A Beachcomber's Blog

Like A Boat Out on the Ocean I'm Rocking You To Sleep

2012-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

Really? Finally! I’m going to be a Grandma. My first-born is having her first-born. Mark and I have watched with a bit of envy friends who have grandbabies. Mark does love to hold babies. For ages, long after our babies were no longer babies, he would come home from work and tell me “I held a baby today”. Maybe a co-worker brought in a newborn or a customer needed a hand to hold that papoose while they paid their bill. I always found it amusing since, and I don’t think he’d argue this point, he was never REALLY ready for parenthood.

We got married very young - at least I was very young. I wasn’t yet 18, he was 20. We were even required to go, along with my mom, to meet with a counselor at Juvenile Probation to be sure we were aware of what we were getting into. Of course at the time we were SURE we knew. After more than 37 years, I can tell you we didn’t have a clue! It should be noted that we were NOT pregnant at the time - just wonderfully, blissfully head-over-heals in love (and perhaps lust). In fact, it was more than five years before Monica blessed our lives with her arrival and I still remember the deer-in-the-headlights look Mark had on his face when I told him about his impending fatherhood. Even after five years, it was a shock.

Out of fairness, he was not raised with younger siblings nor did he babysit as I had. He did a fine job but I believe he was often overwhelmed, and perhaps still is, though dealing with adult daughters takes a little different skillset and he is probably a little more equipped to deal with grown up issues. But babies....they smell nice, except when they don’t. They love you unconditionally, kinda like a puppy. And best of all, we get a chance at do-overs but DON'T have to be the disciplinarians. I suspect I wasn’t the most patient Mom even though I would have liked to have been. But we did read to our kids. And we made them nap (for their sake and our sanity). And we used a play-pen so they could play and we could get something done.....sometimes the playpen would be in the yard while I gardened. Sometimes Mark’s daddy time involved a baby in a play pen at the wrecking yard while he worked on his race car. Some people see play-pens as baby cages but, when I see parents trying to wrangle a kid, I see a play pen as a little rubber room to keep us all sane. We didn't beat our girls but, in fact, were often asked how often we beat them to make them so good. In hindsight, we did okay and you'll never find those welts!

And now we have a grandbaby on the way and have to, once again, think of baby-proofing. And replacing carpet that just won’t NOT smell. And think about my bowls of seashells. And plants on low tables. And stairs...yikes, I forgot about the stairs! And, what do we want to be called? Granny? No! Nana? Nona? Gramma? I so look forward to sharing tidepools and gardens and chickens with this baby. And sharing smooshy cute, chubby little baby cheeks and (personal fave) baby feet to EVERYONE who follows my Twitter feed and Facebook. I can't wait to do the spoiling and have secrets just between us. I can’t wait until July (or now, June) when Monica and Gabe's little Peanut arrives and I am "Grandma". Let the spoiling begin, huh Papa?

In A New York Minute, Everything Can Change

2012-01-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

Oh how I wish I left work just a moment earlier. Instead of that one...last...thing.... Even so, as I headed home from campus, I could see the glow in the western sky. I had been warned all day by the flashing red of my Weather Channel desktop, alerting me to the heavy surf (and the "recommend you stay away from the beach" admonishments...HA!).

The spit is so FAR. It's so close I can SEE it but so far away when you want to BE there. I have to drive north to drive south again. Not sure I'll make it but I'll try. Traffic is in my favor as I go around the golf course and through town. Turning on to 255, towards the Samoa peninsula, I can see I'm not alone. I'm not the only one heading that direction, taunted by the warm glow in the winter sky. Not the only one for whom those "High Surf Advisories" is an invitation. Driving over the bridges, I sneak quick glances to see the enormous orange ball. Dropping. Too fast! Slow DOWN! Wait for me PLEASE!

As I sit at the stop sign waiting for the seemingly endless line of (four) cars to pass, I stow my purse and pull the straps on my shoes. No time to make it to the far end, to the harbor mouth where the final drop would surely be most spectacular. I pull into the parking lot at Samoa Beach, finding a spot easily, tear off my shoes and grab my camera. The howling wind convinces me to grab the raincoat I had taken this morning. I run. Through the cold sand, over the rise, JUST in time. The ball has dropped halfway into the water. The heavy surf roars but I'm sure there must be a loud sizzle as the cold water quenches the sun. I can't draw my eyes away from the orange sphere slowly.....slipping....

..under. The few of us at the beach watch the sky change from orange to dark, muddy blue. No doubt others were farther up the beach - this is a show not to be missed. We wrap our coats around our bodies, breathe deep. And head home. Lord I love this place!

You Get What You Give

2011-12-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

How many refrigerators does it take to light an intersection? How many CDs does it take to fill a pothole? How many new cars does it take to buy a cop or a firefighter? I can’t help but wonder but am too lazy to research the concept of what we lose in government services when we are beckoned by the bony finger of “Cyber Monday” to shop on the interwebs.

I’m not immune; I’ve done my share of shopping online for un-obtainables but, as I’ve become more aware of the loss of government services I’ve come to realize that many of these items are more easily obtained than they appear. For example, for a recent birthday gift for a family member, I wanted a specific book. With the closing of Borders, we don’t have a new bookstore in Eureka. There is Northtown Books in Arcata but I live in Eureka and prefer to keep my money here when possible. This is an obscure book, not one even Borders would have had on the shelf, I’m sure. I looked it up on Amazon and could have put it right in my cart then and there but decided to check out local used book emporium, Booklegger in Old Town Eureka. They didn’t have a used copy but were more than happy to order it new. It arrived in a week and I was able to give love one a requested book while keeping my money where I live. Music? Same thing. I learned that Carole King has a new CD of Christmas music. The Works didn’t have it, but they've ordered it for me. I do this fairly regularly. Loss of instant gratification? A little. Would it be cheaper at Target, assuming they have it? Probably. But, think what you will about Larry Glass and his politics, the tax revenues will remain in MY town. I’m OK with that. I don’t have to grab the “No-Arkleyville” or “Dump Dave” buttons off the counter if I don’t want to.

I’m surprised by the people I know who work at government jobs that don’t get this concept. While fretting about “THE ECONOMY” (duh duh DAH!) they will drive to Santa Rosa or worse, Oregon, to buy big-ticket items. No offense to Oregon but it amazes me that the residents there are OK with paying higher income and property taxes while the residents of neighboring states come in to shop tax-free. Seems backasswards to me. At least shopping in Santa Rosa keeps the state portion of our sales tax in state but, shop in Oregon, California gets nothing. And, coincidentally, Humboldt gets nothing. And Humboldt has less to pay for roads, and lights and cops. And we can continue to complain about the lack of services “our government” isn’t giving us. What the heck? What am I missing here?!

Why bitch about WalMart if no one forces you to shop there? Why hate the big-box when you can simply shop at the business of a neighbor? Or buy the creations of our talented lot of local crafters. Or gift certificates to local restaurants. Big boxes won’t come if we prefer to shop elsewhere. In the grand scheme of things, we may save a little money shopping on the internet, but look at what we lose.

The Tide Is High and I'm Holdin' On

2011-10-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

Tides have been running pretty high or, as we call it..."the ocean is full". Once again, it's been ages since I've been on the water and, as always, I wonder if I remember how. It doesn't take long being afloat when it all comes back. Paddling is relaxing for me and I do it for me. As much as I like it, it's not my only entertainment. I took a week off earlier this month and never got on the water, though I got in the garden and on the beach. On the beach, I tend to augment my walks with litter collection (you take a bag to the beach, too, don't you?). And like my beach walks, my paddles tend to be a opportunity to keep trash from endangering marine life. Not far from launch, I spotted something sparkling in the water. At first, I thought it might be the head of a harbor seal. Or a bobber of some sort attached to a fishing line in the rowboat that passed. As I approached, it became clear that it was a bottle...a 40-ounce beer bottle, bobbing happily. I tossed it at my feet in the boat...my first "catch" of the day.
It was a stunning day on the water. With the water level so high, it was safe to explore up Eureka Slough, behind Jacobs Avenue towards Murray Field, without worry of 'beaching' when I take my eyes and mind from what I'm doing. Wildlife was limited to a couple egrets and a heron who stood by only moments then left in a squawky huff when I dallied too long trying to loosen another bottle from the water's edge. After just a couple hours on the water, I ended up with two 40-ouncers (what is it with the people who drink 40's of Steel Reserve?!), a couple chunks of foam, a bag of/from sunflower seeds, a rubber glove, a small blue ball of some sort...and a cigarette pack. Could have gotten more, including a soccer ball but I hesitate to get too far into the shallows when I'm alone, lest I get stuck and have no one to pull me out.

I will leave you with one last shot, taken at the surface as I approached the railroad trestle coming home. A gorgeous October day on the water. If I did it more often, it wouldn't be as special.

There Are Places I Remember

2011-10-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Chilled autumn morning
Blanket of fog snuggled in the hollows along Elk River Road
Contrails, four, streak across the horizon, glowing pink in the sunrise
Frustrated southbound commuter
No place to take her photo
Must commit this morning to memory,
but content that I have satisfied Fred with a post, however frivolous.

If I Leave Here Tomorrow, Will You Still Remember Me?

2011-09-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

My fingers are tender from carving back the sod threatening to envelope the lonely headstones. I have recently begun a real search for family history, spurred on by the deaths of the last remaining aunts and uncles. I started asking questions in the past but, when faced with ambiguity, gave up the push. Now loss of information looms and the lack, if left to it's own devises, may be the victor.

In my quest, I was led to Find-A-Grave, a website where cemeteries are surveyed and headstones photographed. As I began to search for the headstones of my relatives, I found an opportunity to post photos I had taken, and to volunteer to take photos of headstones of people in our local graveyards for family members living too far away to do it themselves. There are a few of us around here and everyone seems to have cemeteries with which they have become familiar so I held back from "claiming" requests for awhile, deferring to the experts, but when I saw no one taking up the challenge of Myrtle Grove, I made it mine.

Now, me and Myrtle have become friends and I have found it to be my favorite City park. Most weekends, I spend a few hours meandering the rows. Generally I'm looking for a specific grave as per a relative's request but often I wander aimlessly, taking note of the names. There are so many Stewarts and Fosters, McCanns and Hills. And because this was one of the original burial grounds for the area, there are Vances and Carsons and, of course, Buhne. Herrick. Glatt. Cousins. Everding. Albee.

Myrtle Grove was created in 1860 by a group of citizens. In 1958, the stones were surveyed and collected, the family plots cleared and previously upright monuments laid down for ease of mowing. That sounds so wrong, doesn't it? Rearranging the final resting places and beautiful monuments for "ease of mowing"? It even appears as if some stones, with engraving on both sides, were laid horizontal...putting the birth and death dates of one person face DOWN. Shortly afterward, the land was taken over by the City of Eureka which has cared for her ever since. The lack of a groundskeeping budget leaves Myrtle the beneficiary of only occasional passes with the mower and her residents' gravemarkers sinking away in the abyss of neglect. Slowly, many of the flat stones are being enveloped by soil and sod, obscuring the intricate dates and decorations. Alice's (below) seems to be encircled with roses... As I make my way around, I have found some contentment in carving away the creeping weeds and freeing the words to identify those that lay below. My fingers are sore but it seems a small price to pay for those who lived in this area so long ago. I can't help but wonder about their families. The sons of their son's sons. Their great great great great granddaughters. Do they ever visit?

As my knife carves around the stone, attempting to identify the perimeter, the shape of each particular memorial different from the last, I sometimes scratch the surface. The blade etches clean scratches through the accumulation of decades-old grime. My initial panic at the damage done was soon overcome by the decision that these people, these pioneers and elders of the community wouldn't mind someone tidying up a bit, allowing the sun and rain to touch a little more of their headstones.

Feel The Heat

2011-09-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

Back to school time. No new binders, pens and dividers for me. These are my back-to-school supplies. Expect to be bored to tears with stories of my adventures in welding. Danny Walker has his work cut out trying to keep me from melting the hoses and exploding the world as we know it. But, dammit, I want to melt iron and build things or..."I'm gonna build shit with fahr"! I am woman - hear me whine when the sparks and random chunks of molten metal fly.

I am Strong. I am Invincible.

2011-09-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

I am strong. I am invincible…. Actually, I’m pretty ‘vincible’ but I tried this summer to be less so. These are two of my sisters, as we took a walk on the "boardwalk" at the Resort in Coeur d'Alene on a choppy day. But first I had to drive there.

My first accomplishment was replacing two bathroom faucets. For the handy folk out there, this may appear a no-brainer and, in fact, I found it was not technically difficult since I simply reversed the process after removing the old icky faucets. Learning the function of a simple basin wrench? Priceless. Learning that the issue with retrofitting of fixtures is not the actual installation but GETTING in there? Also priceless. Laying there. Crawling. Sprawling. Reaching up while laying, back arched, over the edge of a raised cabinet. Reaching around existing pipes. I can see that new installation would be FAR easier. It probably took me hours longer than it would have taken Mark but I managed it. And now I know I can. BooYAH!

Going from my father’s house to my husband’s at 17 makes one the perennial passenger. My mom didn’t drive until she was nearing 40, not long before I was born so I don’t know that I ever recall her driving with my dad in the car. Heck, if there was company, my Mom took the back seat, deferring her passenger seat to a male guest. Don’t most families leave driving to Dad? I take the wheel occasionally with Mark in the car but distance driving, except in the exceptional cases, is left to the man and I seldom go any distance driving by myself. All this leaves me with little experience navigating in unfamiliar territory. I did drive to Santa Cruz from Carson City twice to visit my folks but it was a 7-hour drive and easily done in a a day. No overnights. I've even made this same drive to Idaho but had the kids along to navigate and keep my occupied. Never alone.

This summer I changed that by setting a course for northern Idaho, fourteen hours away, and driving myself to visit my family. Just making the decision was huge. Then I had to ponder my choices and decide on a route. In hopes of commandeering a spare kayak for a jaunt, I also loaded all my paddling gear. I synced the iPod, packed some snacks and set off. The world was my burrito.

It's odd that there's a real difference between traveling as a passenger and driving on a trip like this. No conversation. but LOUD singing. Although you can't watch the landscape as much as when you're riding shotgun, you see fewer things but you see them differently. You have to pay real attention to signs, both speed limit and directional. And traffic. The real joy would be stopping when I want and taking pictures. Mark is not unwilling to stop but...lets just say I hesitate to make him pull over after passing a caravan of Winnebarges on holiday, knowing he will have to pass them all again after I take a picture or two. But, by myself? Eh...I probably didn't do much passing and don't mind doing it again. So I stopped. I stopped along 199 to enjoy the turquoise waters of the Smith River. On the second day of travel, having spending the night in a Pasco motel, I stopped to watch combines working the wide open fields in southern Washington. Honestly, this area is mostly bland desert but there were stretches of ag land, tended to by behemoth sprinklers that catch my eye every time we head this way.
While in Idaho, I stayed with my sister. Wine was consumed. While wine was consumed, we sat and pondered the birds in her cherry tree and realized there was an abundance of cherries in that tree. She fetched the ladder and a bowl and I climbed. We picked bowls full before the birds beat us to them. I did not fall out of the tree. To celebrate, more wine was consumed.I borrowed my sister's kayak and joined my sister-in-law and the Coeur d'Alene Canoe and Kayak Club on an evening paddle up Wolf Creek, off of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Pretty area, known for resident eagles though just one golden sat atop a tree watching us. Nice people and warm enough to paddle in tank tops at 8:00 at night.
On the way home later in the week, while cruising south on 395, somewhere in the dreary miles of middle Washington, I spotted this train. We were headed the same direction but it was going backwards. The first time I spotted it, it was heading through an ag area and I thought a photo in order. Think about it...the perfect opportunity to catch the front if I got ahead of the back....got it? So, I scurried on ahead to find a good spot to pull over and wait. I grabbed my camera, jumped from my car waiting for it to pass and ...CRAP, dead battery. Argh! I change the battery but the train has continued on. Backwards. The direction I'm going. I charge along, finding spots to pull over but too much junk to make a good photo. Finally, my last opportunity before it ducked to somewhere away from the highway, I pull over, take my last shot at it, surrounded by sagebrush instead of grassy fields but, still, not bad. For a train going backwards...in my direction.

In Springfield, on the way home, I, booked a room and found I was just around the corner from the Hop Valley Brewery so I wandered over for a plate of catfish and a pint of Stout before hitting the hay for the final six-hour push home in the morning. All in all, a great trip. I found that I CAN do this. I drove without getting flipped off once. I pulled into motels without prior reservations. I didn't get too lost and, when I did, found my way again. I successfully located a number of card-locks so I could save a little on the fuels costs of a 1600 mile trip and THAT is no easy task since card-locks are not generally located in easily accessed parts of town. This may not seem like much, but this was an important accomplishment for me.

She Needs Wide Open Spaces....

2011-07-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Feels like ages since I've been on the water. I stayed close to home, opting for the bay on the heals of a good negative tide that landed at 7:30. I thought late morning would be a safe bet to ride the flooding tide so aimed for Eureka Slough.This seemed like an odd place for a patio but the view would be nice if they turned the chair around.

Zoom in to those big chucks of driftwood.

Peek-a-boo, egrets....I saw you.

I'm thinking that super-negative tide required more time to refill the bay because, after being caught off-guard by the shallows a few too many times when I wasn't paying attention, I returned to the harbor. I paddled around the docks until the fishing boats started coming in. Rode the wakes a bit then, when it became a little too bumpy out there, I called it a day. A good day on Humboldt Bay.

These Fragile Times Should Never Slip Us By...

2011-07-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

It seems to me a crime that we should age
These fragile times should never slip us by
A time you never can or shall erase
As friends together watch their childhood fly ... Friends - Elton John

I remember my dad saying that one of the signs of aging is that your "wedding shoes" become funeral shoes. Those fancy black shoes he had to wear for the weddings of his children, were worn more and more for funeral masses and rosaries as he got older. Except for the aches and pains, I haven't really minded the actual aging process. It's becoming more apparent as time passes, however, that I'm not the only one aging. The worse part of getting older is that our friends and family, especially those even older than us, are also aging. And dying.

In February, it was Mark's brother Chuck. Last week, it was my brother-in-law, my sister's husband Richard Fairhurst. Rich had a few years on me and I loved to remind him he graduated from high school the year I was born. He was a water engineer for the City of Santa Cruz at a time when my sister, Mark, Mark's mom and I all worked for the City. Yeah, nepotizz! He was a big man (6'6"-ish?) that married my sister, Carol, just two months after Mark and I got married in 1975 which means they would have celebrated their 36th anniversary in September. He treated my sister like a queen. But when I think of Richard, I think of this trip.

1977. Richard and Carol in their pickup, Mark and I in our van. Communicating by CB on a road trip north into Idaho to visit my my brother and his family then on to Yellowstone. I decided not to clean up the yellow of these shots because, that's what thirty years in a magnetic photo album does to a photo. But the memories are clear. Richard and I each took at least a dozen shots of this woolly beast. He and I crept closer and closer, taking a shot each time we stopped while Mark and Carol stood by the cars.."You guys...that's close enough. Watch out....he might charge you....you GUYS!". Rich and I were sure we could get just one more shot. We can get closer.....click...click...click. Finally our common sense must have told us Mr. Bison could actually catch us though, more likely it would catch ME since Richard's legs would have surely out run mine. We got back to the cars and laughed.....

