Home Again

We pulled into the driveway about 1:30 pm.

Outside temperatures were over 100; we felt sticky and achy; and oh, so glad to be home.

Howie was glad to see us, as one might expect; he is feeling under the weather, however. Apparently he stopped eating a few days ago, and so John, worried that I'd come home and find my dog a skinny wraith, fed him extra and tempted him to eat with tuna fish. The result: major intestinal upheaval. At least I wasn't the one who had to clean it up.

I waded into the pool and reveled in the chilly water, at length. The heat of the air seemed as nothing. I know I will again be in the pool tomorrow, as the temps are not going to stray far from the 100's.

Tomorrow I don't have to get up early to get on the road, not one little bit. Haha, I don't mind that at all.

Ha Ha, God, I Guess That WAS Funny

In a previous post, I noted that we almost didn't get a room at the end of a long day in Des Moines on our way east.

Now my mother would have called me careless, lazy, and unmotivated, and other people would call me a fool, but I do tend to rely on God for provenance. That there was only ONE room available in Des Moines the night we came through a couple weeks ago, and that ONE room was in the very hotel we longed for -- well, I thanked God that night very much, and spent time marveling at how the event had been tailored to our preference as well as our need.

Today our travels took us from Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Winnemucca, Nevada. It wasn't a strenuous drive; I let Bernie sleep until 8:30, then we showered and had a leisurely breakfast. Around 3 pm, we opted to stop and have a sit-down meal in Elko. No worries. After all, we were going to stay in Winnemucca, which is some two and a half hours from Reno, out in the middle of Ja-pip.

We got to Winnemucca, and went into the hotel lobby. While Bernie took care of some of his own business, I stood in line at the front desk to book a room. My heart froze when I heard the lady at the counter say to someone on the phone, "No, I'm sorry, we're fully booked." There were a couple men in line in front of me; both parties had prior reservations. Again, the woman answered the phone and told someone there were no rooms available.

Bernie joined me, and I told him what I'd heard and asked him if he wanted to forge on the next two and a half hours to Reno. He looked pained, because frankly, even with the leisurely pace, we were both really tired. "Let's ask her where else we might stay in Winnemucca," he advised.

Our turn at the counter. The lady asked cheerfully, "How are you today?"

"Not very good," I answered, "I heard you say you're full up."

"Oh, that's tomorrow," she said with a grin. "I think we have a couple rooms tonight."

She frowned as she looked at available rooms. "I have one room with two queen beds," she said.

One room, with two queen beds. We always get the two beds because after riding in the car for hours, I tend to twitch and kick and thrash in my sleep. "Thank God," I said, in heartfelt relief.

Only a few minutes later, as I was soaking my achy old bones in the hotel hot-tub, I thanked God again, and was even able to chuckle a little at how close, how precise the provenance was.

I'm reminded of the Bible story of Jesus being asked for the "Temple Tax." He tells Peter to go and catch a fish. Peter catches a fish. The fish opens its mouth, and there, inside, are the proper change in coins for the Temple Tax.

Heh.

In the Neighborhood Again

Ahh, Wyoming!

There's no doubt that we've made some hurried trips from California to Pennsylvania and back again in the past three years and some. Interstate 80 may be a fairly tedious route, but it is the quickest, and we've come to know it maybe all too well.

In all the trips, I've been saddened to leave Wyoming on the way east, and overjoyed to cross into Wyoming on the way back. Is it because I know that I can get home in one day from Wyoming? Or is it the lovely pronghorn antelope, of which we saw literally hundreds today?

I do love the wild and alien environment of Wyoming, and wish that I was young and adventurous and could explore (safely) all the strange little side roads on horseback, but I think that the answer is the "one day" thing. If I woke up with an Incredible Homing Instinct tomorrow morning, by bedtime, I could be in my own house.

Nevertheless, we won't drive home all in one day from Rock Springs, Wyoming, where we are currently ensconced in a VERY comfortable Holiday Inn Express watching Sunday Night Football. The Piker Press is ready to turn over in the morning, and after a leisurely breakfast, we'll make our way to Winnemucca, Nevada, where we will hole up and watch Monday Night Football.

For us, that makes today and tomorrow the most vacation-like days of this long trip. Then the real resort living resumes: patio sitting, nature walks, playing with pets, eating really, really, really good food. Home in two days.

Yes.

Perfect Weather

September is a variable flavor in Pennsylvania. I can remember an orientation week at Penn State (which would be the third week in September en aquellos dias) when it snowed, and other Septembers when it was hot and humid and disgusting.

Yesterday was perfect, as our days in PA have been since we got here. We went for a walk along the Juniata River, where the old canal used to be, and where they have made the canal edge into a walking trail.

Moving along the path, surrounded by the kind of woods I remember from my youth, of locust, and horse chestnut, sycamore, tulip trees, oak, and sassafras, infringed upon by raspberry canes and ubiquitous poison ivy, highlighted by beautiful orange-blossomed jewelweed and goldenrod, I sank into the environment and was captivated by the river. I could live back here, I thought. I could tell Bernie we have to come back, and I'd have my river back again.

