What's that Glowing Thing in the Sky?

Finally, a truly sunny day!

Bernie has been making me walk all over town to accompany him on his exercise. It's a dreadful chore, moving about in the springtime.

See, this is the kind of thing I'm subjected to: gorgeous fluffy yellow irises in a garden by the sidewalk! How horrible my fate! How cruel my existence!

Fortunately for me, I have a digital camera with which to document the incidents. Otherwise people might get the impression I was just wandering around for hours holding some dude's hand.

I've only got a couple more weeks of this tortuous existence, and then I'm on my own again. Do you think I'll miss being dragged on long walks to look at birds and flowers and lizards and sky?

Oh, come on.

A Walk to the River

Okay, I know this is not a good photograph, but it is important.

This bird is the very first Blue Grosbeak Bernie and I have ever seen in our lives. We're in our fifties. That's a lot of time knowing that such beautiful birds existed, and never really expecting to ever catch a glimpse of one. Today, we did.

Bernie suggested a slow amble (sans puffing, pissing dogs) down to see what the river was doing to the golf course, but we went to the far side of the course, where a National Wildlife Preserve has been formed from what was once farm land. For once we remembered to take along both binoculars and the camera. The Blue Grosbeak would have been worth paying out a weekend at a resort to see, and here he was, only a couple blocks away!

The lizard was more mundane, but it was fun to see this one and dozens others climbing around on the rocks on the side of the hill that led down to the water's edge.

The water is standing in not only the Jack Tone Golf Course, but also in the "Riparian Habitat" off of River View Drive. (Heh. Residents of that neighborhood didn't really think they were going to have a river view until the water came up this spring.) Until a couple years ago, the land was farmed. I don't know what kind of transaction took place, but we walked by and saw rows and rows of tiny trees and shrubs planted in place of beans one spring. And then we heard it was a "riparian habitat" being planted. But it wasn't wet until this spring.

I think they may have breached the levee to allow more of a floodplain. We haven't been able to find a way down there to see. Signs say "National Wildlife Preserve" and there are fences to keep people out.

With the snowpack melting, it's likely that this area will stay under water for a while. This is a good thing for us, as it will provide us with endless entertainment watching the lizards, birds, and frogs frolicking in the watery wetland.

More about flowers, and a little about hair.

I didn't plant these flowers. They planted themselves.

I don't think I've planted any nasturtiums for about four years. One year I thought some would look cute in the front garden ... and they took that as an excuse to be fruitful and multiply.

The original seeds were for flowers of orange, red, and yellow. The daughter plants have wide variations in color; some bronze, some sunset colored like these, and every kind of orange and yellow in between. These really caught my eye, especially with their luxuriously almost-double petals.

I've been waiting for days for a sunny evening so that I could take a picture of them.

This second picture is cool. I love the 40X zoom of my camera, an Olympus C-765 UltraZoom. Look at all those delicate structures in the throat of this flower -- amazing.

I mowed the front yard today, keeping an eye on a storm in the southwest. We may yet have a thunderstorm tonight, but I think the rain has missed us this time. I was nice and cool while I mowed. The wind brushed across my shorn head most agreeably.

Funny, the last time I shaved my head I couldn't wait for the time to come to let it grow back. This time it just feels good to have all that mop gone.

And the flowers didn't even stare at me.

This Has Little To Do With Flowers, and Is Mostly About Hair

Last year at this time, the gazanias were blooming everywhere. This year, they're not. It's been too dim and chill. Yesterday, the high was about 63. Today, it was 80-something.

But that's not what this entry is about. What's on my mind is hair.

My friend Lydia says that I am a shaving fetishist, but that's not true. If I was one, I'd shave my legs more than once a winter, and maybe become one of those ladies who remove their eyebrows and paint them on so that they don't show the white and gnarly hairs.

