Winds of Change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winds

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

The Weekend, and Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Horse Is An Ass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoo.

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

But my God, I'm tired tonight.

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

Puzzle Pieces: Living in Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We help each other as we can.

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

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

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

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

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

Hard Day at Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought I was retired.

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

Here I go.

The River Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ding Dong the Tecomaria Is Dead!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New Fence

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

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

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

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

Chunks that big!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Football Season

I don't know a lot about football.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Air Balloon Launch

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

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



All the videos I took that morning are on YouTube.

A Dog and His Log

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

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

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

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



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

How Stupid Do We Have To Be?

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

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

Memory Trigger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color The Skies 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still giggling over her enthusiastic thank you.

Weather Change

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

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

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

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

Glad I got my swimming in yesterday.

10k for Labor Day, 2008

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

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

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

Increments

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

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

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

A Morning Gift

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

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

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

The Good Horse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good, good horse. Priceless little horse.

Sebastian, the Self-Drowning Dog

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


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

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

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

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

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

My Husband, The Hero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bernie didn't.

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

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

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

Kudos to Bernie Pilarski!

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

So Much for Blogging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fireworks.

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

Twenty Years!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real Live Girl

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

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

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

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

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

We DO have to replace that fence.

Soon.

Heaps of Horseshit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fruiting Seasons

Not this past spring, but the spring before, I bought a new nectarine tree, and planted it.

This year it produced a ton of fruit. The fruits are small; we really could have thinned the tree out much more savagely, and I'm not convinced that the poor creature is getting as much water as it should.
Today I went out to swim with the granddaughter of the house, and when I went to the deep end of the pool to dive in, I noticed a small dried-up nectarine on the ground. I started testing the fruit, and found that many (but not all) of the nectarines were ready. I bit into one and got a very big surprise.

I'd bought this tree to replace the one I'd ordered from Stark's nursery catalog (I was going to link but the bastards don't have a website), which was the worst-tasting excuse for nectarines I've ever found. The label on this little tree said that the fruit was known for intense flavor. Yes, intense nectarine flavor is what I was hoping for.

And it is very tasty ... but the label didn't mention that this was a white-fleshed nectarine. Not my favorite. Luck is with my husband, however, who prefers the white-fleshed nectarines to the yellow ones. The granddaughter loves them, too. She and I went out and picked a big bowl of them to chill.

Both the granddaughter and the neighborhood mockingbirds are already after the seedless pearlette grapes, too, even though they won't be fully ripe for another few weeks. Some of them are ripe enough to taste good, some are bitter as only unripe grapes can be. It warmed my old-time scavenger's heart the other day to see Lil out in the back yard filching grapes without a worry in the world.

But today, after we discovered the nectarines, we swam and played in the pool until I was worn out (she wasn't, of course), and when we had harvested our fruit, we rewarded ourselves by jumping into the pool again.

Ah, summer!

Horse Teeth

Today started with me sliding out of bed like a slug, oozing across the floor, and pumping tea into my system so that I could be out at the ranch. I knew I ought to be there.

My friend Cathy the Mad Horsewoman's older horse has been losing weight. It could be because he's an old dude, it could just be his time coming on, but I knew from watching him eat that he needed his teeth floated.

Horses' teeth grow unevenly, and they wear unevenly. Older horses' teeth sometimes wear SO unevenly that they can no longer chew their food well enough to digest it properly. I'd watched the old horse chew up a carrot and have half of it fall out because his teeth weren't grinding it up and holding it to swallow. He's such a good horse, too, a retired ranch horse who has an unusual horse mentality -- he's a workin' dawg, and even though he's old, he wants to show the world that he still knows exactly what to do.

My horse, Dink, the Stinky Dink if you want to be precise, was underweight his first winter we had him. He'd been a paddock horse and had no idea how to graze, but even when he figured out you have to eat all the oat grass, not just the tips, he was losing weight and becoming gaunt. A "horse person" suggested that we have his teeth floated. We did, and the little snothead got fat as a tick in no time.

"Floating" is a funny term. It means filing the horse's teeth down so that they can meet and chew and grind food. The vet drugs the shit out of the horse, uses a variety of methods to hold the horse's mouth open, and has at the teeth with something that can reduce the teeth to evenness. When Dink was done, dear old Doc Boero (God forgive him for suiciding) took a big-ass rasp to his teeth. Today, young blonde pretty Dr. Janeway (not making that up) used a long armed power sander to even the old horse's teeth.

I learned from reading the James Herriot books what floating teeth involved. But Cathy the Mad didn't know. So I went out to help her get through it. I'm glad I did. She was a bit freaked. We, when we think of dentistry, think of finesse and novocaine. Horses don't have nerves in their teeth, so the vet just thinks of "Get in there and saw off the high points." A bit unnerving.

