Damned If You Do ...

I've been watching the BBC and Aljazeera a lot since the first days of the demonstrations in Egypt.

I thought Tunisia was a fluke; surely such demonstrations would not affect neighboring countries. As the crowds grew in Cairo, I was astonished, then fascinated, then amazed. I sincerely hope that the Egyptians are able to form a new government that takes into account the desires and needs of its people.

Like many, then, I wondered if people in other countries would realize how strong they could be if they simply pulled together and said, "This must change." Yeah, right. Like that could happen in Iran, or Syria, or Libya.

Now Libyans are trying for something similar, or at least they were; Muammar Gaddafi's response was to treat the demonstrations as a civil war, and shed so much blood that war is what it seems to have become.

In spite of my best wishes for the people who are trying to change their lives for the better, I have been struck by the difference in the Egyptian protesters' interviews and those in Libya. Protesters in Egypt spoke of their pride in their people for making a stand, for enduring the hardship of the protest, for being willing to make it clear that they wanted change. However, for the last three days, I've been listening to Libyans bitterly complaining about the US not storming in with a military presence to stop the government's bloody reaction.

What if we had? Why, simply this: Gaddafi would have seen an invasion of his country by foreign dogs as something that justified all-out retaliation. Out-gunned? Yes. Out-manned? Yes. Willing to refrain from using biological warfare? NO. Had we gone in, the people would have borne the horrific wrath of a madman. We would have been branded as the fools and criminals who brought Hell to the land.

And having not forged in, waving flags and automatic weapons, now we're "weak" and "heartless" and "hoping that Gaddafi wins."

I sat on the patio yesterday, watching the breeze and the sunlight in the eucalyptus, wishing that all strife could be resolved peacefully, and very, very glad that I live where I do. Truly a blessed place. But I could not help but wonder that if we, as a nation, had stayed the hell out of Iraq, that by now, Iraqis might have taken to their streets, and of themselves, changed the regime to one that suited them better.

3/4 of February

The rain stopped some time last night.

I watched the puddle on the brick patio outside our bedroom window grow into a small lake yesterday; the north side yard was under an inch of water. The fish pond out front filled to the brim ... but the rain was such a cold one that Lil and the dogs couldn't go out and play in the gutters by the street, nor could I open the garage door and watch the rain from my studio.

The rain has thrown me off track. My heart says I should be out worshiping God in his creation of the almond blossoms at this time of year, but my aging old body and the rain tell me to stay inside where it's warm, and thank God for the steady gentle heat of the woodstove.

Tomorrow my plan is to work on the remaining bits of the Press in the morning, and then after the day warms, I want to go ride Dink and see the sunlight on the white and pink blossoms, and revel in their scent. I intend to pack my camera in the car, and when the ride is done, take some pictures of the blossoms out there. Even though I've had Dink at the Spurgeon's ranch for many years, I've never taken pictures of the blossoms of the trees in their neighboring orchards.

In fact I might try to pack my camera in one of the voluminous pockets of my cotton jacket, and see what kind of photos can be taken from the back of a good horse.

Surprise!

It was a dark and stormy day.

With a coat and umbrella, I walked to the mailbox to retrieve the last three days' mail, which had been jammed nearly solid by the mailman.

Let me aside that I have little sympathy for crowded mailboxes. We could reduce the carbon footprint of this country by 20% if we just stopped sending newsprint junk mail. I've talked to the P. O. about this stuff, and they say there's nothing they can do about it, which is horseshit. So if not checking my mail for three days causes a problem with the Postal Service, too damn bad.

Nevertheless, when I arrived back at the house and dumped the grocery-bag's worth of stuff that had decompressed from the little mailbox, and sorted through it, lo and behold, there was an unexpected treat: a royalty check from Lulu.

Now that can brighten up a day like this in one second flat.

The Storm Before the Calm

 Amid swelling buds

a finch perches in the rain

waiting for his food

This poor lesser goldfinch looked absolutely miserable in the steady cold rain today. There was not enough food in the finch sock for more than two or three finches at a time, so they had to take turns. However, I bought a big bag of seed today, so tomorrow they can glut themselves.

At this point I suspect that the almond farmers with early-bearing trees are sweating it a bit. The bloom isn't FULL on yet, but we're not done with the rain for a few days, if the weather service is right.

On the other hand, the weather service is rarely right, so perhaps all will be fine.

And back on the first hand, the weather service was calling for snow flurries today, and though we didn't get any here on the floor of the Valley, the mountains to the west are white-topped, as we saw when the rain clouds finally lifted enough to disclose a horizon. In fact, the 10-day forecast places two days of snow showers right on top of the Ripon Almond Blossom Festival.

Hahahahahaha! Like that's gonna happen.

In the mean time, while the weather service predicts doom and gloom and ice crystals, this little creature visited our pool:

A Pacific tree frog! He is tiny, (about the size of my last thumb joint) and every time we'd try to sneak up on him to take a picture, he'd dive for the bottom of the pool. So I had to shoot from our bedroom window, and couldn't get a good close-up.

In spite of the cold and the rain, he knows it is Spring. We heard coyotes singing on Tuesday night; I'm longing to hear this little fellow joining the nightly chorus.

Dogs in the River

I don't take a camera when we know dogs are going into the river.

Today is the last warm day we'll have for a while; rainy, blustery weather is on its way again, for a little while. We went and hauled another load of wood with our cars yesterday, and that will not only get us through next week's chill but should also last us until next fall. However, with the impending chilly low fronts headed toward us, I knew that today was a day for Howie to have a bath. And what is the point of bathing a dog who is only a little in need of the bath? How much better to have to bathe a dog who has been in the river mud and REALLY needs a bath!

The Stanislaus River is low right now -- the Sierra snowpack that feeds it isn't ready for a big melt yet. The result is a large sand bar exposed down by the river park. Good place for dogs to play ... and apparently, a good place for families, too. There were a couple dozen people there, with lawn chairs and sunblock and picnic foods, sitting in the warmish air (65 degrees) and letting their kids wade in the shallow shelf off the beach.

Fortunately, they were all on the eastern end of the beach, which left the western end for two dogs thrilled to be allowed in the water. Howie, upon learning that he was allowed in, waded into the water and lay down in it, something he has loved all his life. Now, I understand that behavior when it is really hot, but when the water is icy and the day is barely warm?

They chased sticks and brought them back; they stuck their heads underwater and found water-logged sticks to bring to shore. They leaped and splashed and plunged into the deeper river channel and had to swim against the current to get back to us, and then charged back into the icy water a zillion times more.

We had dog towels ready back at the car, and dog shampoo waiting for our return to the house. Sebastian willingly got in the shower with his Daddy, loving a continuation of water games, but Howie had to endure a long bath outside where there's a nozzle with a strong flow, due to his dirt-trapping undercoat. For him, we hooked up a hose to the kitchen sink so he could have a warm rinse.

No surprise that both dogs are snugged in already for the night, Sebastian in his Muvver's bed (I hope she doesn't mind damp sheets) and Howie on the love seat in the living room with a blanket over him. (I went to pet him a few minutes ago and found him shivering, my poor lamb. I'll give him some warm broth and rice with his food tonight.)

And then it's back to Winter for a week.

Sewing A Little

The weather has been pretty fine here. So fine that I've been opening up my studio (that is, I raise the garage door) to the air in the afternoons.

On Wednesday, I "worked" in the studio all afternoon. That is to say, I collected most of the detritus that always ends up in my studio. I think it's because I like my work spaces to be clear of "stuff" that the open floor is a magnet for bags of recyclables, toys, lumber, fans, heaters ... Anyway, I put stuff away or threw stuff out and took the recyclables to the recycling center. Bernie ran the vacuum for me out there, and voila -- an enticing place to inhabit.

