Good Lord

This evil giant finally crapped out this morning, and after three expensive repairs in as many years, I'm done with Mr. Fancy, and I'm getting a regular refrigerator. It took two tries to find a place that would deliver the new fridge as well as haul this behemoth away.

And my first premium payment for Medicare is lost in the mail.

And I had a nice little getaway this weekend and stayed in a place where the hot water ran out.

And it's another day of record breaking temperatures here---with Santa Ana winds and a red flag fire warning. It was 90 at 6:00 a.m. right here, one mile from the ocean. I never want ice in anything except the occasional gin and tonic. Except today when I want ice in everything. And the behemoth is just pee-ing it into a puddle on the kitchen floor.

And wow, every day I see a friend's post about Day 30-whatever now in Puerto Rico where most people still have no power. It's amazing to ponder it. If my house had no roof and no power today, someone would have to haul me away. And every day I see another friend's post about her daughter's medical bills, and the whittling away of their insurance. So many awful things are happening, and then they just slip away out of the news, but they're not gone. People with no houses and their places of employment, blown to bits or burned to a cinder. Health insurance being ripped away from people who can't survive without it. I can't imagine it. I have to imagine it. I want to imagine it. I want to keep imagining it so I will vote in every election large and small.

Wednesday Beach Report

I can't tell the difference sometimes between procrastination and dread. Is one the other's shadow? Are they conjoined twins?

It might just be the dullness of the  house after the departure of friends. The Santa Ana winds that blew in and then shifted. What is this sense that I'm forgetting something when I did finally manage to put my tax payments in the mail this morning? What is this dread?  I find myself in a procession of days when I cannot open my mailbox. Then when I do, I cannot deal with the mail. It sits unopened, scaring me, a troupe of ghouls behind the curtains.

I walked miles on the beach this morning. No dead sea lions, but I found these:

These creatures are by-the-wind sailors or Velella Velella--except they're not blue. I saw about a dozen of the clear ones like the photo above, and maybe a half dozen of the iridescent greenish black one as in the photo below. Wikipedia says they're usually blue. Remember THIS from last summer?

Now more dead ones. Just a few. But why aren't they blue? Why am I blue?

And I keep thinking of the ring-necked dove that I saw outside the window the night of the miraculous dinner. They are not native to California. I've never seen one here. I keep thinking I should have welcomed it. Put food out for it on the ground so it wouldn't have to battle the hoard of finches at the bird feeder. I haven't seen it again.

Maybe they're greenish black because of beach tar---but I don't think so.

Wednesday Beach Report

 Willets, wind, and waves.

The Santa Ana winds were blowing. Notice how the spray gets blown backwards. For some more backwards news about the winds of change, read this.

Earthquake, Santa Anas, and the Full Moon

I awoke with a jolt at 6:25 this morning. Oh, no, here it comes, I thought. It felt as if my house had jumped up in the air and landed hard. Sometimes earthquakes begin with a rumble and shake, but this one was a single sharp blow, and I thought for sure there would be horrible rattling to follow. There wasn't.

I feel earthquakes in my stomach and in my heart, and it takes hours for them to settle. If I lived a life of complete abandon, breakfast might have been steak and eggs and a sturdy red wine, or maybe a 6-pack of beer on the beach. Or something creamy in the blender. Or a couple of Irish coffees in a dark bar. Can you tell I've put a lot of thought into this?

In reality, I drove the man who loves me to the train station and remained completely sober so I could later drive my mother to a doctor's appointment. None of that went particularly well. Santa Ana winds, a full moon, and then an earthquake over the last few days is plenty enough to cause a loss of equilibrium.

My mom woke with a headache, and nausea followed as it usually does these days. After the train station, I left her with her companion and went to yoga for 35 minutes until the plumber called to say he was on his way to fix the leak under my kitchen sink. 35 minutes of yoga is better than none, and I felt remarkably well despite cutting it short. After the plumber, I went to the beach and performed my usual ritual of picking up trash--which this morning included a very soggy five-dollar-bill. An omen, perhaps?

Maybe there's more good luck or money on the way--or maybe my mom's hospital bed! Or maybe The Someone will finally find time for mediation so we can agree on how much he owes me, and I won't go completely nuts and re-hire my attorney again. Or maybe the man who loves me will start feeling better.

But so far what's really happened is this: My mother had another not-so-lovely trip to the doctor with a dishpan on her lap--to find out when we got there that she's lost 10 lbs. in the past month. And she may be developing cellulitis again. The winds are kicking up, and while my mom naps,  I might just pull the covers over my head.