About a year and a half ago, I shaved my head. It was an impulsive promise that I made to a friend who was facing chemotherapy; she was so freaked out by the "disfigurement" of losing her hair that she was buying wigs and hats even before the treatment started. I promised her that having no hair was no big deal, so I'd shave my head when she started chemo.

People have since told me that I was "so brave" and "so loyal" and "so nice/supportive/etcetera etcetera etcetera" but the real truth is that I just got mad that hair is so important to our image-mad society. Number One, I hated seeing my friend afraid. Two, I think I was just looking for an excuse to try life with no hair on my head.

I don't like seeing people in fear. My reasoning was this: if my friend saw me with no hair, when hers fell out, she'd have company, and a (somewhat lunatic) role model. And that was fine. When her hair got so sparse that she had to have her husband buzz the stray bits down to nothing, she called me on the phone, and laughing, said, "Now I look like you." That was good. I liked that. We spent the autumn and early winter with no hair; Christmas her hair began to return and I stopped the regular shaving.

I swore I'd never do it again. People drew away from me and my shaven head as though I had leprosy. They would look away quickly if I looked at them staring at me. There were lots of whispers, but only three persons actually had the nerve to ask me about the new hairstyle. I did feel naked, a freak.

By the following March, I was quite fluffy with hair again; by July, the sweat was trickling down the back of my neck under my mop and I was remembering how cool and breezy having no hair was. I gave a hairdresser a near-coronary by having her shear my hair on the sides and back to 1/2" and just leave me about an inch and a half on top.

I've had some time to think about hair, and the lack of. When I didn't have hair, no one crowded me at church on Sunday. Old men didn't look me up and down when we sat at the bar. When I went riding, I could just pour cool water over my head when I was too hot. Towelling off after swimming took seconds. I never had hat hair, or pillow hair. Or a bad hair day.

Why do women need fluffy hair, or long hair? Or cutely-styled hair? Since when are we People of Hair? Men get too hot or too bored or too busy and shave their hair off at whim ...

Which is all to say that I think I'm ready to do the dirty deed again. This time, no high ideals, no allegedly altruistic reasons. I'm just sick of hair hanging in my face, and not having a regular salon whose artists can be trusted to treat my hair with the care it deserves. I'm tired of going to a bee-yoo-ty parlor and having the hairdresser try to put some old lady cut on me. I've had enough of painful knot-pulling when I comb my hair before leaving the house. I think I'm ready.

Crazy?

Who.

Cares.

Look, Honey, Another Unseasonable Rain!

What a surprise, it was raining again today.

Yesterday it rained on the shoer when he was working on putting shoes on the Little Duke (I have to get some pictures of that horse in this blog) and it rained on us when we went shopping for water-jars the day before that, and it rained on darn near every day of the past six weeks or more. Yeah, make that the last two months, okay?

Today we just threw open the door and told Lillian to go out in the rain and see what it felt like. At first she was reluctant, but the temps were quite temperate, and after Howie ran outside, and Babe the Big Black Beast followed him, Lil ventured out to shriek with chill when the drops started hitting her -- which shrieks rapidly turned to delight, especially when we allowed her to venture to play in the gutter.

Being Easter Sunday, there was little traffic on the street, and we were right there to keep an eye on Lillian. With surprising savvy, if a car appeared on the street, she jumped to the sidewalk and only returned to the sloshy gutter when the car had past.

In the top picture, Babe is making sure that Howie is not getting Lillian into any trouble. Babe considers himself the arbiter of behavior: if you act too silly around him, he will bark at you with enough volume to make your ears ring. He stood in the rain and watched us for a while, barked loudly at me when I stomped at him, and then joined his Daddy on the porch where the sane people were.

Howie, on the other hand, had a mission to perform: his job? To get Lillian to throw the tennis ball, and then run off with it until he got too bored on his own. Then his job became to bring it back and give her a chance to run with it.

Everyone got nicely soaked, and we're hoping that was the last rain we get until ... how about November or December?

