What is isn't, What isn't is

We're breaking records here. Hottest summer. Most fires. Now the biggest fire ever in California's is no longer the biggest. All over the globe there's been the highest high and the lowest low.

And this is the longest in my blogging history since I've blogged. I'm reading instead. Glued to the news. Thinking about how things look like one thing and are really another or, even worse,  that things are exactly as they appear and yet we are mired in inaction.

As still as this heron. How perfectly camouflaged, I thought. Nature is so brilliant. No fish will see that heron coming. Look closely. See it there against the wall to the left of the post on the boat dock? It moved its neck just a second before I went to get the binoculars to check it out more closely.

But it's not a heron at all. It's a piece of sun bleached algae or paper stuck to the wall. The "neck" moves because it's not completely adhered.

Remember this?  Can you tell a satellite dish from a heron? How about shit from Shinola?

Here's a beached sea lion.

And this, in actuality, is a rather crowded beach.

And this? That piece of stone there in the middle?

Well, it could be my heart--because don't we have to harden our hearts to survive this mess? I suppose there's an argument for that. But for now, I'm just letting the news break my heart every single day. If we can't feel the trouble we're in, our brains will atrophy too.

One thing for sure, I know whale shit when I see it.

The Beach Report

Two of the  Channel Islands, Annacapa and Santa Cruz, have blown onto the sand at Hollywood Beach. Currently, the two wind tossed islands are now buried in the sand near the beach bathrooms which completely disappeared from view around sunset Saturday evening. The bathrooms are now able to be accessed, thanks to the quick work of Harbor Patrol, by a ladder that descends through the roof. Beachgoers are advised to use caution.

Pedestrians in the beach and marina areas are now fashioning helmets out of the stem portion of downed palm fronds in a fight fire with fire mentality. A recently interviewed walker reported that he'd been struck by 17 falling fronds in the last 24 hours, but that his "helmet" had done a good job at protecting him.

Fish have also been seen to be flying through the air in the marina and at the beach. The herons in the area which have begun to speak a rudimentary English have expressed their appreciation at the bonus.

As for me, I'm tired of the wind. It's keeping me awake at night. I haven't slept much in 3 or 4 days and have reason to believe I may be suffering from hallucinations. I'm hoping that explains why I'm heading back to divorce mediation due to the reduced compensation of the Best Ex-Husband-In-the World. (Yes, that is how I have actually referred to him this past year. Really. I swear.)

Stay tuned. And just for the sake of idle speculation, do you think I'd make more money doing Air BnB or selling divorcée tee shirts on my blog, dispensing my wealth of divorce wisdom?

Stay out of the wind. I've heard it can cause temporary insanity.

How I Awoke with a Stepladder and an Empty Vodka Bottle in My Bedroom

2:27 a.m. And my smoke alarm beeping. Every 30 seconds. Cheerp. Cheerp. The man who loves me is in my bed next to me, dug so deeply into dreamland that he doesn't even stir when I get out of bed and stand directly under the offending device. In the dark, I stare up at the ceiling wanting to be certain it's this smoke detector and not the one in the hallway or the carbon monoxide detector downstairs. It is.

There's no possibility that I will get back to sleep unless I can stop the noise, so I go downstairs to the laundry room and pull out my plastic box of batteries. There's one 9-volt battery in the box and it's in a package that's been opened. Please be a good battery, I whisper as I head for the garage to get the ladder.

This should be pretty simple, I think. Back upstairs, I position the ladder, setting my iPad, in flashlight mode, on top of the ladder. I'm a 12-foot tall woman in jeans and a black lace bra in a spotlight and the man who loves me is still sleeping. If he wakes, I think, he may die of fright. Battery out. Battery in. Cheerp.

I stand on the ladder in the dark, typing "my smoke alarm won't stop beeping" into the Google search box. There are a variety of  remedies, but first I have to ascertain if my alarm is AC or DC. I'm guessing it's hardwired since my house is newish, and that's probably required by safety code, but I can't tell by looking, so I haul the ladder into the guest room, close the door and turn on the ceiling light to look at the smoke detector in there. I'm thinking it should twist off easily if it's just a battery device. It doesn't. 

The troubleshooting instructions insist that I must cut the power to the smoke detector, take the battery out, push the reset button, turn the power back on and re-insert the battery. Shirt on. Down to the breaker box on the exterior wall of my house. Each breaker is carefully labeled. None is for upstairs. There must be another breaker box upstairs. I can't find it. Unless it's in M's room. She's sleeping, and given her insane hours and her 65-mile each way commute to her job, she will probably kill me if I awaken her at 3:00 a.m. Cheerp. I'm thinking maybe that's not so bad.

Back to Google. Maybe if I just take the battery out entirely. Nope. Cheerp. Cheerp. Back downstairs. I recall that there was an extra smoke detector in the laundry room drawer when I moved in. If I can examine the device by holding it in my hands, read the white on white Braille-like lettering, maybe I can figure this out. There's a reset button. "Push to reset. Hold to test," the tiny letters say. How long is a push vs. a hold? Should I risk actually setting off the alarm? My mom will wake up. M will wake up. I'm not so sure about the man who loves me, but I'd rather poke out my eardrums than push that button. Standing upstairs in my closet with the extra smoke detector in my hand, I practice taking the battery in and out of that one, checking to see if I could have wrongly inserted the battery in the beeping detector. No. What if I push the button on the unattached smoke detector? It's not wired in. If the alarm sounds, I can rip out its battery. It beeps. Then beeps again. Now there are two smoke detectors cheerping. Good-bye battery. Cheerp. What??? The thing is cheerping and it has no battery. I stuff it into the pajama drawer in my closet and close the door.

