You might as well let go and enjoy the ride.

My younger brothers and me

In this picture I'm not the one looking resigned to being hurled down the slide, but I felt like I was at the top of a steep and rather slippery slope when this:

arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. In a couple of months I can put it to use. Hope I get a chance to wear it out. And I hope we have Medicare for all before I leave this planet. The ups and downs of my health insurance post-divorce were just plain stupid. Why do we still have our health insurance tied to our jobs? 

In other news it rained here again last night. And it's still humid. I've used my air conditioner three times in three days--before then it didn't get used at all. It was just a place to set stuff. 

What We Leave Behind

It's windy here again in paradise. Just a few minutes ago I Googled "Least windy place in Ventura County." The palm trees are blown out like windsocks, all their fronds pointed in one direction. It was impossible to walk on the beach this morning, and at least one day last week left me wondering if I'd scratched my corneas by trying. But there was a morning or two wherein I could inspect the wreckage wrought by wind and waves. It looked like this.

Gulls mining the wreckage

There's one of everything on the sand on a day like the one above. One sock. One glove. One shoe. A plastic shovel. A sand toy of some sort. An immense tree trunk. Bungee cord. Pair of glasses. Shorts. A t-shirt. A tire, a towel. And there were quite a few large crabs. Hence, the gulls.

The day I got my eyes full of sand there were petals. Rose petals. There was quite a trail of them, staggering on and on as if Ophelia had wandered there before throwing herself into the deep. I couldn't seem to get a good photo of the big picture of the entire winding road of yellow, pink, peach, white, and red. 

I always wonder about the flower petals I find on the sand. It's a thing. Quite regular, especially on Mondays. Maybe a wedding. Maybe the scattering of someone's ashes. The effect is definitely ceremonial.

I've been doing my own dig through the wreckage. But unlike many people my age, I'm not collapsing under the weight of a parent's probated house stuffed to the rafters with possessions that have lost their meaning. My mom moved around. She broke up housekeeping and then broke it up again and again. By the time she made it to my house in California and then left here for a nursing home in Iowa, all I was left with was a closet shelf of boxes.

It was solemn and joyful and mysterious and surprising to open those boxes. Oh, there were boring parts and maddening parts, but there were beautiful sweet notes in greeting cards, so clearly chosen carefully for her. There were coins saved for no apparent reason, and hundreds of pretty postage stamps torn from letters. Old photos, of course, our baptismal certificates, and trinkets. But this was my favorite thing:

My mom never made it beyond the 8th grade. She began a string of jobs after that--most of them are mentioned HERE.

We all leave a trail behind us when we leave this life. Some of it wreckage, some of it rose petals.

Yesterday's Beach Report/What the Yoga Teacher Said (yesterday)/and Stuff I'm Avoiding

Beach Report: 

After two days of Santa Ana winds (they blow from the east) all the sand is back where it belongs. I missed my beach walk on Tuesday and when I arrived there yesterday, there was no dune to scale in the parking lot and the beach bathrooms were on level ground. The beach itself looked like a movie set. A smattering of driftwood, some rocks, and some beach glass amidst the pebbles. Like nothing  dramatic had ever happened. It seems that's the way some things in this life are. You spend years detesting someone while turmoil swirls and then you just can't work up the interest anymore. In fact, you don't even think of them, or IT, or anything much to do with the giant mess that once was.

What the Yoga Teacher Said: 

Find love in the pose, the yoga teacher is fond of saying. It's a job sometimes, finding love. It's there but you have to look for it, work at it. And during the struggle, it's the looking for love that makes the struggle easier. Just the other day as I logged on to check my mom's bank balance online, I discovered it was time to change her password. Without thinking I changed it to il0veyoumom! 

Stuff I'm Avoiding: 

I have three stacks of things on my kitchen island. The never-ending pile of paperwork for my mom. It took me months to get her on Medicaid (hooray!--she's on it!) and now there's a barrage of mail that I can't seem to comprehend on the first read through, so I stack it up. Stack #3 is the re-fi offers and my notes on how to negotiate a re-fi. I will have to gin up a certain mood to make those phone calls. Stack #3 is the alimony mediation stuff--those ducks are pretty much in a row.