The top photo? Can you guess where? Yep, Idaho border. The sign was apparently out for repair leaving us without a photo op at the border so we improvised with Richard being the obvious choice for the panhandle.

This adorable child would be Monica with her Uncle Richard. He was loving. And kind. A giant of a man and a cheek-pincher. I know my girls and their cousins will miss Uncle Richard's cheek pinching. I know we all will miss him terribly. I do already.

The Water Was Cold, the Beach Was Empty But For Us

2011-06-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

With a minus tide promised at a reasonable hour, I convinced the Old Man to accompany me out to the Lost Coast. Of course, to make it out by 9:00 we had to leave by 7:30 but this view as we approach "the Wall" heading down to the water is always worth it.
The rocks were exposed giving us a great place for climbing along with poking and prodding the marine residents.

Can you see him? He's tiny.

The view looking south at an empty beach and the King Range was phenomenal.

See Mark. See Mark tempt fate by chipping away at the berm of the Mattole River as it converged with the sea. See our little pinniped friends as they surfed the wash that churned them from three directions. They kept a close watch on us but continued to enjoy the romp. As did we.

Glory....in the Eyes of A Young Girl

2011-05-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

If there is a sculpture in the next race called, Parenting 101, I know who WON'T be piloting it. Here is a letter I wrote to the Eureka City Schools Board and Supervisor:

Mr. Haulk et al,

Is it true that, during this year’s Kinetic Grand Championship, a Eureka High School sponsored EAST sculpture was piloted by students under the age allowed by the rules? Were false documents really provided by parents, condoned by teachers, so that said students could participate? Really? Wow! If you are not familiar, please feel free to follow this link to the Lost Coast Outpost where Hank Sims lays it out. Note near the bottom of the first article, http://lostcoastoutpost.com/2011/may/11/descrambling-todays-kinetics-brouhaha/ a comment by “The Original Race Baby” who admits to be being a teacher. Yours? Wow all over the place.

While you on the Board and the administration of Eureka High ponder the budget and why parents are pulling their students in favor of charter schools, I will remember a day when Rob Taylor, band director for EHS was not old enough to legally drive his own students on a band trip. Guess he didn’t know about this option or he could have provided a fake ID as well.

Should you pull the records of these two students and discover that they were of legal age to be piloting the sculpture, please let me know and I will be sure to apologize and presume they were just not responsible enough to bring ID as promised.

My involvement comes from being the mother of Monica Topping who was beat up publically as the figurehead of the Race organizers. She had to deal with these people, was threatened and intimidated on the Arcata Plaza in front of Arcata Police Sgt. Dave Brown and with “EHS” emblazoned on the sculpture. I’ve been a Glorious Spectator of the Kinetic races in all of its incarnations for the sixteen years we’ve lived here. This took a real ugly and evil turn in a way that I’m not sure even the Great Razooly would approve.. But it got ugly with Eureka High’s permission. This is how you raise the responsible kids of the future?

They could take a lesson from the Colfax High team who managed to travel here with their sculpture and actually FOLLOWED the rules.

Sincerely....

This Killin Time Is Killin Me

2011-05-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

I don't get out much. Traveling on my own is adventure but, on my own I make rookie mistakes. I forget things like pocketknives in my purse (no worries-TSA found it for me...). I forget my bag on the carry-on cart and feel the wrath of the tiny Asian lady who, I'm SURE had unkind things to say about me, had I understood what she was muttering to her friend after he retrieved my bag.

This trip is one I have undertaken for work, for an expansion of my job due to the unofficial freezing of vacated positions. Learning is good. Expanding my knowledge of the world I work in is good. Spending three days in Palm Springs with training managers from various law enforcement agencies, was going to be a great opportunity but, something coastal would have been my preference.

With the disappearance of airlines willing to serve Humboldt, my flight options were slim. I left Sunday evening, hopping through San Francisco to arrive in the land of golf courses around ten, threw open the door to my fifth-floor balcony and tucked in for the night. I checked into the conference in the morning and found myself with a cohort willing to wander town at lunchtime in search of a deli I had spotted on the way from the airport. After a navigational error, we found our way to Sherman's Deli, as did most of the employees from nearby businesses. No sooner did a killer hot pastrami on rye arrive, we asked for our checks and to-go boxes in order to scurry back through the blistering heat to not miss the next speaker. The evening meal found us on a lovely patio enjoying Chili Rellenos and me having a beer alone because she doesn't drink. I hate feeling like a lush.

Day two was more of an adventure. Lunch was provided to allow for"networking" so dinner away from the hotel was the respite we needed. We headed down the strip, checking out the menus being offered by the hosts, looking for something with outdoor seating and a reasonable menu. We decided on Azul when my companion was entranced by the gliding seats and attached tables. Two-for-one dinner Tuesday didn't hurt and the pomegranate Cosmo was the cherry on top for me. We sat near the entrance with her facing the bar. She noted the abundance of men. Okay...neither one of us was shopping so who cares..... "no really, there are a lot of men." And...? I looked around to find she was right...we were pretty much the only women. Then I saw her...him...gams up to there, turquoise heels and a bouffant to match, walking towards out table to invite us to the show that night. At that point, I looked away from the menu to see the display at our table for the "Judy Garland Show". Ohhhhhhhh. We found the Castro district of Palm Springs. Turned out my companion was less than "tolerant" and didn't get how these men weren't looking at women. Well....they don't LIKE women. "But the Bible says....". Yeah. We had to finally not go there when it became obvious there was a chasm that could not be bridged. I had a second Cosmo with a huge pile of mussels and we wandered back to the Hyatt where it became clear there were other issues, not the least of which was her use of the word "fornicate"...ewww!

So here I sit at the Palm Springs Airport awaiting my evening flight. I could be doing SO many other things not the least of which is celebrating Hope's 23rd birthday. Work is no doubt piling up on my desk. At over $9 for a beer, I can't afford to get drunk. It's 93 degrees outside, the terminal is filling up because weather in SF is delaying the flight before mine and others connecting to and from there. Soon, I'll find out if my flight will also be delayed. Considering I have a four-hour layover there, it matters little except the people-watching is far more interesting in San Francisco. As long as my landing in McKinleyville isn't later than the 11:59 already scheduled.

I just realized this was never posted because, although I'm getting better at using my XOOM tablet, there are a few skills needed for posting a readable blog and I'm not there yet - cut and paste evades me. Turns out I ate something I shouldn't outta `et at one of the airports and spent much of the evening and the following day with my gut gurgling and locating every restroom in the SFO terminal. Tummy still doing flip-flops and eating brown rice and smoothies to gently ease my way back into food.

You Don't Have To Go Home But You Can't Stay Here

2011-05-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

It felt wrong to displace a mother on the day before Mother's Day. To spend time on Mother's Day weekend, of all time, destroying the nest of another mother. But, DANGIT, these pigeons are driving me nuts, eating the seed and keeping the finches away from the feeders.

This feeder is at eye level to the window in our laundry room. I can see the feeder as I stand at the washer and, in fact, have to fill it from there, through the window with a scoop mounted on a stick. Either that or it's a ladder operation which gets tedious, especially in the winter when the ground is soggy. In the past season, I've renovated my gazebo feeder progressively, to discourage what we see as flying rats. I've added horizontal strips of wood to make the entrance smaller. This only slowed their escape. Plus it made getting the scoop inside to fill it almost impossible. I added some chicken wire on the bottom half but that did nothing to deter them. This week, I've noticed one smaller pigeon sitting. In bird-talk, that means "I have made this my nest and I've got babies". Dammit! I had to get this opportunity closed off before it was too late.

So I waited through the week, chasing her out of the nest...I mean feeder when I saw her. I noticed that she had a companion that would stand guard on the roof and I finally figured out he was helping her build a nest. Dammit!

I decided the Farmer's Market should wait. The plan was to add vertical strips of wood between the uprights, making the openings too small for pigeons but big enough for the finches. I got the Mikita, the pliers (to remove the useless chicken wire), got a reminder on how to use the chop saw to cut the wood strips....after chasing her out a few times from inside, I decided to take a couple pictures, just for posterity. I climbed up on the washer and she flew out....leaving....an egg. DAMMIT!

I'll see you at the Farmer's Market, I guess.

You Got To Take the Bitter With The Sweet

2011-05-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

I love it here but even I have to admit that this winter has been particularly cruel. Cold. Wet. Dreary. You name it. But days like we've been having in the past week make it all worthwhile. Besides, as sad as it makes me when someone I know moves away and dwells on the “!@#$%^ weather”, these days make me feel downright smug to be living here.

Sitting in my office, an inside cubicle that sees the light of day only through other office windows, I could see the sky. I could see the leaves on the trees moving softly in the breeze I knew to be a chilled northerly. But then, like a crooked finger enjoining me to come hither, I smelled the ocean breeze. The enticing smell of the sea, wafted over the cliffs, across Beatrice Flat, the cow pastures and parking lot and invited itself to my nose at the far west side of campus. I'm still in search of driftwood of a particular size so took a lunch break on the South Spit where I knew supplies would be good.

When you grow up in Santa Cruz, only a foggy winter morning might allow you a beach to yourself. Here, it's not uncommon at all. Though not a human, I did come upon this little pup. He had me worried, even as I left him there but it was clear he had come out of the water under his own power and he looked alert. We are always told to leave them be so I did. Bye, little dude!

Naturally, I took a bag and collected trash. Only a little plastic this time. But lots of shoes. There were several zories in addition to this boot and bedroom slipper. What the heck? Perhaps they belonged to the resident of this beachside abode. What a glorious view they have!

When My Face Don't Wanna Shine

2011-04-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

"... cuz it's a little bit dirty"

When my creative writing teacher, Sally Pansegrouw, assigned a prompt to describe a rainy day, I took a little different tack from my peers. I could have written about the drops running down the metal lockers (ours were outside) or waxed poetic on the concentric circles the drops made when they hit the puddles. Nope. Not me. It would not surprise a certain administrator, who often scolded me for being without shoes, that I chose to walk barefoot through mud puddles. and describe as eloquently as a high-school freshman can describe, the cool mud oozing between my toes. There is something oddly satisfying, in a juvenile way, about stepping into the rain-soaked soil. Oh, I know there's a potential for injury -- I've got stitches in my foot to show the damage a broken bottle can do to an unprotected foot wading through a creek. I do wish I still had this assigned paper - with the bold 'A' scrawled in the binder-paper margin. Once we get beyond, say.... sixth grade, seldom do we have the opportunity to play as we did as kids. As adults, we should feel the joy of mud once in a while, or at least be reminded how it felt.

This weekend, I got a little touch of my childhood. After Saturday's trip to the Farmer's Market and purchasing sugar pea plants, I knew I had to get them planted with a means for climbing before they began caressing each other with their tiny tendrils, coiling into a death grip around the stem of their neighbor. Once that sort of love-fest gets started, you're left with one big cluster of fragile stems and no way to really contain them. Unfortunately, Sunday was rainy but I was determined to get this job done.

I had pondered my homely little garden area, still covered with soggy cardboard to smother the lawn below. I knew my only hope, sans a trellis, was to run strings to the rafters of the chicken coop, below which were other plants. So I moved pots and dug holes as a light rain fell, pulling weeds as I went, moving bricks I use as plant bases, getting muddier and muddier as I went. I managed to clear enough space for the ladder, twisted two eye-bolts into the rafters, then three eye-bolts each into two nice chunks of driftwood I had collected. I set the driftwood on the surface of large pots and planted the peas, three to a pot, each with it's own little beanstalk to climb. And the drizzle kept on. Occasionally, I would feel the collecting moisture run down my scalp and on to my face. Mark kept looking at me and shaking his head (he's been doing that for more than 35 years so I'm used to it) taunting me until I, when I was wet enough, shook my head like a dog, flinging water in his general direction.

My hands were caked with mud. My sweatshirt (and bare arms) collecting more grime every time I shoved up my sleeves with grubby hands. My socks, worn inside perforated gardening shoes, wore the grit intended for my bare feet. Eventually, my job was done and I moved the other pots back into places where they could get the best of the small dose of sun that gets between the roofs into our yard. When I stood back to admire my work, my garden was as grubby as I was. Brown hand prints on the sides of my lovely green strawberry pot. Big, angry smears from rolling the huge pot that holds my Japanese Maple. I ran the hose around each pot, rubbing my hands over to clear the mud and bring back the shine to the glaze while simultaneously creating even more muddy puddles to splash through.

The cardboard is still ugly, waiting to be covered with compost and to accept a few zucchini plants. The bare soil awaits some hand-poured steps, a project for drier weather. I have a few empty pots awaiting the season's herbs though most of my herbs grow along my driveway, and artichokes, tomatoes and Brussels sprouts hunker between roses and hydrangeas in my sunnier front garden. But I like this grubby little planting and I think the hens will, too, as they watch the peas climb their way to the top of the coop, tempting them just beyond their wire barrier.

It's a Beautiful Day

2011-04-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

It doesn't have to be sunny. Just a Saturday. With no rain. In Humboldt. I don't complain about a dry 56 degrees so market basket in hand, I strolled the Farmer's Market, open on the Plaza for just the second week. I went for honey - I love Dave Reed's Blackberry honey - but also picked up some Brussels Sprout and Snap Pea plants from Flying Blue Dog Nursery. I was cautious to be sure I'd plant what I bought and didn't get too crazy with more than I was ready for. The cilantro was looking good so maybe I'll grab that next week.

After my lap of the Farmer's Market, I made a lap through Heart Bead for a tool I need to smooth wire for wrapping. I took a class from Kim last Fall and am just now finding the time to use my new-found skill to turn my tumbled beach rocks into center-pieces for necklaces.

In spite of the timing (it was high tide and I usually prefer low tide for beach walks), I figured it was better than NO walk so stopped at Samoa Beach for a brief stroll. Good choice.For me, a walk on the beach has value, no matter the weather but I generally consider it a successful walk if I find a sand dollar. As the sandpipers (I think?) clustered and flowed and banked and wowed their way around me, as if to prevent my taking their picture, I had to watch my step for fear of crushing one of the treasures on the beach. I was surprised when I emptied my pockets at the end of my walk and found the flotsam amounted to eleven, yes, ELEVEN flawless (or nearly so) sand dollars. Of course, my other pocket contained the jetsam....actually just trash. Plastic, of course. Although, if anyone knows Jimbo who seems to own the Rose Ann, my collection includes what must be an equipment tag, perhaps from a crab pot (that's the orange rectangle near the top of the peach schnapps bottle). In spite of the trash, I can't complain about this day. It's Saturday, after all.

"It's a beautiful day; don't let it get away..."

Buzz Buzz Goes The Needle

2011-04-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Although years and miles kept them from being as close as they might have been, they were still brothers. They were six years apart and Chuck had joined the Navy right after graduating high school, did his stretch on a nuclear submarine or on base in Groton, Connecticut, then moved to Washington to work for Lockheed after discharge. More than the six years, 700 miles separated them. There were occasional phone calls to talk about motorcycles, their one common bond. When Mark found out his brother had gllioblastoma, a nasty form of brain cancer, it hit him hard. We made a family trip a year ago November, taking his mom and our girls up to eastern Washington to make contact. The Topping boys fried the turkey and compared haircuts. Their kids and our kids connected. Mark connected with our nieces and nephew as the only brother of their Dad. Chuck's grandkids didn't know what to think of Mark or even what to call him since he looked so much like their Grandpa but we decided against "Uncle Grandpa" when we realized how much it sounded as if the family tree didn't branch.

Chuck's health declined in the next year so and, when it became clear he wouldn't survive and his time was short, Mark and I took his Mom to visit early this year. Chuck still had control of his faculties and even his sense of humor though morphine had dulled his reaction time, sometimes requiring patience to wait out the response. We talked about the holidays and the visits from his four children and their babies. I commented that it must have been noisy and he said..."family is always good".

The family took turns sitting with Chuck, chit-chatting about the past. No real talk about the future, except plans for eagle tattoos for their Dad who was devout and inspired by a cross stitch above his bed: Isaiah 40:31 "but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles" . Chuck may have been a sailor but had no tattoos and didn't quite "get" the concept but it was something they had all decided. Kids spent time while they had it with their father. His brother and mom with their only connection to their past together.

"As the ink and the blood mix with pain"

Chuck lost his battle with the cancer in February and we made plans to head up for the services - one on each side of the State. The first service would be in Kent at the Tahoma National Cemetery where he would receive full military honors. Tears flowed as the old soldiers and young sailors paid respect to Chuck's military service. The 21 guns were fired. The flag was handed to the widow. We asked the groundskeepers if they would mind our watching as they prepared the site where Chuck's ashes were to be placed. Though unaccustomed to being observed, they dug the hole and treated the ground with honor befitting the veterans interred there, even as they placed the soil and pounded the stake for the temporary marker.

In the week after Chuck's passing, his children visited tattoo parlors to have an eagle inscribed on their skin as a memorial to their dad. Even his wife, who previously had no interest in ink, had an eagle permanently placed on her body. Mark was waiting for the right design to dedicate to his brother and finally had the work done this week. Max at Sailor's Grave did the honors.

"each drop of blood is a token of love"

Lights Will Guide You Home

2011-03-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

... and I will try to fix you.

If you know me, you know I'm a fiend for storms. It happened when we were in Washington for Mark's brother's funeral so missed the tsunami. Yes, I'm a little disappointed but, unlike the fools seen walking on the beach as the reporters stood above them speaking of impending coastal doom, I would NOT have been on the sand. I would, however, have been on a precipice watching my world dance the Tsunami Surge. Long after we returned and the surge had come and gone, I was skittish to walk on the beach, leery of the aftershocks. but this week, it was time. I took a rare lunch break and headed to the South Spit and found that Eureka was not unscathed in the tidal aftermath.

I'm never more aware of the half-dozen times I enter and leave the Tsunami zone on Hookton Road as I am after a good quake but I was in search of driftwood for a project and the South Spit is the logical destination. I expected that I would collect a pocket-full of beach trash along the way, as always but, as I strolled along, dodging the water (was that a surge?!) and scanning for the perfect driftwood sticks for my project, among the razor-shell clam shells were flashes of color. As I stopped to pick up a bottle here, a plastic cap there, the obligatory pieces of nylon rope, I would also pick up what turned out to be small, colorful shards of plastic. The handful of trash became a pocketful. Became a bag full. The shards of plastic, like cheap imitations of beach glass, were scattered all around, brightly colored pieces of smoothly sanded blue and orange and green. Where did it come from? Was it stirred up out of the gyre? Carried from Hawaii churned inside the wave of the tsunami?
My favorite bit of jetsam? A flashcube. Remember flashcubes? Four flashbulbs mounted in a cube that was used on the Kodak Instamatic cameras from the 70's? This was crazy. How long had that durable little hunk of plastic been floating around? From where had it been flushed? Luckily, I took my big bag to carry wood and ended up filling it nearly halfway with caps, bottles and dozens of shotgun shells; washed down river from a target site perhaps? Has no one heard the term "police your brass"?