It's almost 4:00 a.m. Google. Be sure the battery door is completely closed after you change the battery the umpteenth website says. Back up the ladder. Coax the cover. Wiggle it. Silence.

I have some booze on a pretty tray with a couple of glasses in my bedroom. Grand Marnier. Bailey's. A nearly empty bottle of Polish bison grass vodka that is so good, I have been reluctant to drain it. Now is the time. I sit in the big white easy chair in the dark, the bottle on the window ledge next to me. It's so quiet I can hear that lovely man in my bed breathing. Is he dreaming? Wait! What was that dream I was having?That dream just before I awoke. The Someone and His Someone. There were nefarious financial dealings. Blackmail. And….something. Some secret that explained everything about my divorce…but now it might as well have gone up in smoke.

Herons call over the water in the dark. The vodka bottle is empty. Back to bed.

In the morning, the moment he wakes, the man who loves me smiles and kisses me. When he sees the box of batteries on the bathroom counter, he says, "I guess you were up in the middle of the night." Later, over coffee, he tells me he slept well. And that he dreamt of Harrison Ford.

If I fall, I might not get up

The good things about today:

I woke up feeling great.
There was time for coffee before I took the man who loves me to the train station.
My mother's doctor had an opening for the follow-up appointment recommended by the ER doc.
I walked on the beach while I worked out the details of that appointment.
I found lots of beach glass while walking and talking.
The doctor's office had a wheelchair.
The blue heron came to the boat dock this evening.

The not-so-good things:

I took the man who loves me to the train station.
My mom is still feeling unwell.
One of her antibiotics made her nauseated and we had to drive to the Dr.'s office with a dishpan in her lap.
She left the doctor's office for a 2nd doctor's office in a wheelchair.
She still needed the wheelchair to get back to the car.
She has new antibiotics and an anti-nausea drug.
She's had a little dinner and some Gatorade.

So there you have it. The scorecard for today. It looks pretty even. But it doesn't feel that way.

One year and two and one-half weeks after buying a house in Margaritaville....

I finally made it into a kayak. A borrowed kayak, but yes--a kayak.  In fact, C is visiting, so we borrowed two kayaks.

We paddled a couple of miles, I guess, from the yacht club where we borrowed the kayaks back to my house so we could prove to my mother that we hadn't drowned. "That looks like a lot of work," she said, as if we hadn't realized there were boats with motors.

Not really adept at anything athletic, I thought I might have trouble getting into the kayak from the dock, but both getting in and getting out went smoothly. Paddling went smoothly, and it was a glorious southern California day. A breeze, brilliant sun, blue herons flying overhead. Perfect.

Now I must pad, rather than paddle, down to the kitchen and create some dinner.

Fearful Symmetry

In a weird symmetry both the Someone and the man who loves me have been very sick with the flu. I would not know of the Someone's condition, of course, if it weren't for the fact that I have contacted him a half-dozen times asking him to please get a new court order to formalize the lowered alimony he began paying in January. He has invoked his illness as an excuse. A good excuse, as excuses go, but making a phone call is probably not going to spike a fever. Then again, I've become physically ill by having to root through a box of divorce papers.

I haven't seen the man who loves me for a month. Like many who've caught the flu this year, he's had a relapse and sounds positively awful.

Meanwhile, here in Margaritaville, the days tick by in their own symmetry. When I come downstairs in the morning, my mom is already up. She's opened the curtains, and fed the cat, and is standing in her spot at the kitchen island looking out at the water. I go to the gym, and when I come back, she's still there in her p.j.s drinking her re-warmed coffee. We talk. We read the paper. We talk about the paper. I eat my breakfast. She goes to her room to crochet and read, and I go up to my room to read and write. I come down for tea. She has her lunch. I have mine. She re-warms the last of her coffee. Off we go again to our separate retreats.

At five, the ancient cat meows for her special ancient cat milk. My mom gives the cat her "cocktail," and  pours her martini. I begin to prep for dinner and maybe race off to the store. Seven--we eat. She does the dishes. I put away the food and wipe down the counters. I brush the ancient cat while she takes a last scroll through the news on the iPad. She says good-night. I say good-night.

I read. The New Yorker. Jack Gilbert's poems. One of the many books from my MFA colleagues. Prairie Schooner. Missouri Review. The pages from my writing group. And sometimes I blog. When I hear the beep of my mom's oxygen machine turning on, I sink deeper into the reading or the writing. At my desk in the dark, I look out at the shining black water and marvel at rings radiating across the surface. Sometimes I open my window and listen for the heron's croak or the deep gasp of a sea lion as it comes to the surface. I take a deep breath, too.

The Wind Beneath My Wings

There's a stiff wind here a lot of the time. We're just gonna roll with it. It doesn't ruffle our feathers. Much.

Birds and Their Figures of Speech

Last night there was a great blue heron on my boat dock. It walked from one end to the other on those implausible legs, and then bent to water, stretching its neck like a magic trick. For a minute, it looked as though it was thinking about walking up the ramp to my patio. It would have been tall enough to lift the latch on the gate with its beak.

I've seen pelicans swoop low over the marina, too--and egrets, cloud white above the blue water.

I have a pigeon nesting on my balcony--which, I suppose is not a good thing if you subscribe to the theory that pigeons are just rats with wings. While I don't especially like huge flocks of pigeons, I'm okay with one nest. The cooing is a sweet sound. No wonder we refer to love talk as cooing.

There are lots of figures of speech that relate to birds:
Fly the coop.
Birds of a feather flock together. --one of my Dad's favorite cautionary sayings.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Bird-brained.

Feel free to add to the list.