I'd can veggies for the winter, I'd fish and freeze and eat bass, all the fish I could catch, and I'd fish every day, and love the bright red of sugar maples peeking out from the forest ...

The rational part of my mind gave me a ripping good kick on the ass and said, "You moron, how many days out of the year felt like this when you DID live here???"

After some thought, I answered, "Lots. Uh, ten?"

Rational replied, "HOW many days are there in a year?"

I didn't answer, but did continue to salivate over the remembered taste of pan-fried black bass, oh, with Spanish rice on the side, and tomatoes from the garden.

In the afternoon I had to travel to the next county up the state, where my mom's nursing home was, and in front of a snooty county clerk, swear that I was who I was and that I, as executrix, would carry out the terms of my mother's will; I'm sole inheritor as well as executrix, so I was promising that I would be just to myself in all my dealings with myself. Thanks, legal system, that little dance cost me $200, and I didn't even get to take a swing at the snooty clerk.

By the end of the day, I wasn't in any mood to move back to PA, but only wished my paper chase was done and I could be transported back to the other coast and sit in my quiet studio to write.

We're on our way as the sun comes up tomorrow, thank God. We're in no hurry to get across the interstate highway, but we're headed back to where we belong.

And you can bet your booties that snooty clerk is going to be featured in a story in the not-too-distant future. Maybe something with zombies, maybe something more in depth about her inability to respond adequately in relationships ... I'm not sure, but something.

Hey! Maybe a cartoon!

The End

I saw my mother into the ground today.

The service was absolutely beautiful, with lovely music and terrific readings. Close friends were there, though the attendance was not huge. Mom had often complained years ago that most of the people she had known were dead, and she had lamented being a survivor of her cohort. Yeah, that happens sometimes, and so most of the people who went to her church only knew her as a dotty and confused old lady.

No more. On the Other Side, the girl her mother called "La Furia" (The Fury) is back in action, I'm sure.

I cannot say for sure, for I do not know the mind of God, but the luminous, perfect weather this morning was like exultation. I don't think I've ever seen such a glowing, clear morning in Pennsylvania in my life. The views of the mountains and the river as we drove to the church were extraordinary, so much so that I forgot I had the camera in the car. Maybe Heaven -- and my dad and my sister -- are happy that Mom has joined them, all flashing smile and presence big enough to move mountains. The mountains and the sky and the sun seemed to speak loudly this morning.

I'll take that as a "yes."

The Old Gray Mare ...

Hoo-boy, as Stan Lee used to say in Marvel Comics. What we've found on these past two days! Things just ain't what they used to be...

First of all, I was awakened Wednesday morning by my phone ringing. I answered it croakily. "What the hell, were you still asleep?" my sister-in-law's voice boomed. "I've been up since 5 am! When are you getting here?"

It was a good thing she called, or we would have slept until 10, or later. I remembered Bernie's alarm going off at 6am and him telling me to go back to sleep, which I gratefully did. We pried ourselves out of the hotel and onto the road by about 9:30 -- not an efficient travel plan. But we did get to Maumee, Ohio, where we rented a room from Holiday Inn.

Now Holiday Inn used to be a nice bet for travel. We've come to vastly prefer Holiday Inn Express, and just in case you haven't already found out, the two brands are totally different experiences. Holiday Inn Express, by and large, wants you to continue to use their chain and goes out of their way to make sure your room is wonderful, amenities unequalled, experience utter luxury. Plain old Holiday Inn could just give a shit as long as they get your money. Bare bones rooms, lack of customer service. We found out too late at night that the air conditioner in our room worked only with a noise like a train driving through the room. Higher rates, less service. WTF?

I forcefully fantasized that I was on a space ship and that the noise was the ship's engines kicking on. I got a little sleep.

Today, we made it to home base, a motel that used to be a Holiday Inn, back in the day, but is now a "Quality Inn". It has adequate facilities, but nothing special. It used to have in it the successor to Tony's Cottage Inn , but alas -- Tony's has changed. The signature salad is a shadow of what it was only a few years ago. And we went down town to grab some Laskaris hotdogs, but Laskaris has been sold, and it's secret chili sauce is gone, and the hotdog grill, and the poor folk who bought and run it are doomed. No one but us was in the restaurant, and the owners were ... sad, apathetic, clueless people who aren't even keeping their work counters clean.

I have a sad feeling that an Age has passed.  At least the AC in here works quietly.

Oh, Well, He Lied.

Tuesday: 

Up at 6, breakfast after a shower, and then on the road. Yes, back on the road, after a night's broken sleep as my already out-of-sync body rebelled at going to bed several hours early after getting up the day before long before it wanted to. Also the body rebelled a great deal during the night about the Subway sandwich I ate for the afternoon meal Monday. Not rested.

Originally we thought we'd get from Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Des Moines, Iowa (too late to pester our friends there), but as the day wore on, and we lost another hour to time zones, we decided to stop right after Lincoln, Nebraska, at the first Holiday Inn Express we could find.