This is a beautiful stretch of relatively pristine beach normally carpeted with expanses of driftwood. Who knows where this stuff came from...maybe it actual made it to a recycling bin but blew off the truck, on to the street and into the storm drain, where it floated out to sea and broke into pieces.

It's sad that so many disposables have taken the place of things that would be easily washed or repaired or simply done without. Why can't we be bothered with washing and reusing instead of tossing items in favor of new versions of the same thing. Why don't we fix things instead of throwing them out and replacing them?Well, I fixed something. These lamps have been in the family and not really my style, though some would argue that I have no style. Chinese Ginger Jars (actually from China). Carved wooden bases. A patina that comes enlightening the life of a chain-smoker. Both cords had been repaired long ago in a way that made me nervous. Some may have slated them for the thrift store but these lamps are worth saving. How hard can it be - it always looks so simple when Martha does it? I hit Shafer's for new wire, plugs and sockets. Having them apart allowed me to clean the nicotine from the surfaces hidden nooks then oil the wooden bases before reassembly. Took me longer than it took Martha but, guess what? They work! And maybe they do fit my hippie-chic decor, after all.

too late for cops in trying to stop the crime rate

2011-02-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

What hope is there if the cops tell you it's a crappy neighborhood and they don't live in the town they're sworn to protect?

I work with cops. I like cops. I trust my life to cops. But, to have one who works in MY town ask "why would someone buy a house on that street?"..... really? "That neighborhood is bad. Drug houses. Tweakers. The houses were bought by families then left to their drug-dealing kids who let the house run down". I argued that this is a great town and tried to tell him that, if responsible people buy in to those sketchy blocks and care, they will chase out the tweakers who don't like to be watched by nosy neighbors. "Nah", he tells me, "most towns are swiss cheese... mostly good with holes of crime or drug neighborhoods. Eureka is blue cheese with veins of crap all over the place". He has moved to Fortuna .... What the hell?! This isn't Jericho....or Bartertown where the good people have to cower inside their homes. Who says the bad guys get to win?

Back in the day, when I dispatched in Santa Cruz, our officers had to live within 15 minutes of work, in case they had to be called in. That used to be the case in Eureka, too, I'm told. That has increased to 30 minutes for the few department that even care which means officers who are here to protect Eureka can go home to McKinleyville or Hydesville .... someplace they perceive is safer. Doesn't it track that a city is better protected by the people who have a personal stake in its success?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation finds Eureka to be a "Distinctive Destination" because of the architecture, history and non-traditional tourism options. Sunset Magazine sees us as one of the best places in the west to live. Our neighborhood is on top of things. Though our Neighborhood Watch hasn't had meetings in a while, we know our neighbors and watch out for our 'hood. We're willing to do the work because we have a personal stake in keeping it safe. I want my cops to live here....I want THEM to have a stake in this town. I want them to think of this as more than a hellhole they leave at the end of a long shift. If you want to work here, shouldn't you be willing to live here?

I Found My Groove...Baby I Found My Groove

2011-01-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

Why did it take me so long to experience Stone Lagoon? I have no clue but it was stunningly beautiful. Nineteen of us showed for a planned outing of Explore North Coast, mostly members but a few checking out the group joined in a paddle that held no threats or weather concerns, welcomed vessels of all sorts and promised to have perfect weather - especially for a mid-winter morning.

After working our way through the reeds and attempting to explore the creek on the south side, we headed to a boat-in campground for lunch. Never having been there, I didn't recognize the level of the lagoon was high...until we tied off to a picnic table that was sitting in the water, when it normally sits well above.
After a rather extravagant potluck, hauled in on a raft towed behind a member's kayak, Marna Powell led us on a tour of the six campsites and several spruce trees of awesome proportions.

It turned out that I DID remember how to paddle but had forgotten the finer points of my forward stroke until we were heading in but, muscle memory will kick in once I get out there and paddle on a regular basis. This trip reminded why I love still water and had me wondering why I hadn't done Stone Lagoon sooner.

Hang Me Up to Dry

2011-01-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

It’s the start of a brand new year and I haven’t posted a blog since autumn. Is that better than posting even though I have nothing to say? I know Fred wouldn’t agree - I'm surprised he hasn't commented with a "there's nothing to see here...close it down". Sometimes it’s best to “leave `em wanting more’. I’ve been to the beach. I made ricotta cheese. I baked piles of Christmas cookies. I've dabbled with blog-fodder but the holidays were cold and wet and had thoughts that were mere seeds lacking warmth for germination. I haven’t formulated enough to write about them but maybe listing them will help them bear fruit:

I have friends and relatives that are battling medical maladies of all sorts. It scares me. I hope I’ve been doing everything in my power to keep us healthy. I hear people question God’s plan in these matters but I believe that God has given us tools - he doesn’t force us to use them.

I have acquaintances, that have survived their holidays grieving the loss of a loved one. One in particular has an amazing support system in place that allowed her to be non-traditional. She set aside the Christmas tree and instead took a small trip with friends and celebrated with a fancy dinner al fresco. She has plans for all of the important holidays in her near future to keep her mind busy and her heart distracted. I’m sure she will slowly get back into holiday mode but I think she’s dealing brilliantly and is so fortunate to have good friends in her life.

I see couples in the cuddly and demonstrative phase of their relationships and sometime envy that excitement. Then I remember that my marriage has hung in when others packed it in. We may not lust openly but I like the fact that I’m still cuddling on the couch with the same guy after 35 years, even if we’re watching TV and not copping a feel under the blankets. Giving this up for a flash of excitement is unthinkable!

I have an old relationships that leave me questioning WHY I keep trying? Not my marriage though it IS Mark who wonders why I keep trying. I’m not really sure. The communications are few and far between and, frankly, a drag. Just once, you’d like to hear something happy when you ask “howsit goin?”. As I’ve told the girls when old friendships turn sour, sometimes you just move apart and don’t have anything in common and I suppose that sometimes you have nothing BUT history. Is that enough? Should it be enough to maintain a friendship?

I leave you with a few pictures I’ve shot in the past few months. Maybe the new year will bring some inspiration to my sluggish brain.

East End Boys and West End Girls

2010-11-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Thursday, being a government holiday to honor Veterans, Mother Nature honored us all with a sunny November day. Maybe not warm but crisp and clear. I started the day with a brisk (both in speed and temp) early morning walk through my hood, shopped for groceries then, after consulting my list of things-to-do, decided to ignore all and take advantage of the clear sky to get out on a motorcycle ride. With Mark working on bikes and not often able to get out, I no longer own a bike but he had a fixer at the shop that was fixed and had offered its use to me so I thought it best to get a ride in while the weather held. I donned my boots, dug out my coat and gloves, dusted off (literally) my helmet and started thinking about where I would ride.

This bike is a little 800 cc Suzuki cruiser, black with silly buckhorn handlebars - a little laid-back and chopper-like for my taste but at least I could comfortably touch the ground. This is especially nice when I ride so seldom, at least I wouldn't have to worry about ground clearance while I adjusted and reminded myself how to ride. As often happens when I get out on these random rides, I'm a bit nervous in the anticipation then I climb on, head out the driveway and it all comes back. Except for a brief goober moment when I forgot to check for automatic signal canceling and rode 10 blocks of I Street with my blinker on, it all was second nature.

It felt so good to roll the throttle on - even the blast on the freeway, with no windshield to protect me from the chilly November air, was nice. I turned off at McKinleyville then headed through Fieldbrook, enjoying that stretch where the trees reach overhead and across the road. Had I done this ride a few weeks ago, those trees would have been a beautiful autumn canopy but now, just skeleton-like branches hang overhead. Damp road, chilly air but still, the collective smells of wet leaves, livestock and the smoke of woodstoves hit me square in the face and warmed me (figuratively anyway) as I imagined the people in their homes, huddled beside the fire as I rode past through the cold autumn air.

I headed into downtown Blue Lake and past the Mad River Brewery where I could smell the wet grain cooking as I aimed towards West End Road. I do love that area, which is why I always end up there on these little jaunts - so beautiful with the animals grazing at the edge of the road but SO narrow, I was grateful to be on a bike as cars passed going the other direction. Past sheep. Past horses. Then along the river on West End Road as I came out of the trees and headed into Arcata. As I returned to town on Old Arcata Road, my fingers became increasingly dysfunctional with cold, making it more difficult to manipulate the clutch and brake levers. I started thinking about wrapping my hands around a warm mug of Orange-Cinnamon tea, a sign that it must be time to head home.

Not a long ride but enough to make me appreciate where I live and even to think about the holiday and the Veterans who served that allowed me this ride in peace and relative safety. I say relative because, just blocks from the shop, I barely missed being hit. Some bitc.... PERSON traveling on E Street ran the light at 14th right in front of me and behind the van I was following. Truly, had I been going just a tiny bit faster, she would have hit me broadside instead of forcing me to grab every bit of brakes that Suzuki had to offer. I think she was a little confused when she realized everyone else going her way was stopped and maybe still doesn't realize how close she came to having me bounce across her windshield. Timing is everything. Just wasn't my time I suppose. So ended a lovely ride that will hold me until Mark has another fixer for me to play with. My to-do list is still waiting.

That's Why I'm Never Going Back to My Old School

2010-10-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Well I did not think the girl
Could be so cruel
And I'm never going back
To My Old School ~ Steely Dan

Probably one f the hardest lessons to share with your teenage kids is that, in the grand scheme of things, high school doesn't matter. I don't mean the education or the grades - obviously that's important. There will be people you will meet and hold dear to you through time but the social hierarchy that is "HIGH SCHOOL" (all caps, chiller font with foreboding strings attached) will become such a small part of your life that you'll wonder why you let them cause you such grief. My apologies to those of you who may have been cheerleaders or football players or homecoming queens who still feel those are the best years of your life. For some of us, dare I say MOST of us, they were not so.

At the time you live those years, you feel as they represent your life. Who you are and all you ever will be. Your life is dictated by those narrow parameters set years ago. You are categorized. The brains. The stoners. The geeks. The jocks....the rest of us. You vacillate between wanting to blend in and striving to be noticed but by the right people. If you were raised with rules and boundaries, you push against those boundaries, trying desperately to make a name for yourself among the crowds that are held in high esteem. What you don't realize is that those people will come out of high school and will be the little fish in the big pond of the real world.

When one's level of popularity is based on looks or athletic prowess, you never really learn to treat people well because you don't have to. Somehow, people hang around you even when you treat them like crap because, let's face it, they're afraid NOT to be your friend. High school is a small village where you really can't get away from the people that you don't like or that taunt and bully you. You may have to ride the bus with them or even live near them. You feel like your whole life will involve these people and don't realize that you can leave the village. Sure, some will become business people with some level of success based on their high school stature (if you're a fan of One Tree Hill, I'm talking Dan Scott, here), but in the end, most will spend their lives trying to be what they were in high school. You know what? There is just no real world equivalent of the homecoming queen and in the real world, if you're not a nice person people don't want to be around you.

As I've watched a number of the "It Gets Better" videos that are part of The Trevor Project, aimed at the kids who are being bullied because of their real or perceived sexual orientation, I've been reminded how it felt to be pushed around and scared at school. I won't give value to the the so-called friends that put me through those brief periods of fear or the ones that disappeared from my side when it was happening but I can only imagine how a teen going through years of this treatment would think that this represents what will be their life. How awful to think that suicide is the only way away from the pain. Guess what kids .... high school is NOTHING! I can't speak for coming out; I can only speak for coming into your own. - becoming who you are and being proud of who you are. Screw the people who don't like you or don't like who you are. You CAN get away from those people and find people who will take you for who you are.

And as a final note, I would like to apologize to Matthew Phillips. At Del Mar Middle School in Santa Cruz, Matt was that kid with goofy glasses, acne and high water pants. He was teased and I know I took part in laughing at him at least once. I remember it made me feel powerful to be on the other side of the taunts for a change. And it made me feel awful. I don't think I did it twice but still remember that one time. I am not proud that I didn't have the balls to stop other people. I am sorry Matt. I hope you came into your own, got tough, got rich and kicked a little bully ass.

The Summer Sun is Fading As The Year Grows Old

2010-10-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

I love the fall. The covers of magazines in October and November with the golden leaves, the squash....everything in the bronze tones of the season. The Fall catalogs come filled with plaid, cable knits and corduroy. I've always felt drawn to the golden elements of my birth sign and, though Leo is a summer sign, the various traits of the Sun, fire, sunflowers.... are what drive me. I want to explore in the autumn months. Pumpkin patches. Autumn leaves. I want to wear sweaters even before it's cold. When I feel the first chill in the air, I crave a ride through the hills, a bowl of soup and freshly baked bread.

Some spousal manipulation garnered a trade: a drive for autumn colors in exchange for a day taking pictures at a motorcycle track day in Willows. Mark promised to pull over whenever I spotted a picture and was true to his word though it's painful for him to pull over just after he's managed to put the pass on two or three RVs only to have to pass them AGAIN, after I've taken a few photos. Our summer has kept the air so warm, I wasn't sure we'd find the colors I was looking for and, as it turned out, I was right. I suspect another two weeks will be needed to turn the leaves to reds and golds.

Since we were heading east, we went north on Highway 3 out of Weaverville, hoping the Trinity Alps might have seen a chill. Looking up to the trees coating the mountainsides, it's easy to see the changes are afoot but just barely - the hint of colors mottling the canopy is just barely visible. Areas near water, where the more easily manipulated deciduous trees reside, teased me with yellow. We stopped for a brew in Weed at the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company and found a fun crowd in there on a Sunday afternoon. Mark had the Abner Weed Amber Ale while I tried the Stout of Jefferson, a seasonal they had on tap. They knew we were visitors but, when I told them we were from Humboldt and were no strangers to microbrews, one local sighed and said... "you are SO blessed in Humboldt" and began to tell a story about a business trip, a surfboard and a waved that kicked his ass. Fun crowd. We left them discussing the scores of some sport we don't follow and headed out to I-5.The Thunderhill Raceway is in Willows, just a half-hour or so from Chico, so we trusted Victoria, the bitchy Brit in our GPS to guide us to the nearby Sierra Nevada Taproom. The place is enormous - a far cry from our Humboldt microbreweries with its tanks resembling grain towers on the roof. The food was tasty - Mark had a steak and I tried the Grilled Lamb Pizza on a crust you could watch them tossing in the open kitchen. The decor was gorgeous. We polished off our brews - I tried the Tumbler, a nice brown ale because I was drawn to the Autumnal scene on the label, and Mark had the Stout. We called it a night fairly early in preparation for 7:00 gate opening at the track. The wind was already gathering speed at 6:00 when we met Tom and Dan for breakfast.; not cold but the leaves were stirring which is never a good sign early in the day. As the sun came up, we gathered at the track gate, everyone scoping out what the other guy brought. Suzukis, Yamahas, Ducatis... all planning to turn their road-race bikes loose on the turns of the SCCA track. The people at Pacific Track Time run these track days allowing for three levels of riding, twenty-minute periods for each. Each group (in theory) would have four blocks before lunch then another four after. Although there is likely some unofficial racing going on, the intent is just to ride fast and get the yayas out. The wind made the riding, or at least the turning, difficult allowing at least two riders a helicopter ride to neighboring hospitals with injuries. The waits for the medical crews and air ambulances delayed the riding a bit but all in all, everyone had a great time.
The day got warm - brushing close to 90, I suspect which the wind cooled down only slightly. I spent my day wandering the track with my camera thinking how fun it would be out on the track, with no worries about traffic except for a few other bikes. Maybe one of these days I'll take the opportunity to let someone else take the pictures. For now, I still need to get back out to check out some autumn leaves.

It's the Time of the Season...

2010-10-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

Posted on the wall above my desk at work: Multi-task: to screw up several things at the same time.

I am so frustrated with my lack of blog-posts. Not that I think you people (all three of you) are impatiently waiting for another fabulous missive from my direction but, lets face it, sometimes one stops looking when enough time passes. Someone (PT Barnum? Walt Disney?) is reported to have said "always leave them wanting more" and it seems a better choice than "write something....ANYthing, doesn't it? Truth is, nothing much has been happening in my life.

The pumpkin spiders are decorating my porch for the fall. The autumn is beginning to see more wear. I'm still wondering what happened to September, let alone July and August. The dismal summer weather wasn't really a problem for me. We've had some nice days and some dreary days but I haven't been cold. Perhaps it's because my internal temp is rising, documented by the bloodmobile when I donated last. I've been getting a wee bit warm. Not flashing though it's debatable whether I'm dealing with Mr. Gore's global flashing or "my own personal summah". Could be the days are just warm. Or I'm old.
Home improvement has not really progressed but it's a good news/bad news thing. Mark's business is doing well, leaving him too freaking tired to work pounding nails and screwing drywall once he gets home. Can't blame him because I'm the same way. Work. Sit with a cocktail. Eat dinner. Crash. Repeat. Until Saturday when I whittle through the list of do-mees I've made for myself, interspersed with entertainment of some sort. I'm somewhat ADD when it comes to entertaining myself. People asked me if I've been out paddling and I have - a bit. My few paddles have been around the bay. Alone except for one with Hope and Nick. Nothing spectacular. Truth is, alone is boring but it's better than not going. It seems that when Explore North Coast has planned paddles, I've got other plans. One of these days, the Cock Robin Island or Mad River paddles will be on a Saturday when I'm free. I don't venture out into unfamiliar territory on my own so I'm left to the familiar. *sigh* But I'm not a single-focus girl - I have other interests. When the weather is good, I want to walk on the beach and watch the surf and photograph the surfers. And I love to garden. Pick berries and make jam from them. And cook. I'm up early and going so as not to miss a moment of the day. I hate the down-time of waiting for company so go alone.

When the cold weather of fall and winter hits, my ADD doesn't go away but it shifts to indoor crafts and baking. Now that it's getting cooler - and AFTER I get my garden cleared and winterized - I'll make something out of the stones, beads and shells I've set aside for necklaces and earrings. I have plans to make more grocery bags. And get back to some sewing. While the bread rises.

My mind, this summer has been occupied with thoughts of my food and where it comes from, spurred by a viewing of Food, Inc, the Local Challenge thrown down by the Co-op and my one summer read, Plenty which is the CR/HSU Book of the Year. It's driving me a little crazy and would love to spend time driving around exploring the farms that produce the local foods I buy, much like they did in Plenty, but I don't care to go alone but don't have anyone to go with, so I don't. I didn't. Whine. Whine. Whine.

I've actually been considering a drive to Santa Cruz to attend my high school's homecoming football game. Why? Not sure but it sounds like it could be fun, or at least the drive down will be nice. High school was far from being my glory days and the people I will most likely see are not those who had any use for me in school. The ones I would like to see have no interest in reliving high school (ugh...*shudder*) so are no where to be found. I don't want to feel like I have to drink vast quantities so I can feel like having fun (THAT would be more like the high school days I remember...) though I wouldn't mind sneaking a flask into the game, cheer, reconnect. I'd also like to go visit my godmother and her huge and fabulous family. I wouldn't mind taking my kayak if I can find someone to act as a guide since it's been years since I've played around the old waterways.