It's done now, and I hope the old horse gets good and fat and fit and lasts another 10 years.

Day Trip to the City

Tuesday, we celebrated Bernie's birthday a couple days early and went to San Francisco for the day.

We had the usual leisurely lunch at Sinbad's (the best calamari tempura we've ever tasted, of course), sipping wine, watching the bay and the bar patrons (men in expensive suits having liquid lunches) and drinking in the sweet air of the bay. (The restaurant keeps doors and windows open, flies and mosquitoes being too declassee for SF.)

From there, we hopped a streetcar and went to Pier 39 to see the flower arrangements. Bernie was taken with a barrel of clarkia, their white ruffles dominating the planting. I got a couple good macros of them, and a number of shots of other plants there, but you'll have to go to Flickr to see the rest.


Walking around on Pier 39, we saw a kid hanging over a railing on the upper storey, with a seagull on the little overhang below, screaming at him. The bird wasn't begging, though, the calls were angry and warning. Suddenly we saw why: babies!

I had never seen a baby seagull before and was stricken by how unbelievably CUTE they look. They're fuzzy, and spotted. How on earth do they grow up to be such unutterable raucous rude squawking crap machines?

















Finally, we went on to the Aquarium of the Bay, and spent a long time in the underwater aquarium tunnel, watching a horde of anchovies. If I was Bill Gates, I'd have an anchovy aquarium in some room, with a sitting room beneath it.

Keeping It Up

Yesterday I had not a single minute for writing, the first day in a long, long time that I didn't get to that kind of creative effort.

However, I did make this little graphic for a 2-year-old's birthday card. It was fun, and didn't take too long, about which is the cool part: I've learned enough to pull something like this out of the hat with a minimum of swearing!

Transformations

On the Fourth of July, I staggered out of the bedroom with one thought only: hot tea.

However, before I reached the kitchen, Alex and Lillian waylaid me, enthusiastically telling me I MUST see the wonder of the age NOW!

And when I saw it, I forgot about tea for a while and instead grabbed my camera and was privileged to have a photoshoot of a dragonfly that had just emerged from the shell of its nymph stage.

Dragonfly nymphs live underwater for over a year, dodging fish, growing, and shedding their skin from time to time. Then when the time is right, they respond to some biological signal, and climb out of the water.

This one climbed up the wall beside our front door and clung there, safe from predators, but not from paparazzi. Poor patient creature, it gripped its old shell, its abdomen slowly stretching from a lumpy blunt mass to a long, graceful body.

My camera has a low-light setting, fortunately, because the porch is in full shade in the mornings, but so that we could assure ourselves of some good pictures, we brought out a flashlight, and on macro setting, got some spectacular views.

One of the most dramatic of these is the Peek of the Week over at the Piker Press.

Not only is the transformation from nymph to adult an amazing thing to see happen right outside one's front door, but also a stunning validation of the success of our water habitat in the fish pond off the front porch.

We have often watched dragonflies skimming over the little pond, marveled at the one year the wasps had an population explosion and frequented the pool for water, and caught a great egret stalking the remaining fish (the dastardly villain ate all but one of the named fish), but this year has been a triumph, as we discovered five baby fish swimming with the big guys ... and now this creature, grown in the waters of a front yard fish pond.

In this second side shot, you can see how much longer the abdomen of the bug has become. And still the creature hung there, unmoving. After a while, I saw two water droplets fall from the abdomen, dropping ballast, I suppose, getting ready for the aerodynamics of flight.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by dragonflies (and damselflies, too). There was a small lake about twenty minutes from where I lived called Zook's Dam; I loved visiting there in the summer, seeing the bluegills beneath the water lilies, the dragonflies lighting on top of the flowers.

Over the course of the morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the porch again and again to see how "our" dragonfly was getting along. I took dozens of photos, most of which were blurred in the dim light, and the awkward way I had to position the camera.


I didn't want to risk touching the insect with the close-focus lens -- emergence from the husk (called an "exuvia", by the way) leaves the bug very soft and vulnerable. If it tried to fly away too soon, one of our scrub jays would find it and eat it in seconds.

At last, on one of our visits, we saw that the dragonfly had unfolded its wings and held them out to the side. The abdomen was thinner, the color of the body darker. The time was at hand.

And then the bug was gone, and I was able to get very close in with my lens and take a picture of the exuvia.


Little filaments were visible, but I was not able to find a single reference on the web to tell me what they were.