NOT. There are no Holiday Inn Expresses after Lincoln. In fact there's jack shit but bedbug factories (which my sister-in-law, a former truck driver told me after the fact) between there and Des Moines. And getting into Des Moines well after dark, we found every frackin' hotel booked solid. I'm not lying. It was ridiculous, a veritable Posada of searching for a place to stay. "Everything around here is sold out," we were told over and over again.

Finally, one hotel had ONE room. It was on the far side of Des Moines, and it was a Holiday Inn Express, and we crept in like crippled mice and crashed. So much for Tuesday.

The Long Day

Bernie tells me that tomorrow is not going to be as long a drive as today was. I hope he's right.

We started off at 4 am this morning; losing an hour going from Pacific Time to Mountain Time, we got to Rock Springs, Wyoming around 6:30 pm. For once, we didn't hit a lot of road repair, and traffic was light.

The hot springs at Nightingale Hot Springs, Nevada seemed closer to the road than we remembered, with a lot more steam coming out of the ground. Is the volcanic activity increasing?

There was still snow on some of the peaks south of the highway in eastern Nevada. Not as much as we saw in June, but amazingly, still some.

Just east of Salt Lake City, I saw a strange color on the hillsides. "What could be blooming red at this time of year?" I thought to myself. Well, DUHH, it wasn't blossoming, it was the beginning of Fall Color. We don't get that for a while yet in the Central Valley of California, and rarely if ever such a sweet, bright hue.

Wyoming was beautiful in the early evening light. Our room at Holiday Inn Express is GORGEOUS.

Thoughout the day I remembered the reason for our trip, feeling pangs of loss, pangs of guilty relief. Alzheimer's just obliterates the one you love, and abrades your heart to the very soul. At times over the past years of Mom's decline, I would find myself wishing that Dad was there to keep her from the dangerous forgetful actions, but he had such a tender heart, and loved her so much -- I'm glad he didn't have to go through this. I hope they meet again on the other side. I hope that she will be able to see just how beautiful she was to him, and how much he loved her.

And though the world is much poorer without my mother, her death was the mandate for me to use that dread apparatus of modern life: the telephone. I spent literally hours on the phone this past weekend, letting close friends know about Mom's passing, and catching up, and loving hearing Deb's and Lonz' and Barb's voices, getting a kick out of reminiscing with Dan Brown about what Mifflintown was like when we grew up in it. (He's the funeral director, and was the younger brother of one of my grade school/high school class mates.) I found myself wondering why I don't talk with them more often, and remember my mother nagging me to stop being so shy and solitary and get out there and talk to people!

And travel. Don't become a stay-at-home.

Got it, Ma.

End of the Line

Peacefully in her sleep, my mother died this morning. 

My dreams were strange last night, and I had a hard time sleeping around 4 am. Mom died right around that time.

Today I'm packing, doing laundry to pack; we'll clean up the car and get a new case of water for the trip. Howie won't be coming with us this time (he's getting too old, and the last trip took too much out of him) so we'll have plenty of room for extra clothes. I have no idea how long we'll have to be there.

I'm not happy my mother is gone, but I am happy that she's done with that damned disease.

Sad Dream, Sad News

A few weeks ago, I had a nightmare.

In it, I was in a house with my mother and my father. I wanted to get something from the upstairs, but I was so tired that I could only crawl up the white painted steps. (Note: I have never lived in a place with white painted steps.) As I neared the top, Molly the Macaw came waddling around the corner, and as she usually does in real life, began coming toward me. 

As I do in real life, I tried to get away from her, but slid down the stairs. She landed on me, and I kept trying to keep my face covered while she flapped and squawked. I shouted for my mother to help me, over and over, but she just kept on doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen.

Finally, I was able to get an arm under the bird and fling her away from me. I scrambled to my feet, staggered over to my mother and shouted at her. "Why didn't you help me? Why didn't you help me?"

She turned to me, looked down her nose, and said, "Because I don't like you." I raised my hand to crack her across the face, but all she said was, "You can't hit me."

Indeed, she was right. In the dream I knew I could never hit her, and just turned away, sick at heart because my mother hadn't really loved me at all. I'd been loving someone who didn't love me back. And my father, in the background, just shrugged, as if to say he didn't care about it at all.

Honestly, in the dream, it felt like my heart was being torn into pieces. Even after I woke up from the dream, I hurt inside, and shed a couple tears.

Now, a person could be miserable for days after a dream like that, even to the point of being afraid to fall asleep in case they dreamt something like that again. But I do know something about dreams, and I believe that you have to tackle them head on sometimes, to find out what's actually lurking in your subconscious.

The parrot as fear is a no-brainer: I'm scared as hell of that bird in real life, and every time she screeches it feels like someone put a chainsaw to my spine. Perfect symbol of a fear from which I need to be saved, right? But what is it that I'm afraid of, that my own mother won't help me overcome, and just turns away from me instead, disdaining me? And how could I be that angry at her, that I would (as I never did in life) raise my hand against her?

Any guesses? Oh, right. Alzheimer's.

And with that realization, I understood that at some level in my subconscious, she should still be the Mom I knew growing up: fierce, fearless, vibrant. She should have been able to surmount Alzheimer's! But instead, she has drifted away on the tide of forgetfulness, not even looking back. On that deep and cloudy level of my mind, I have anger at her for leaving me behind, no longer remembering me. And Dad, oh, Dad, where have you been while her disease has been crippling her, and breaking my heart?

