of the process and remarked, "Wow, you have pinks!")

The colored pencil book was absolutely correct: I had no idea what all values and hues I had in that box. One of the projects Bernie and I want to tackle is a pencil holder for the colored pencils so that I can use them effectively when I decide to use them at all.

And since one of my Christmas gifts to Lillian is a set of colored pencils, I think I ought to start learning how to use them effectively. 

Oh, Boy, Raccoons

So a man returns home from a long night at work and sees the cute little lighted deer in the front yard by the fish pond has been knocked over.

On the other side of the fish pond, that is, his front porch, he finds a wet spot, and tracks leading away, to a spray of wetness where some creature has shaken the water out of its fur. And more tracks ... tracks that look like a small hand ...

Obviously we've been discovered by a raccoon, if not a passle of them. 

Just great.

Separation of Christmas and State

Bernie was telling me over lunch today of a town (somewhere, he could not remember) in which the city council decided to stop calling their town decoration a 'holiday tree' and just call it a 'Christmas Tree.'

Promptly after that, Jewish residents complained that if a Christian holiday was going to be symbolized during the Christmas season, then a menorah ought to be accepted for Hannukah.

The city council was all right with that.

But then, some local atheists got bent and said that if those 'religious' symbols were allowed, then they should also have the right to put up a display that said all religions are bunk.

Such a tizzy, oh, what do we do?!

After running around the kitchen table several times, frothing at the mouth at people's contentiousness and utter stupidity, I told Bernie what I thought would be a fair solution.

Local/State/National governments need to drop the word "Christmas" from their vocabularies.

The CHRISTMAS season is from December 25 thru January 6. 

Let the secular governments admit that what they are decorating for is the HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON.

And if there are to be Christmas decorations put up, let that be done, where it belongs, at every Christian church. Baptist, Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Presbyterian, and all of the little community Christian churches everywhere. If there are Hannukah decorations to be put up, let the synagogues do it. Let each household decorate as they please, and let the atheists put up all the little signs in their living room windows that denigrate all believers in God.

I was aggravated to see a news article (which may have contributed to my rant at Bernie) about the ceremonial lighting of the White House Christmas tree. 

That was all about the ceremony, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the anticipation of celebrating the birth of The Christ, God Coming to Earth to Become One with Mankind. (The only G-word that accursed administration worships is Gasoline.) And this empty ceremony only commemorates a season that is no longer observed: a holiday shopping season beginning the day after Thanksgiving. 

Sorry, White House, the Christmas stuff is up in stores in SEPTEMBER, not the day after Thanksgiving!!!! Get with the program!!!!

*Wipes froth from corners of mouth. *

This is the season of Advent, during which we await, symbolically, the coming of Light into the world. It's a dark time, a time to light fires and peer with an anticipation or worry into the darkness, to look into the sky and wonder if we will see the Universe peel back to reveal the face of Reality. 

The darkness deepens... when will the Light return?

Piggie Finches, and News

Eight little finches, gobbling nyger seed. 

They look so cute -- such tiny little birds. And they sound adorable, little chibi voices, conversational and varied. I love hearing them argue with one another through the window over my desk, and looking up from my computer to see them hanging on the seed sock and feeding.

A couple days ago, I was watching them and saw a sudden shadowy shape come zooming from the sky -- a little merlin hawk, hoping for a quick snack!

The finches scattered, and the feeder was unattended for several hours. 

I hope that I don't have to cut back on feeding the finches; I enjoy them so much. But the economic slump has made its way to our door, and we may have to curtail extraneous spending.

Well, not "may" -- "will" is a more accurate word. How extraneous is yet to be seen.

Bernie's plant is shutting down as it always does for Christmas week ... but this time they're adding four "planned non-production" days to the break. And then, after the Christmas vacation, they're adding another week of "planned non-production" ... and then adding to that, a few rounds (at least) of four-day weeks.

Some people, I know, would see that as a financial constraint, if not a hardship, but I hate seeing Bernie go off to work every single day. For him to have nearly a month off, time for us to go for walks together, to have writing sessions together, to play at yard work -- this is the very best Christmas gift I could receive.

The Weekend Willies

Let's see, Friday I was weary and had a bit of a sore throat. 

It was the day after Thanksgiving, so none of us did much, but by nightfall I was feeling rather more tired than I should, and the raw throat that started the morning was downright sore. Saturday dawned and my throat hurt so much and my glands were so swollen I thought about the mumps, a disease I have not thought about since childhood. (and one which I never have had, thank God.)

Bernie, in a fit of wisdom, had a look at me and sent me back to bed. I didn't argue with him, even though I have only rarely spent a day in bed. I gathered my sketch books and a pile of magazines I could look through and then throw away (finally) and my laptop and a book to read, remembering Robert Louis Stevenson's poem that went, "When I was sick and lay abed/I had three pillows at my head,/and all my toys around me lay/ to keep me happy all the day."

I stayed in bed, warm under layers of blankets, and just was quiet.

Sunday morning dawned, and I was able to swallow without pain; and though I still felt rather tired, and went back to bed in the afternoon, I was suspiciously admitting I was feeling better.

Today I got up and felt like a normal woman, which was good because Alex and John were having a church blessing of their civil wedding, and we were having another day of guests and food preparation. We had no idea how many people would be there, but John asked for six pumpkin pies, and as a wedding present, I made them. (with Alex and Bernie's help!) 

I have never caught a cold virus that came and went so quickly; however, I have no complaints about that. Maybe it was that Bernie ordered me to bed and made me stay warm and quiet that enabled my body to recover; maybe it was the pneumonia vaccine that kept this cold, unlike all others,  from immediately invading my lungs. Maybe it was the kickass turkey soup recipe I made Friday when I started to feel poorly, a recipe based on an Aser story... If it was the latter, then as a fictitious character, I rock as a healer.

The last permutation that I can come up with is that today was a fluke and tomorrow I'll be back to being sick again. I hope not.

Tomorrow I'm making more of that soup, just in case.

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.