Holy smoley, the water is right here!

Saturday was a lovely sunny day, so Bernie and I took the dogs for a walk.

Having heard that the Stanislaus River was high enough to put the city and county offices on alert, we decided to walk down the street to have a look at the river that flows past the Jack Tone Golf Course.

Well, normally it flows past. Currently the golf course is a back water appendage to the river, as you can see from this picture of the lovely golf course. All but the highest holes are under water.

We watched avocets and geese poking around the edges of the lake, and even saw a fairly large fish swimming around in what is normally the driving range. My guess is that it was a big entrepreneurial carp who saw a great opportunity for rare goodies.

Like any pair of lackwits with a couple big dogs and nothing better to do, after observing the flooding at the golf course, we decided to walk down to the levee and see where the break might be that allowed the course to be flooded. Although we came to no harm, and didn't reach the break, I have to say that I knew it was a stupid stunt to pull, that I knew better than to try to find where a flood was occurring, but that I could no more stay away from the river than I could stay away from the ice on the creek that ran past my parents' property, even when I knew the thickness was iffy. Old habits of curiosity and waywardness die hard.

What we saw surprised me. Normally, from the levee path, you look down some twenty-odd feet to the river. This time, the river was right there, only about three feet from the top of the levee. Across the river, the flood plain fields were all under water, as could be seen in this picture. Where the trees are in the distance is where a farmer's fields will be when the water goes down.

I don't know when that will be. Today has been cloudy, but we've had no rain yet; any rain in the mountains is going to end up down here in the Valley. There is talk of having to release water from the reservoirs so that they don't overflow -- that might put the water in the Stanislaus over the edge of the local higher levees.

Parts of the levee path we were walking on were very spongy and crumbly. They were not quite "wet" though they were damp. Unfortunately those levees are riddled with the holes and dens of ground squirrels. If the water comes up over them, it will eat them away like butter on fresh mashed potatoes.

When Babe started to limp, we turned back to find some shade for him to lie down and rest, and after our break, headed home, back past the golf course and up the street. There are lots of low-lying fields and farms that will keep our little residential area above flood danger ... at least for now.

Rainbows

We should have seen dozens and dozens of rainbows this winter during the rainy season.

But we didn't. When we got rain, the cloud cover was too solid, until this past week, when we got a couple beauties. If the clouds had been more cooperative, and the other rainbow brighter, this picture would have shown a double rainbow.

When we lived in Pennsylvania, we didn't see that many rainbows. Just another reason to love living in California.

Lillian was out playing in the rain with her umbrella. She's already seen enough rainbows that they are nothing unusual to her.

Eye-strain A Go-Go, Isn't that what they used to say?

Let's see, I've been working on this project for two full hours ... if I charge $30/hour, that means someone owes me about $60 -- gee, is my math correct?

There's art, and then there's work. Some art flows so senselessly easily I can't bear to charge for it; some art has a lot of value to me and to pry it loose from my possessive little hands will cost a pretty penny. But when it's stuff that I don't want to do, and only end up doing because no one else handy has the skills to do it, I feel a simmering resentment that looks like the timer on a taxi dashboard.

Did the project really have to take two hours? Well, let's see, if Someone had provided a template or even a list of what the project had to include, if I could afford a better damn printer, and if Word wasn't as obtuse and stubborn as a constipated mule with a bad attitude, no, it would not have. But if I don't get paid for what I do, how do I afford a top-notch printer?

My resentment doesn't simmer long, though. By morning, the enthusiastic "Thank you!" that I'll hear will be worth millions, anyway. The project is DONE, and my brain is starting to fill with little DONE endorphins.

It's a good life, and I'm glad I have the skills I have.

Gone With the Spring Cleaning

So lovely in the morning sun.

Nasturtiums, second or third generation. Or maybe more than that, because I don't remember planting them last spring. I thought summer color was supposed to be geraniums, and that the previous year's nasturtiums had been removed.