I was able to find peace in understanding the dream, and I know she loved me. She didn't always know the best way to love me, but I never doubted that she did.

This afternoon the nursing home called me. Mom's foot is ...'better' ... but she is not. Some new phase of the disease has kicked in, and she forgot how to feed herself, forgot how to swallow after a bite of food. Uncomprehending, she just spit out her food and couldn't figure out what she was supposed to be doing with it. For the last three or four days, she hasn't wanted or tried to eat or drink anything, too weak to stand.

The nurse said they would put her on an IV to see if rehydration would "perk her up" -- but warned me that if there wasn't a big change in the next couple days, they'd be calling me again to discuss ... "making her comfortable." That means, in real life, allowing her to die.

I know that. I knew from the beginning that Alzheimer's is terminal. But my heart still thinks ... well, you know.

This Writing Thing, Part 3: The Avalanche

So I signed up for National Novel Writing Month.

On Halloween, I dressed up in a long, ugly dress, put on a scaggy witch hat and wig, and painted my face in horrible patterns. And since I was wearing some funky high heels, I wore pantyhose. Alex and John came by to hand out candy. In the giddiness of the holiday, the visit, and the impending writing glut-to-come, I scampered through the family room, making my 7-month-old puppy Howie chase me. I stopped in the hallway, but Howie didn't. He crashed right into the back of my legs, knocking my feet out from under me, and sending me skidding on the slick pantyhose and carpet, right into a broken doorstop on the closet door. The rough metal end tore a hole in my right palm.

I didn't need stitches (though John thought I did and wanted to drag me to the Emergency Room), but by the next day, that was one sore hand. What a perfect excuse to not follow through with NaNoWriMo!

Instead, when I got ready to start writing, I just changed the bandage. The prospect of writing was overwhelming.

I don't remember how much I wrote that first evening. I do remember that letting the words begin to pour out onto the screen of my computer gave me a sensation very much like the one I got back when I would dive from a high diving board -- a sense of air, of stretching my arms out, of daring life to take me, and the glowing kernel of faith, that I knew I had the skills. I just wrote, drawing from a recent incident in my life, and one of the remembered dreams.

The following morning, I read what I had written, cleaning up typos as I went. It was all right. In fact it was more than all right -- it was part of Me there on the pages. As soon as I was alone, I set in to write again, thrilled to indulge my memory and my vocabulary. And then I began to lie.

I think that was when I really began to enjoy myself; the words were fun to build with, and the imagery delightful to paint, but when you write fiction, none of it has to be true. I was writing in the first person (which many literary snobs sneer at, but a point of view I have always loved in books) and allowed myself to peer at life through the eyes of my main character.

The most amazing part of this first writing experience was the deadline: if you're going to gush out fifty thousand words in thirty days, you can't stop and second guess yourself. You have to keep a-hammering. And to do that, I needed to hone a skill my father taught me when I was nine -- which fingers to use to type correctly, which I had always tried to do, but never had the motivation to do so without looking at the keys. That November, I didn't have time to keep looking down, I had to follow where I was in my paragraphs. One more thing was thrown into the mix at that time: Alex and I began to use an instant messaging program. Before the month was halfway through, I finally learned to touch-type.

No one read a paragraph of my story, not until the very end. I didn't "share" with others; writing was a wholly personal and private act for me. That's the only thing that got me through, I believe, because there were some parts of the writing that were damn good, and had someone told me that, I probably wouldn't have had the guts to try to finish it, for fear of spoiling it.

The timing was strangely right: only a day or so before the last day of November, the last paragraph was ready to pour out, and I was overwhelmed by emotion. Wondering at my sobs as I typed "The End," Bernie read over my shoulder what I had just written. "Wow," he said.

Now, was that month's writing a good and finished story? Hell, no. It wasn't supposed to be about good and finished. It was all about the writing, the doing, the writing, the thinking, just the writing, that's all.

This Writing Thing, Part 2: The Transformation

What did I have in my head that I wanted people to know, though? That's what stories are all about, aren't they? A writer has a message they want to get out there to people, a great thought that will change the lives of the readers, a beautiful idea that will dazzle the mind. At least that's what I thought writing was all about, and the fact was that I didn't have a great thought in my head.

My only personal manifesto was to enjoy life day by day. It's what I wanted to do from the time I was sixteen. Of course, my mother didn't think much of that idea at the time, and in 2001, she was still hoping that I would someday "bloom" and become "successful," whatever the hell that meant.

I could write about that, I posed to myself. Maybe I could have a character who thought that very thing, and lived her life accordingly. And anyway, no one would be going to read anything I wrote, so I could make the character just as boring as I pleased.

But fifty thousand words! That's a lot of words, and how would I come up with them?

While tidying up the bedroom, I came across a dream journal I'd used the previous Lent, loaded with six weeks of memorable dreams. The entries were just notes, fragments to bring my dream back to mind for meditation. I could stretch them into more words...

I could ...