Thus, yesterday I was able to haul out my sewing machine and finish five (small) sewing projects: hemming three pairs of Lil's pants and mending some rips in pajamas. In addition, I did the last machine seams on my ottoman project, shown there in blue denim. The final sewing (on the opposite side) will be by hand as soon as I get some nice blue thread.

The sewing machine I have isn't a very good one, I'm afraid. It's adequate to my needs these days, I suppose.

My mother worked in a "shirt factory" while I was in grade school. She had some bodacious sewing skills. I used to love going to Selinsgrove, an exotic hour away from our town, to visit a discount fabric store. Most of what we picked out was under three dollars a yard -- for the good stuff -- and oh, the bliss of finding fabric for a dollar a yard or less! Mom made me gorgeous skirts with matching jackets; I made myself simple dresses for school under her tutelage. She encouraged me to buy cheap fabric and make funky seventies clothes. We worked together on my prom dress -- I did the tedious hand sewing of a bazillion tiny fabric loops for the button back -- a gorgeous yellow satin, full skirted creation with a lacy-filmy over-jacket (there is a name for that sort of thing, but after nearly 40 years I've forgotten what it is) that was absolutely beautiful and unique.

In 1988 I stopped sewing pretty much completely for ten years. By then, alas, I'd forgotten much of what I'd known, and hadn't kept up with the technology. I made an upholstery cover for a window seat in 1997 and then somewhen along the line, my old sewing machine died.

I bought the current machine to do just what I did yesterday -- little stuff. For now, that's enough.

Stumbling Through the Super Bowl

Everyone knows that the Steelers lost.

How disappointing it was, and yet, I have to admit, Green Bay just plain old outplayed Pittsburgh. Packers' quarterback Aaron Rodgers looked just about flawless, and the Steelers' QB Ben "Trap 'Em in the Bathroom" Rothlisberger played like he was hung over or didn't sleep the night before.

I thought that Randle El was underutilized.

Bah.

Packers' offense seemed to know how to keep Troy Polamalu  out of the picture, and I think that's what gave them the win. Probably every coach in the NFL will be studying this game to see how to neutralize Polamalu's stunning speed in the future.

We had a houseful of guests (which I always love) and none of them was cruel enough to gloat about Green Bay's victory. They all knew I'm a Steeler fan ... how could they not, when I was wearing a Steelers t-shirt?

Ah, next season ...

Maybe next season someone else will have an HDTV and we won't be the hosts. Lord, there was a lot of food left over.

Something New Emerges

This will be the very first Spring Bernie and I will have been able to spend together.

We met in September of 1974, briefly, and went on growing closer, engaged in December of that year, and married the following April. But in order to get married, he had to find employment, and we were in Pennsylvania, where spring comes in late late April if they're lucky, and May usually. So by the time Spring rolled around that year, he was working.

We've often wished we could have been little kids together, to have time to just play. We would have only gone home for meals and sleep. I would have got him in trouble, getting muddy and wet in the creek, and he would have led bike hikes as far as we could ride.

Now, things have changed. He and I are not separated by jobs, or three hours of road travel (we grew up far apart in PA).  Instead, we go to bed at approximately the same time, and get up at approximately the same time. We go to the grocery store together, to the bank, to the office supply, to the library. We'll ride bikes together soon (after the bees settle down to their pollinating job), and see first morning showings of new movies, irresponsibly having popcorn and Coke for breakfast.

Today we went down to the river again, after it had warmed up a little. I wore knee braces so that I wouldn't have to stay on the level, and we trekked off the main trail to a path that runs along the edge of the river, passing by a lovely sandy beach near a swamp where frogs will soon be singing songs of love.

No worries, no "We have to keep it short or you'll be too tired at work." No hurries, no "We have to go before eleven because you have to leave early because of the traffic."

We've been lovers for 36 years, we've been husband and wife; we've been partners and co-workers, mom and dad, Dziadzy and Gran ... and now we get our wish: to play all day long if we want, kids together at last.

Nuts

We were walking around the center of town yesterday, waiting for my car to be smogged. Our town has a tiny down town, abutted by residential streets characterized by little bitty, well-kept houses and soaring street trees.

On one corner, I was intrigued by a drift of dried leaves of a type I didn't know -- narrow, serrated, peculiarly dark. I looked up and didn't immediately recognize the tall tree, but noted that it had some kind of casing as fruit, that had split open and dropped ... small oval nuts.

I looked at them scattered around on the ground, the sidewalk, the street gutter. Bernie stepped on one of them and it cracked readily.

"Pecans!" I squeaked, and tasted the golden meat inside the shell. Delicious.

We filled the center section of my purse where my camera normally travels.

I had never seen a pecan tree before in my life. And yet here is this tree, producing tasty fruit, unpraised and uncollected, for what has to have been many years. Most likely no one remembers what kind of a tree it is; that's part of our Convenience Society. Pecans are annoying to shell, especially if they aren't the large commercially grown ones you see in stores at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And who do you know who goes around gathering nuts and fruit fallen from trees any more?

Well, now you know two: me and Bernie. I plan on visiting this tree later in the spring to see the nature of its green foliage ... and to tell it that it's still doing a good job.

When Technology Fails

Our dishwasher died last Thursday.

It's a Bosch, a hard-working, energy-saving, water-wise machine. I've liked it, especially the aspect of it that meant it could never leak water into its own wiring and set up a risk of electrocution, as the previous dishwasher could.

Nevertheless, the part that is necessary is on back-order -- possibly a flaw in the manufacturing of this thing -- and so for the next week, we do all dishes by hand.

That's not a difficult task. We never had a dishwasher until we moved to California in '85, never had one that worked well until we moved back here in '88. Of all appliances to go wonk, the dishwasher is the least troublesome.

Now I have noticed some things:

Dishes don't pile up in the kitchen, waiting for the dishwasher to be cleared.
Dishes are sparkly clean, with no junk residue, as people clean the dishes rather than neglect to rinse them before they put them in the dishwasher.
Everybody pitches in and washes/dries the dishes.
Dishes and pots and pans are cleared and cleaned after every meal.
More glasses and silverware are available at any given moment.

Now I wonder, why do we actually have that dishwasher?

Each time I do dishes, I think of Cheryl Haimann's poem:

Keeping House
	Cheryl Haimann
	At three, dry the forks with a flour-sack towel. At four, dust the baseboards with an old undershirt. At five, iron Daddy's handkerchiefs and fold them into neat rectangles. Mama prepares her daughter for a woman's future, keeping house like all of the silver and sepia women in her photo albums. She can't predict a future of interactive teleconferencing and data storage solutions any more than her daughter can predict a time when plunging her hands into a sink full of spoons and hot bubbles would be the most peaceful part of her day.

And I find a smile creeping across my face as I put the dishes, clean and ready to dry, on a towel on the counter.

Carpet of Leaves

Parts of the path down by the river are covered with little oak leaves of varying shades of brown.

The sound of footsteps is muted; the colors are as rich a feast for the eye as a fine tapestry. They smell organic, earthy, rich.

Imagine having a two inch deep carpet of them throughout the house, soft to walk on, low maintenance ... in the spring, you could just sweep them out the door and put them on the compost heap.

Indeed, I was in a florist's shop in Modesto in which they did something like that with eucalyptus leaves. The floor was adrift with fragrant natural potpourri, the perfume stirred up each time a customer walked through the store. Lovely! And as eucalypts drop leaves year round, they had an unending supply to enhance their wood floor.