My mind is still reeling with the things I want to do over the summer... and it's gone! What did I accomplish this summer? Zip. Zilch. Bupkus. I didn't travel. I didn't kayak enough. No major projects completed. I didn't drink too much. Or eat too much. Or exercise enough. Or sit too long. But I was SO busy, doing what, I can't recall. I canned some tuna (luckily it will taste better than the bland color would indicate. And, as a switch from canning whole tomatoes, I turned a HUGE quantity of tomatoes into a few tiny jars of tomato paste by cooking the hell of the puree. This was a new thing and I liked it so much, I've ordered up two lugs of tomatoes from the CR farm to do it again this week. I like learning new things. I took a wire-working class at Heartbead in Arcata which was fun and I'll probably join them again at the end of the month for another wire working class that will teach me how to encase the rocks and shells I've collected in wire to use as centerpieces for jewelry. That's something. But is it really enough to explain where the summer went?

It's Your Favorite Foreign Movie

2010-09-08T11:19:00.001-07:00

Listen to them talk. For some these bikes represent the cool old bikes of the past. For many, these bikes are THEIR past. When I stroll around vintage motorcycle shows with my camera, I listen as well as look. The bench racing alone is worth the price of admission. This is time travel - holding tight to parts of the past, returning to visit them on occasion.

Look in the eyes of the old guy leaning on the cane as he gazes at the knucklehead Harley, remembering how he first learned to ride one just like it. Walk past the gray-bears standing in front of the Triumph and listen to the laughter as one recalls how he had one "just like that .... I chopped it". Or the guy tell the owner of the BSA that he learned to ride in the dirt on one just like it. "Man I wish I still had that bike..." These guys are not bikers but motorcyclists - they've ridden for the better part of their lives and still do. Motocross. Trials. Flattrack. They talk forks and ignitions and frames. They hunt through the swap booths and recognize pieces in a pile of seemingly worthless metal. They can spot a needed linkage for a Matchless at fifty paces. They walk straight across the grass to a booth because they recognize the rusty tank as the perfect replacement for the BSA they are restoring - the tank dented in a race long ago. You wouldn't recognize them by their attire because there is no uniform. No costume. But, as you weave through the bikes, you'll hear the words: "Oh my God, I had one of those"...over and over.

When the show was over on Saturday, some were in no hurry to leave but leaned on their pickups, listening to the Blues filtering across the bay. Their conversations started and stopped as the memories were compared. These are men for whom motorcycles represent as much of their history as the girls they loved. I suspect many were more nostalgic about the bikes.

Pick Up a Flat Rock and Skip It Across Green River

2010-08-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

Pick up the rock, encircling it with your thumb and finger, holding it flat side parallel to the water. Stand sideways to the water. Squat slightly, pitching the rock across the surface of the water. Count the skips....

I was going through some vacation photos and realized how often my family ends up skipping rocks when we're on road trips. Maybe it's the still water that's so different from our crashing waves. The one above was taken at the base of Cape Enrage lighthouse in New Brunswick (eastern Canada). We climbed around the slate shoreline for quite a while while Mark and Glo skipped stones on the Bay of Fundy. Do kids learn how to skip rocks anymore? I was talking to co-workers the other day after more than a week of our e-mails being down...."What did people even DO without the internet?" Did you know you can play solitaire with CARDS? No way! What about 'football'...paper folded into a thick triangle and snapped through the finger "goal posts" of the opposing player? This red soil is on Prince Edward Island, northern province on the eastern side of Canada...land of Anne of Green Gables. Not many shells for mom but plenty of flat rocks for skipping.

What other skills are kids missing out on while watching TV and playing video games? Climbing trees? Playing hopscotch? We have to fix this. If we remember how, that is.

I Want to Break Free

2010-08-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

Like prisoners, caught in a cell, free to go but for the lack of a key.Trapped inside my canner are eight pints of albacore. The key? A rubber gasket.

The old floppy gasket was leaking at the end of last season and I finally found one at Shafers sometime this past spring and, upon comparing it to the old one, found it to be correct and tossed the old one. The first tuna of the season, purchased from the Captain of the F/V Sunlight, was sweet, half of which disappeared at Sunday dinner leaving the remainder to be savored at a later date. The jars of albacore were placed in the canner, the gasket tucked into the lid. The lid would NOT close. No matter how I tried, no way, no how. I warmed it. I oiled it….methods the generally work no matter WHAT you’re working on but the lid would not go on the canner. Finally, Mark got involved and HE pushed. He pulled. Finally, face red and veins popping, he managed to twist the lid of the canner closed. "We may not get it back open but…there it is." Funny guy!

Last night, I played the Tuna Canner symphony, the infernal rattling of the canner, with a 10# weight for 110 minutes which is an interminably long time to endure the clatter of metal-on-metal. This morning, the canner was cooled down and I attempted to open it to extract the jars. Not budging. I called Mark; he too was unable to move it. We worked together with me holding the lid and him twisting the bottom. Then I held the pot and he twisted the lid. His arms hurt. My LEGS hurt. I am not butch enough for this kind of business. He brought in clamps to try to gently, but forcefully turn the lid. We put the pot back on the stove just to warm it gently. and tried again. Crap!

No help at ALL from Mirro who agreed that this was likely a faulty gasket, too thick for the application. Tricia in Customer (non-)Service suggested I toss this one and buy a new one. No suggestion on how to accomplish this SINCE IT WAS STUCK IN THE FREAKING POT! No compensation due me since “the vendors [in Brazil] are responsible, Ma’am, not Mirro.” Grrr.

The canner is still sitting on my counter. Eight pints of tuna are encapsulated inside, presumably intact. Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Another half hour of struggling with clamps and pieces of kindling for wedges, the tuna is free! THAT seriously took the fun out of canning.

I Can Dig It, You Can Dig It

2010-08-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

Unlike the lady of the home (above), my decision did not take much pondering. For the first time, I decided to take gardening blog, Gardening Gone Wild, up on their monthly photo contest. This month's theme, "On The Road Again" asks us for photos of gardens we found on our travels "on unfamiliar ground with an open mind and open eyes". While I'm sure photos will be submitted with fabulous formal gardens in exotic locales, my mind went immediately to the simply, rather crude kitchen gardens I saw at the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts.As we wandered the Plantation, amidst the role-players in period dress, deep in character of the time, we took a look inside the way the settlers lived. Without benefit of Martha Stewart or Sunset Magazine, their gardens were not fancy nor decorated, but functional. No fancy construction. No fancy tools. The dirt clods among the corn plants were worked with simple hand-tools. The raised beds of greens were built from scraps and pieces of wood leftover from building the fences that kept the goats from the garden as were the trellises and supports holding up the beans. So simple, yet so uncluttered and pretty.

Don't Make Me Laugh...

2010-07-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

In the olden days, there were party lines. For you younguns, that was when two households shared a phone line - that's right, not just two family members but two homes. Separate families. SHARING!. I suspect that there was a price break though it may have just been too expensive to have a private line. We shared with the neighbor who was rather intolerant our house with chatty teens with our chatty ways. She would occasionally come to the door and demand we vacate the line. Occasionally we would.

We have now progressed to cellular devices. Or have we? When the text came in, I didn't recognize the number:

INCOMING TEXT: Wus up beezy?
ME: not sure you want to know. Wrong # I presume.
IT: Wat?
ME: Who are you? This is Debbie.
IT: Oh Im sorry wrng numbr. But wat r u doin tho?
ME: you're funny...I'm working.
IT: Im not tryna b funny. But, how old r u debbie?
ME: old...really old.
IT: Married?
ME: very
IT: Alrite. Im sorry 4 takin u away from your work. It was nice chatin wit u. And by the way, my name is Don.
ME: bye Don.

I figured this inane text "conversation" was over...then again with the "beepbeepbeep"

DON: U kno later maybe wen u get a break if u feel like chatting a little more y dnt u give me a buzz? If u feel like it. No pressure.

Dood, are you serious? Does this work for people? I told him I'm old. I told him I'm married. I USE PUNCTUATION in text message for craps sake. I tried to Google search the phone number but no luck. Did he really expect me to jump on this opportunity with someone who can't spell worth shit? C'mon! Are people really lonely enough to get picked up by a wrong number? Please tell me "no".

I Been in the Right Place but it Musta Been the Wrong Time

2010-07-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

I could easily have been on a ship. The clang of the bell buoy rolling in the fat swell. The echoing of two fog horns, talking to each other from the spits at either side of the Channel. The surf hardly visible in the thick fog and only noticeable when it rumbled against the hull. In reality, it was just a walk on the north spit jetty and the water was thundering against the rocks underfoot. Slowly, the fog began melting away but not until after my walk.I took the day off work and was pleased to see a zero-tide was due at a reasonable hour. I headed out to the Breakers and climbed down into the rocks that make up the jetty, checking out the lifeforms normally hidden under water. Squatting down to see under the bigger rocks, I could see the beautiful purple and orange sea stars gripping the rock along side the anemones, drooping down like gooey wet stalactites. I could hear the chattering of the barnacles, searching the salt air for food that wouldn't be theirs until the water, once again covered them and brought them dinner. See the tiny little crab scurrying around the barnacles? Little devil was no bigger than my thumbnail and obviously too shy to allow a good focus. The low tide and fat swell brought out a number of surfers, many of whom entered the water from the jetty to save their arms from the paddle out to the break. As always with the surf, you have to be in the right place at the right time or the ride just isn't yours. Luckily, a few were in the right place at exactly the right time.

Hot Town, Summer in the City

2010-07-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

While parts of the country have been dealing with triple-digit temps and cranking up the air conditioning, we who have chosen to live where 70 is a heat wave are asked to conserve. So we dutifully live in the dark while others luxuriate in their pools or in front of the air-conditioning. I've lived in the heat and have returned to my senses, thank you very much.

I grew up in a middle class neighborhood, built mostly in the early 60's. Nothing fancy but we did have curbs. No sidewalks; those were for the rich people on the next, newer street. We also did not have swimming pools. That, too, was for the fancy people above us. We had sprinklers and we had a Water Wiggle. For those of you not fortunate enough to have owned one of these entertaining devices, the attached commercial might refresh your memory. Looking at that commercial through the litigious eyes of a person who would, say, spill hot coffee in their lap then sue the restaurant that sold them the coffee, I see dollar signs. Through the eyes of a child, it was a blast. Oh sure, there were times it would THUNK you on the head or, better yet, wrap around your ankle then continue to ensnarl you like a boa constrictor until you could free yourself. Of course, as the hose got shorter and shorter, that put that vicious little smiling head ever so close to your face. You'd reach out and grab the hose trying to prevent it from smacking your face. Now THAT is a good time cooling off.

Wake Up Little Suzy

2010-06-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

I have found social networking sites to be helpful in so many situations but unnerving when death comes calling. I learned of my nephew's death when his sister posted in shock on her myspace. It was eerie to read his earlier posts knowing he had written them and his friends had responded not knowing they would not see each other again. Then to read the 'wall' posts as those same friends became aware of his passing and grieved publicly on the platform of myspace.

This week, I learned of the passing of a family friend, Sue (Eisele) May. Though we weren't best buds, we were classmates, friends, neighbors - it wasn't until she was in the hospital birthing her first baby that I learned from the OB nurse that her name wasn't even Sue, and I learned that only because they didn't have anyone there named Sue. Turned out her name was Carol. Her dad told me that he used to sing "Wake Up Little Suzy" to her when she was a baby and the name stuck. She was the niece of Mark's best friend. We were neighbors when we both rented from her parents in Santa Cruz. She moved (along with a whole caravan of us from Santa Cruz including her parents) to Nevada and wound up as our school secretary. Again, I remember asking one day when I was at school where Sue had run off to and they said, "Sue? You mean Carol?" Guess it never really worked for her because we met up again on FACEBOOK and, once again, she was Sue.

I knew she had a cancer diagnosis and would periodically fall silent on the chatter of FB then I'd spot a posting where "Sue May has become a fan of ....." and I knew she must been feeling a little better.

This week we learned from her Uncle that she lost her battle with cancer. Yet there she is on Facebook ... smiling in a photo with her husband, looking so good and deceptively healthy. I see photos of her. Comments she made. But on her "wall", the comments come in from friends who are finding out she is gone. Facebook, as Facebook is wont to do, beckons me from the right margin to "say hello to Sue". Hey Facebook...I'd love to BUT I CAN'T! Scrolling down her page, her comments remain to remind us of her so I suppose it's all good. It's like she's still out there. We talk to her as though she has computer access wherever she is and reads how much she is missed.

Hopefully she's feeling better, laughing with her dad, Don Eisele, and brother Eric, both of who went before her in the last couple years. Maybe there will be a heavenly social network that will allow her to "friend me" and be in touch again someday.

They're the First to Come and The Last To Leave

2010-06-05T09:48:00.000-07:00

Bleary-eyed at dawn we, the first team of volunteers for Kinetics, were out and about the Arcata Plaza at 5:30 setting up barricades, collecting cones and preparing the town square for the insurgence of the fabulous machines that make up the Kinetic Grand Championship. I have attended most sections of the three-day race over the years but my husband's shop schedule leaves me to my own devises, wandering the Plaza alone on Kinetic Saturday mornings. This year, I threw out the possibility of using my time wisely and volunteering. I thought I'd pitch in for a few hours and ended up doing far more....there were sites beyond the Plaza that had to be prepared. Although the sculptures are what most people see, the volunteers....the Site Coordinators and Ground Pounders make it happen.

Honestly, it was an honor to wear the official uniform of the Kinetic Accomplice - the glory extends widely to the Ground Pounders for they are the 'doozers". We pitched in where we're needed...we answered questions of Glorious Spectators like "where should we go to see the machines after this?" and "Where can we watch tomorrow?" My favorite was an elderly lady who asked if something was going on...."why, yes, yes there IS a race going on". "A bicycle race?"....Not exactly but CLOSE, ma'am." I wonder where she thought she was.

The Ground Pounders are the roadies....we did the set up and tear-down. The "first to come and the last to leave"..... It is the Ground Pounders that ask, with a smile, that Spectators pull "feet off the street" in preparation for the LeMans start of the race, and are sometimes met with scowls....yet we soldiered on, collecting our bribes from sculptures for a job well done. I cherish my bracelet from the registration Goddess Jen-0 as well as my boobie button from the Classical Nudes and others that accumulated on my shirt over the morning.

The fun of this event is like an inside joke that not everyone 'gets'. The costumes of the teams AND the volunteers raise the eyebrows of the uninvolved. So many people, mostly long-time residents I suspect, roll their eyes at the thought of the race, a clear violation of Rules 1 and 10. ** Facebook and Twitter comments mentioned "those people" more than once.....some people just don't get it but I'm glad I do. I'm grateful for Monica, Rutabaga Queen 2004 and Queen President 3 for this year, for getting us further involved in the race. Gloria has been 'entourage' since Monica ran for Queen so has been a Ground Pounder by default since she was pre-teen.

Sitting on the rocks watching the water entry on Day Two, I sat with two couples visiting from Sea Ranch who were having SO much fun. They got "it" .... Francis asking "honey, did you get a picture of that?" every few minutes as the sculptures peddled past, giggling like a teen at the numbness we were developing in our butts from sitting awkwardly on the cold rocks. It's fun to see that joy and enthusiasm. It's fun to HAVE that joy and enthusiasm..to see adults not ashamed to be silly. As was Hobart's intent, the race is intended for adults to have so much fun that kids want to grow up to be adults.

I hope that, when you attend special events anywhere, always be aware that someone, probably a BUNCH of someones, worked real hard so you could enjoy yourself. I just hope they have as much fun doing it as the Ground Pounders do.

** RULE #1: It is mandatory that all Sculpture Pilots, Pit Crew, Officials, Spectators, Law Enforcers, Communicators, Volunteers, Merchants, and even innocent bystanders put great effort into having great fun for it is such Craziness as this that keeps us all Sane! If you insist on being a grumpy racer and not having fun, you may declare "diplomatic immunity" (since you are surely from another planet) and not be cited by overly excited officials for that infraction, but we reserve the right to adjudicate any such declaration.(NOTE: Rule #1 repeats as Rule #10...it's THAT important).

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle....

2010-05-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning, having let the cats in for breakfast then letting them back outside, I was confused by the sound of Tyra “mrowring”. After checking around, I realized she was outside, calling at the back door. While she is normally a decidedly yakky kitty, it’s unusual for her to cry to come IN. The mystery was solved when I opened the door and found a dead finch at her fluffy black feet. *sigh* A gift like only a cat can give.

We’ve had dozens of cats over the years and have learned that this is really the greatest gift a cat can bestow on a human….or at least it is to a cat. The cat we had when I was growing up was a giver. Putsy was a prolific breeder and great hunter, a skill she would pass on to her spawn by maiming a gopher and allowing her kittens to ‘play’ with the quarry. She would finally go in for the kill and share the bounty with her babies. Great training. Unpleasant to watch but really the way to teach your children to hunt if you’re so inclined. If she was between litters, she would deposit portions of any variety of vermin on the back step. A cat we had in Nevada, Hawk, actually brought a jackrabbit home once and tore it open to share with his nieces and nephews. Surprisingly, Hawk was neutered but was helping to train the babies of a stray that came to our spawning grounds.

We acquired one of our best hunters in Camden, South Carolina in 1975 - that's him at the top. Torker was feral orphan left behind by his mom under a boat at the shop where Mark worked. I bottle-fed him and he grew to be an awesome cat, quite content to travel on the dash of our van (picture it - it was the 70's) but with still enough wild blood that the scent of eggs would drive him to a frenzy. If I was fixing eggs for breakfast, he would quite literally jump on the table and steal scrambled eggs from a plate and run to a corner to feast before you had a chance to react. I learned to cook him an egg of his own and serve it hot to slow down his devouring it so Mark could finish HIS breakfast in peace.

Torker came back from South Carolina with us, traveling on the dash most of the way. He hunted in Florida. He hunted in Texas. Once we got home to Santa Cruz, he went camping with us. In fact, we’re pretty sure he’s the reason the “All Dogs Must Be on Leash” signs in Yosemite were changed to “All PETS Must Be On Leash”. I remember a ranger stopping his truck as Torker chased a big bushy-tailed gray squirrel up a tree. Luckily, the squirrel was more agile and we did not have to hide the remains from Smokey Bear but most prey around our house were not so fortunate. He caught birds (big ones), gophers, mice….and he would bring those gifts to me. Unfortunately, we lived in an apartment at the end of the hall….and he would bring them alive. If I didn’t come home soon enough, he would kill it for me. If I took too long, he would eviscerate the little creature leaving me only the most delectable pieces….stomach, claws and face. Yeah…nice gift. Thank you, Torker. He would not do this without first bashing and tossing the carcass around in the hallway, leaving little red splats all over the hallway wall. The girl in the apartment nearest the door did not appreciate the bloody walls but she MUST have preferred them to the live mice that would run in the hallway. Again, “Thank you, Torker” for endearing us to our neighbors. Torker’s love for the road took him for rides in stranger’s cars….if a car door was left open, he would jump in. Three times he disappeared, twice he was returned. to the pound where we would retrieve him. I’m sure the last ride he went on was with someone who recognized he was a perfectly awesome cat and with a Southern drawl to boot.