And here's how I avoid the piles of stuff:

Rearranged Patio Stuff

It was warm and not windy today so I pulled up a couple of dead plants. I moved unhappy plants to places I think will make them happier. I swept. I weeded. And I decided to bring my big glass jar of beach glass inside and find a place for it since it's always misty with condensation and no one can see the beach glass.

My Entire Collection of Beach Glass--except for what we used to tile the fireplace

So I dumped all the beach glass out and washed it and laid it out on a towel to dry. Then I took the big glass jar into the laundry room to wash it. But I broke it. I had this beach ball sized jar for 20 years, and I've moved it to three different houses. It's funny how I always go into denial first when the bad thing happens. That just a bubble of dish soap, I said. I didn't break a big round piece out of that beautiful jar. But I did. Not salvageable. 

So the beach glass is now in a bowl that my mom gave me years ago. And it's very cool because the mirror let's you see the glass in the bottom of the bowl. So there you have it. The mess cleaned up. And the next time I move, I won't have to transport that huge jar. I'm finding love in that thought.

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.

Wednesday Morning Beach Report

Back to blue. The wind has settled.
You could make bigger waves in your bathtub.
All day I thought what a perfect day to be out on a boat.
Still no response to my application to be a volunteer docent for the Channel Islands National Park.

Once upon a time I had a husband and young children.
We took a vacation to Cornwall and there was a church buried in the sand.
In this time before my beach life, I wondered how this could happen. Who/What/How would a church become buried in the sand?
This is not a church. It's a bathroom.
I understand now.
How the wind moves the sand and we get tired of putting it back.

The tide was out when I walked on the beach today. I could walk/swim a little to the breakwater, I thought. I love my impulsive urges and I'm glad that I act on fewer of them.

When I got home, the marina looked like a bathtub that someone had pulled the plug on. How deep is it, I wondered. What if someday, I looked out my window and saw the boats sitting on the ground?

I still pick up heart-shaped rocks and beach glass. The hearts are so numerous now they are stacked two and three deep. There is a tower of hearts in the center. . And today I found an orange piece of beach glass. Not amber. Orange. Orange is my favorite color.

Beach glass. Heart rocks. I find them lying at my feet. How lucky is that?

Monday Morning Beach Report: Hello El Nino, Hello Full Moon

The ocean is a gargantuan beast, its many mouths yawning tall with foamy tongues stretching farther and farther onto the sand. Not green or blue or silver or gray, all the churning has turned the beast brown. Life guard stations have been pulled from its reach, and where they once stood now lie what the beast has coughed onto the sand. Driftwood resembling half-devoured serpents. Tangles of twigs like flattened birds' nests, each with its own cache of plastic detritus, proving once more that we humans are the great sulliers of the universe. Green, red, blue, yellow. Bottle lids and their evil companion pull-tabs. Straws, strings with their flaccid balloons, pens, piñata leavings, Tic-Tac boxes, half shredded take-out containers. Tiny shards and nubbins of who-knows-what. The beast has regurgitated it all at our feet.

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Tears

This post comes to you from my condo in St. Paul, Mn.--a condo I bought back in 2008 pre-economic downturn against the advice of my trusty financial advisor. He was right.

But post-divorce, I was making all kinds of crazy plans. I would have taken out a jumbo loan and financed the Taj Mahal at an interest rate high enough to reach the moon if I'd thought it was the solution to how shitty I felt back then. Daughter M was not doing the best in those days either, and I think living here was some sort of balm--as much balm as a physical thing can be for a hurt that's not at all physical. She lived here for three years, and now the other daughter, C, is living here with her husband. With my mom in a nursing home in northeast Iowa, the Twin Cities are now a good gateway to visiting her.

The frozen rural place/a.k.a. Iowa--taken on the road trip with C and her husband to see my mom

Photo of my mom and me taken yesterday. 