Alas, I have something that the florist's shop did not: a dog capable of shedding a bushel basket of undercoat hair every four days. Leaves and dog hair do not make a pretty picture, though mixed with mud might make some fairly sturdy bricks.

Shh -- Only Whisper This

Here's one of our yellow-rumped warblers talking a break from chasing and being chased by other warblers. You can see the touches of yellow on the shoulders and the throat, even in the dim, foggy light.

I feel better this evening; the fog dissipated around 3pm and in an effort to drink in all possible photons, Bernie and I took the dogs to the river park. We had to wear sunglasses!!!

The dogs, of course, loved the outing, and for the first time since Howie broadsided that tree, I saw him go from a plain old run into that glorious gear in which he just flies over the ground -- he's so fast, so graceful -- that did my heart a world of good.

I'm sorry to hear how cold it is in most of the rest of the country. So I'll only whisper this: buds on the trees down by the river are unfurling into tiny bright green leaves. It's Spring.

Close to Hibernation

Last night I dreamt of a river, deep and green like the ocean. I had to swim along in it, let it carry me to a safe place. I knew it would, so I was unconcerned; and I was bundled in layers of clothing to protect me from the water's cold. 

I woke to gray haze again, and really wanted to be able to go back to sleep, back to my dream-river, and not wake up until the weather changes.

I don't actually hate the fog; in the fall I feel a sense of anticipation at the first wisps drifting along the fields and streets. In the fall, fog reminds me that Christmas is coming, and how beautifully the decorative lights will be enhanced by the white stuff in the air. Fog blunts the coldest weeks in January, keeping plants from freezing, and I welcome it for those few dangerously cold nights.

And there can be no doubt that on the foggiest days, when the gray mass parts suddenly and reveals the sky, the wonder of just what an exquisite color of blue exists in the world can just about break your heart open.

Today I watched a small crowd of yellow-rumped warblers cavorting in my neighbor's cherry tree. I know what they're doing -- the same thing the white-crowned sparrows are doing as they whistle their territorial call, the same thing the regular sparrows are doing as they quarrel nastily in the shrubs, the same thing the crows are doing, bringing their ladies little twigs and bits to eat, the same thing the hawks are doing, circling in the sky above the wad of gray beneath. It's time for happy hootchie-cootch, they say, and they're out there dancing and giving each other the eye.

Birds see differently than people do. People are still hunched up, bundled up, fed up, and pretty much consider that this much foggy weather has long outlived its usefulness.

As soon as my comforter is out of the dryer, I'm going to wrap it around me and crawl back into bed. I want to find my green river again and let it carry me into a land with sunshine.

The Fog Also Rises

Really, I've had enough fog.

Bernie and I were talking about the weather today, and agreed that this has been the foggiest year since we first moved to California in 1985 -- a tule fog year in which we literally could not see -- no, I seriously mean literally -- the sides of the road as we drove along, a window rolled down so that the driver could see the center lane markings. For like 21 days. It's not been quite that bad, but it has been rather unrelenting. An hour of sun here and there, a day of sun to tease ... but mostly, since Christmas, it's been gray and dim. Let's see, for 32 days or so.

The humidity hovers at 87 to 99 % every day, all day; the weather service promises highs of 63 degrees, but lies. If it hits 55, we're lucky. And while I know that most of the rest of the country is in the freezer, making the acquaintance of leftover soup and bargain chickens, this is California. It's supposed to be better than this.

The Murk-ury Rises

Spring is here. The temperatures are rising into the high fifties or low sixties by late afternoon; the skunks and possums and raccoons are committing suicide in droves on the roads; and the red-tailed hawks are doing mating dances in the sky.

Yesterday it was sunny all day, simply gorgeous. Bernie and I took our cars to a little wood lot up the road and loaded them with 1/4 cord of firewood, which will last us until next fall at least. In spite of the lovely day, I was eeping around like a poisoned cockroach, so sore from my exciting horseback ride, and feeling like I was 90 years old. I caved in towards evening and swallowed a naproxen sodium pain-reliever, and a dose of valerian before I went to bed.

When I awoke this morning (not intending to be awake, I just opened my eyes) I saw the thickest fog yet this winter season. I was so astounded by it that I couldn't go back to sleep. I rolled out of bed, noting gratefully that all the soreness and weariness were gone, grabbed my camera, and went out the back door to take this photo.

My mother used to quote me the weather adage: "As the day lengthens, the winter strengthens." Meaning that just because the days were getting longer again didn't mean the weather was going to be nicer just yet. That's one to remember, because it's always true. This year I could say, as The Weather Channel predicts higher temps for us in the afternoons, "As the mercury rises, the murk also rises."

I hope the murk gets over itself soon.

P.S. Hooray for valerian and what it does for sore muscles!

A Bee for Me

Oh, the lovely honeybee!

She pollinates flowers, can't you see?

With all the world in which to be,

Why'd the asshole land on me?

It was a beautiful day here, and I wanted to get Dink out and dusted off before we have a riding date with a nervous horsewoman (possibly tomorrow). He was eager to get out in the world, even to the point of reaching out to take the bit into his mouth, a sweet and helpful gesture.

Off we went. Dink was so good and calm that I was able to watch a couple hawks soaring above us, spot a meadowlark and hear its song, and watch a strange dance in the sky between a flock of crows and a huge flock of blackbirds -- it looked like the crows were herding the blackbirds away from their tight formation! The sun was warm, and Dink let me know if he saw any orchard machinery: a tractor, a fungicide sprayer. No worries.

We'd reached the halfway point in our walk-around when I saw that bee boxes had already been delivered to that particular orchard. It was our turning point to head back north along Kincade Road; bee boxes were staged on either side of the road.

I wasn't worried; we pass by bee boxes all the time during almond blossom season, with no mishaps. Only this time, unlike the photo here, the almonds are not yet blooming. Yet the warm temperature (58 or so) had the bees active ... and frantic for sustenance.

As we passed by the boxes (we were on the road, the bee boxes on the edge of the orchard), Dink and I were pummeled by bees zipping back and forth. I felt them hit my arms and face and back, saw Dink toss his head as his nose and forehead were hit. I could feel them land and take off again, but knew my nonchalance had been a mistake.

Dink began to fight the reins, wanting to put his head down and rub the bees off on his leg, which would have made them sting him, and what would he have done, just said, "Hey, no prob" -- no, he'd have either bolted or shied or reared and I would have ended up on the road with a broken old bone and bees on me. I held his head steady with the reins, and he tried to lift a front foot to brush the bees away. Sorry, Dink, no can do! I pressed him forward with my legs, and talked to him. "Just keep on going, Buddy, we're going to be fine, just let's go, let's go, you're doing fine ... "

He switched his hindquarters back and forth, prancing, still trying to get his front legs up to scratch. I sat deep in the saddle, held the reins firm ... and felt a bee land on my head, heard the bee begin buzzing madly. I shook my head much the way Dink was shaking his, but the buzzing only got more frenzied, and I knew what was coming.

While I held Dink steady, the bee snuggled up against my scalp, and cursing in its little bee language, stung the shit out of me.

There was nothing I could do. I had to keep the horse calm and under control.

By the time the bee stopped buzzing -- and died, I presume -- we were out of the craziness, Dink had no more bees clinging to him, and I was able to use my riding crop to flip my hair up, hoping the bee would fall out and take the stinger with her.

Back at the ranch, some half an hour later, I carefully checked for bees on my jacket, the saddle, Dink's flanks before I dismounted. I examined his face -- no beestings. With a quick brushing I turned him back out in the pasture and fled for home, to beg Bernie to comb the bee out of my hair and remove the stinger, which he did with efficiency.