The incredible, edible nasturtium is an energetic plant. It puts forth blossoms in 40 days of the seed going into the ground. Heat deters it not, nor cool weather. It takes on poor soil or well-fertilized, perhaps not with equal abandon, but with enthusiasm. It thickens its leaves so well that weeds don't like to compete with it.

Yesterday I filled a 54-gallon city compost can with the viny buggers that had flourished from the spring before, engulfing celosia, geraniums, a small fountain, and the electric connections that had kept the fountain going. One of the strands of foliage was ten feet long.

Too bad it doesn't taste good enough to make it a staple. On the other hand, if we could no longer get the seasoning pepper, we could make do with the slightly peppery nasturtium. Remember that when the world breaks down and trade becomes impossible.

Pitch Dark and Raining

I just looked at the weather service online and they said it was "cloudy."

Obviously their weather station is run by a drunken optimistic sea lion who can't see out the windows. It's pouring and blowing rain, hard enough to soak the dogs, who woke me to tell me they wanted to go OUT, and hard enough to make the woodstove sluggish.

WTF are we having to stoke a woodstove at this time of year? Last night Bernie reported that there was snow on the mountainsides in the Bay Area! This global warming has resulted in a very cold spring, and a greater icepack in the Sierras this year than in the year before. Good for the ice pack, bad for anyone who is accustomed to putting tomato plants in the ground in mid-February. (Uh, that would be me.)

I'd post a photo, but everything is gray,
or needs a flash even
at the height of the light of the day.

Unexpectedly rhyming, neh?

Chicken, How to Elevate It?

I stood in front of the stove with a big package of frozen chicken and thought, "Blech."

"Blech" is a word I learned from DC's truly ancient comic book series in which Bob Hope was a cartoon character. The jokes were so hokey and story lines so idiotic that I bought every one I found. Back in the day, that was a hard-earned 12 cents, btw. But those comics have nothing to do with this post.

I intended to bake those chicken thighs. Unfortunately, previously frozen baked chicken thighs smell like cooked shoes to me. (Do not ask about the cooked shoes. It was in Seattle, and I was living in a cardboard box, but that's another lie -- uhh -- story.) They say that there is a kind of knowledge that you can receive when you need to receive it, and there is even a theological term for it that I can never remember. My mother used to say that "Knowledge is in the air." However one cares to describe it, a taste came to my mind, with a list of the ingredients I would need to procure it.

Once the chicken was all nicely defrosted (thank God for the microwave) I prepared it on a rack in a big open roaster with a little salt and some garlic powder. While it cooked for the first 20 minutes at 385 degrees, I made a basting sauce.

I melted 1/4 cup of Saffola Margarine. In my teeny Cuisinart chopper, I put one peeled and sectioned CaraCara orange, a heaping tablespoon of mango-pineapple-passionfruit jelly and another of raspberry-blueberry-cherry jelly. I poured in a little more than a tablespoon of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, a good hearty sprinkling of pepper, and a shake or two of Tabasco sauce. (I really wanted Louisiana Hot Sauce, but all we had was Tabasco.) After mixing all that up until it was a slurry, I added the melted Saffola and mixed again. Every 20 minutes, I basted the chicken with it, and towards the end, every 10 minutes.

It was pretty dang tasty. I cooked 12 chicken thighs, used about half of the basting sauce, and the chicken was done in about 1 1/2 hours. We had it with mashed potatoes and salad, but I think it would have been better with rice, and asparagus.

Too bad the whole family can't agree on rice and asparagus.

Miss You, Dad

Last night I dreamed about my father.

In the dream, we'd been traveling across country, and stopped at a rest stop. I went in, and along with travelers' amenities, I saw a rack of beautiful shawls. I picked one out that was simply gorgeous (in my favorite color, black) and took it to the counter to pay for it.

Alas, I had forgot my wallet, so I set the shawl down and went to the parking lot to find the car. The red Prism was nowhere to be seen.