It was -28 degrees today in St. Paul. I went out for a walk. The sidewalks were dry and clean. With my eyes watering from the cold and my frozen tears sticking my eyelashes together, I thought about  my complicated history with Minnesota. I came here for college in 1970 just weeks after signing the final paperwork relinquishing my son for adoption. The next year I had major surgery on my spine and a month later my father died suddenly of a heart attack. The following year there was another back surgery. Thirty years later I came here again and again post divorce. I've walked in every type of weather. I've walked in deep into the woods and on country roads in the pitch black winter night while the sky was ripped apart by shooting stars. I've walked ankle deep in the mud on a lakeshore, along the Mississippi River in driving rain, in downtown St. Paul bathed in Christmas lights. I've walked drunk. I've walked sober. I've walked wailing out loud, talking to myself, while plotting mayhem, and while plotting my own destruction. Today I just walked, glad to be out under the sky.

Today, walking in St. Paul

Walking is what I do. Sad, happy, mad, glad, tired, wired, here, there. 

And while I've shed plenty of tears in California, somehow I always feel happier there.

Last month walking on the beach in Cambria, CA

And tomorrow, I'll be back in Margaritaville (a.k.a. Ventura County)

Though I have to disclose that this photo was actually taken in a Mexican Restaurant in Dubuque, IA

Another road trip photo--just because.

Good-Bye Christmas Tree /Hello El Nino

I did not require a crane to remove the Christmas tree from my living room, but the Ventura pier needs some remodeling after December's giant waves. This morning I could hear the roar of the ocean a mile away with my bedroom windows closed, and with the rain in abeyance, I went to see how the pier was doing. Still standing, I'm happy to say, despite today's stormy seas. The winds blew in fierce and cold this afternoon. More El Nino storms on the way, they say. I feel safe here in my house out of the path of flowing mud, surrounded by farm fields instead of dry hillsides, the marina ready to catch whatever rain is delivered without any towering waves. Southern California is indeed the temperate place many people imagine it to be, but it's also a place of extremes.

And extremely beautiful. The sun went down today without much flashy red, but the clouds were edged in gold, and in the opposite direction, they were cotton candy blue.

I hope you are warm and dry. I hope your 2016 has had a nice dollop of sweetness so far. And if the wind is blowing in your direction, I hope it smells of evergreens or like the lavender in Grant Park today, releasing its wind-whipped  perfume.

Believe it.

Would you believe me if I told you I was sitting in my kitchen eavesdropping on my mom having a conversation with dead people? If you're a regular reader of this blog, of course you would. You might even know that you can click on the labels in the sidebar and read other posts about my mom talking in her sleep/talking to the dead.

Would you believe that the weather app on my iPhone says it's going to be 85 in Margaritaville  tomorrow? That's okay, I don't believe it either. It won't be 85 here, a mile from the sand.

Would you believe that I'm cleaning out my garage and that in the 3 years I've lived in this house, I've amassed bags of stuff that I don't need or want and that probably no one needs or wants? Sure, you'd believe that. You could probably clean out your garage and come up with just as many bags of stuff.

Would you believe I'm falling in love? I can hardly believe it myself. But it's true.

What I've learned so far on Maui

Besides the fact that it's stunningly beautiful...

...coconuts can fall on your head. 

There are flocks of chickens everywhere presided over by fancy roosters.

And there are fabulous birds. Java sparrows. Myna birds. White cattle egrets that are almost as tame as pets. Gray francolins. And this guy--a red-crested cardinal. 

It's harder to snorkel in the surf than it is off a boat that's anchored somewhere calm. 

It's hot.

I hate sunscreen. But when threatened with sunburn, I willingly slather it on like it's my new religion.

Did I mention it's hot?

My friend Paula's family and other friends are just as awesome as she is.

Saturday Morning Storm Report

Fronds are flapping.

Camera are clicking.

This is what the photographers saw.

The long-billed curlews seem less impressed.