What a transforming phrase! What a wonderful word, "could!" A couple days before Halloween, I was suddenly sweaty-palmed and trembling at the thought of writing all those words. ALL those words. All those WORDS!

No more concise, say-it-clearly-in-the-briefest-manner writing -- instead, I could allow myself to be as wordy as I wanted to be; I could describe everything until not a speck of it was hidden. I could jabber, I could embellish, I could use images from my own life and finally explore them in words.

And no one ever had to read a sentence of it. As many words as I cared to write, they were mine, all for me.

Obviously, I had changed my mind about NaNoWriMo. I was "in."

This Writing Thing: The Beginning

Before November 2001, I hadn't written a scrap of fiction since college days. I'd taken one course on writing fiction in order to take a class with Bernie in it (we thought that would make it more likely for us to actually get to class), and when that class was done, I was tremendously relieved.

Over the ensuing years, I read a lot and painted a little; then in the 80's got a bug in my ear about writing religious education courses for teens and adults. I wrote a teachers' manual -- one that was in use several years after I left that job, which would be flattering if they had any idea at all that I was the one who wrote it. I believe they simply used it because they had no idea how to write a new one.

For the next six years, the only things I wrote were letters and emails. I painted not at all; I didn't sew or draw. My garden was my canvas, and that was enough.

Then came October of 2001, and the e-mail from Alex with a link to NaNoWriMo. She was going to take the challenge and try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. "Ma," she wrote, "you have got to try this!"

How to describe the feeling with which I recoiled? A boiling fear immediately surged through me, and I knew I wouldn't take the challenge. Fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of looking like a stupid hack with no imagination at all ... fear of trying something new and unexpected.

The fear was an old familiar thing, a hangover from something in my early twenties that had surfaced bit by bit: if what you do doesn't come out perfect, then what? People won't respect you, they won't buy the product, they'll stop thinking you're good at what you do, they'll pity you for your inferior effort ... That old familiar fear had put to a complete end drawing just for the fun of it; stomped to death my painting, squelched my singing. Nothing made me feel less like completing a project than having someone pause, have a look, and say, "Wow, that's really coming along!" God, then what if I spoiled it? If I tried to write a story, someone might read it and say, "Gee, Sand, I never knew just how much of a mush-brained incompetent you were." So I turned my back on the challenge.


No one would ever have to read what I wrote, though. That was the part of the deal that kept NaNoWriMo in the back of my mind. No one would have to see if I was stupid, or untalented, or banal. After all, I could hit Control + A for All + Delete at any time. Presto! Gone as though it never existed!

Because Bernie worked second shift, he was gone from about 3 pm until 2 am ... that meant that he wouldn't be there to peek over my shoulder at the computer. Alex and her husband lived in Modesto at the time, so they wouldn't be popping in unexpectedly to find me writing my pathetic little attempt, and the dogs wouldn't care if I wrote total trash, so long as I fed them.

A secret vice. A secret game. A secret club, just for me ... maybe it was worth a try.

Life Is All About The Each Days

This is the south forty. Corn.

I never planted corn from seed before that I can remember. I've grown tomatoes, peppers, onions, spinach, parsley, lettuce, radishes ... but corn? No.

So we planted sweet corn in a swath in our front yard. I have no idea if it will produce edible ears in that unamended heavy clay junk that passes for soil; and though I may have had fantasies of growing enough corn to put up for the whole winter, I don't actually believe that is going to be the case. Maybe the corn is too close together, maybe the seed was crummy (the germination rate sucked) ... whatever. We haven't got any eatin' ears yet, but two things commend this crop in a suburban front yard: A couple rows of corn look beautiful, and the sound of the afternoon breezes rattling the stalks is like food for the soul. We love the corn, and I will probably want to plant more again next spring.

Bernie grilled more spectacular chicken today. Dear God, thank you, it was so good. We swam in the pool, too -- thanks to this late heat spike, the pool is usable.

And we had a bit of excitement today, as well: our neighbor is going out of town for a few days and we find ourselves in custody of two female dogs.

A short aside -- except for the all-too-short couple weeks of my puppy Pumpkin (35 years ago) and the conqueration of my household by Grace Louise, a gray-cream calico kitten (20 years ago), all our pets have been male. (We don't count Molly; she is not a pet, she is a curse.)

Anyway, our household is baby-sitting a golden lab named "Honey" and a German shepherd named "Zena." They are ladies. They are hefty animales.

Howie has made known his antipathy for clumsy womens by showing his teeth and snapping (not biting) and looking crazed from his reclined posture at Bernie's feet. Both clumsy womens said, "Hey, dude, no problem, geeze, what a crab" and kept a good ten feet away from him. Sebastian just crawled under an end table and pretended the ladies weren't there.

We took all four of them to a fenced park and let them run and make acquaintances before we brought the girls into the house. They did fine. They're fine here.

Zena is a big girl German shepherd, though, and having her here has made us miss Babe so much. He was so big, so dark, so exuberant ...

Zena would have hated him.

Painting

No, this isn't the painting, those are leaves. I like those leaves. I like them a lot better than I like the painting!

I've been away from painting for so long that most of my oil paints are dried up. I also noted today that many of my brushes look like they are victims of mange.