I walked back through the building to the other parking lot, and the car wasn't there, either. But my father was there in the courtyard. "They sent me to pick you up," he said.

I was so glad to see him again. He's been dead for -- can it be seven years? I gave him a little hug, and then thought, "Hug him, you fool! When will you get the chance again?" so I hugged him like I did when I was an exuberant little kid. I was so happy to see him, and so happy that he was so glad to see me, too.

And if I cried a couple tears telling this tale, no biggie, because I spent most of the day smiling. I don't care if it was "just" a dream. I got to see Dad again.

CHASE wants you to be their bitch.

Just a little rant.

In order to reduce the rate on my car loan, we did a transfer to a new credit card from the conventional loan. It was working well for us, until CHASE bought out that credit firm.

CHASE insisted that it was our bosom buddy, but refused to accept that when we paid twice or extra in a month -- that we had paid twice or extra. Unless the payment was the minimum or received within seconds of their "due date" nothing counted for the next month. So if the minimum was $60, but we had paid $500, none of that carried forward, and should they change their "due dates" suddenly we were "late" inspite of being $440 ahead. They charged us late fees and then changed the "special" percentage rate to the maximum rate, because we were "late."

We're supposed to keep track of their little pissant rules every day? We receive "YOU HAVE ALREADY PRE-QUALIFIED FOR A CHASE CREDIT CARD TODAY!" advertisements at least four times a week. Those cretins don't even know who they have in their accounts. Even if you can get a company representative on the phone, they will LIE to you and tell you that yes, your extra payment will be credited to the next month, and when you get your statement, the extra will not be, and the late fees will still be added to your balance.

I'm not the only one who has had that experience. CHASE = CROOKS.

We're in the process of getting a loan to pay off CHASE and never, ever, have to deal with them again.

CHASE = MISERY AND LOSS OF $$$

Am I angry about this? You betcha.

CHASE = THE WHORE OF BABYLON.

There, was that bitter enough?

Prozac, and People I Used to Know

My cartoon this week was actually a commentary of sorts.

Happily the woman copes, hanging her laundry on the line. Prozac gets her through her daily chores cheerfully, contentedly. That she's washed and hung up her cat disturbs her not at all.

I've known three people before Prozac was prescribed for them. After Prozac, I could not have picked them out of a crowd by their personalities. They became totally different and utterly unexceptional people once the drug took them.

One was a mischievous, impish soul, prone to laugh and play tricks, loving and creative. There was some heavy misfortune in her life, and some doctor prescribed Prozac for her to help her cope. It did, I guess. It shortcircuited her grief, and she could get to work and home without bursting into tears. Her mischief stopped. Her wicked humor disappeared. Instead of laughing, she became enamored of smarmy e-mail forwards, and stopped sketching her marvelous cartoons. She lost contact with me ... for the most part, and even the halting short letters she sends sound nothing like my most beloved friend. She's gone, that person I loved so much.

The second was another close friend. We used to hang out and drink wine together while our husbands and our kids interacted, giggling over silly girl-stuff or telling stories about our ancestors: we were both hispanic, but cut off from the really Mex families. We enjoyed each other's company and could hardly wait to get together the next weekend or so. She moved away from my area, and though we promised to visit, after she started taking Prozac, visiting was suddenly not an option. I don't know why she started taking it. After she fell into the Prozac haze, she did not talk about the reason she thought she needed it. She listened only to those people who patted her comfortingly and said she'd made a good decision by taking the drug to hide her pain and anxiety. The last time I talked to her, I didn't recognize anything about her except her voice. It tore me up.

Another friend I have stopped taking Prozac not too long ago. I knew him before his Prozac time, and lamented his Prozac personality castration. Someone who had his ear told him frankly that he was catastrophically changed by the drug, and he had the courage to get off it. It was hard for him. The withdrawal made him irritable, fearful, and restless. Gradually, he started interacting with his friends and family normally again. He still has the anxieties and periods of "blueness," but my God, it's "him" again, not some oatmeal-brained pod-person hoping someone will give them a cookie and say "Good Boy/Girl!" What a relief!