I learned some lessons today:

Stay away from bee boxes if they have no blossoms to occupy the bees.

Wear a hat, not a sun visor. A bee won't get tangled up in a hat.

And finally, if I had shaved my head the way I was wanting to the other day, a bee could have landed on me and taken off, no problem. 

Oh, one last bit of kudos: Dink is one phenomenal horse.

Above the Fog Line

On good days, we've been having an hour of sunlight. On most days since Christmas, if not actively raining, the sky is gray from dawn until dusk, with only the occasional splat of a water droplet condensed out of the 97% humidity hanging coldly in the air. Such is the fog, although this fog season seems rather protracted.

I got fed up the moment I opened my eyes this morning, and when Bernie stirred, I didn't say, "Good morning" or "I love you" first, as I should have, and would have. Instead I said, "What is today? Wednesday? Good, let's go to Sonora and see some sunlight."

Sonora is a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, about an hour from here. The elevation is such that it is above the fog. That's only 1800 feet, but it's enough. It's a bitty little town, only about 4300 people, and there's not much there: some thrift stores, some antique shops, a few bars and restaurants; some art gallery kind of stuff, a cheap-leather-goods-made-in-India store, a kitchen store, a yarn shop ... There are other things in the town, but not in the "down town." Most of their income in Sonora comes from the tourist trade, as people flock to the mountains for the snow in the winter, and for the camping in the summer. I would not set foot in the place on the weekends -- it's probably a nuthouse of crowds. But I do know that Sonora has one thing I don't at the present season, and that's sun.

Bernie and I walked around, window shopping, wearing sunglasses, feeling nicely warmed by the sunshine. After about an hour and a half, we'd seen what was to be seen, and drove around the foothills for a while to keep the sun in sight. It had been almost 20 years since we were there last, so it almost all looked new to us. Traffic in Sonora was horrible and noisy, so we opted to come home for the main meal of the day.

I sighed as we descended again into the fog, but in the evening, the glob lifted for a little sunset light.

I keep telling myself that in a few days, the fog will hoick itself off and my towels will once again dry normally in the air, my nose will not feel as though it is freezing off, and the green stuff growing on the patio cement will go away.

Yes. Yes, I'm sure it will.

Football, the Unadmitted Failing

Oh, dark secret! Oh, what shame I bear in this regard!

During NFL season, when I wake up, I think of the day as Game Day, or Not Game Day. Now, whether or not there's a game on is not the most important thing I think of, and not even usually the first, but it's right up there. I think about this before I think "Do I have leftover spaghetti available for breakfast?" or "Does the family all have clean underwear from my laundry duties?"

On Sundays during regular NFL season, I do not go anywhere but church in the morning. No. When I get back from church, the early game is in progress, and at half-time, I am in the kitchen making a nosh plate, from which I will snack my way through the day. Cucumbers, celery, olives, summer sausage slices, French bread with cream cheese, strawberries, tomato cubes, Fritos and jalapeno cheddar dip, assorted cheddar cheeses, thinly sliced cold tri-tip sprinkled with cumin ... so much to eat, so many games to watch -- bliss!

I watch the end of the early game, flip back and forth on the afternoon games, glare at the late game.

I know most of the quarterbacks' names, and how well they seem to be doing (except Chicago and Cleveland, for some odd reason, although this year I was incensed to see the constantly-spitting Cutler, so I remember him, with loathing, from his days in Denver); I know many defensive players, more running backs and receivers than any woman my age probably should. I relish watching their performances, frequently shouting advice to them and their coaches, as well as feedback on their plays.

Lillian has learned to play outside; Alex either goes to another room or wears headphones; Bernie has his laptop to amuse him, and -- perhaps it is his way of assuring marital harmony -- is able to tune out my coaching and commentary.

Now we are in Playoff Time, and that means that on both Saturday AND Sunday, my place is in my comfortable chair in full view of the television. I'll cook on Saturday morning, by golly, but that's it. Leftovers and noshes or make-your-owns are the rule of the weekend.

Yesterday, Bernie and Alex and Lil went for a long walk by the river, which allowed John and me to shout whatever we liked at the coaching staffs and the players. He and I were both hugely surprised and mollified to find that our exhortations resulted in a win over the juggernauting Patriots by the Jets, and my grand-daughter's doll, Sanchez. (If you don't follow this blog, "Sanchez" is what my granddaughter named her first doll seven years ago. I cannot watch Mark Sanchez without fantasizing that he is her dolly all grown up, which makes me very sentimental.)

Today was a Not Game Day.

Next weekend, Chicago will be crushed, along with their quarterback, Spitting Cutler (may they sack him a thousand times) by Green Bay, and my allegiance will be torn as Sanchez has to dodge the Steeler defense.

My sentimentality is probably overridden by Polamalu's hair and Harrison's body-flomping tackles, but we'll see.

Tomorrow is a Not Game Day, too.

Under the Fog Monster's Butt

Oh, so dim.

Above the wad of fog that squats in the Central Valley, the sun is shining. In the foothills, people are slathering aloe vera gel on their sunburns, even while grinning at their own discomfort.

People are skiing in the sun, sweating under their down vests in the Sierras, wearing sunglasses to shield their eyes from the glare.

In the Bay Area, diners are sitting outside restaurants, with light sweaters over their shoulders, supping on small sandwiches and sweet, fruity California wines.

But here, from dawn until dusk, the sky is a uniform gray. In spite of knowing that in less than a month, the almond orchards will be beginning their bloom, the gray, low ceiling of the fog weighs on me. We're pretty much out of wood, so the furnace runs at night if the house gets below 64 degrees. During the day, we're setting the temperature at 68.

Crazy! During the sunny times of the year, 68 degrees would figure in my vocabulary as in "Oh, Lord, it's 68 degrees already at 8:00 in the morning! No wonder I'm sweating already! Turn on the fans!"

Today the house was 68, and I was freezing. My hands and feet felt so cold that they hurt, and I could not bear to touch myself, not even to scratch an itch on my bare skin. I put on gloves and a warm jacket, and started walking. Howie was quite agreeable to keep up a gentle jog as I walked as fast as I could. With the damp dark sky above, I prayed a Rosary while I walked, for someone I know who needs prayers very, very much, trying to elevate my mind out of being grumpy and cold.

Howie and I walked through an almond orchard, and my prayer stopped along with my footsteps, for a few moments of thankfulness. There, on the branch of a tree, were buds -- and on each one, pinpoints of white were peeking.

The fog will not last forever.

Little Prophet

The black phoebe was on the deck beside the pool again yesterday, and this time, when I picked up my camera, the bird didn't immediately take off. I got a decent picture of him.

Sure enough, when I checked the weather forecast, they were calling for a chance of showers today. Why does the phoebe fly around by the pool only when it is going to rain? Do insects say to themselves, "Oh, no, it's going to rain, so I might as well drown myself in Pilarski's swimming pool before I have to go out and buy an umbrella?"

Late in the afternoon, we loaded the dogs into our car, and with Alex, Lil, and friend Mei-Mei in a second car, went for a walk in another park by the river. The fog had lifted, and the sun, as it set, was swimming in a watery haze. Thus the sky and the phoebe were in agreement.

There was one fairly heavy rain shower around noon, and then the clouds just milled around smoking cigarettes and threatening pedestrians for the rest of the day. But there was a different feel to the air, a different look to the light.

Yes, there will be some cold days yet, but I believe that tomorrow I will poke my head out the front door and hear Spring giggling.

A Salve of Memory

"And have you seen Sand lately?"

"Oh, I usually see her about once a year..."

Yes, she does. She's the technician who does the gentlest mammograms ever, which any woman would appreciate. And who would ask her if she saw me lately? Why, her sister Lisa, who was a good friend and co-worker years and years ago.