And the reasons there is not a picture of the painting here are twofold: One, I don't feel like walking to the other end of the house to get the camera and cables, and Two, I don't feel like making all that effort for something that looks like shit.

No, I'm not being modest. The leaves really are easier on the eyes.

Nevertheless, I had the urge to dig out my oils yesterday, pulling the box of paints out from under the work table, squeezing each tube to see if there was any chance of getting any paint out of it, and opening my jars of medium and thinner to see if the jars would still actually open. "I'll find a simple picture in a magazine, scan it into the computer, and then fuzz it out in Photoshop so that I can clearly see the color values." That's what I told myself.

I found a simple picture. I got my scanner down from the shelf. I proceeded to introduce my laptop to the scanner... For almost three hours.

If one reads this blog regularly, one would possibly remember that the reason the scanner isn't on my desk with the desktop computer is that the suckasses who invented Windows 7 made sure it didn't work with most things that used to work with XP, as in planning obsolescence. However, the laptop I have has Vista on it -- should be no problem.

Should be.

The scanner, I should add, was already obsolete when I bought it for very cheap -- it was a display model and didn't even have the manuals with it. Still, it worked just fine for me for years. Therefore, I was optimistic about it getting along with the laptop.

No.

It said I needed a new driver after I installed the software. So I found one online, and downloaded it.

No.

It said it didn't see any driver, and also, by the way, had no record of scanner software being installed. Fine. I re-installed, re-downloaded the driver.

No.

Still can't see the scanner, said my laptop, squeezing its computer eyes shut. And you need a driver anyway.

"Fine, you shithead," I replied, and went to the Canon homepage to find and download the manual.

Heh, said the laptop, and refused to talk to the printer in the other room, printing out only the last page of the manual. I stomped to my desk and turned on the computer there.

Oh, trying to send a laptop with Vista to do a Windows 7 job? the desktop sneered at me. The desktop jerked the printer's chain and I retired to the studio once more with a stack of pages in my hands.

Wait. The manual was for Windows 98, Windows Me... and XP. The laptop began giggling like a naughty teen in art class who has just poured Elmer's glue into a dozing classmate's hair. My scanner is that old?

"That's just ... fine." I said once more. I re-uninstalled all the scanner stuff, drivers, schmivers, what all. I turned the machine off. Then, remembering an issue I had with a previous computer, I plugged the scanner into a different USB port, and started the thing up again.

By the numbers, Baby, and I didn't really even need the damned manual. The scanner installed, the driver that came with the CD worked, and the laptop said, Ooo! A new toy! Let's play!

By that time, I really just wanted to sit with a glass of wine and read a paperback and pretend that there were no computers, but I scanned the simple picture, fiddled with it in Photoshop, and then selected a small, small canvas.

Long ago I swore I would nevermore try to paint on a white canvas, so I got a disposable rag and a tube of paint for priming. I chose my cadmium red, because I was still pretty hot under the collar about the whole computer thing, and began smearing the canvas with a light coat of paint.

Fine. The red paint, instead of looking red, looked a sickly pink, very unappetizing, very uninspiring.

"Fine," I said, and put the thing to dry, opened the garage door to vent clean air in, and got my glass of wine.

Yeah. That works. The painting sucks, but at least I got a lot of paint on the canvas, covering the stinky pink priming. "Fine." Now for a glass ...

Gathering Clouds

The other morning, we woke to an unusual August sight: clouds!

Well, that many clouds, anyway, and that kind of clouds -- the ones that run in herds across the sky.

To me it seemed like a whisper, a reminder, a warning that the perfect weather we've been having is going to change greatly in the not too distant future.

In two weeks, we probably won't want to get in the swimming pool; it will be too chilly. Seems ludicrous today, when the temperature outside is 103 degrees outside, but the fact is, by the weekend, the low temps at night will make that pool feel like an ice bath.

So the clouds are an omen of cooler weather to come.

I got a phone call a few days ago that was a omen of changes, of clouds on the horizon of my life: my mother's nurse called from the nursing home to tell me that over night, Mom had inexplicably "bruised" an ankle badly. They took an x-ray, which showed no break, but then a couple days later, the nurse called again.

My mother's foot was still swollen, but turning red, with streaks going up her leg. I didn't need the nurse to explain to me why they had begun treating her for a possible infection; they were supposed to do some kind of tests to see if there was a blood clot involved.

No blood clot; so they tested for gout. No gout, no breaks, no clots.

I know this because they woke me up at 6:50 this morning to tell me that although the tests were clear of what they were testing for, her foot is still swollen, and because she can't remember from one minute to the next what her condition is, she tried to get up from her wheelchair to take herself to the bathroom, and fell. The nursing home always calls if there is a fall.

Mom wasn't hurt in the fall -- at least not this time.

I asked the nurse if there was a possibility of an insect bite that would cause my mother's foot to swell ... like me, my mother used to be very susceptible to "fly bites" -- gnats, in her case -- that would make her swell up with allergic reaction. (I got one off some bug on the surface of the pool about two weeks ago that made my left side swell and discolor like a bruise and systemic poisoning. That'll teach me to skinny dip at night and then not shower after!)