The husk is still on the wall outside the door, a reminder of the fantastic "birth" we were allowed to witness, and a testament to the peculiarity and complexity of Life.

The First Movie

This is my very first attempt at moviemaking.

Howie and Sebastian were playing with Lil in the front yard. We get to hear Sebastian's big hound voice complaining that Howie got the stick...



Heh.

Really Hurting

At this time last year, Bernie and I were hurtling across the country, ostensibly to my sister's rescue.

She's dead now; the rescue was in vain.

Under the smoky skies, looking at the date, I imagined trying to explain to her why her rescue failed; to tell her how much I loved her, and how powerless I felt.

I tried to tell her tonight, hoping that somehow she would hear me.

The worst hell I can imagine is meeting her again in the next life and having her demand of me, "Why didn't you help me?"

I tried, and I failed, and the loss of my sister's life is still ripping me apart.

But Then Came the Bad News ...

What was for us a charming little thundershower was for many others, a disaster.

Lightning from the storm set off over 700 fires around the state. 700.

And our lovely cooling trend is ruined -- the air is too smoky to be outdoors safely.

And the virus I had got drastically worse. Here comes pneumonia like a freight train! Fortunately I went to the doctor Monday and we were able to head it off before it was fully-fledged.

I hope the fires are under control soon, for everyone's sake.

A Day at the Resort

Since the last entry, I came down with yet another virus, one Lillian brought home from the last week of Kindergarten, when some smarmy stupid cow mama thought that keeping her sick kid home from school for the final party of the year would traumatize her child forever. "He's running a fever, but it would be so unfair for him to miss the Last Day of School ..."

God alone knows how many kids started their summer vacation sick because of that selfish, immature parent.

The virus laid Lil low for about three days. I'm hoping that I'm over the worst of it. Night before last I hardly slept for coughing, and even pulled a muscle in my throat from it. Last night I slept sitting up in the New Comfy Chair, and it wasn't TOO bad. I still awoke groggy and feeling digestively challenged by the cough suppressant/antihistamine, but by 10 am, had stopped coughing enough to rise to the effort of cleaning up the back patio after all those freakin' windy days.

I took my time and methodically swept up the fallen leaves and crud that had been blown onto the patio, and re-arranged the furniture there. I took a break to drink a pint of water, because the temperature at 9am had already been at 92. It was, by then, close to 11am.

I put on my bathing suit and hosed the accumulated dust off the patio. The result? Paradise. The chairs were in the shade, the pool was glistening in the sun, and Bernie was awake. We spent the next six hours outside, dipping in the pool for cool, sipping wine, reading our respective books, and ... getting rained on.

RAIN.

In June.

We'd just leisurely paddled down to the deep end of the pool, when I looked at the sky to the south and said, "Whoa, if we were back east, I'd say it was going to thundershower!"

The unpredicted bank of clouds was gray and nasty looking; I started scanning the edges for funnel clouds. But we're in Central California; it just doesn't do that here.

We sat on the ledge over the 8-ft end, and there was a low rumble. Bernie laughed. "That's thunder."

"It was not," I retorted. "That was some dumbass's car that doesn't have a muffler."

The sky pealed again, unmistakably not like a car. We got out of the pool.

Still not believing the clouds had anything to do with California, we called Alex and Lillian out to listen. And then it began to rain on us, while we sat reading our books. We had to put the books away, and the cloth cushions indoors. It rained harder than it did the last winter rain we had.

No, we did not go indoors with the cushions. We sat outside through it all under the lemon tree, cackling at the amazing turns of fate. Pass up the chance to be rained on in June in California's Central Valley? Not likely.

The rest of the afternoon we spent under the clouds (no more thunder came) until the wave passed and the sun came out again, and we finished reading our books. We played in the pool until we were raisins, and had a wholly wonderful day.

Aside from the occasional paroxysms of coughing that made me feel like I was being shredded.

The cloud cover and storm kept us no hotter than 100 degrees, which isn't too bad. Tomorrow is supposed to be about 10 degrees cooler, and the good news is, the patio is already nice and clean.

Killing Time

So pretty.

Stinkin' blasted plant. It's called "bindweed" because what it does is crawl all over other plants and choke them to death.

I had had it eradicated in my yard the year after we moved here; then we got new neighbors, and the lady of the house thought it was a pretty groundcover and let it run rampant.

Then she got a garden service that comes weekly and sprays weedkiller, so she no longer has a bindweed problem. Once again, I do, and alas, I'm very bad at spraying weedkiller weekly.

Maybe I'll do that today. Wednesday is a good day for killing things, isn't it?

One Pretty Day

Yesterday the winds did not race across the dusty Valley.