Having a routine mammogram is a good idea -- that's what the doctor would say. Still, having one's breasts smushed and scanned is ... unnerving. Yet the greatest worry I had today was: Will Krissy still be working there? I sure hope so!

And so I was at ease when I saw her. The first thing she told me as I was standing by the imaging machine was that she and her mother were talking about me just a few days before, when the subject of Amish and Mennonites came up, and Krissy remembered me describing the lifestyle of the Amish ... 25 years ago, in a class I taught -- indeed, the first class I ever wrote, Comparative Religions, for a cynical batch of high school students.

The mammogram went fine, and I left the hospital feeling fairly warm and fuzzy, remembering how much I loved my sassy and fractious students, and feeling honored that one of them, so long after, remembered what I said.

What Is This Stuff?

Yesterday the weather forecast mentioned a low of 35 degrees, which is cold for here, but not all that unusual.

Alex watered everything (not that anything had dried out from the days and days of wretched fog) and felt we'd prepared well enough for a touch of frost.

She's already planning this year's garden, and noted that the "Last Freeze Date" for this area was listed as January 1st in her gardening book. I sputtered a bit and grumbled in my old hedge shaman way that February 14th was more likely.

I certainly didn't expect to be proven so right last night. When I got up this morning at 7:30, the temperature outside was 28 degrees, and there was ice in the birdbath, and icicles overhanging the fish pond.

I think some of our plants took a beating on this one.

And Something Unusual

I think the last time we saw this stuff was Christmas Eve.

It's sunshine.

SUNSHINE!!

It's so warm, so delicious!

Also, I saw the first bee boxes staged in a farm lot about a mile from here. You know what that means, don't you? Almond blossom season is a scant month away.

Adventure Dog

It's been a week for Howie.

He went on runs through the park by the river with Bernie, and had a great time, burning off all the energy a dog builds up when his owners have cut back on their expeditions due to disgustingly cold fog and heavy gray skies.

After a day of rest, we took Howie and Sebastian over to the big park west of us, which features a huge flood basin, green with neatly mowed grass, adjacent to an almond orchard. We also took the throwing stick, so that they could expend energy chasing a tennis ball.

Before allowing the boys to run on the grassy bowl of the park, we make sure that they are pooped out in the weeds between the orchard and the park. But Sebastian would not poop. So we flung the ball along the verge of the orchard, hoping that Seb would get excited enough to drop his poo NOT on the grass of the park.

With the first throw, both dogs were totally focused on the ball. Fling, retrieve, fling, retrieve, fling ... and Howie was so intent on reaching the ball first that he failed to note an almond tree in his way. As he snatched the ball, his momentum took him broadside into the tree trunk, with a sickening thump.

I ran to him as he staggered to a halt, ordered him lie down. He panted, but seemed in no particular distress. He got up and walked fine, and indicated that he was ready for another ball. We let him rest, but about then, a dog who had been with his people on the far side of the park ran away from them -- straight towards us. He was a little, little dog, and it is a big, big park, so we watched without concern. By that time, Howie was on his feet and poised to run again, so we flung the ball out into the bowl of the park. Off our dogs went, and the little dog intersected them. All three dogs stopped to figure out who they all were.

One of the things I love about our dogs is that they are more interested in us than in other animals. I called to How, "Howie, ball! Get ball, bring!" And he did, with Sebastian beside him, the stranger dog trailing the bigger beasts.

The small dog, a odd-looking, but cute Australian shepherd/terrier mix was absorbed in our dogs, and they tolerated him, but really, knew they were 'way out of his league. The next throw, Howie was out in front with his brilliant speed, but he overshot the ball, and trying to grab it, stumbled and did a double somersault, finishing with a skid across the grass.

Ow.

I gave him an Ascriptin that night (our vet cleared this).

The next day I enforced a rest for him, but the day after that -- yesterday -- he went for a walk in the woods by the river with Bernie and Alex and Lillian and Sebastian. Too close by the river. He waded right into the icy water and laid himself down. From there it was Crazy Dog Time, splashing and swimming and digging in the sandy bank.

Alex bathed both dogs when they got back, and Howie plainly stated this morning that he was ready to go at any moment; however, as you can see by the photo, Adventure Dog needed a Sunday Nap Day.

Playoff Saturday -- Wild Cards

Football Saturday.

Bernie promised to heat up his smoker-grill and make ribs. I promised to make fried rice.

And while we waited for those feasties to be done, we watched football.

The New Orleans Saints were chewed up by the Seattle Seahawks, much to the surprise of everyone.

The family snarfed food then, exquisite ribs, beans, and "spanish rice" as the second game started.

Peyton Manning played as though it was his job to be a quarterback and nothing else. It wasn't enough. The Colts lost to the New York Jets by ONE POINT. I really wanted the Colts to win ... but then, I really wanted my darling Sanchez to succeed.

Lillian's first doll (I don't know what gender it was when she received it) was a structure of plastic head, arms, and legs, with a cloth body. Within minutes of receiving it, the clothing was gone, leaving a unisex "mannikin." Lillian, about aged two, named it "Sanchez" -- for reasons none of us adults could ascertain.

Sanchez disappeared years ago, in a room-clearing pogrom.

And then he reappeared, playing for Philadelphia.

How can I not love him, and how could I root against him for the Colts?

My grand-daughter's doll has once again proven he is one hell of a quarterback.

Go, Sanchez, go!

Ending the Christmas Season

I'm enjoying the Christmas lights on the shrubs on the back bank through the end of the Christmas Season. At church last Sunday, the readings celebrated Epiphany, when the Bible readings talk about the Magi coming to pay homage to the newly born King of the Jews, the Christ.

But today, January 6th, is actually Dia de los Reyes, the Epiphany: The Christ is revealed as King for Gentiles as well as Jews.

Our Valley has been under thick fog for days now, which means that it's very cold (for here) and damp and drearily foggy gray. Even with the woodstove going, we've been chilled and -- OMG -- wearing shoes to keep our feet warm.

A month and a week until the trees start blooming.

I can't wait.

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve -- the night we party until 2011!

Not.

One of the families involved came down with some sickness; one has car trouble and can't get the whole family into the cab of a little pickup truck. The other family decided that they were also too old, after all, to party late.

Yesterday I had prepared my meat and cheese noshes, and scrubbed down the kitchen counters; this morning we all pitched in and cleaned the house. We were juuussst finishing up when we got the call about cancelling guests.

Now we could have been angry, and we could have been disappointed, but in fact, we were all relieved. (I really hate staying up late any more.) Bernie and I flung ourselves into the car and went to the store for sauerkraut for tomorrow (we will still be having guests for din tomorrow) and on the way back, got to see spectacular sundogs in the sky.

When I was a kid we called them "cloudbows," but I've been taught that "sundog" is the name for these iridescent bands of light in the sky around the sun. Most of the time in this sighting, we saw two, one on either side of the sun, and then, shortly after we zoomed into the driveway and I roused the household to come see, not only were the two side sundogs, but a colorful arc above the sun as well.

Had the guests not canceled, I would probably still have been dusting furniture and shoving laundry in the dryer, and not looking outside much at all.

All's well that ends well, I say.

Happiness and peace in this brand new year, 2011.

Almost 2011

A few weeks ago we were at a pot luck with the people we call the "Haverim." The Haverim are our Seder buddies each year, and we try to get together once a month or so. They're more like family than just friends ... in fact they're more like family than my family ever was. Anyway, it was time to broach the subject of New Year's Eve.