But the fact is, Mom isn't going to get all better, and the breakdown of bodily functions will continue to escalate. I'm not looking forward to how things will get more iffy, but I suspect that the breakdown events, knowing as I do that they must come, will be less traumatic than the onset of full-blown Alzheimer's was.

Goodbye, Nicholai

The 1977 printing of the Sunset Western Garden Book has this to say about eucalyptus:

No pests. In Australia, you seldom find a eucalyptus leaf unchewed by insects; here, by contrast, you almost never find one insect-chewed. Importing has been entirely by seed; no natural pests have been imported by way of living plants. There are no foliage-attacking diseases of eucalypts here.

Indeed, one of the reasons there are so many eucalyptus in California is because they were so easy to grow, so beautiful, so varied. At my previous house, and this one, my front yard planting had as its focus the feathery, graceful, tall Eucalyptus nicholii: willow-leaf eucalyptus.

"Nicholai," I whispered to this tree when I planted it, "your job is grow fast and tall and hide that ugly street light from me." (Right by the sidewalk in front of the house was an orange-tinted street light -- unsightly by day and glaringly bright at night. Ugh.)

And so it did. In only a few years, Nicholai soared above the street light, with grace and loveliness shading the yard, for peaceful darkness at night, and cutting the heat of the late afternoon sun.

Sitting in the front yard was like sitting on the edge of a rich forest, thanks to the nicholii and little brother tree Dwarf Blue Gum. Complete privacy from the street, even from the sidewalk a few feet away. On the hottest summer days, we'd sit under the tree with a mister spraying us, and be comfortable and content, surrounded by beauty.

Bad things happen even to good trees.

I'm not sure when, but a bug from Australia arrived in California: the eucalyptus psyllid. The infestation began as a few white dots on some leaves of Nicholai; when we found out what it was, we did some oil spray, which helped the lower branches we could reach. Alas, most of the tree was higher than we could spray, and the foliage began to really weaken, with great leaf fall sprinkling the lawn.

Last month, seeing the disgusting waxy exudate from the psyllids sprinkling the lawn, the front porch, the outdoor furniture, the sidewalk, our neighbor's lawn and driveway and cars, we knew that we had a lost cause on our hands. We could have tried systemic poison, but the amount of chemicals needed would be massive, and we'd have to trash the front vegetable garden, the blueberries, and forget ever planting edible stuff in the front yard, because the psyllids are never going to give up. Bugs don't quit. Moreover, runoff from our yard (and all the yards in this neighborhood) goes right into the river. The fish -- those left -- don't need more pesticides.

We love our trees. They don't talk, or beg at the table, but they protect us from the sun and the wind. They soothe our eyes with beauty, and share our home. Sometimes they dump stuff on the neighbor's yard, but we don't mind cleaning up after them.

It was a hard decision to have the nicholii cut down. We'd thought to wait until Fall, but economic times are tough right now for tree services, so we were able to get a really fine price ... for the job to be done today.

Maybe it was best to be done with it quickly, I don't know. The tree-cutters were most efficient, and very careful of the other plants in the yard. We said goodbye to the tree before the tree service arrived, and if that sounds dumb, so be it. I've been leaking tears all day over the tree that I planted and nurtured and admired through all the weather of eleven years.

My tree is gone. The yard, without Nicholai in it, seems strangely small. The dwarf blue gum (which is not affected by the psyllids) will fill in quickly; most likely in two years it will be hard to tell there was ever a second tree there.

Still, I won't forget it.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Blocks

August is a fruitful time of year here in the Central Valley.

Peaches and nectarines and tomatoes and cucumbers and squashes, oh my! Apples and almonds are ripening; this year has been very good for the pomegranates, which are swelling with a promise of November deliciousness. Good stuff now, good stuff to come.

August 5th was the first day of school in this school district. My granddaughter was glad to start third grade, welcoming the volume of socialization that classes would bring. I'm glad she enjoys school, and thinks her classmates are fun to be with.

Nevertheless, I have two thoughts that are less happy.

Number Two is that August 5th is too damn early to take kids away from swimming and playing in the summer weather. What sense does it make to stuff kids in a classroom during just about the hottest time of year? Gosh, the state must be lying about not having enough money for education if it wants to pay for air conditioning in August instead of the lower rate of heating the crowded classrooms in the winter!! Damn that lying state! Damn that lying school district! Both of them would rather send the kids home for a couple weeks in the fall and in the spring -- times when neither heat nor AC are usually necessary.

Stupid, wasteful, inconsiderate, and unneccessary.

But wait! There's more! If you want a heaping helping of STUPID, try this one on: students are not allowed to bring their textbooks home.

Number One: STUDENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE THEIR TEXTBOOKS HOME.

No, not even if the parents request it so that they can read the textbooks to understand what their children are going to be learning this year. Lil's parents made the request this year, and were refused. Because there is a chance of naughty students losing or defacing their books, even responsible students and parents must be treated the same as miscreants. Or so they say.