Our most recent felines have been hunters but not eaters. More of the Garfield perspective…..”eww, Eat mice?” They will hunt, generally unsuccessfully but if they manage to capture something, they will simply run them to death and leave the carcass behind for us to clean up. I’m fine with nature taking its course, survival of the fittest and all, but I hate that they kill for sport. So, for the spring, while the baby birds are fledging, I will need to bell the cats. Or at least Tyra. And to the mommy bird, I apologize. I grieve your loss.

You're Not the Boss of Me....

2010-04-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the theme of chicken-related phrases in common use, I feel compelled to discuss "pecking order' as defined in Merriam-Webster as:

1 : the basic pattern of social organization within a flock of poultry in which each bird pecks another lower in the scale without fear of retaliation and submits to pecking by one of higher rank; broadly : a dominance hierarchy in a group of social animals
2 : a social hierarchy

No matter how many hens I have at any one time, there is always a pecking order. Depending on the dominant...we'll call her the peckerhead....the severity will vary but there is always a 'squawk" to alert you to the fact that someone is at the bottom of the pecking order. I believe Ginger to be the lead pecker in my flock and she's a mean one (see previous post). As a result, I've done more doctoring of hen butts with this flock than ever in my years of hen-keeping. Well, a while back I DID have to deal with a little Polish hen with a prolapsed oviduct ....I won't gross you out but it involved the chicken equivalent of a uterus on the outside of the chicken having to be returned to it's proper location with a gloved hand, Vaseline and a horribly unhappy husband for a helper.

This flock has been dominated by Ginger from pretty much the start so I've been dealing with wounds. Chickens will commonly peck at anything.....rivets on jeans and my pretty painted toenails are generally enticing. Should a peer develop a wound of any sort, the others will peck at it - and the bigger the wound becomes, the more enticing it seems to be. I've read that they are attracted to red and others have told me it's the 'smell of blood'. Who knows what the the girls are thinking but they just peck at stuff. I've collected medications and treatments to try and help. Blu-Kote is a spray that has an antibiotic in it as well as drying agents but I suspect it's best feature is it's color.....It's a punky blue-violet color that is lovely when applied to a bare chicken butt. The blue seems to disguise any injury so allows the wound to dry and heal without further distress. I also have Rooster Booster that helps stop the 'cannibalizing" behavior by turning skin (including my hands) that dark purple but also has peppermint and aloe which must be soothing. Poor Mavis has had her neck and behind plum plucked clean and has become used to being hung upside down and smeared with purple goo so much that I don't think she minds. Hanging a chicken by the feet, by the way, relaxes them - makes `em "go nonny". If you've seen pictures of villagers carrying birds that way, it's just a way of calming them.

This is my little tribute to Ruby, who has been pecked at for the last time. For the last week, I've been spraying her with Blu-Kote but am pretty sure her wound actually was the exterior part of an interior problem. It was difficult to diagnose since it was quite bloody at times and hard to keep her sequestered. She seemed to actually be enjoying the attention since she would hide behind me when I was in the pen and actually leaned on me and dozed once. After days of treatment however, sadly Ruby has "gone on holiday" (a Chicken Run reference if you're not familiar). She has "bought the farm" and "gone to live on a ranch".... poor girl climbed into the nesting box and packed it in. Hopefully, I can keep Ginger under control so she doesn't do that to others in my flock. I really hate to lose my little feathered friends.

Leave Me Alone

2010-04-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

If you check any dictionary, the word "broody" translates to moody, introspective, contemplative....which pretty much sums up a "broody" teen. Although people brood and teens are broody, the first and truest definition of the word "broody" is "being in a state of readiness to brood eggs that is characterized by cessation of laying and by marked changes in behavior and physiology....a broody hen". Aah, crabby, grumpy, full-with- child attitude...THAT I understand.

Ginger has decided to set (on eggs) and flat ain't giving them up without a fight. I've had broody hens before that made it their duty to hatch every egg placed in the nest. Never mind we had no roosters to fertilize the eggs - they're just the motherly types. Reaching under to collect the eggs caused little more than clucking and bothering. Never before have I had one quite this snotty. When I reach in to check for eggs, she pecks at my hand and I don't mean gently. I've finally taken to tucking my hand inside my shirt sleeve but she can leave a mark even then.

Now that Ginger has herself become broody, other commonly used terms that come from chicken-raisin' come to mind....This, for instance would be Ginger with "her feathers ruffled". after being physically removed from her clutch of eggs. Can you tell she's pissed?

When I decide to wash down the coop walls to remove webs, I will share with you "madder than a wet hen".

UPDATE: It is now one month later and Ginger is, once again, broody. Sitting on the daily clutch deposited by her coop-mates, refusing to give them up. One month pretty much to the date. Do chickens PMS?

This Could Be The Start of Something Big....

2010-04-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

It's April already and finally April and for us on the chilly north coast, it's a wee taunt, allowing us glimpse at spring and the warmer weather to come. I flipped the page on the calendar at the start of this month and realized that Humboldt calendars really should have bigger squares during the doing-stuff season. There were SO MANY things squeezed into the tiny square of my calendar for last Saturday.So many activities but the Surfrider Beach Cleanup won out....we cleaned the entrance to Mad River Beach with magnets and rakes, scouring the sand of nails before that could puncture the tender feet of beach goers. The fire sites are normally fairly easy to spot the the winter's high tides had caught the cinders in their flows, spreading the nails and covering them with sand. For our efforts, we took six buckets of rusty nails, and other bonfire debris from the beach. I had to keep reminding myself to stop and smell the salt air and enjoy the waves while I was there.
The pre-printed start to the Farmer's Market on my CAFF calendar was almost buried...but it was on my list of things to accomplish so I packed my market basket before I left the house. After tidying up the beach, I joined the throngs of people giddy with the first Farmer's Market of the season. I made my first loop around to ponder the possibilities then ended up with a new marjoram plant from Flying Blue Dog Farm (I even remembered to bring the coupon I received by being Facebook buddies with the farmers.) , some honey from Reed's Bees, some salad greens and a couple enormous leeks. Next week, chard and carrots....and more herbs as the season progresses. I made a run through the Gem show at Redwood Acres, passing by the rock hounds, I was in search of beads for future projects. First I find beads that speak to my creative soul then a centerpiece that will work. The creative juices flow and the colors of the stones, drilled, strung and stacked is always so appealing, I couldn't resist snapping a picture until the craphead booth proprietor scolded me. I was a little embarrassed and explained I would never take a picture of his actual designs (though I doubt he actually created the pricey pieces he was selling) and was only entranced with the pretty colors. He admonished even more until I spewed an admittedly insincere apology and stopped short of calling him a dick...only muttering it under my breath as I slunk away. Didn't buy anything from him but I did find a nice string of red abalone chips to create yet another necklace I could do without....but they're so pretty.......

This weekend is another busy one. I was hoping to do one of the paddles with Kayak Zak's for Godwit Days but it looks like there will be moving assistance for Hope and another run through the Farmer's Market on Saturday. I took Monday off so Mark and I can make some headway on the entry project. I hope I don't miss anything - I repeat, bigger squares on the calendar.

She's Leaving Home....bye bye.....

2010-04-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

So many changes have been taking place these last few weeks with all three girls in transition - one daughter is in the metamorphic stage of ending a relationship, another moving, yet again, this time back from McKinleyville into Eureka. And now, the old man and I are contemplating a life as empty-nesters as the youngest princess is embarking on a move out of the castle.

In a perfect world, we would return to something akin to our early days, the five child-free years between wedding and Ms. Monica when we could do what we wanted when we wanted...and do it naked if we cared to. If that included a spontaneous amorous encounter on the sofa, so be it (different couch entirely girls so get over it). Unfortunately, as boomers who chose to spread their child-bearing over a number of years, we're not as amorous, nor as limber as we once were. Our new life, once the urchin vacates, will probably involve eating what we want, when we want.... and that's about it.

Now that Glo is gainfully employed, her plan is to move in with her boyfriend. The conversations regarding our "no revolving door policy" have fallen on deaf ears as they have in the past with her sisters and she has begun to pack for this new phase of her life. No anger involved, just excitement on her part and sadness on ours knowing our baby has grown up and old enough to survive on her own. We remind ourselves (regularly) that I was younger than her 18.25 years when we got married and I left home. I survived. She will survive. And we will begin the transition to speaking to her as an adult rather than the child she remains in our minds.

When we were young and unencumbered by offspring, we considered no one other than ourselves. When he worked on City buses and had to run a bus from Santa Cruz to, say Watsonville to exchange for another in need of service, I would go along for the ride. Just two of us alone in a 50-passenger transit bus, cruising Highway 1 at sunset. Now, I will probably accompany him to tow a bike after he closes the shop and perhaps we'll grab dinner instead of cooking. And our dinners will probably include more sausage and pork and other things kids don't like. And we may return to a life with a little less structure and a little more spontaneity. We'll probably bicker more but...hell, maybe we'll bicker less.

Of course, the kids have lived for fifteen years in this huge rattle-trap of a house with peeling paint and sub-standard bathrooms and now that we're finally fixing these things properly, they're gone (not their fault we took so long). The goal is to finish it all, enjoy it for a time, then move to a smaller place without stairs in deference to our geriatric knees. and it will be in town so I can still get around when they rip my driver's license from my wrinkly little fingers.

Perhaps I'm thinking too far ahead; after all, Glo hasn't even emptied her closet and that alone could take a while.

There Were Times....When I Bit Off More Than I Could Chew

2010-03-15T15:11:00.001-07:00

We were busily destroying the front entrance when Ol' Blue Eyes came on and Mark said "I guess you could say "I did it my way on this, right?"..... yes, honey, you could say that. Apparently, the technical term is "R and T"....rip and tear. Lordy! What a disaster. Mark discovered, as he always does when we get into these projects, that things are not as they seem, or as they should be. He had hoped to get down to the lath and plaster then overlay it with drywall but a contractor friend mentioned the possibility of the lath not being even, the thickness may vary. Sure enough the walls had "wows"; the lath would have to go. If you're not familiar with the lath-and-plaster construction of old houses, it looks like this. Narrow strips of wood, nailed on to the 2 X 4 studs, which in a house this old are actually two inches by four inches. Then, they smooshed plaster in between. This is the back side of the frontroom wall after we removed the lath off the entry side. The dust is phenomenal.....this is what Mark looked like. Imagine, if you will, what that dust does to the house, even with that plastic sheeting blocking the doorway. And all that pounding drove things on the otherside of the wall to fall to the floor. Will it never end?! At least we can insulate it before putting up drywall.

To be honest, I'm often not usually in the mix of these jobs but not because I'm not willing. They tend to only progress on Sundays and by the time we finish lingering over pancakes and Mark gets up to his ass in wood or dust, I have to work on Sunday dinner to feed the masses. This week, I'm on vacation and I hoped to make hay on the entrance so my job, would be pulling carpet off the stairs. Freaking carpet tacks! I pried. I pulled. I cussed a blue streak when the tack strips found tender skin. I started wondering about my last tetanus shot. Gloria would be juicing the lemons for dinner; my hands were not in any shape.

We're not sure why the stairs had so many colors of paint and in so many widths but we are seldom surprised at what we find in this place, even when we discover that the doorway had been widened and the supports for the house were cut to do it. There is no header over this doorway into the front room and those vertical studs should stretch from the floor to the ceiling joists. We're not sure who did it, the Gray's that built the house or one of the subsequent owners who weren't completely knowledgeable about anything they did. Mark isn't likely to cover it back up now that he knows what lurks so we're pondering the shape and size of the doorway and will be bringing the front room even farther into this project.Once I was done with the stairs, I moved on to the floor. Mark continued on with the walls, until we decided we would need some bolstering if the job was to continue. Here are the favorite tools of a woman doing heavy rippin' and tearin' - a Superbar and a Brown. And at the end of the day, we were still smiling and Mark had over 500 pounds of plaster and carpets to haul off to the landfill.But in the morning light, there was this to contend with.

And She's Buying the Stairway....

2010-02-22T07:26:00.000-08:00

Who among us, who grew up in a 60's era ranch-style home, didn't think living in a two-story house would be the coolest? If you've never lived in one, a multi-story house and it's stairways, is a thing of wonderment. A banister down which children can slide. A landing on top where small children in sitcoms lurk to listen to adult conversations below. Teens stomp UP them and things tumble down them. People crash and die, their necks and limbs tweaked at unusual angles...in black and white. Banisters to decorate for the holidays! I was fascinated with the stair lift that was used on The Farmer's Daughter.....*sigh*. And my godparents, Wynn and Royce Krilonavich's house, was huge and seemed to go on forever....

Those who have lived in two-story know the reality is far more tedious. Dirty laundry is carried down only to be washed and carted back up the stairs. Running to your room is a climb, not a simple run down the hall. But the real joy of stairs isn't realized until large items are purchased...beds and desks....and must be moved up those stairs. And when you have a 100-year-old house with stairs built long before building codes, the thrill fades quickly. Our house had, at one time included a second unit which was absorbed into the main house more than thirty years ago and includes not one but TWO sets of stairs. The rear steps are less radical but have a turn halfway up, making them difficult for moving large items. The front steps are direct but steep and narrow. I'm relatively sure we have been black-listed for delivery by most all local furniture stores, their drivers have begun to recognize the address. Hope's high school graduation present was a three-piece desk that was initially ordered wrong and had to be moved twice which did NOT endear her to the burly moving people. My big oak teachers desk, I've been told, will NOT be moved from this house. We may move but the desk will be included whether a buyer wants it or not.
The latest episode of "Stair Wars" started when Mark went to the plumbing store to buy a few supplies for the bathroom project from hell. He returned only to get the trailer to pick up a tub/shower he bought. We're not ready for the shower... but it was a deal! Mark was not blessed with sons - luckily his wife and daughters are a tough lot and, while the shower is not heavy, it IS bulky and cumbersome. We got it up the porch steps and pondered the situation. It would likely clear the ceiling but the banister railing would have to come off. Once that was done, Mark's plan was that we would "just lift the stall up on to the steps". Yeah, right.....So we tried that. The railing came right off but the newel post remained. We tried the lift but, with the post there, it wouldn't clear so we set it down again. That left Hope trapped in the corner for the time it took for Mark to pull the newel post but, once the post was out, we managed to boost the stall onto the steps at which point I had to run up the back stairs to access the top of the stall to continue it's move.

Some bashing and yelling and luckily some laughing came with with trip up. Another door and piece of wall were removed to clear the opening and the stall was home, for the time being.
There is still more work to be done in the bathroom so the shower will have to be moved in and out as the project progresses but now our front stairs are off limits. The total lack of railing is even more dangerous than the crappy railing was before. The newel post was battered and didn't really suit the style of the house so Mark decided that, rather than reassembling it to it's former tattered glory, it is now time to fix the front entry. Nothing so simple as paint since the walls, like those throughout the house, are covered in layers of wallpaper and paint - it's gotta go!
We now have begun this new, additional project by removing the wallboard from the lathe and plaster framework and we're at the point of no return, all because he ran for plumbing supplies. I DID say I wanted a house with character.....

Under the Boardwalk....

2010-02-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

As my youngest continues to apply and hunt for her first job, I've been thinking about my first job. Many who grew up in Santa Cruz, had their first work experience at the Boardwalk or maybe the Soquel Car Wash - places we could easily get to on foot or bicycle. Kids who lived in Scotts Valley, started at Santa's Village for the same reason. These were places that needed a lot of employees so could afford to take the chance on whoever they got. Some lasted some didn't. Mark, being a car guy, did the gas station route, pretty typical in the days before self-service pumps.

I was one of the Boardwalk kids, working at Hodgie's under the Jet Star, across the main entrance from the Merry-G0-Round. My parents knew Hodgie, actually Howard Wetzel, as a teen growing up around the corner from our house on Santa Cruz's east side. Networking was as much the way to job hunt then as it is now - it's who you know. Hodgie was actually a motor cop for Santa Cruz PD before his retirement and purchase of the restaurant. I mostly worked back in the fry corner, hand-dipping corn dogs and deep-fried artichokes, going home at the end of the day reeking of fry oil. On breaks, we would occasionally walk among the tourists but more often, would head to the basement, in the coolness away from the noise of the crowds or better, above the crowds by finagling a ride on the SkyGlider from one of the Seaside Company kids in exchange for a corn dog snuck out the window when they passed by on their breaks. Riding up high, the car gliding along a cable swinging in the warm air. From up there, you could see the beach and the tiny people and for that brief expanse of time, not have to worry about filling the oil or Hodgie barking at us to quick goofin' off when one of the cooks would toss an ice cube into the vats of oil, causing the oil to burble and us to squeal.

The Boardwalk was eerie in the morning, before the crowds arrived. No lights. No ringing bells or yelling kids or carousel calliope. Just the workers, carrying supplies to the restaurants and preparing for the day. More eerie, however, is the Boardwalk at night, without lights but with thousands of people, including the obligatory screaming girls. I was working on the Fourth of July 1974 when the lights went out. At some point, in the midst of the fireworks., a blown transformer. In the panic, there was a stabbing somewhere on the Boardwalk and tourists ran for their cars. The ensuing traffic jam filled Beach Street and all roads leading from beach flats, making it impossible for the ambulance to get to Beach Street. Hodgie, gruff as he was during the work day, turned fatherly and would not allow us to leave. Initially we pulled the windows closed then relented when there was some money to be made - working from coffee cans full of change, we sold coffee, hot chocolate and any food we had already cooked. Then the windows came down and we all sat in the dark of the dining room watching the lights of the refugees disappear over the bridge. When the traffic finally dissipated around one in the morning, he let us walk together to our cars and head home. I still remember laying in bed that night, the excitement and the sore feet after fourteen hours keeping me wide awake till nearly dawn. The panic was not forgotten and the fireworks were gone from the Boardwalk until 2007.

All that excitement and that was my first job. So, where does a kid get their first job experience around here? How does my 18-year-old, with a good brain, no criminal history, a diploma AND a two-year degree, get a job when she has no work experience? Would it be easier if she were fifteen? Now that she's 18, prospective employers seem to expect her to have job experience and won't take that chance. Yet we go in stores regularly where we nearly beg for service from unpleasant kids with no social skills.

This was a problem we hadn't considered when we discouraged her from getting a job when she was in high school - we thought she needed to focus on her studies since she was taking all college classes. How does she convince an employer that she's worth the risk when she has no work references. When so many are looking for jobs, how do you make yourself stand out? How do you prove you have skills and network in a town without a Boardwalk or a Santa's Village? She's thinking she'd like to wait tables....or stock shelves....whatever it takes. When the corporate stores require on-line applications then don't allow for calling in to check on your application. what's the procedure? How does THAT work? Should she go back to school and get MORE education without a particular goal in mind? Or just keep pounding the pavement, filling out applications and wincing when an interviewer asks the inevitable question about her work history? My child is looking to start making those first-job memories.

TOSSIN' AND TURNIN'

2010-01-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

...splashin..
... and churnin...
.... blowin'...
.... and goin'....

how I love a good storm.

Highway To the Danger Zone

2010-01-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

I was spoken to. Beckoned to the water as if by Sirens. The words...."high...surf...advisory" flashed on my Weather Channel Desktop, calling me to the sea with that mysterious force. The afternoon had turned gorgeous, at least in this piece of the world, at this moment. I had to take my lunch break at the water.