For many years, we invited all of the Haverim over to ring in the New Year. The menu was always the same: bring some nosh/appetizer and whatever is to be drunk. We'd play marathon sessions of dice, talk, dance to swing music at midnight, and then trash the house with confetti and pop the hundred balloons. When the kids were little, we'd run out in the middle of the street with them and toss confetti and whoop.

Last year I begged out; I was still tired from the illnesses that had beat me up earlier in the year. I'm feeling pretty good these days, so I was willing to do something. Most of us fall asleep by about nine o'clock, what with our kids being grown and grandkids not requiring late night vigils, so I thought instead of New Year's Eve, why not invite the Haverim over for New Year's Day, to dine on pork and sauerkraut for the New Year's luck? (I have no idea why pork and sauerkraut are supposed to bring luck in the new year, but we all like it, so it's a good excuse to have it.)

So there we were at the potluck, and I was sitting at the table. I put on my "official" voice, rapped on the table, and told the happy group that we had business to discuss. "Since most of us fall asleep early," I said, "do you think it would be better to have New Year's Day dinner together, or do you really want to do the New Year's Eve thing?"

I have been accustomed to moderating if not controlling meetings much of my adult life, so I was really, really surprised when the rest of the group, like a thundering herd of maniacs, suddenly came to consensus: "LET'S DO BOTH!!!"

As we headed to our car that night, Bernie said out of the corner of his mouth, "How was that negotiation supposed to go again?"

Ah well. It will be fun, I'm sure. However, you can be certain that I am going to show no mercy when it comes to kicking ass at dice.

***Photo credit Bernie Pilarski

Fierce December!

 Now that's what you  call a Christmas Eve.

The sun was so delicious, and the air so clement, that we opted to have our late afternoon supper on the front lawn. The air was cool enough that Bernie wanted his hat and jacket ( I had a flannel shirt and my long-loved polar fleece vest) but warm enough to sit out until sundown.

The dogs were with us, and Howie crawled into Bernie's lap for a prolonged pet and cuddle.

Bernie had sandwiches, and I had a platter of sliced summer sausage, fresh veggies, and French bread with cream cheese. Perfect dinner!

And while the sun warmed us, I saw a hummingbird sipping in the eucalyptus tree, whipped out my camera, aimed, and fired. He's quite handsome, isn't he?

Happy holidays, all.

Glorious Gift

Not a real picture. I used a public domain photo of the moon and tried to show what we saw last night.

Weather here has been thickly overcast with rain for days; the forecast called for drizzles and clouds and rain pretty continuously until Christmas.

I did ask God for a little favor, though, that the clouds would break enough for us to see the lunar eclipse.

When I pray like that, I don't expect results. The world does not need to be ordered for my pleasure. Nevertheless, when night rolled around, and incredibly, the heavy clouds parted, we kept a watch on the moon as it shone down on our back patio, and I was giggling with delight.

Suddenly John shouted, "It's started!" and he and Alex and Lil and I grabbed folding chairs and heavy jackets, hats, gloves, and blankets and scrambled.

We watched the moon being eaten up, bit by bit, until it was all red and orange and mysterious. Lil fell asleep for most of the last half, but readily awakened to see the red moon.

There are many people who don't believe in God, who would say that my prayer and the astounding vision of a lunar eclipse in a week that Man promised would be all cloud and rain are merely coincidence. What an impoverished life those people must lead -- I couldn't live like that, with my hands over my eyes, refusing to see wonder and mystery and such stunning beauty, and such mercy and indulgence.

Thank you, God, for such a gift. I hope that I will never forget it. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life.

Don't Stand Behind Them

A winter treat for a little girl and her family dogs: digging for gophers.                                                      

Sebastian found a gopher run, and was inflamed; determined to dig the vermin out, he rapidly went down nearly a foot with great sweeps of his long toes and claws. Lillian was thrilled to see her dog act as an earth mover, and laughing in delight, urged him on.

Howie, seeing the dirt fly, got right in there and helped, even though he was not really interested in the burrow. He dug as though the hole needed an add-on patio.

The earth was soft and loamy with the wet weather, the ticks are dormant due to the cold, and what fun to see such an enthusiastic excavation!

The dogs thought so, too.

Happy Dog

The fierce beast pictured here thinks that a long walk by the river and racing through the long green winter grass makes for the best December afternoon ever.

He's still really fit for his age; he'll be 10 in a few months. It does my heart good to see him galloping effortlessly across the meadow, or easily leaping onto a four-foot shelf by the river.

It hasn't taken long at all for him to figure out that Daddee is the Human who initiates the idea of going for a walk, either. He knows his Muvver is a couch potato these days, so he follows The Man around, poking him with his nose, asking, "Are you ready to go yet?"

I say this all the time: Howie is the best dog I've ever known.

A Mailing Label

After some months of having my desk out in the kitchen (trying to resolve issues with my new monitor), we moved my desk back to our bedroom again.

[The monitor that came (for free) with my desktop computer kept jiggling the display, and dimming from time to time (most annoying when I was trying to work). Moving to the kitchen and a more stable power outlet seemed to help ... for a while. Finally, I switched out my new monitor for my old monitor (a 2003 Sony) that Lillian had been using. My new monitor works perfectly with her computer, and my old monitor is just fine. Not as glitzy, but I don't need glitz.]

As I was moving the stuff from the desk, a mailing label fell out from under the Plexiglas protector. It was a Priority Mail label that I had printed out last spring, so that I could send stuff to my mother. I remember when I addressed it. I'd been sending Mom a dozen freshly baked oatmeal cookies, and when I got to the Post Office, I could not find the label. I filled out another, and sent the cookies. After I got home I found the original label on the floor by my desk where it had fallen. "I'll just use this the next time," I thought, and stuffed it under the Plexiglas.

There was no next time.

Finding the label, and watching it drop into the waste basket ... well, it hurts still, and I miss her. I miss the woman who was always game for a fishing expedition, who taught me how to make the foods she learned from Dad's family, who sewed me beautiful clothes for school.

I hope she has all kinds of fun things to get into in Heaven.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Bernie lured me out for a walk by the river with the dogs this morning after the rain stopped.

Since my gimpy knee episode earlier in the year, I've been reluctant to walk. And even now, with the knee seeming to work well again, I dragged my feet (so to speak) about walking on the uneven paths down in the woods.

No worries, it all worked well; the temperature was a balmy 60 degrees and everything looked washed clean by the rain. The dogs went crazy, racing through the green winter grass at top speed back and forth across the path ahead of us. Howie's striped coat seemed to glow a deeper orangey-brown in the wintry light, and I loved seeing him leaping along effortlessly.

The big sighting of the walk was a lone coyote, who was crossing the path far ahead of us. The wild creature stopped to watch Sebastian thundering through the woods after Howie, and then quietly, oh, so quietly, slunk away on the northern branch of the trail. When we got to where the coyote had been, both Howie and Sebastian sniffed around, but they weren't particularly interested. For them the call of the wild is mouthfuls of juicy green grass and the heady hurtling up and down the gullies and hills.

Bernie said it best as we walked along on the carpet of oak and cottonwood leaves: "Yep, this is my idea of a winter wonderland."

Ditto.

Little Things

This morning we went to Mass, it being the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation for practicing Catholics.

I like this holy day, as it draws me to contemplate what life must have been like for Mary, conceived a sinless human being, just as Adam and Eve were created. (Non-believers, go ahead and find something else to think about.) Without the veil of Original Sin, did Mary then have a better understanding of what God's will for her was? Gabriel the angel speaks to her, "Hail, full of grace!" Obviously this messenger of God knows that she is something different ...

There I was at Mass, contemplating this wonder, fat and focused. It was a good start to the day.