Pillville: Population 2 (and an elderly cat)

Today went by in a whirl--the last few hours with my son and his family. It was too windy here to be outside so we went into an arcade and shoved $5 bills into token machines, held out our hands and let the children pluck them at will.

Arcades might be among my least favorite entertainments in the world usually, but I tossed that attitude to the wind.

I feel a little like these places are training kids for Vegas, but what the hell....today I might have even bought them candy if they'd asked...

...just kidding. But the time was sweet. And Zoltar says our futures look sweet, too.

But really, we have no idea. Though I do hold somewhat to the idea that we can choose sweetness.

At lunch, my 10-year-old granddaughter wanted to know where she was during the time my son and I were on a trip to Europe in the 90s. You weren't anywhere, I told her. She asked the question again. I told her she wasn't on the planet Earth yet. That she hadn't yet been born. She furrowed her brow and laughed. I love how kids always have trouble imagining their parents before the beginnings of their own lives. Our pasts are to them as mysterious as the future.

And sometimes my own past is mysterious to me, too.

But here I am right here, right now in Pillville with my mom talking to herself as she crochets in her room. Piper the ancient cat has not ventured out yet from her respite under the laundry room sink. I just had a long talk on the phone with my friend Paula about the mysteries of dating. I have to decide if I'm serving leftover spaghetti for dinner again. What does the future hold? And why did the past roll out the way it did? How much control do we have over any of it?

the wind whipping the waves into weird shapes

The Santa Ana winds had already kicked up by the time I woke this morning. The water in the marina was blowing backwards, and I felt twitchy and weird. A couple of hours later, I had literally developed a twitch in my left eye. The twitch abated from time to time, but always returned. What am I not seeing, I asked myself. What don't I want to see?

Tonight after dinner, walking in the dark, the twitching lessened and almost stopped. Relief. And then two streetlights blinked out just as I passed them. Stopping, I turned around and watched as they flickered for a few seconds, then sputtered into black.

Is the left eye different from the right? I googled. Then I searched for eye twitching superstitions. Suffice it to say that there are many. All I've determined for sure is that my right eye is my dominant one.

courtyard at the Ventura County Museum on Sunday afternoon

The winds have mostly died down, but the twitching is back. A half-hearted gust rattles the dried palm fronds from time to time. They clatter like bones as if perhaps a few dead souls have forgotten to return to their world and are still walking about in ours.

a detail of one of the altars at the Dia De Los Muertos exhibit at the Ventura County Museum--the "sugar" skulls are actually eggs

At dinner on Sunday night, the man who loves me, M, and I told my mother about the Day of the Dead. The skeletons are happy, I told her. There are parties and food and drinks in the cemeteries. She said that sounded marvelous. But tonight I feel as if there are ghosts lurking just beyond the edges of my peripheral vision, and when I try to spot them they disappear.

Poseidon's Horses, Dominoes, and Roulette

sea spray being blown backwards by the Santa Ana winds

"Here in Pillville the winds can shift pretty quickly." At the risk of seeming completely self-obsessed, I'm quoting the final line of last night's blog post. The winds have, indeed, shifted here--the literal winds, that is.

The Santa Ana's kicked up this morning, blasting off the desert, with the potential for wildfires, psychic mayhem, and projectile palm fronds and patio umbrellas at a dangerous high. I don't know if I believe all the hoopla about the wind-borne positive ions driving us to desperate acts. But I don't rule it out.

My own patio umbrella had to be wrestled to the ground and restrained this morning. I'm hoping I don't suffer the same fate. When my mom is unwell, I don't feel it's right to leave her here alone, so I'm housebound, forsaking my morning walk and trip to the gym for T'ai Chi Chih. My concentration goes haywire and all the big questions ask themselves over and over. This morning there were doctor's phone calls to await with the answers to somewhat smaller questions. Do we hold the digoxin if she takes the antibiotics? What was found on the chest x-ray? Does she have a urinary tract infection? Currently, I only have the answer to one of those questions.

It was the antibiotics and their side effects that sent my mother to the hospital in June. INR levels off the charts, nausea that caused severe dehydration. We have a different antibiotic waiting in its nifty bubble packet on the kitchen counter. Spin the wheel. Stack up the dominoes. Which way will they fall when the wind is blowing everything backwards?