When I got up, it was cool and pleasant, and the sunlight reflected off the pool to cast sweet morning shadows on the retaining wall beneath the alstromeria.

Bernie and I had lunch in Modesto, then came home and swam together in the pool with Howie before he had to leave for work. It was a nice day, and we planned to do more swimming today after lunch.

Well, forget that. By 7 am the branches of the neighborhood trees were thrashing so loudly it made my scalp crawl to listen. I checked the weather ... yet ANOTHER wind advisory, to last all day today, and all night, and all day tomorrow.

And then it's supposed to get hotter than hell.

So much for idyllic California weather.

Made Alex Hook It Up

So, so weary!

It wasn't a physical day -- not with the damned latest wind storm in progress. Can't play or work outside, too much dust in the air.

However, mental activities can be tiring, too. I worked on the Press this morning; except for the cover image, which should be done tomorrow, it's ready to go. (No Fever Dreams cartoon this week; there's a limit to how many articles I want carrying my byline. It's the Piker Press, not the Sand Pilarski Dog and Pony Show.)

When I had a few minutes to spare, I had a look at the Belmont Stakes site. The race is tomorrow, and Big Brown is the favorite. I'd looked at the Kentucky Derby on line some weeks ago, and Bernie had told me he'd seen an impressive clip of the Preakness. (Note: The horse races "Kentucky Derby", the "Preakness", and the "Belmont Stakes" comprise a series of grueling races called "The Triple Crown." When I lived on the East Coast, coverage of the races was huge; out here on the Other Coast, it's lucky if I see anything in the newspapers at all.)

So as my morning break, I Googled the Derby again, and then the Preakness, and was truly impressed by the performance of the favorite. He's not Secretariat, who, back in '73, stole my heart in the Derby post parade, before I knew anything about him, but Big Brown is a looker, and he pulled off that Preakness sprint with a lot of class.

The video I saw online showed the horse after the amazing surge of speed in the Preakness, after he'd won, with the jockey trying to slow the horse to a jog. Big Brown was fighting like a son of a bitch -- he wanted to keep on running. It was at that point that I suddenly had hairs turning gray remembering that our television was DEAD.

Bernie had just crawled out of bed and was feebly drinking coffee when I hit him with, "Dammit, the Belmont's tomorrow and we don't have a TV!!! And Baffert says he thinks Big Brown is a freak of nature and can pull off a Triple Crown!!! @!##!#!"

"You have got to watch your mouth when Lillian is home from school," he suggested groggily. But after I provided him with a sumptuous lunch of pork steak, parsley potatoes and butter, and white and yellow corn (mmm, sweet) he fired up the erstwhile "good" laptop (I still haven't forgiven it for eating 1100 words I wrote) and did the final research on TV's. "If you want a TV, you can go get it. Otherwise, you can wait until tomorrow and we'll see if we can get it before the race."

I was dressed and out the door before he was even ready to take his shower in preparation for work, stash dollars in pocket.

Never in my entire life have I bought a TV by myself.

Keep in mind that over the years, I've not gone anywhere by myself if I could help it, and since last summer's traumas, I couldn't go many places by myself, let alone spend multiple hundreds of dollars.

But I did. The new TV is in the living room now, functional, beautiful, bigger than I ever imagined a TV to be. Bernie said to me on the phone after I checked out and was on my way home, "Now I know how much you love the Belmont."

Yes.

And then I came home and made my first foray into experimenting with PHP! While cooking party chicken wings for snacking on during the Belmont! I was successful in my attempt at PHP, and the chicken wings are great! I am a GENIUS!!

Fine, not a genius, but wow, I stretched myself today.

Nice TV.

A Climate Change

"Euonymus" is a cool name for a plant, and I like this one. It's a nice shrub: no thorns, no rancid-smelling blooms, no leaf drop to speak of. Even in winter it's a pretty burst of color.

I snapped a picture of the euonymus because it was bright and happy-looking, and I've included the picture here because for the past few days, I've felt brightened, and happy.

Last summer, I remember sitting in a hotel room alone (after sitting with my sister in her hospital room all afternoon), chatting with my good friend Lydia, and confessing to her that I was so damaged by events that I said "my hands shake all the time now." Fact is, they only shake most of the time now, and not everything makes me break down in tears. It's an improvement!

This week I had a strange burst of Action and cleaned the house indoors, washed down the front of the house outside, cleared my desk of paperwork, cooked, shopped, rearranged furniture, wrote about 6000 words, organized my closet, wrote letters ...

Bernie asked me what was up. I said, tentatively, "... I felt ... normal?"