We came home, and began making a list of stuff we had to do: drop off books at the library, check the Post Office box for new contracts, go to Staples and buy office supplies and make copies of the latest contract, go to Target for various odds and ends. "See what Shrek 4 costs while you're there," John requested.

"No problem. I'll call you when I find out." However, my phone, when I went to get it, was not on my desk.

"I think your phone is dead," he told me. "I tried to call you and Bernie a while ago and it just went to voice mail."

I rummaged around a while for my phone, checking pants pockets and rooms. Aha! I remembered I'd had it with me when I went riding yesterday. But it should have rung when he called, as I hadn't turned it off. I had put the phone in the deep front flap of my purse when I left the ranch. Sure enough, there it was ... and it was turned off.

I swear, I didn't turn that phone off. I didn't even know it was in my purse this morning. Now how embarrassing would it have been to me, and how annoying to all the other people in the congregation, not to mention the priest, had that phone rung during Mass? We weren't even sitting in the back of the church, but right a few pews away from the sanctuary.

No, I didn't turn that phone off.

Somebody did it for me. Thank you, Lord.

Again With the Potatoes

So yesterday, I made a meatloaf, and gravy, and to go with this, I thought I'd use some of the potatoes I mentioned in the last post.

Half an hour before the meatloaf was to be done, I cut up the crispy, juicy home grown potatoes (the darker brown ones) and put them on to boil.

The meatloaf was done. The gravy was done. The salad (with home grown romaine lettuce among its ingredients) was dressed and tossed. The potatoes, however, were not done.

Another twenty minutes passed, with the meatloaf and gravy being kept warm. We tested the potatoes. Still crunchy.

We were starving, so we turned off the potatoes and ate meatloaf and salad. I put a few of the crunchy potatoes in a bowl with a dab of butter and ate them ... they were good, but they were as crunchy as raw jicama.

I wasn't worried about it, and figured I'd fry some of the semi-cooked potatoes this morning with eggs.

Worst taters and eggs ever. Crunchy hash browns? NOOOOO.

Maybe I'll try roasting them in the oven sometime today. Or maybe I'll just eat them raw. They were great raw.

One Potato, Two Potato

This morning Alex decided to re-dig her garden and plant turnip seeds.

The spot she was going to use was the site of potato failure this past spring. She got lush green plants, but they just kind of cooked in the summer sun, without blossoming. And if they didn't blossom and wither, they don't make potatoes, do they?

Wrong!

At least a couple of the plants made potatoes, because around the end of warm weather, some more green potato plants came up. The freezes last week turned them black, ahh, poor potatoes.

But when Alex began digging over there, well, what do you know? POTATOES!!! A couple of them look a bit gnarly, but those light-colored ones -- "new potatoes"  -- have skin so tender it rubs off with a thumb, and when freshly sliced, with a hint of salt, were THE best potatoes I have ever crunched down raw in my life. They were even better than the ones I raised back East, and that's saying a lot.

Now Alex has got her bearings with the potato growing. She has a plan.

Chillin'

It's 52 degrees and fogged in after a little rain last night.

In spite of the chill, I'm ensconced in the unheated garage, wearing fingerless gloves made for me by Cheryl, and a heavy zipped sweatshirt over my t-shirt and flannel shirt. (Pants, too, of course, and socks and shoes, but I'd be wearing those indoors as well.)

Why would a woman hole up in the garage with a laptop? Shouldn't she be at her desk working, or lying on the couch stuffing her face with potato chips?

The answer to this question is nearly ready to go home to her mother, a six-year-old in the screeching phase of little girlhood. Alex agreed to watch the little girl until her mother gets home today. It's a commendable thing to help out a neighbor like that, and I applaud Alex's charity.

That does not mean that I want to share the experience, however.

I am hugely grateful for my garage studio, even when it's chilly on a damp, dim day. My chair is comfortable, my laptop is deliciously warm, and the only children I can hear are the boys on the other side of the street, booting a football (and each other) around.

Also making me feel good were emails from two new authors, both accepting the contract. There's some fabulous writing coming to the Piker Press.

Cats

Down town, in the Park and Ride parking lot, underneath a thick canopy of trees at one end is a picnic table. Earlier this year, while taking cardboard to the recycling center that also occupies part of the area, we noted a small pile of catfood on the cement, beside the picnic table, with about six kittens eating and lounging. Their mother slunk away as soon as she saw the car pulling into the lot, but the kittens scattered only when I got out of the car.

They were all feral.

I was angry to see the pile of cat food; I'm sure that someone thought they were being merciful and generous and kind to the darling little kitties. Maybe they even thought that the kittens would come to recognize the food-giver and look upon him/her with affection, maybe even save his/her life when he/she fell down a well and needed someone to run for help. Maybe the person with the cat food thought that if the beautiful kittens grew strong, they'd become great ratters and hunt mice and gophers.

Honestly, I don't know what they were thinking. I do know what I thought: Coyote fodder. Disease vector for rabies and feline distemper. Scavengers tearing into people's garbage. Catfights and their festering wounds.

Two blocks down the street from the Park and Ride lot is a deserted paper mill, with hundreds of trees planted on its property. I've seen coyotes there. Coyotes find cats delectable. This little town is near the river; seeing hawks and owls around town is not unusual. Hawks and owls also love little kitties. Perhaps the person who was feeding the kittens loves coyotes and hawks and owls and wanted them to have plenty of easy-to-catch prey.

I've seen close up an eyeball ripped and blinded, infected and oozing puncture wounds, lacerated ears from catfights. It's not pretty. Those adorable kittens start fighting seriously if they are still alive after about six months old. It's what they do when they establish territory and mate. Encouraging feral cats to stay around one area is just leading them into violent encounters.

More than a decade ago I had the opportunity to watch, over years, a family of semi-feral cats living in a barn on a ranch. The owner fed the mother cat and kittens, and they were adorable to see playing among the haybales in the barn. The kittens grew older, and mated; some years a passing tom would add his genes to the pool. But as they inbred, they started having problems. The kittens were not as healthy as the original batch. Pretty soon some stray cat brought distemper among them, and the owner of the ranch was quite unhappy seeing dying cats and kittens on the porch, in the hay, around the big yard. The ones that survived had long-term problems; after a while I saw none of them that didn't have hideously pus-filled eyes. I don't know what happened to the sick cats; I was away from that ranch for a few years. When I last visited, they had no cats, and no cats were ever mentioned.

In the case of the mother cat by the Park and Ride, and the mother cat in the ranch barn, maybe it would have been more merciful to live trap her and -- if euthanasia is too sad to contemplate, have the cat neutered, and then let her free to hunt.

All this unhappy thought comes to me because we had to go out and buy a trap. Last night we caught an unneutered male cat ... inside our garage. It was annoying enough to find evidence of a stray cat in one's garage, him having torn open bags of pretzels from the pantry out there, but this bold kitty didn't leave it at that. He actually came into the house looking for more food, and Fourmyle, (the cat in the picture above) left off sleeping in Alex and John's pillows and chased the stray out of the house.

The city's Animal Control came and took the cat away. If the owner, if he has one, goes to pick him up, the owner will be fined; if the cat isn't feral and the owner doesn't pick him up, there's at least a chance someone will adopt him ... and he'll be neutered before he can be adopted. And if he is feral ... well, he won't be for long.

Don't encourage feral cats to breed, please.

There She Goes!

This is a picture of me, in disguise as a cement truck, roaring down the highway away from NaNoWriMo.

As they have said from the olden days, "Thank God It's Over."

I had thought I was ready and prepped for a NaNo run, and I suppose I was, in the same way one prepares and is ready to put new shingles on the porch roof. I had the skill set, and the discipline. Wow, I needed both of them, because this was the worst NaNo finish yet.