Driving out Table Bluff, dipping into then climbing out of Tsunami Hazard Zones would not normally be a concern but, after Saturday's 6.5 quake followed by news of the morning 7.0 in Haiti, I felt a bit squeamish. Funny how such things make us so aware of our mortality. As I reached the bottom of Hookton Road, at the far south end of the spit, I reconsidered the drive out to the end. It's only a couple miles out but I found myself calculating that I could get back to high ground in about three minutes if I ripped along at 60. Truthfully, the jagged potholes at the far end of the spit would probably rip the suspension from my low-lying car at that pace but, right or wrong, I decided I could save myself in a pinch.
To witness the larger waves - and size DOES matter - at the south spit, waves would have to come from the South and these were from the west. But what the surf lacked in heighth was offset by quantity. I walked the beach briefly, enjoying the pounding layers of surf, crashing on top of each other and the foam, tumbling happily up the sand. Nice fat juicy waves in the channel rose above the level of the jetty though they clung to the north side of the channel with few splashes to deter the fisherpeople on the side I walked.

No rocks. No big waves. But a winter lunch break spent on the beach with small waves is better than a lunch anywhere else.

She Was Shakin'....Earthquake 2010

2010-01-10T09:00:00.001-08:00

Take heed when next you notice these signs in the window at BonBonnier, the Works and Old Town Coffee and Chocolates although these bricks were in the alley from the building next door.

Yesterday's 6.5 quake was the worst I've been through, and still, once my hands had stopped shaking, I realized we fared pretty well. I headed out on my morning walk and aimed for Old Town to inspect the damage I heard about. I was not the only one. The big guys were on duty.Crumbled bricks and boarded windows were apparent. Contents of some stores were tossed about.Looking through the glass, I saw books had tumbled from their shelves in Eureka Books, and spools of yarn and ribbon had jumped from their racks at the Fabric Shop.In some of the local second-hand stores, it was apparently that items had been lost but, truthfully, I suspect the decor had not been changed much.

There will be cleanup today, stores around town will be sweeping up glass, mopping up alcohol and taking inventory of their losses but, we're all still alive. No buildings collapsed. I did hear there were injuries when ceiling tiles fell at the mall. I'm SO glad I wasn't at Costco...aren't you.
The Eureka Fire house has been yellow-tagged, for structural damage, I was told. Homeless firefighters?!

But I realized that the most damage was done to those that stood hard, fast and unyeilding. That which was more open to the movement, like the hanging lights in the Old Town lighting store and the nautilus shells in stained glass hanging in Shorelines gallery survived.

As for my house, she was shakin', but her pier-and-post construction has allowed her to sway through many an earthquake in her more than a century of existence. I was just building a fire when the house started moving...things were crashing off the mantle. Pictures jumped from the walls. My regret is that I was so busy covering my eyes that I didn't SEE what was happening. I didn't see the walls moving. Maybe that's better. My inventory showed a bathroom that looked a bit like it threw up....cabinet doors open and items laying in the sinks....my neti pot was truly the only lost item a tragic loss I will have to replace .
I got through to Mark, who was at the shop with the girls. Motorcycles swayed and danced and made for a frantic run for the door for all of them but, gratefully, no major damage to bikes or family.

Pictures are rehung. Broken glass swept.We lost no windows. We lost only tchochkes ..the jar can be replaced, the shells survived. When the shaking stopped, he only things left on the mantle were my dad's clock and Sid's ashes...my big ol' cat that we lost this year. Truthfully, those were the only really important things that were there anyway.

There are Places I Remember ...

2010-01-09T13:02:00.000-08:00

New Years Day at the Breakers, the sheer volume of water contained by the waves coming up the channel was amazing.

Breathe deep the salt air.....

The ocean warms the soul, even on the cloudiest of days.

BRING A TORCH

2009-12-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

So the fa-la-las are done....the tree still stands but she bears no gifts at her feet (well, one until an errant boyfriend stops by), the thank yous are being written (yes, Glo, I know yours are done) and I'm just happy to be burning all the ribbon and tissue paper and have the mess cleaned up. It wasn't a bad Christmas but it was somehow lacking.

I'm not sure where the problem was. On Christmas Day, there was a nice gathering of family and a few orphans that stopped by to share the joy (maybe a cookie and cocktail). The gifts were nice and everyone seemed pleased. But, tomorrow I will return to work happy just to have had a week off. The greetings of "how was your Christmas" will be met with "fine, and yours?" but that's about it. Now that the girls are grown and two of three are out of the house, I think the pre-Christmas prep to will need some tweaking.

After our fast and furious drive to southern Washington for Thanksgiving, we returned to a lack of leftovers and no family hike with which to start the annual slide show. And it never really did get off to a start. Mark got the lights up when we got back and the house looks nice but, the cheap lights that are being made, didn't make it through even one year of storage which left him frustrated with bad bulbs. The weekend following Thanksgiving, the family went together to hunt for a Christmas Tree and took home two - one for our house as well as Hope's first tree for her apartment. Mark worked on the lights, (which is the worst part of decorating the tree, I think) then left it to us to finish. The hanging of the garland and such has always been a fun precursor to the hanging of the ornaments but, with just three of us at home, it was done with the television on rather than Christmas carols. After it sat for a few days without ornaments, I busted out the boxes and hung our special decorations on my own. Even the ceremonial placement of Angie on the "highest bough" lost it's sparkle. Her triumphant location at the top of a completely decorated tree has always been special, alternating each year between the girls with the dates written on the box top to remind us whose turn it would be. With only one child left in the house, there was no interest on Gloria's part to teeter on the ladder and shove the tree up Angie's skirt - until I did it in her absence. *sigh* I can't win. I think that next year we will decorate the tree again "as a family, DAMMIT" while Sunday dinner cooks, so we can all take part, perhaps with a glass of wine to liven up the procedure.

The whole "Jesus is the reason for the season" was also a big issue for me this year. My Catholic roots still miss going to mass but, every time we go, it seems we are met with a priest who feels compelled to welcome "those of you who we don't see very often". Yeah, Catholic guilt..... way to make me feel good about being here three hours past my bedtime, Father. So we've stopped walking the few blocks to St. Bernard's for Midnight Mass and I think we all miss it, even the agnostics in the bunch enjoy the singing and praying and smell of incense as well as the chilly walk through town. Maybe next year, we'll drive to a different service. Maybe "Our Lady of Perpetual Talk" which, I'm told, can be found across town.

There are the people who feel compelled to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS with such force and anger, it takes the warmth and sincerity from the greeting, people. "It's OK to say Merry Christmas". You're right and I do. But I also wish the Jews and Pagans a Happy Holiday.... just because they don't celebrate Christmas, doesn't mean they don't celebrate. As for the atheists, too bad, so sad. Your choice. Dealing with God not your cup of tea? Do you need to be so pissy about it that those who DO believe in a higher being, a divinity of any sort must be so defensive? No need to be angry if someone greets you happily during the season. Did anyone else on Facebook receive the Christian challenges? Friends and relations dared me to claim Christ as my Savior while taunting me that 93% of people don't have the guts. Pssh....makes me ALL warm. I found myself wishing people a Merry Christmas but bracing for the attack that might follow. It seemed as if I was somehow being defiant. Christmas shouldn't be that way. And next year it won't be.

Even without Midnight Mass, we had our traditional Christmas Eve clam chowder by candlelight, using the good silver. This year also brought us a few extra bodies that passed through on Christmas Day and that was just fine. We had turkey to nosh and cookies out the wazoo. We stocked the liquor cabinet. We had an elderly friend of Nana's who was without family for the first time so she joined us. A few of Monica's friends whose families are elsewhere came by. I liked it and think next year we will formally issue an OPEN HOUSE invitation. We'll bump us some Christmas carols including Dar Williams doing "The Christians and the Pagans" and hit the hot toddies with a double shot of brandy. Until I have grandbabies' eyes to twinkle, we will adjust our holidays to fit what we have to work with.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

2009-12-03T21:44:00.000-08:00

Wasn't it just last week I was hanging up my harvest garland and placing pumpkins, real and faux, around my house? Wreaths and mantel were decorated with leaves of gold and bronze...and crows. I just wrapped my banister in autumn garland and now it's time to transition the fall into winter. Down will come the ears of dried corn to be replaced with sprigs of pine and rosemary. The warm earthy brown and rust candles will be replaced with pillars of white and silver (very Martha, no?)

The fall went so fast. Our Indian Summer was so brief and frantic - I've not been out for a paddle in ages. I'm not fond of cold anyway but it seems like the days I've had free time, my water time has been spent spectating at the crashing waves. It's a favorite pastime but does not translate to paddling conditions for me.

Maybe because we went out of town for Thanksgiving which left us without our traditional family hike, family photo and frig full of leftovers, the season hasn't transitioned correctly. I'm determined to remedy that this weekend. I will get down the Christmas bins and fill the air with the sounds of Christmas and the smells of the holidays. I will wrap up gifts so they can be shipped on time. By Sunday, my house, and with it my mind, will evolve into a holiday spirit that I hope will carry me through the season, blissfully ignoring the materialistic hubbub, angry Christian rhetoric and inflatable lawn Santas. I am a lapsed Catholic but not so lapsed that I don't equate Christmas with a kind and benevolent God. I also appreciate the solstice celebrations and the joy and peace that comes with them.

No matter my beliefs or yours, I hope we all get through this season with love and peace and that feeling of wonder we all felt as we prepared for Santa. And, as always, Gloria can enjoy hearing Josh Groban singing her name in long, expansive notes....and she will smile.

SHE DIDN'T TELL ME THERE WERE ROCKS UNDER THE WAVES

2009-11-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

You don't have to know me well to know that a "high surf advisory" or a call to stay off the beach is just taunting me. Hey, I'm careful. And I DON'T go on the jetty when the seas are up....I'm crazy but I'm not stupid.

I took a couple mental-health days this week....they weather was so calm and sunny early in the week I had hoped to get in a few paddles. By the end of the week, however, a storm was brewing so the kayak stayed in dry dock but I still took the opportunity for some beach time.

I drove to Camel Rock when the surf was whomping the rocks from all directions. The sky was blue but the water was churning, wrapping itself around the rocks in torrents. Tide had been high at Moonstone but left no treasures except for evidence of apparently a LOT of little naked crabs running around somewhere. At Power Poles, the foam chased me up the dunes so I chose not to walk far up the beach. Very awesome storm. I won't even mind going back to work tomorrow.

SAME OL' TRAILER TRASH IN NEW SHOES

2009-11-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

1995 - the Topping Trailer Trash years. Actually just two months but it felt like years. After spending eleven years in Minden, Nevada, enduring the heat and the cold and the wind and the dirt and the....cranky Californians who brought their cranky asses with them to screw up life in a whole NEW place....we packed up our lives and returned to the coast. It was fourteen years ago today.

The move started in August with the travel trailer and the rental of a space at the KOA . We came back the next weekend, towing my old Volvo on a trailer surrounded with boxes of thing we thought we might need but had to be left in a mini-storage. Mark leveled the trailer, hooked up the propane and poop pipe and returned to Nevada to pack up the house and close up his business. Monica and Hope were to start school on Monday and the next two months would be the stuff memories (and nightmares) are made of.

The alarm would sound, I'd grab the "shower bag" containing soap, shampoo and conditioner, along with a towel and flashlight and head out into the dark morning. Making my way up the tree-lined road (there were still trees at the KOA at that point), flashlight darting left and right to illuminate skunks and raccoons scavenging through park trash cans, I was generally the first inside the cold shower house. I'd turn on the lights and get the heater running and wait for the warm water to run through the pipes. Wash, dry... brrrrr, I'd scuff back to the trailer and wake Monica and Hope. They would, in turn, take the bag and grab their towels and venture in my footsteps back to the showers where, hopefully no one had left the door open and it was a bit warmer.

While they showered, I would fold up Monica's bed which doubled as the dining room. I'd wake Glo, who was just three at the time, and get her moving so as not to be in the way when her sisters returned. The tiny trailer bathroom held the mirror so timing was everything to get everyone dressed for school. An ill-timed opening of the refrigerator would block an exit from the bathroom....bickering and impatience and we're off to school. Hope had come from a year-round school so already had a month of second grade under her belt when I dropped her at Marshall that first day but Monica was starting Eureka High as a sophomore - that's a tale for her to tell. We had a few extra minutes that first day and drove by the house we were buying - 'our house'. We would do that regularly, cruising slowly past, nervous until that "SOLD" sign was hung over the realtor's picket.

Some days, Glo and I would head back to the park where I would keep track of her by the squeaky tricycle she peddled around the park. We would pick berries and bake cobblers and cookies in our tiny little trailer oven. A couple days a week, we would kill time waiting for stores to open, sometimes at the Del Norte pier watching jellyfish and otters wind their ways up the channel. Then we'd go about discovering Food Mart and the Fresh Guys, finding Winco and doing a wee bit of shopping which was all we had room for in our trailer house. Late afternoon, we'd hop in the car to collect the girls from school. Sometimes we'd eat and relax in the park hot tub.... nothing like tubbing with strangers for childhood memories.

The initial plan was for Mark to drive over on the weekends and bring loads of our stuff with each trip but it took only a couple of those long drives before the novelty of THAT wore off. It was decided he could get more done if he just stayed there and packed. He rounded up a friend to help ("do you know how many f#*king serving dishes you have?!") while I was a single-mom in the trailer park for the entire month of September.

Mark was scheduled to start work at Harper's at the start of October so he came that weekend, towing a box trailer containing our world which Harvey allowed him to park out back of the dealership. He also brought our dog and one old cat. For the next month, the body count in that 18-1/2 foot trailer was two adults, three kids, a cranky old cat and a hundred-pound dog. We added dad to the morning shower ritual as well as a walk for Grizz and set about trying to enjoy autumn under the trees. We bought a jack o'lantern and a box of apples without consideration of our storage situation so put them on the table outside. The racoons found them all to be quite delicious, taking a bite of virtually every apple, littering our site with the remains. Arrrgh!

The end of the month held light at the end of that long, trailer-lined tunnel. We would occasionally make treks to the mini-storage to retrieve warmer clothes and, as Halloween loomed, we dug out the costumes. As the girls tried to decide on their costumes for the year, Hope's decision was made for her when she contracted chicken pox.... She was no longer contagious when she returned to school with a black pointy hat and realistic witchy complexion, complete with bumps.

Finally, the papers were signed and on the first Friday in November, Glo and I dropped the girls at school, picked up a bucket of chicken and had lunch on the floor of our new, old living room. Over the weekend, we emptied the box trailer of our dusty Nevada boxes into our musty old home.

For fourteen years, we've been here in this rickely old beast and I still love it. I always wanted a house with "character" and, as Mark tells me, "well, you got it!". I spent a little time in county records tracking the history and age of our new abode. A two-story house built by Anthony Gray early in the last century (records are sketchy due to a fire of county records) who ran a rug-cleaning business out of the garage and added a second half to the house sometime before 1920, as a home for his son and wife. Around 1953, the two units were joined, creating odd rooms and two sets of stairs leading to the same floor. We have found eleven layers of paint and wallpaper when we did the guest room and 12" planks of redwood that ran the full width of the upstairs when we replaced flooring. The odd angles and square nails are still fascinating. We finally gave up on the project list, choosing to do projects as they come, and some even get finished. But what I really want to do is move this wall........

You Were a Vampire and Baby I'm a Walking Dead

2009-10-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

It's Halloween and, with all the scary stuff on TV, nothing scares me more than that trailer for "The Perfect Storm". Actually, the movie would have me peeing myself IF, and only if, I actually sat down and watched it. I love the ocean but big ass waves that guys on a fishing boat have to look UP to see the crest? Ho..lee..crap! I've done scary movies. Hell, I read Hitchcock and Rod Serling as a pre-teen. I was probably just nine or ten in Santa Cruz when my sister, Carol, took me to the Del Mar Theater to see Psycho...."Oh God Mother...BLOOD!" comes to mind when I'm rinsing hair color out of my hair and the red-brown is swirling around the drain.. and I would never go in the fruit cellar.... I remember watching the Exorcist through my fingers at the Rio..*shiver*. Oh yeah, Willard... and Ben gave me the rat willies (but I think it may have been that smarmy MJ song - blech)....You won't see me at Saw sinco or jonesin to see Freddy Krueger and when I think about Dracula, I leave my window OPEN! I am fascinated with cemeteries and spent a couple hours waiting for the full moon earlier this month to get some pictures. These are not the things that keep me up at night (well, except for that Dracula guy).

My nightmares were always made of BIG things...big rocks falling from the sky...big dumptrucks full of petunia-colored paint (after a particularly stressful childhood bathroom remodel)...and really big fish; the groupers at Marineworld made me squeemish with their awkward size and rubbery lips. I'm thinking that's why that wave in The Perfect Storm makes me shudder - that wave is just ENORMOUS beyond the scope of comprehension for me.

Different strokes for different folks. I know one person who is TOTALLY creeped out by used bandaids (dirty tape with dirt and hair, too) but I love her and I accept her as she is. I saw a lady being interviewed the other day that is horrified by BUTTERFLIES. Soft, gentle butterflies.

So, I've spent the day carving my jack-o-lanterns into benevolent hobgoblins and scattering friendly, PG garland around. I will not be responsible for a child's sleepless night although, for me, one of those award-winning pumpkins carved into a half-ton jack-o-lantern would be the SCARIEST! Oh, and I made the coolest spiders out of styrofoam balls and glow-sticks....thank you Martha. They are good things.

Happy Haunting people. What gives you the willies? What about vampires before they were in?

Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens

2009-10-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

It wasn't so long ago, I brought them home, fresh from the incubator. I think back to when my babies were brand new and fuzzy, they made me smile with every little glance. Those sweet little girl eyes. The sweet "peeps" they made as they nibbled at grass I threw in their pen. So tiny, I could hold them in my hand. I didn't even mind when they pooped on me - well, maybe a little. The time passes like a whirlwind as they grew from tiny little creatures to adults. And then....they lay an egg! Actually, this one is looking a bit like a fella with the fancy big comb and enormous waddle. He/she also greets me eagerly at the gate which seemed aggressive till I realized it was trying to get to the weeds growing outside the gate. No sweeping sickle feathers have appeared at the tail and, when touched, she squats down into the submissive pose the girls seem to save for roosters. So we'll see if Ginger has become Genghis....or, as we like to call them, "Stew".
I've found one egg a couple days this week but I got two eggs today - small brown beauties - so it appears I have at least a couple of my feathered children growing into adulthood. Perhaps it was Julia (above). I could be scientific about it and hang `em upside down and take a peek at the vent (that's what they call a hen's naughty place) to see if it's "in use"..... yeah, I'm not that interested at this point.

Before the Breathing Air is Gone....

2009-10-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

Weather: The daily atmospheric conditions upon which we base our shoe and sweater wardrobe Climate: The state of the air our grandchildren will breathe.

I'm no scientist. I struggled through a meteorology class with Dr. Jon Pedicino at CR because I really WANTED to understand why some days are sunny and others are good for surfing and still others are best spent indoors baking bread and making soup. I came out of the class with a B and still don't understand it all but I did learn that the perforated layer of ozone is trying to protect us from the suns scorching rays. That's science, not politics.