It's not that I don't know what depression is about, God knows. I take the amino acid Tyrosine twice daily to stave off my own "why live" urges. It just seems to me that if the cause of the depression is chemical, there must be another solution than a drug that destroys your personality and ability to interact with the real world. And if it's a problem with coping with your life, why cover up the solution with drugs when what you need is psychiatric care or psychotherapy?

I don't know. But I do know that I miss the two friends who became Prozac very, very much.

A Small Potato Makes the Newspaper

Bernie, doting fan that he is, sent my book Judge, Jury, Shaman to a reporter from a local newspaper.

She read it, and called me for an interview to go along with her review. Yesterday the article appeared in print. I'm transcribing it here, but I am correcting the spelling errors.

Ripon resident answers challenge by writing books, by Megan Gladden.

Ripon resident, Sand Pilarski began writing in 2001 in response to a challenge issued by www.NaNoWriMo.org, to write 50,000 words in the month of November. The 50,000 words she wrote became her first novel, Dreamer. That first novel opened the flood gates and she has since written five novels, several short stories, and created a cartoon series entitled "Fever Dreams."

"After you write 50,000 words, you have the urge to write more," said Pilarski. "It is technically a hobby, but it's more like an obsession. I write or draw every day."

She has published all of her books and a Fever Dreams weekly calendar through Lulu.com. Lulu provides free online publishing services and print services for a small fee.

Pilarski's work can also be seen at www.PikerPress.com where she is the West Coast Assistant Editor.

She says that all of her books are intended for an adult audience and cautions that they aren't intended for kids who haven't hit their teens yet.

Her most recent endeavor is a series of short stories that she has compiled into two books, Judge, Jury, Shaman and Oz Can Keep Them All. All of the stories in the books are told through the perspective of the shaman Ase Ur-Jennan.

Her adventures take place in a fantasy universe where wizards and trolls are all just part of an average day.

Pilarski originally published the works under the alias Ase Ur-Jennan but eventually felt confident enough to claim the work as her own. The author of Judge, Jury, Shaman is now listed as Ase Ur-Jennan as told to Sand Pilarski.

The character Ur-Jennan is a sassy older woman, unintimidated by dragons and evil witches, willing to battle with her powers of sarcasm. She is an engaging and relatable character.

Judge, Jury, Shaman is very well written and impressively self-edited by Pilarski. It is funny and touching, in turn.

It is not made obvious in the book that it was originally published as short stories, so it initially reads as choppy without as much flow as the average novel.

Each chapter is very short -- generally only one or two pages -- and has its own mini story line. Chapters often give their own little life lessons under the transparent guise of wizards, dragons, and trolls.

The overarching story becomes a bit more evident in the second half of the book as Ase Ur-Jennan makes some friends and with them, confronts a dragon and evil witch.

My favorite chapter of the book is the first, entitled, "Popping the Big Question," in which Pilarski discusses the big question: "How do you know if you have a big ass?" Hilarity ensues as Ur-Jennan describes the trademarks of a large rump including getting stuck in chairs and knocking over household objects with said rump.

While fantasy isn't my favorite genre of literature, Judge, Jury, Shaman was undeniably well-written and provided quality entertainment. The book does not talk down to its readers, nor does it drift too far off into its alternate universe.

It was also refreshing to read a woman-centered story in the particularly male-dominated genre.

"I like older women characters. There's not a whole lot of media about women facing the last third of their life," said Pilarski.

Pilarski pulls this unusual story line off with wit and intelligence.

As an author, Pilarski wants to "provoke thought and sweep the reader along." After reading Judge, Jury, Shaman, I'm excited to see more from this talented local author.