I helped Lillian with her math homework more than once last year, and once already this year, and I can confidently say that the person who wrote the courses is a moron. No repetition, no learning to memory. Memorization is Old School. Modern Learning means counting how many ones equals eight -- the "ones" symbolized as blocks.

Come on, this is third grade. Why are the kids still using blocks to count? Seriously, I'm not making this up. Learning to write numbers in the thousands, the little illustrative pictures on the worksheet (copying costs are far preferred to reading out of their text for free) literally had pictures of blocks to tell the children how many units were in the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands columns. Now, the thousands column's number was represented by a picture of cubic figures of a thousand blocks each. Did each child count each block to make out a thousand? No, of course not. A picture of a cubic figure cannot show a thousand individual blocks. Well, the children are taught that the picture of the big block of blocks is equal to a thousand.

Let's review that quickly: the children are taught that a symbolic thousand is equal to one thousand. Isn't that like saying to the child, "This symbol -- '1,000' means one thousand." No? Did they make any of the children actually count out a thousand blocks? No, of course not, that would be a ridiculous waste of time for an eight year old.

A question on her homework this week ran something like this: "Write out the number eight thousand, four hundred, seventy-three. Explain."

WTF? Explain what? There were two whole page-width lines on which the student was to answer. My answer, when I looked at it, was, "8,473. Because that's the way it is written, Asshole."

I sent Lil with the page to Bernie to see what he would suggest instead.

I think the books are kept secret because there might be a couple parents with brains who would look at them, and either be able to explain better than the stupid teacher, or who would look at them and understand that our tax monies are being wasted on fads.

Morning Bug

On the back patio, while the morning was still cool, I was called to look at a bug. Although I was unable to identify this beetle (thereby spoiling my daughter's, husband's, and grand-daughter's image of my omniscience) I was able to grab my camera and get a nice macro.

What appeared at first glance to be a simple mottled coloring, in reality is an intricate pattern of bumps and tiny craters. Each leg of this bug is neatly striped; the antennae have segments, and contrary to cartoon sketches, do not protrude from the top of the bug's head, but rather the from the front, like a moustache.

This bug never knew its mother, father, or siblings. It hatched into a grub, and began to eat. That's all it had to do to take its place in the world: eat and grow and eat and grow until it was so large that it had to curl up and digest itself. In this transformation, it became a creature of legs and eyes and antennae; totally different, almost unexpected.

The bug walks the earth just like we do, but it is never surprised by what it finds. It doesn't worry about being outsourced. Drama holds no interest for it. Vanity is unknown -- uniform in its species, its wings need not out-do all the other beetles. In its travels, it may pollinate a flower or two, but being a successful pollinator is not its reason for living.

Bug will not climb up the tree and shout that it has a right to be left alone by ants or possums, or a right to mate and generate offspring. Rights have no meaning for it, as all it wants to do is walk on the world and live long enough to contribute to the survival of its race.

Its eyes are directed mostly towards its front; the bug intends to see what is ahead of it. Walking around something may be an option, or avoiding a danger, but there is no backing up, no second thoughts.

The fact that the majority of bugs like it will be eaten by predators, or themselves not have enough to eat to survive, or be able to walk far enough in favorable places to find a mate bothers the bug not at all. Statistics and reports have no place in its life. It does what it must, as well as it can, and success or failure are just part of its life.

Indeed, even a precarious and potentially dangerous stopping point for this bug's daily travel is not taken into account. The bug in the picture rests upon a flyswatter, completely unfazed by the looming camera and the large creatures that peer at it.

If people try to live this way, they're labeled slackers or losers or bums. However, if the people try to live this way and follow the path God sets for them ... well, the world still labels them slackers and losers and fools -- but aren't they the saints?

Summer Days at Home

I've gained five pounds since Bernie got his new grill.

Now there are a few reasons for this: my left knee has been acting up rather painfully, so I can't do power walks in the morning; the deliciousness of the grilled meats Bernie makes inspire the rest of us to come up with excessive amounts of side dishes; and I'm so happy to be back in California that I have no restraint in enjoying our culinary adventures on the patio to the very max that my stomach can hold.

Oy.

The hopseeds are drying on the tree, soon to begin dropping into drifts on the patio, signaling the half-way point of summer here.

A mockingbird has taken up her 5:30 am post on the neighbor's palmetto, singing her deafening refrain, "Come here, come here, come here, what-a-dummy, what-a-dummy, what-a-dummy, brrrt, brrrt, brrrt!" (The last bit sounds like a cell phone ring.)

The little mister is available on the patio for daily use, making a fine spray of water to cool the heated limbs while we chat in the shade; the big line mister is hoisted from the house to the hopseed tree to drench us in heavy drizzle on these triple-digit days.

Howie puffs and pants behind me as I move through the house in the mid-morning; Sebastian sits by the back door and makes squeaking sounds that should not come from a 75-pound dog. They know that the best part of the day is the part that includes leaping wildly into the pool. Each dog has his way of begging for the adventure.

I finally got around to reclaiming my studio after our days away, and afterwards, spent hours on the next project. I can feel my brain working on the possibilities even while I write this.

I love summer in the Central Valley, and I love a brain that can still work on autopilot.