We have become a disposable society and it's bad for the budget and for the earth. We buy cheap shoes and toss them out when they start to show wear. We wear bargain clothes not worth the thread to repair a torn seam. We eat fast food wrapped in paper, put in boxes, stuffed in bags with a drink topped with a plastic lid and a plastic straw. And we eat it with a plastic utensil finishing off by wiping our mouth on a paper napkin....all of which goes in the garbage. Our trash cans aren't big enough for all the waste we create. Our landfills are filled then covered over and used as a base for the next new development.

Our budgets, as well as our world, will suffer unless we change our evil ways. When a gallon of gas was approaching the $5 mark, we found alternatives. We carpooled. We walked. We bussed. We biked. Now that the cost of gas has dropped a bit, we've gone back to our high consumption habits. Some of us will reduce, reuse and recycle until they compost our bodies but others have to be hit where it hurts - in the cheesy, vinyl pocketbook.

Even if you're dubious about overfilling landfills or the talk radio host you listen to raptly assures you that global warming is the fantasy of a madman, can it REALLY hurt to create less garbage? Can it hurt to pack a lunch in reusable containers and take a real metal fork and paper napkin? Buy a good, sturdy pair of shoes that will be worth fixing. If the pesticides you spray on your lush lawn causes you to cough, is it such a stretch to think it might be better for the earth to find a less-toxic alternative?

This week we've sent a rocket to the moon to blast a hole to determine if the environment is welcoming. Most of us won't be alive when we colonize that new world so we really should take care of what we have. We have just one planet and she isn't disposable. Remember, once upon a time SHE was an inviting place to live, too.

KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR

2009-10-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

I have arthritis in my back that causes me to occasionally feel (and walk) much older than my years. I also carry around a few extra pounds. When Big Sid, our handsome tabby, began having trouble negotiating the steps a few weeks ago, empathy was not difficult - he's more than a bit heavy plus that step was at eye level.

In past weeks, the Big Man started sleeping in the middle of the back lawn at night. Not sure where he normally sleeps but I’m guessing it was somewhere that involved a jump or a climb. In the midst of our recent flea infestation, he also started napping in the covered cat box, stinky but quiet. Between the fragrance of cat poo and the fact that that chubby Sid has not been able to get to his back half for a number of years, we hauled him to the sink for a good wash before hitting him and his feline step-siblings with the Advantage.

The bath was sorely needed and I figured he would feel better with the flea crumbs removed but, instead, he developed wobbly-cat disease – as if he’d had a stroke, his ample stern was not quite following his bow. In hindsight, I’m thinking that bath was the beginning of the end and for that, I feel horrible beyond words. Last Wednesday, I carried his ampleness to the vet where he purred contentedly but would not walk across the room to display his lack of grace for the doctor. Because he is eleven years old, he got a “senior screen”, full blood test that might uncover diabetes or other condition that might afflict the obese elderly. They gave him a shot for pain to see if that would help. By Thursday, his test results showed “normal” but his legs were more wobbly. He still wasn’t showing any indication of discomfort except for his total inability to climb stairs and physical inability to mow everyone down on the way to the food bowl.

Friday morning he was a seal, dragging his big ol’ butt to the food bowl, rear legs not functioning at all. But he ate – he cleaned his plate and the leftovers from the other two plates. Then he crawled back to his towel and plopped the rest of his body down. Back to the vet that afternoon for x-rays and a cortisone shot…pills for home. Sid spent the weekend dragging himself around, front legs powering around his enormous lower body. He slept in the sun’s rays, actually dragging himself out to the back porch once -- I could see he was considering a trip down the steps to the driveway when I carried him back in for fear of him going for a “drag” down the street.
It broke my heart to see him. He was lacking control of his bladder. His feet were cold to the touch….he tail stopped twitching. His front half was still a cuddly teddy bear and he even played a bit with Hope’s hamster as Rambo rolled past him in the ball. By this morning, we knew things didn’t look good for Sid.

Mark’s shop is closed on Mondays so he was elected to take Bubba back to the docs. They consulted. They concurred that his butt-nerve was pinched badly by the arthritis and would not get better. Even surgery was not an option that would help. So Mark held Sid in his arms while they sent him off to take on his next life, where maybe he’d do a little yoga, eat smaller helpings and stay a little more limber for more of his years. Hopefully, we’ll get him back in one of his other lives. I miss that big ol’ ottoman already.

I FELL INTO A BURNIN' RING OF FIRE

2009-09-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

I really didn't fall in but had to keep reminding myself where I was which was on a beautiful stretch of beach at Mad River. Others who had been there were enjoying the beach by the warmth of a bonfire. Many of the bonfires were built from pallets. Pallets have nails...LOTS of nails.
Along with other members of the Surfrider Foundation - Humboldt County Chapter, I spent my bit of the annual Coastal Cleanup with a rake, a magnet and a bucket. There were plenty of others out and about, bags in hand, picking up after those who don't. Like them, we collected plenty of cigarette butts and beverage containers but our focus was in and around the fire pits. From one fire to the next we'd carry our tools then plop down to rake out the coals, drag the magnet through, clear off the magnet and do it again. And again. And again. Five buckets of nails were removed and we didn't make a dent. Personally, I consider this a bit of a penance since I know our girls have been involved in many a beach bonfire fueled by pallets and, truthfully, until a Ranger brought it to their attention, I never even thought about it. After that, we sent them with proper wood to start the fire. Mad River is a party beach, fueled by awesome sunsets and a "ya gotta know where you're going" location. Ironically, partiers enjoy the ambiance without even thinking of what they were leaving behind. We all knew we had been guilty of the same in our youth but we're hoping the kids out there now will be more aware of the environment. As someone who has stepped on my share of nails and has 28 stitches in one foot, courtesy of a beer bottle that cut through to my tendon, I really hate to think of the children running on these beaches , their tender little feet encountering sharp shards of beach trash. So, here's hoping everyone will reconsider using pallets as beach fire fuel. Pack your trash and mark your calender to join us next September on the third Saturday for another Coastal Cleanup either by yourself or with a group. Remember where you live. Listen to your Mother.

Reelin' in the Years

2009-09-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

Did you love middle school? Wouldn't you love to go back and relive those years? Yeah, me too. I'd sooner slide buckass nekkid down a splintered board into a pit of pythons....OK, too graphic but you get my point. Middle school sucked for me. If it didn't for you, you were likely slim and or pretty. I was neither. In sixth grade, I was not the looker I am today. Several of the girls I thought were friends, turned out to be not. By eighth grade, though, I was growing into my weight. I tossed away the spectacles and started getting some notice from the boys. Often not the boys I wanted to notice me but boys nonetheless. I did have (not in the Biblical sense) a rather famous surfer that had several girls in the know very frustrated. I had mad crushes on several boys that most of the girls hadn't even noticed. Maybe I had a thing for freckles. Or maybe it was the quiet silliness that the pubescent boys have at that age. Not the jocks (their girlfriends were bullies) or the screw-ups (although I'd love to know where John Prieto is....he was smart but spent a lot of time sitting outside the classroom) but Mike Watson had my attention. As I recall, Walter Wilson had my friend, Jeri's eye. There was no dating. No "hookin' up". Not even any makin out. I recall sitting on the sidewalk in front of someone's house, the four of us just talking. Good times.
Reunions of any sort are exciting but, for most of us, also very scary. Probably those of you that hung with a big group in school look forward to them. Out of a large social pool, odds are you have retained something in common with at least a few. When you hang with just one or two people, however, moving apart leaves you without those links to the past. A few of my friends really weren't. The lives of the others moved in totally different directions. from mine. In my case, I got married right out of high school and Mark has been my "friend" for 35 years and I haven't been more than "Christmas Card" friends with much of anyone.
The one advantage to the oft disparaged social networks is finding some of those people. But once you find them, what do you do with them? Through the miracle that is facebook (FB to the cool kids), I "ran into" Jeri, a friend from middle school. Through the comments and "likes" on our FB walls, we realized we had much in common and began asking why we had lost touch. Since she now lives in Seattle and was planning a trip to Brookings, we made plans to meet.We would meet over coffee. Would we have fun? Would we have philosophical differences that we can't get past? I couldn't wait to find out. We spent a few hours over a sandwich and beer then headed to the beach - a place she doesn't see enough and I can't get enough. For another hour or more, we walked along Harris Beach talking our way through the years, about family and how we've spent the past 35 .... wait, it's close to 40....years. as well as the verboten subjects - religion, politics, gay marriage - amazed how similar we really are. No deal-breakers.
Eventually, I had to head south, to avoid driving in the dark. She headed back to the B & B weekend she was spending with her man. We still have so much to talk about. We never had a chance to talk about Mr. Shagren's class. The boys. The girls. The drawing she did for our Donner Party report....quite gruesome and cool. We didn't talk about music....but there's time. We're making plans to visit again so we can talk about the past. In the meantime will stay FB "friends" in the present.

I'VE BEEN THROUGH THE DESERT ON A HORSE WITH NO NAME....

2009-09-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

Like the wild icons of the west they were, the mustangs would appear in our neighborhood in Nevada and most of us were moved by the romance of it all... "The herd is over on Vickie".... "Hey, did you see? We have two foals this year". After a day or two of grazing and nibbling the forbidden fruit of the non-native species planted by city-folk, they would disappear back into the foothills of the Pinenuts to our east.

In the eleven years we spent in the high desert, we saw four or five herds come and go, the victim of civilization. In general, they were not unattractive horses, almost entirely sorrels, with white blazes and/or socks. We did have one severely sway-backed mare at one point but we also had a gorgeous buckskin (picture Ben Cartwright's steed-tan with black mane, tail and stripe up the back). The buckskin was rumored to have been a renegade domestic with stories varying from a voluntary release by an owner unable to care for it to a 'hot-to-trot' party girl that jumped the fence when the gypsy herd passed by like a teenager climbing out the window to meet her leather-clad boyfriend.

We lived in Johnson Lane, an area seven miles south of Carson City, an unobstructed view of the Sierra Nevadas from our front window. Roughly fifteen hundred homes, mostly on one-acre plots though a few ten and fifteen acre parcels remained. Most of us had livestock of some sort. I had my chickens and we would raise a couple pigs each year. Neighbors had horses, mules, turkeys....Then came the developers, make that Developers, capital 'D'....They wanted to tweak the general plan that required one house per acre so that they could build, say, five hundred houses on five hundred acres but on quarter-acre plots with a golf-course. And we shall name our development "Wild Horse Meadows" or some such. Lets just say that the people moving in to these homes didn't have horses, chickens or turkeys. In fact, they didn't like the smell or horses or the sound of chickens, never mind the peacock. And those mustangs walked all over their pretty lawns and nibbled their petunias. The nerve!

Eventually, the copters would come - the BLM called to duty by a complaint that demanded they "manage" the herd. Those helicopters had the same affect on our neighborhood as CAMP does in SoHum....we knew what was coming and we all hoped the quarry would evade capture. They wouldn't because the helicopter cowboys have big scary machines to chase the frightened creatures. Soon, the trailers filled with nervous mustangs experiencing their first taste of captivity would drive out of our neighborhood. They would head north on Highway 395 to Palomino Valley where they would be stored and fed at taxpayer expense. A few would be adopted, the others euthanized.
Months would pass and, sure enough, another herd would be spotted wandering through an open parcel, nibbling on sagebrush shoots and spring wildflowers. Likely led by a young stud, having lured a few fillies away from another stallion, they would settle into the void left by the previous herd. And, like their predecessors, they would venture into civilization looking for food, babies in tow. Then, neighbors in another pristine little corner of our dusty chunk of sand would forget why they moved to the "country"and place a call to BLM....and bring back the helicowboys.

BLM is in the news this week, rounding up similar herds on the Montana/Wyoming border in the name of 'management'. There are protesters but not the "save the horsies" kind of animal lovers. These people want the horses left alone to survive (or not), on their own. Instead, dozens of horses will be stored and miserable, and fed (on our dime).

Save It For a Rainy Day

2009-08-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

The summer is at it's peak here in Eureka and it seems as if my life is revolving around food - fruit, vegetables, herbs, canning, drying, freezing...food in it's freshest forms. Our farm share boxes are full these days - each week's box load packed with something old and something new but everything much fresher than what I've been getting at Winco. I swore I would post pictures of each and every box to encourage more people to consider supporting the local farms but I've been so busy with saving my stuff, I lose track of time. If I don't want anything to go to waste, I have to be diligent about sorting through and making plans. The purple beans have been lovely but we can only eat so many but trimming and tossing in the freezer means we'll have some for later in the year. I'm not a fan of [roly poly] peas but shelling them into a tub for the freezer will force me to eat something I normally avoid by throwing a handful into pots of pasta e fromage or tuna and noodles. I've had my dehydrator running pretty much constantly for the past few weeks with trimmings from my rosemary, oregano, sage and parsley, alternating with the bountiful herbs from the farm box. Little nosegays of basil one week, a huge bunch the next - most of which went into the freezer but a tray or two were dried for the spice rack. This week, we're back to just a few stalks of basil but enough dill to consider another attempt at pickles. Potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini have been constant and this week, the beets are back. Mark's mom will benefit from the extras.

A week or so ago, Glo and I headed up to Wolfsen's to pick blueberries. The little buggers are pricey but good. As of yet, I haven't been privey to anyone's wild blueberry stash so, if we want to pick, we pay. We were a little more careful and only picked about five pounds to avoid the sticker shock of last year's ten pound berry orgy. Back home to rinse and trim and lay them out on trays to be frozen then stored in a tub to use for muffins and pancakes or added to pies and jam when blackberries are ripe.
On Sunday, we bought our first albacore of the season off a boat at Woodley Island. Paying the boat hands to clean it is worth any price they ask so I take home only a bag of dressed out fish including the red meat to be canned for the cats...I hadn't intended to can yet but after taking out enough for dinner from a 12 pound fish, the rest was loaded into jars so the canner was put to work for the first time this season.

I've managed my first load of blackberry jam for the season and hope to do a few more batches before the season ends. I'm way too lazy to be this productive. I would NEVER have made it out on a Little House On The Prairie.

Life in the Fast Lane

2009-07-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

The sun came out this afternoon so I took the opportunity to run some outgoing up to the mailroom and take the long way back to the office. Walking behind the field house towards the stadium, I spotted this guy in the path, all appendages tucked away, covered with the dried remains of pond plants, only the tiniest hint of a snout and claws held a clue that this was no rock. The hare was nowhere to be seen.

Less-than-average rainfall this winter left my pond walks around campus lacking treasures; the spots where last year I spotted hundreds of pollywogs are all but dry, the water starting far beyond my reach. I'm sure Speedy was bored and left for wetter pastures and, angry though he may have been, I took it upon myself to transport him to a more appropriate environment. Naturally, I wore a skirt today so I was less than demure as I climbed through the brambles and snags to find a clear bank but I found him some bog nonetheless. I startled a frog or two with my crashing about so I figure it must be friendlier territory for amphibians than the warm asphalt of the gym parking lot.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

2009-07-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of people, I find myself constantly fighting the battle of environment vs. economy. In an effort to support conscious production of my food as well as the local economy, I make the tough decision to buy, for example, $2/pound organic zucchini at the Farmer's Market rather than the much more economical standard squash at the grocery store. I have to admit that I am not as concerned about the eating as much as the process of organics. After all, we survived our childhoods fraught with copious amounts of lead and lawn sprays, not to mention the lack of seatbelts and bicycle helmets. It's more the process of genetically modifying crops to suit our schedules and spraying chemicals over the farm crews as if they were dispensable that disturbs me. That said, I wanted to share this week's farm box and hopefully, each week's bounty in order to encourage more of you to support local farms - pricey but I think it will save us much in the long run. This week, another kohlrabi (that's the funny purple spaceship), a bit of lettuce and a small chunk of broccoli. those went into a pasta pot into which I added some home-canned tuna and scads of garlic. The garlic was in there, too, along with some new potatoes, a few onions, summer squash (which, in hindsight, would have been better with the tuna), some basil and parsley, both of which also added to the dinner. It's still only our second box so the pickin's are slim but really very nice. The box will get fuller as the weeks go by. The letter enclosed assures us that tomatoes are on their way. My most recent adjustment has been my milk purchases. As pleased as I've been with a gallon of milk finally costing less than two bucks at Winco, neither of the brands they carry are California produced....what about our Happy Cows? They do carry Humboldt Creamery milk in half gallons but it's much more expensive. What's a girl to do when, as a Surfrider member, she supports the Rise Above Plastics but the gallon jugs of milk are SO much less expensive. Argh! have discovered Walgreen's carries Humboldt Creamery milk, often just a bit above the $2 mark so I've been making a stop there to buy my milk and decided this week to spend more (about 75¢/gallon) to switch to half-gallon cartons that I can burn. When you buy three or four gallons of milk a week, it can add up but it's a price I'm willing to pay to keep money local and avoid the use of plastic. It has totally changed the look of my frig, though.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2009-07-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

So Mark and I planned to head up to Big Lagoon today, to celebrate 34 years of wedded adventure. Mark's never been out on the kayak but decided it might be a nice way to spend our anniversary. Unfortunately, our buddies at the Weather Channel had little flashing clouds all over the north coast and we just didn't think it was good to be out on the water in a thunderstorm. Since same Weather buddies showed the clouds completely bypassing the Mendocino coast, we headed south to Fort Bragg to check out Glass Beach. The area had been a bottle dump in the early part of the (last) century which left all the glass to tumble around in the waves, polishing and softening the shards. They stopped dumping there in the 60's and, at some point, the State took over to protect and prevent the remaining glass from being collected. It's really fascinating. Normally, just to find a single piece of beach glass is exciting anymore. I mean, it's great that trash is no longer dumped in the sea but I really miss finding the glass. I've even taken to running loads of broken glass through my rock tumbler to make a reasonable facsimile.
I knew it would be difficult to walk around all the beach glass and obey the State Park regulations to not collect but I thought my camera would satisfy by beachcombing urges. That was the hardest thing ever. All those sparkling pieces of wet glass, the very thing I search for earnestly when I walk the sand....and I can't HAVE them. Then, as we're walking back up the trail, there are people sitting in the sand filling buckets with glass. WTF?

So, I'm going to have to find out if there are REALLY restrictions on collecting or if all the websites just say that so the tourists will leave the glass for the locals. There are actually no signs noting State Park designation nor rules against collecting. I hate to think I was trifled with. If I was, I'm going back with a bucket.

UPDATE: I checked with the Mendocino District office of State Parks and confirmed that Glass Beach is considered part of MacKerricher State Beach and collecting the glass from the beach is prohibited. When I mentioned the lack of signage, she responded "yeah, I guess we really should post it...". Yep, they really should.

Good Luck Movin' Up cuz I'm Movin' Out

2009-06-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Mark did some serious Dad time this weekend, replacing the timing belt in Monica's car ("so I don't have to tow her home from Seattle....") then with the help of Hope's man, moved the last huge piece of furniture from Hope's room to her new apartment, her huge three-piece desk beast. It's been awhile since Monica moved out at a quarter-past eighteen so the evacuation of another offspring has caught us a wee bit off kilter. Well, unless you count Mark's mom who moved in, moved out and then returned to live in an apartment house across the street but that was more drama than transition....I digress.