The quotes were pretty close, and it was indeed nice to get a good review.

Lillian's Daffodils

Granddaughter Lillian cannot resist picking flowers to bring into the house.

The first two narcissi that bloomed were summarily picked and brought in for decoration. She was so pleased by their looks, that I offered to take a picture of them for her. She was very pleased.

The cool thing is that I can print out the picture of them for her. I wonder if she'd like a little scrapbook of her finds and wonders?

Those aren't daffodil leaves, no indeed. I nestled the blossoms in the alstromeria to catch the evening sun.

The Amazing Nose Discovery

This is the first year that I can actually smell the scent of the blossoms on the air.

The heavy weight of the pollen on the wind has made me pretty ill in the past, until I just learned to stay indoors while the orchards were in bloom. In recent years my doctor found a drug that keeps me from reacting badly to the blooms, but until this season, I'd not been out much in the fragrant air. What a lot I've missed.

And today was simply beautiful, a blessedly warm day for the bees to work hard and pollinate the trees. In the morning I drove to the store by back roads that led through the almond orchards, and just drank in the glorious explosion of flowers. At noon I opened up the house to let the Winter smell fly out the windows and to allow Spring to venture in.

Some of the orchards are already beginning to show the "snow" of falling petals; some orchards are just beginning to open their blossoms. I hope that my appreciation for the scent of the flowers won't do me any harm -- dear God, it's wonderful, and I'll never forget it now.

Dumb Parasite Trying to Comprehend Primitives

Tonight I'll probably sleep in a comfy chair in the kitchen.

The temperature is supposed to drop to the twenties tonight, so keeping the fire going is a priority, expecially with the wind blowing, which makes the wood burn more quickly.

The power went out for almost two hours a while ago. Whether it was the wind knocking over a tree, or a crackhead busting a pole, I don't know. I dredged some supplies out of a cabinet and got ready for a prolonged outage.

I thought about knocking on neighbors' doors, and offering them shelter if the outage continued through sundown. (Most heating systems rely on electricity.) But the folks across the street had power, when we did not. Hurray for PG&E, who are so vulnerable on the coldest night of the Spring.

We do, however heat with a woodstove, we had charcoal in the garage for cooking, and had lots of stuff for cold sandwiches, anyway.

As Bugs Bunny said, "Unnnnga-bunnnnga."

We can make it.

The One

It's him.

Bundled in warmth against the July chill of San Francisco, my husband, Bernie strolls along a pier. He's the Best. After 31 years together, he still can make me roar with laughter -- no way will I go to lunch with him without wearing waterproof mascara for my eyelashes. My eyes squirt tears from the mirth; he has an altogether too-ready and surprising wit.

I love him.

When I put my head against his chest and hear his heart beating, Life makes sense again. When I awaken in the wee hours of the morning, with a middle-aged woman's fears for the future and guilt about the past, I hear him breathing, and all is well.

He is my heart, and without him, I would have no existence.

So Beautiful, So Fragile

There they are, the stars of the stage.

This area is known as the Almond Center of the World. Almond orchards surround us, this being the best climate for them. The spring comes early enough to have them bloom in February; and normally, the spring is dry enough in February that the bees (who come from as far away as Montana --or was it -- North Dakota?) have a protracted date with the blossoms and set tons of fruit. In March rains can come again, after the fruit has had time to set.

Unfortunately, the temperature is dropping rapidly. A couple cold fronts from the north are pushing in, making the wind rise and the air cool. The minimum temperature at which bees will get their fuzzy little asses out of the hive and work is 45 - 50 degrees. If the forecasters are correct, the bees will only have about three hours a day to pollinate all those orchards. And all their work will have been in vain if we get the freeze that is also predicted.

I've been praying that the forecasters are as wrong as they usually are. The almond farmers need a break this year, considering how paltry the crop was last year -- cold rains spoiled the trees at the height of bloom.

The blossoms are beautiful, though, aren't they?