Hang onto Your Haaa-----Better Yet, Hang onto Everything

The wind is having its way with Ventura County. All night long gusts rocked my house. Howls were punctuated with crashes as all my potted trees tipped over. My mom feels terrible for me when the trees tip over. So much work for me, she says. Not really, I tell her. I really want the greenery outside my windows instead of the neighbors' houses. So my trees are horizontal, laying low quite literally, until Mother Nature decides it's time to inhale. The trees have blown down a dozen times in the last year. I'm okay with it.

Luckily, not one of my mother's seven different doctors needs to see her today. Palm fronds are thudding to the ground. Streets signs come loose on days like today. Traffic lights go out, and it's the planet of projectiles out there when these winds pry loose various things from their moorings.

It was difficult to sleep last night. I was not particularly anxious, as I sometimes am when nature gets testy, but these straight line winds, as damaging as they can be, are not the tornadoes that occasionally touched down in Iowa while I was growing up. In Iowa, if my Dad deemed it wise, we kids slept in the basement. He lost a brother in a tornado when  he was growing up on a farm in southern Illinois.

Here, my house doesn't even have a basement. I like to sleep with the shades up when the wind blows. I can see what's blowing by, and prove to myself that it sounds worse than it is. If a boat ever becomes air born and sails by my window, it's quite likely that I'll run for the first floor screaming like a two-year-old.

One of my plastic owls (in the photo above) has had an unfortunate encounter with a gust. He was the handsomest one--with luminescent eyes and a head that swivels in the breeze.  I've nicknamed him Humpty-Dumpty. I hope I can put him together again.

The real birds are faring much better. Still visiting the feeder despite the wind.

 Piper, the ancient cat, has interrupted her nap on the couch a time or two to express interest.

While I would never let her outside to even hint at terrorizing the birds, I think it's good for her to be interested. I stare at my writing on my computer screen. My mom stares at the newspaper on the iPad. Piper stares at the birds.