When Hope first starting thinking about the possibility of a place of her own, we tried to talk her out of it for a number of reasons not the least of which was the potential for saving money on her part but she having none of it. We just wanted her to be sure about this big step. Rent means obligations but it also means independence. Not that I don't understand the need to be an adult ..... in just a month or two, even my baby will be the age I was when I got married and left home and that is a very sobering thought. We do not have a revolving door at our house. Barring abuse or some other viable reason, once you're out, you're out. The transition from parent to landlord, let alone roommate is virtually impossible. Once a child has been on their own, expecting them to go back to being a child is like shoving them back in the womb....NOT goin'!

I'm excited for Hope in her new place. She planned. She shopped. It was like a bridal shower but without the hassle of a wedding! While I mulled over Gottschalk's leftovers for a bargain on yet another serving platter, she saw bowls and utensils and small appliances to fill her future cupboards. Her 21st birthday came with perfect gifts for the new housekeeper....margarita pitcher and shot glasses. It was exciting for me when she unpacked an item and asked me where it should go. "It should go where YOU want it to go". Huh? After 21 years of doing things in a kitchen that mom set up, she has the chance to consider these things. The perfect drawer for silverware. Shelf paper. A leopard-print broom! And then there's "Mom....how do I hard-boil eggs?". She's asking for recipes because she's actually cooking for herself....YEAH!

But I will miss her. Her recent busy schedule of school and work has kept her gone more than she was home anyway but we knew she was coming home.....eventually. But now I have less laundry and fewer dishes. Sounds good but it takes longer to accumulate enough to run the load. Ditto the dishwasher. What I won't miss is the sound of the morning bicker of two teenagers argue over bathroom schedules in the morning.

And her sister will miss the company. But then, Hope's room was the bigger of the two and Glo has plans. She has raspberry-colored paint chips and, now that the desk is out, she has plans for a mural and pink and.....a whole new world. And I get a dedicated craft room. But, I will have to wait for Sunday dinners to get my dwindling family together to be silly and laugh at inappropriate jokes, shocking the occasional guest. And maybe Mark and I will be able to walk naked through the house on occasion....THERE! THAT should keep the girls from stopping by unannounced!

Hey There Mr. Blue, We're So Pleased To Be With You

2009-06-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

Friday's REALLY low tide was tempting but, alas, there was work so, left to my own devices, I headed out on Saturday to take advantage of a negative tide and check out the rocks that are normally underwater. Low tides also often uncover better shells and such at the waters edge but that was not to be. At Trinidad, I climbed and scoured the rocks below the lighthouse then headed over to poke around below the pier. There was a grand collection of trash that I was unable to pickup due to the fact that it had been there for a lonnnnnggg time. There was this old can that had apparently been there a while. I was crush and stuck fast.

Not sure about this thing. I thought it was a watch and it may have been but it wasn't budging enough to find out.

I thought this was a flounder when I saw it but...just a sole. Yeah....so I walked over to the State Beach side of Trinidad and was able to get far to the north end. Rocks were exposed on the beach that are usually homes to sea stars and enormous mussels (and me without a license to gather). My stomach began to beckon so I grabbed a sandwich at Murphy's Market and headed up to Houda Point to see how the surf looked. Good for lunchtime viewing but apparently not for riding. It does reminded me, lest I forget, why it is I live here.

One wouldn't think the day could get better but I went home to deal with abalone Mark was given by a customer. I've never actually COOKED abalone and was afraid to ruin it so I utilized the Google-machine for directions. I wasn't wanting to go the bread and fry route so tracked down some grilling directions. I unwrapped what Mark expected would be a few small pieces and found one big abalone. I sliced it in half, pounded it (because most all recipes said I HAD to), marinated it a bit and tossed it on the grill with some veggies. Oh! My! Gawd! A little brown rice and we were good to go. Tender? Like buttah! Thank you Mr. Blue Sky for a beautiful Humboldt Day.

Let's Spend The Night Together

2009-06-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

So, ya know those moments? The ones when you realize just that fraction of a second too late that you've screwed up and screwed up royal?! Today I found myself home in the early afternoon, after attending a meeting in town. It was sunny for the first time in days and I thought it was time to get the peeps out doors for a little Vitamin D. Mark nearly has their new digs ready so I carried them outside in a bucket and checked out the surroundings before letting them loose. There will be a nesting box with outside-access which is, at this point, still a big hole in the wall. I nailed a piece of leftover lattice over the opening to keep out the cats. Check! The other walls are covered with wire. Check! The door is covered with wire. Check! The latch is installed to keep the door closed. Check! I scout the dirt floor for chickie-dangers and close the door..... Just as the latch clicks.....shit! No latch for the inside. So there I stand, peeps in the bucket and me in the chicken pen. And no one around to call for help. I check my pocket. Nope, no cell phone. Would I even call the kids? What, so they can stand outside the pen and laugh? Maybe take pictures? Monica would Twitter this for SURE!

It was a brief moment of panic. Just long enough to think I'd be spending more time than intended with my new feathered friends. Take a big breath and begin to investigate. I was grateful Mark had run out of staples when he was installing the fencing and hadn't come back to thoroughly capture every tiny edge of wire with a heavy-duty, industrial staple . I managed to wiggle one staple free and reach my arm towards the latch. It was farther than I thought and the chicken wire was grabbing at my shirt and skin, foiling my escape. Eventually I contorted enough to reach the latch and set myself free. Thank God!

I dug through my craft drawer for some floral wire to attach to the latch until Mark rigs up something more attractive. I sat with the girls for a while longer, amazed at their tiny versions of dirt baths - chicken hygiene accomplished by rolling around in a hollow in the dirt, fluffing their wings in the dust -- really adorable when done by a three-week-old chick. It didn't take them long to start scratching around, looking for bugs. Before long, they'll be spending the night out here but tonight, they're back in the washtub, stinking up the laundry room.

Walkin'....Yes Indeed....Walkin'

2009-06-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

I think Glo is FINALLY done graduating. After two weeks out of CR classes as well as finishing up with Academy of the Redwoods, she walked with Fortuna High on Friday and it was with mixed emotions. It's been almost a month since walking at CR but, since AR is officially part of the Fortuna Union High School district, it is FUHS District that would issue their diplomas. The administration there was smart enough to realize that the first ever graduating class from AR was a huge deal, with most of them completing their two-year college degree concurrently with high school requirements. . The superintendent asked our kids to stand and be recognized at Friday's ceremony, at least appreciating the dollars in seat-time these kids brought to Fortuna.

The administration at Fortuna High seem to appreciate AR but, somewhere, the Husky students learned to treat them like outcasts, never really welcoming them at FUHS events. From scowls and outright hostility at the proms to having cash and belongings stolen at dances, the AR kids agreed to walk only because the AR administration thought it would show them to be the bigger people. As a carrot, they were offered the ability to participate in the Safe and Sober event after graduation. If that was an incentive, someone should have told the Fortuna High kids. If Glo had a buck for every time she heard the term "those stupid AR kids" between the early Friday morning Senior breakfast they were expected to attend, through the grad practice and the three a.m end to Safe and Sober, she could have bought her own damn car. I guess someone forget to tell these kids they live in the "Friendly City".

At least that obligation is complete and she's finally done with high school. Now, to find a job and figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. One more time, congratulations Glo.

If You'll Be My Dixie Chicken

2009-06-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

New to the household this spring are these little girls - my flock of six little peeps. Although Glo and Hope have each given one a rapper name, I'm fighting them with my own ideas. There are two Buff Orpingtons who will retain their honey-gold coloring. - I'm thinking Ginger and Honey West. There are two New Hampshire Reds that will probably look exactly like Rhode Island Reds because, after all, Rhode Island is small enough that some trampy poultry could have snuck out up to New Hampshire and started a new brood. I'm toying with Scarlet and Ruby for them. Then there is one Delaware that will be white with black wing tips and one Austrolorp which will be a gorgeous black hen with dark eyes (I've had those before). I'm toying with Julia and Mabel respectively. As Mark is building their new dwelling, they are living in their washtub, eatin' and poopin'. What a difference a fortnight makes ... from fluffy little Easter treats, they've turned into gawky little birds and the girls aren't as fond of them. "They're feet are bumpy and weird."Aw, lookit that face. I'm hoping for some sunnier weather so they can be moved out to their new digs without a huge adjustment - they ain't smellin' like roses these days. In the meantime, the old hens are in the old pen, keeping us in green eggs until it's time for them to go "on holiday"... that was a Chicken Run reference, for those who aren't familiar. Unless Mommazilla over at Cheaper Than Therapy wants to let them run at her place.

Nobody on the Road, Nobody on the Beach

2009-05-19T16:00:00.001-07:00

I have the week off work but still had to make a trip to campus for a meeting. Afterwards, I decided to head out Hookton Road for a walk. The sand is finally warm again yet I had the beach entirely to myself. The low tide offered up a handful of goodies to please the beachcomber in me and I was intrigued by fragments of what were surely huge sand dollars that were too fragile to survive the tumble to shore. I would love to find one of those gems intact.
It turned out to be a perfect day for beach house hunting. I spied a couple real possibilities. First, this cozy little number - the perfect little hideway to cuddle up with your (really small) sweetie for an evening mai tai (or maybe Sex on the Beach?) The architect is unknown though obviously there was some Native American influence. Faced to appreciate the gentle southern breezes, this little number will be the perfect spot to enjoy the Humboldt sunsets.

This second diamond-in-the-rough is more spacious - perfect for the growing family. Taking its cue from Mother Nature, this little cottage takes full advantage of the flotsam and jetsam of the area, using both rope and chip bags for gingerbread. An outdoor fire pit makes it a natural for entertaining. Although faced due west, sand carried on the strong winds from that direction do add to the coastal decor of the room living area.

I will present these options to Mark and we'll check the budget for a vacation home. If not available for purchase, perhaps we'll just visit and share the sunset with the residents.

Pomp pomp pompomp pompompompompomp pomp

2009-05-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

OK...so I don't know the lyrics to Pomp and Circumstance (are there lyrics?) but I know from experience that the bands are tired of playing after the HSU and CR graduations last weekend. It actually began Friday night with the "Matriculation" ceremony for Academy of the Redwoods. The members of the first graduating class received recognitions, scholarships were dealt and a class photo was taken prior to the RiverLodge being transformed for the Prom which Glo attended until the wee hours.

The morning dawned early and frantic, starting at Monica's 8:30 walk at HSU. We grabbed Nana, found a decent parking place and caught the shuttle to the Redwood Bowl, arriving in plenty of time. I tried frantically to get a good picture of my first-born receiving her Bachelor's in Journalism but, since many didn't comply with the two minute limit in the photo pit, and there was a genetic vertical impairment in play, I barely caught sight of her as she descended the steps. Caught her coming in though. Unfortunately, with all the speeches and commendations, we had to be the people who leave as soon as their children perform in order to make the 11:00 Commencement at CR. We left as politely as possible, hustling to the shuttle to return to our car to get on the freeway and blast south where we came into the CR gym with just moments to spare before the first strains of Pomp and Circumstance began. My flash was being uncooperative so I didn't get a good shot of Gloria in her cap but this group shot is most of what is being called the "First Edition"; these kids graduated with their two-year degrees from CR while simultaneously completing high school. I wish it had been noted in the program since it would be quite a feather in the cap of CR but the Academy of the Redwoods early-college high school was well represented. So, two out of our three girls received proof of their education in one day. When it next becomes Hope's turn, hopefully she will be the only one walking and the day can be more relaxed and she won't have to share the spotlight. We're awfully proud of these two smarties.

ALL I'VE GOT IS A PHOTOGRAPH

2009-05-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

My brand new camera in hand, I headed out to photograph the world and the people who live in it. Me, working for National Geographic? Nope. Me, at five-years old with my brandy new Kodak Hawkeye that I'm pretty sure my mom ordered off the back of Nestle's Quik...we LOVED our premiums and always bought the cool stuff offered on boxes of cereal and such. I'm pretty sure she bought one each for my sister Katie and I. We had just moved on to a new cul-de-sac in Santa Cruz - Harkleroad Avenue - named after the Harkleroad family who had surely owned the property that was mowed down and developed. Needless to say, living on HarkleROAD Avenue caused much confusion over the years... It was 1962 and ours was the first on the block besides the Harkleroad house. The Tribble's house ended up on that lot you can see behind Mr. Telephone Man, right on the corner of Harkleroad and Rodriguez.

As you can see by the picture, it was a quality piece. I think a spool of film held twelve pictures. You turned a knob on the bottom to advance the film, watching carefully the little window to see the arrows until you reached the next number. Turn it too fast and you might miss the frame then your next photo would be lacking half of a memory.

As I ventured up the street, I came upon a telephone lineman. Future paparazzi as I was, I apparently charmed him into this coy pose. The albums are full of cheesy pictures I took over the years, plenty of them black and white with rippled edges, notes in back (or sometimes in the border) identifying the people or place. See how my feeble attempt at cursive identified my subject? I kept this picture in spite of having no idea who he is but I know it was my first photo. The one that got me hooked. I wonder if my mom had any idea of what she was doing when she ordered that camera. Do you remember your first camera? Did you ever order cool stuff from the back of boxes?

River Bar Rendezvous

2009-04-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Another first for me on the water, I joined with a couple dozen others for a paddle with the State Park Rangers on the Eel River. It was a fun group with a variety of vessels, from long aluminum canoes to short river kayaks. From wetsuits to shorts and sneakers. We put in at the rocky beach at Williams Grove on the Avenue and, after a group shot and a "kumbaya moment" (in racing, they call it a driver's meeting), headed out for what the Rangers Richard B. was sure would be the last chance for the season - water levels were dropping and we dragged our collective bottoms more than once.
We took out at Canoe Creek and climbed up to see the affects of the 2003 Canoe Fire. The area was showing signs of recovery, covered with bright greens of redwood sorrel and wild roses. Ranger Alan pointed out the distinct differences in damage done, the charring reaching much higher on trees that had been surrounded by slash left behind during timber harvest.
We continued on, working our way through the shallows and ripples and wind, lunching on the beach at Burlingame then (finally) pulled out where we had shuttled our cars, at Leatherville, just south of Dyerville. It was fun and exhausting and another notch in my belt. We are truly fortunate to live here, people. I love taking opportunities to see this county from a different angle.
My title is intended to taunt Eko back from the dark side......come on....we KNOW you're out there.

I Know That It's Time For A Cool Change

2009-04-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

I laughed at my ugly lunch ensemble at work a while back so thought I would share it, in honor of Earth Day. You will see no frozen entrees. No prepackaged cheese and crackers. No plastic forks. I use this worn-out little tote that I got from the blood bank eons ago. There may have been some yummy leftovers (my kids would call that an oxymoron) or maybe one container had crackers and another, some cheese slices. It looks like a cut up orange in the salsa tub. Real fork and spoon.

I'm environmentally conscious but I'm even more cheap but that's not bad, is it? I carry home my apple core or orange peels to be composted or fed to the hens. The containers are things I can't avoid - yogurt, feta and ricotta cheeses, salsa....but no plastic trays wrapped in plastic wrap, packed in a box. I'm reusing the containers. And I know what I'm eating. It's ugly but like hemp shoes., it's the right thing to do. Reducing. Reusing. Nothing to recycle. Happy Mother's Day to Mother Earth. And enjoy this from April of 1990 when our Girl Scout troop in Minden, NV coordinated a neighborhood trash cleanup. That would be Miss Monica on the right.

Baby Come Back

2009-04-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

So what am I to think here.....? Upon receiving word of the demise of Gottschalks, I contacted the credit department and closed my account. Even with a zero balance, I figured there was a potential for drama on my credit report that would be impossible to clear up for years to come. This week, I get a lovely letter expressing dismay that I have chosen to close my account.... Hello, you closed your whole damn store! Reading further, they offer me a discount for reconsidering. So, do you suppose the liquidators will honor the discount considering they won't even accept the card on sale items? I understand this is a bank not really affiliated with Gottschalks. In fact, I have a Bose account through the same bank and I have my eye on a sound system......do you suppose.....? Seriously, this mailing must have cost someone (who could ill afford it) a chunk of money.

Sometimes It's Roses, Sometimes It's Weeds

2009-04-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to see artichokes "springing" to life in my garden in spite of my absence. As much as I love to get out and get dirt under my nails, lately I've been tasked with the taxes. I am no accountant and have always hated doing this though Turbo Tax generally gets me through the rough spots. Doing business taxes is a whole different ball game however and I have vowed never to do this again. I will find a CPA versed in the subtle nuances of vehicle repair and pay him whatever he wants to save me this pain again. It's keeping me out of my garden while the lemons are preparing to sacrifice their young for the sake of an alcoholic beverage.

The success of Mark's motorcycle shop is a good-news/bad-news thing in my book --more profit translates to more work to find the deductions I know are there (we're not livin' THAT large in this house so there must be deductions). And as good as he is at fixing bikes, my man is equally bad at organizing his record-keeping. He actually HAS the records, he just doesn't remember which bag, box or drawer they're in. It has become a regular thing over the last few weeks for me to present him with a post-it note list of items to locate so that I can enter them into the little boxes in hopes of bringing us closer to clear. Entering that initial "gross" amount in Turbo Tax incites an ugly number to appear in red in the "taxes owed" box on the top. Although I knew the number would go down as I progressed, it still yelled at me in a frightfully ugly red tone, taunting me, invoking the curse of the IRS.

Sure enough, I have managed to bring it down to a very quiet green color, indicating a refund, though marginal. After all that red, ANY green is good....which brings me back to the garden. I have earned it. I will grab a snack then head out with a tub to fill with weeds and bugs for the hens. After all, it is they who laid the Easter eggs.

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes

2009-04-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

Am I the only girl out there that doesn't mind creepy crawlies? I was talking to my friend, Sandi, over at Cheaper Than Therapy about a frog her hubby and urchins brought home (watch for her future post). As she described the long, gooey arm of the frog, she was mortified that it would make good on it's escape attempt. I, on the other hand, thought it sounded awesome - no one brings me frogs.

Hope has a zoology assignment to take five invertebrates to class at HSU. She was more than a bit squeamish so I offered to track them down. I was in the garden on Saturday and uncovered a little salamander that I was hoping would be where I left it but no such luck. A curious neighbor caught us crawling around in the dark Sunday night, her holding the flashlight while I overturned rocks throughout my herb garden. I ... oh, I mean WE managed to find a worm, a snail, a slug, a sow bug and a little black beetle. No potato bugs. No salamanders. Dang! Hope had to provide their scientific ID and pray they made it to HSU alive - she had the opportunity for two points per critter but would lose one each if they were dead. We tucked them into a plastic tub with grass and dirt, poked holes in the lid and left them on the porch for the night. Naturally, morning inspection found a dead worm and a missing beetle (I think) so, after a scurried morning search they were replaced. She carried them to school in her trunk, nervous they would somehow escape....and the teacher wasn't in the office. So, home came the container, the worm was returned to the garden. The others found a new (if brief) home in the chicken pen.

Tonight, we try again. Hopefully it won't be so cold and our treasures will survive the wait. Hopefully, too, the professor will be there to count her critters.

The photo? That was Hope at Brownie camp - Davis Creek Park between Carson City and Reno. We overturned rocks to find toads and I actually got her to hold one. First and last time, I suspect.