Well, maybe "normal" wasn't the word that was the most descriptive. But it was easier to say than "For the first time in well over a year, I'm not so covered in anxiety that I can't think what to do next, I'm not so soul-sucked by depression and what-could-I-have-done-betters that all I want to do is huddle in a chair in a corner and hide, and my body doesn't feel like any moment could be the Big One, in which I just stop in my tracks and die like two of my uncles did."

Yeah, all of that. So ... "normal" will do.

I like the feeling. I hope it continues.

Come August, There Will Be Grapes

This then, is The Grapevine.

Stretching for about 30 feet along my northside fence, on my side AND my neighbor's, this son of a gun produces so many grapes we can't eat them all.

When I bought a little bare-root pack of grapes ... maybe five or six years ago, it was nothing more than a stick with a bud or two. I asked the nursery expert if it would grow in a pot, and she told me it could, but not to expect a lot from it. She went on to tell me I'd have to spray it with several different chemicals every year, blah, blah, blah. I didn't buy $50 worth of chemicals -- the grape starts were marked down to End-of-the-Season worthless. I took it home and plunked it in a pot, [see red arrow] watered it, and wondered if it would last the summer.

The following spring, to my surprise, it began to sprout again. I moved the pot to a spot by the fence where I had a trellis, stuck a paving block underneath it so it couldn't put down roots in the soil, gave it its own emitter on the irrigation line, and forgot about it. I hoped it would vine up on the fence for greenery, but I never expected grapes.

By the following spring, the pot had become a wintering spot for ants, and a clump of grass three feet tall had started in the pot. I yanked out the grass, threw in a handful of Osmocort slow-release fertilizer pellets, and evicted the ants by turning on the irrigation system. The plant went nuts shooting out tendrils in every direction. We had a few bunches of grapes, yay! They were small, but tasty.

The following spring I noticed two things: The pot was actually lifted on one side by the vine's grip on the fence; and ... water wasn't draining from the pot.

Okay, three things, the third being that the pot was only about half full of soil, thanks to successive wintering damned ants. Well, I thought, that lack of drainage and soil will do Mr. Grape in for sure. Wrong yet again. We gave away grapes to everyone we knew, until people were avoiding us; we were sick of grapes and left them for the birds. Last year Bernie found a fellow at work who liked the grapes, so I kept packing him down with shopping bags of grapes to take in to work.

This year, I vowed to hack away the vine and allow only a few clusters to ripen. Over the weekend, however, Bernie informed me he had a co-worker ask if the grapes were ripe yet, and could he have some.

Fine, we'll do our part for world hunger; I will only trim up the grapes that the dogs might reach. Sebastian has no sense at all when it comes to eating fruit, and grapes are not good for dogs. (I hope that damned parrot enjoys them.)

The Year of Destructo Machines

First it was the dishwasher, and I guess I'll just blame the rest of it on the dishwasher's incendiary speeches that inspired the continuing uprisings.

The dishwasher, a glitzy quiet and efficient machine bought in 1997, began to hoick up water into its own electronic innards. Water + Wiring = Not Good. Then the CD changer began to malfunction. Then the refrigerator in the kitchen, a monolith also bought in 1997. (The squat little creature in the garage bought by Bernie's parents in 1941 still trundles on, never ever having needed a freon recharge or service.)

The air conditioner kacked on us, during the last heat wave. Then the dryer died. Then the washer. (The stove I had replaced about five years ago because the one that was in here was shitty, but that's not about this year.)

Before the weather got too cold, we had to replace the water heater.

Whoops, forgot about the pool's circulation pump that had to be replaced last summer.

Both Alex and John's computers bit the dust last fall.

Mere days ago, my laptop betrayed me and disappeared an entire day's worth of writing. Hours. HOURS and HOURS of writing. Product failure!

In the last couple days, Bernie's laptop (only a few months younger than mine) began to act very, very screwy, so he did a complete system wipe and restore. It's acting screwier than ever, and running really, really insanely hot.

This weekend, the television died. The End, Finis. For a while, it acted wonky but we could get it to work by rapping it smartly on the top. Nevermore, said the Raven, flying in the window to perch upon our chamber door. This is an ex-TV.

While working on the Piker Press cover and updating my blog this weekend, I was less than pleased to observe that my beloved Sony monitor was rendering some blurry shit in regular lines down the screen.

Oh, and of course, let us not forget my digital camera that went toes up this past winter. When I grumped about it to the salesman at the electronics store, he said, "Wow, it was four years old? That's a long time for a camera."

Planned obsolescence and crappy manufacturing are a bite.

In the mean time, the 67-year-old refrigerator in the garage cackles to itself and says, "Pussies."