My friend Ellen and I drove the one mile to the beach this morning where we walked for twenty minutes while my mom was napping. The spray from the waves is blowing backwards--back out to sea. The waves looked like nymphs rising from the deep, their  platinum tresses trailing behind them. The especially long curls of waves brought to mind Poseidon's horses, white manes unfurling in the wind, galloping towards...whatever comes next.

photo credit: medeaslair.net

Whatever you do, DON'T head for the hills!

the view from my front door

From Joan Didion: I recall being told, when I first moved to Los Angeles and was living on an isolated beach, that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew. I could see why. The Pacific turned ominously glossy during a Santa Ana period, and one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf. The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called "earthquake weather." My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake. 

I knew the Santa Anas were blowing before I opened my eyes this morning. "Fire and Ice" read a headline from the Los Angeles Times. The photo was of the snowstorm in the Midwest. Here the wind felt like a blast furnace. Reports came over the radio. The 101 Freeway had lanes closed. Later the wind was blowing the fire toward the sea, and the alternate route along the coast had a section about to be shut down, too. Sirens. The university campus and homes evacuated. More sirens and the drone of helicopters. Luckily, this is all "over the hill" to the east of us. 

I was out for a bit this morning, and when I came back, my mom was on the patio eating her cereal.

She likes the sun, and it's seldom warm enough here for her to get a little on her skin. "I had to wear my hat," she said, "to keep my hair out of my eyes and mouth." Stuff was blowing by the boat dock. A large inner tube, a tarp, patio furniture cushions.

Then as I sat here at my desk, the wind stopped. When it started again, it was a gentle breeze from the ocean. But still, the sirens are wailing in the distance, and the helicopters are buzzing like bumblebees.

If you want to read more of the Joan Didion piece it's from "The Los Angeles Notebook."

What Remains

The remains of the December 1st windstorm remain piled up on the streets of my neighborhood. Stacks of palm fronds, tangles of branches, piles of leaves. In some places only the heavier sections of trunks of massive trees remain, sawn into chunks that seem suited for end tables in  some giant's house hidden deep in a forest.

My condo complex, always on top of grooming the grounds, immediately cleaned up the mess, but has now instituted a massive tree-trimming, and for days the manic whine of chain saws and the grind of chippers has wrought aural chaos inside my brain. So today, I thought, I'll stop by the County Arboretum. Watch the ducks and the peacocks. Walk in silence.

Sometimes I'm so wrong.

The Arboretum lost 235 trees in the storm. Another 700 need restorative pruning. Giants that once towered over the grounds lie on their sides, uprooted. Where there once were limbs, now there are stumps and wounds. Still birds sing in the branches and peacocks strut as though nothing had happened.

I walked among the crews, the machines, and the rubble amazed at how much beauty remains.

A Sad Day for Trees

Satan's wind roared through out neighborhood last night. The power went out at midnight. This morning we woke to a trickle of water pressure because the power outage took out power at a pumping station.

It was a bad day for cars, too. But C., who loves her old car, took the news like a champ. And then went to work sawing the tree branch to free her car.

She has the shoes for the job. I suppose I might have delivered emergency water by horseback--if I had a horse.

The park was a strange and sad sight; all the vibrant huge trees on the ground while this one stood tall.

But there was joy, too.

If palm fronds were viable building materials, Los Angeles could become the land of palaces.

Why I Hate You More When it Rains

I hate you, Mr. Ex.
But I hate you more when it rains.

I was in a hurry to buy my own place. The Little Missus (she was still "Miss" then) had already slept in our bed. She'd cooked in my kitchen, stuffed her leftovers into our fridge. The candles on the dining room table were burned lower, and two empty ice cream dishes flaunting pink plastic spoons basked on our patio. A bar of sandalwood soap perfumed our shower.

Yeah, I was in a hell of a hurry to make my escape. Running for my life, I looked at twenty townhouses searching for the one that could accommodate two big dogs. I pondered hallways and elevators, stairs and patio walls, neighborhoods and parks. It was September. An easy time in Southern California to forget about rain. In September we think of wildfires and smog and is the heat ever going to break, and why do some people say "Santana" while others call those evil winds "Santa Anas" and we know  it doesn't really matter because we're all thinking of The Devil and praying that hell hasn't burst  through some fault line to colonize the City of Angels. In September.


I didn't notice the place I chose had no kitchen door. No island of tile or linoleum on which to coral a soggy dog.

And now it's another December. My patio is a sewer.

And I wish you were floating in it.