I felt bad the two years I didn't finish; one year because I didn't have a story I really wanted to tell, and the other (last year) because I fell in love with my story and didn't want to spoil it by writing junky word count. This year, I thought I would write a sequel to "Going Hungry" and maybe even wrap up the story.

Forget it. The story was there to be told but because it was NaNo, I put word count above all else. The story advanced about 10k words, and the rest was nitpick fluffy filler. "He said" then "She said" and then they described in excruciating detail every step of their recipes ad nauseum.

Hated it.

In the beginning, for me, back in 2001, NaNoWriMo was a mere 500 and some participants who were leaping off a precipice of uncertainty, attempting to write a novel in 30 days. It was thrilling, exciting, captivating. At my fifth year, it had become piano practice: three hours with a laptop, hammering out two thousand words a session, every day for a month to build and hone a writing habit. This year, at the beginning of November, I think I noted that there were already 160,000 people signed up; and it may be that I am just getting old and crotchety, but the NaNoForums seemed to be populated by the most shallow and clueless gits floating around the cybersphere.

Yes, hated it.

Nevertheless, two days after I validated my 50k words and officially "won," I found myself back with my story "After Life" and tenderly writing a completion to the last chapter I had started. Love the characters, love the story ... love writing, yeah.

Will It Ever Return?

See this coleus? What illuminates it so sweetly is a morning summer sun.

It's winter here now, and the last few mornings have been gray and drizzly. No lovely cool sunshine wake ups now -- this is the season for getting up and throwing wood into the firebox, for wearing slippers, for having to tell the dog to hurry up and get out there and do his doggy thing.

I know that I've grown soft as a Californian. When I was a Pennsylvanian, we occasionally had snow in September, in April, and every day between them there was a possibility of white stuff falling out of the sky. By contrast, here in my winter weather, this morning I kicked off my slippers and went outside barefoot to feed the birds, because it had been raining and I didn't want to get my slippers wet. Such harsh weather!

Wuss that I am, I already miss summer.

Skyline: Dung on the Silver Screen

Now the fact is, Bernie and I have done a review which will appear on Monday in the Piker Press.

The review was negative.

It was not negative enough by a long shot. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS MOVIE. IT TRULY AND FUNDAMENTALLY SUCKS WORSE THAN ANY SY FY (what a stupid way of identifying that network nowadays) MOVIE YOU EVER, EVER SAW.

I try to be sort of polite when we do reviews for the Press, but in this blog, I don't have to. Skyline was THE worst movie I have ever gone to see in a theater. Admitting and yet not excusing myself for the folly of young adulthood, I state for the record that we did go see Jeff Goldblum's version of The Fly, thinking it was going to be an updated version of The Fly, starring Vincent Price, which we had thrilled to in our childhood. Adding sexual banging, vomit and graphic violence to the original, Goldblum's version was repellent and disappointing. Yet it did have a plot, borrowed from a previous version, but it WAS a plot.

Skyline did not have a plot. The story was supposed to be about aliens attacking earth. Killing humans.  And then ...? And why ...? Oh, they craved human brains to "empower" themselves, mmmm, lots of scenes of brains with partial spinal cords attached. WTF?

Skyline did not have a cast. Not of actors, anyway. The people who were supposed to be the focus of the film begin the saga with a hedonistic party which includes more liquor than BevMo, voyeuristic telescopic explorations of high rise neighbors electronically transferred to a BIG big screen TV, and random sex. Unless you're part of the population that craves sex and drug parties, you just had to loathe the shitty ensemble that makes up the cast. Also, they couldn't act their ways out of paper bags.

So, no plot, no acting. What's left?  CGI! In the trailers, it looked very promising. On screen, the motherships looked to have  been cobbled from the scaggy stupid-looking Romulan ship in Star Trek and the gnarly ships from The Matrix, and most of the subsidiary ships looked like extras from the squiddy scenes of The Matrix as well. I swear the alien forces images were stolen from photoclips from Predator and Galaxy Quest, with slime and gore added.

To add 'realism' to the film, there was a puking scene, and a pissing scene. Neither one seemed to add anything to the movie. Those scenes only added to my annoyance.

IT WAS A REALLY STUPID, POORLY DONE MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PUT YOUR HEAD IN A BURLAP BAG AND WHACK YOURSELF WITH A SHOVEL IF YOU HAVE AN URGE TO GO SEE IT!! YOU'LL FEEL BETTER AFTER THE SHOVEL TREATMENT, AND I'M NOT KIDDING!

NaNoWriMo 2010

Participating in NaNoWriMo is not like climbing up a stony cliff.

It's more like climbing down this stony cliff. At 22k words, I'm about to that dark hole in the middle of the picture. I've felt for handholds to keep on going, I've strung together long, pointless chatterings of words to reach the next crevice where I can stop for the night and say, "You got this far. You can get all the way down."

Once I get down to that gravelly-looking bit that might mark 35 thousand words, I'll be able to slide. The slope is not so dangerous. Handholds abound. 15k is nothing. In fact, I could do that final 15k sitting on a piece of cardboard and just hanging on for dear life.

So I say. We'll see. Tonight, the words came easily, and I enjoyed writing them.

Goal tomorrow: 24k, if not 25.

Why Am I Doing This Again?

Ahh, the stony path I have chosen!

Today is November 8, and I should have 16k words by the time I go to sleep. However, I know I won't. Yesterday I opted to watch NFL football games all day, an activity my pastor finds abhorrent, but one that I look forward to from the day after the Superbowl. (NFL football and the Triple Crown are the only two sports I have any interest at all in watching.) Yet watching the games precluded any chance of making 14k yesterday.

This morning, I put up the Press, and had foolishly left one of the most difficult serial stories to format today. I love the series, the sheer whimsical craziness of it, but whatever word processing program the author uses simply doesn't mesh with mine, and so I cannot automatically add HTML paragraph breaks; what's more, the author uses few commas, which I have to add, and leaves spaces in the wrong parts to I have to correct all of that. It is a measure of how much I love the story that I'm willing to do this.

But that was this morning. I don't write in the mornings, so I'm just using the Press as an excuse, I guess.

I have my formula for word count; I know where the story has to go. But I sure don't want to be doing this.  Am I losing my writing, and just becoming an editor?

And now the Steelers are on TV against the Bengals, which team I have hated since the late seventies -- do you think I'm going to do any serious writing tonight?

No.

Have I mentioned, Tejon, that I am NOT doing this again next year, not even for you?

Nationally Novelly Writingly This Month

It is National Novel Writing Month.

I'd like to say that I'm extremely enthusiastic about it, but I'm not. This year, the whole thing is about re-establishing a writing habit. I have four novels in my workspace to complete, and for the past year, I've done nothing to get that done. That's just stupid, and lazy.

I've chosen to write a sequel to a past NaNoWinner; possibly between the two, I'll be able to salvage a decent story. It's been hard, though, as Bernie, my beloved husband, has also decided to do NaNo. He let me read his first 600 words.

Wow. I was in tears by the time I finished, and when I tried to read to him the paragraph that had moved me so, I could not get through it without sobbing. He had talked about Time in such a way that I could not help but grieve for the way we as human creatures are forced to apprehend it.

My own story is utterly, completely word count, without a scootch of wisdom or wit. Another soap opera, as lousy as "Transitions" was. All I can do is disengage my intellect and let my words run on into other words. I tell myself that word count is all I'm going for here, and I will do that, I can do that.

But God, I wish I had something better to write.

Tejon, if you should happen across this post, I am NOT doing this again next year.