The Power Goes Out in Margaritaville--Twice

In the torture chamber of beeps, I awoke (if you can call getting up after you've barely slept waking) to find the empty gelato container on my night stand. Yes, after the first onslaught of power outrage beeps, I confess that in my darkened but far from silent house, I mistook my need for peace and comfort for hunger on this first night in over a month with the man who loves me back at his own place.

Somehow in the dark freezer I found the container of pistachio on my first try. I'll have a spoonful while I set the battery lantern in my mom's bathroom, I thought. Another while I tuck an extra blanket around her.

And what is the point of the almost dead battery on the cordless phones continuing to beep? Wouldn't it conserve the battery if they just beeped once or twice? And the security system, doesn't its beep just make me feel more insecure? All of that thinking required more gelato until I sat with it my bed staring out at the dark water, knowing that any minute the Southern California Edison would text me a sincere apology. And that after that they would call expressing more remorse. They did, and I sat spooning the smooth green gelato into my mouth marveling at how light it still was from the car headlights passing by, and from the battery security lights in the offices across the water.

I dozed and then woke to the powering up chirps and beeps, the clack and sigh of my mother's oxygen machine. I dozed again until SCE let me know the power was back on--and they were sorry for the inconvenience (and would that be sorrow over the darkness and the beeping or sorrow over waking me with the texting and the phone call?)

And then it happened all over again, and I surrendered to the wind and the rain. I surrendered to the dark and the sound of my mother talking in her sleep. I surrendered to  myself alone in my bed, thinking back to the immediate aftermath of my divorce. Awake for days, and sleep still ruined months later when I finally moved out of the house and into my own place. I could not sleep in the silent emptiness. Sloshing with red wine, I'd load up the CD player and turn up the volume while my dogs waited for the completion of this ritual at the foot of the stairs, the climb feeling like forever, the grief feeling like forever.

And now this life on the water with my mother. With my heart full even when my bed is half-empty. Two more storms are coming, they say. Come wind. Come rain. Drench us out of this drought. I have vanilla ice cream and sea salt caramel gelato in the freezer.

this morning the water in the marina was so high it obscured the sign with the name of the street

Breathe. Lift Your Hearts.

My mom and I in 1968 or thereabouts--which means that she was in her mid-40s in this photo--almost two decades younger than I am right now. 

Breeeeeeathe. Lift your heart. This is what the yoga teacher said.

Breathing. Hearts lifted. Then backs arching for the dive back into the water. This is what the dolphins did as I walked on the beach after yoga.

There were dozens of dolphins in clusters of five or six or seven cavorting more recklessly than I've seen before unless I've been out on a boat. Completely out of the water, splashing, and diving, their dorsal fins appearing and disappearing as if an immense paddle wheel was out there in the blue-green deep.

October here in Margaritaville is more summer than summer. June gloom--which can stretch on and on--has been blown away by the dry winds, and we are left with an infinity of blue.

My mother is thrilled when it's warm and sunny. She likes to sit in the sun in her tank top. When it's gloomy and damp, she wears long underwear under her pants and a t-shirt and a sweater over the tank. "Sunny California!" she scoffs then. "Ha! Where's the sun?" The temperatures listed in the L.A. Times give her false hope. It's always a good ten degrees hotter there.

This afternoon she chatted with her sister on the phone as I sat upstairs in my room reading. I was engrossed in "The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter. Transported by the novel's big proclamations about love, transported my my mother's voice--louder and stronger than I've heard it in years--I found that I was picturing her in our house in Iowa, stretching the long curling cord on the wall phone in our kitchen as she reached for her coffee cup or her pack of cigarettes. I was in my girlhood room lying across the old four-poster bed, reading--but also thinking I should be listening. This loud voice, this enthusiasm--what was she talking about? Wasn't there something I should be learning from these grown-up women? But I was reading.

There's something in the air here. We are breathing, opening our hearts to our past and future selves, diving in and out of the present.

Report from Margaritaville

It's been a month since my mother moved in with me. Here are the stats:

Number of times I have unloaded the dishwasher, folded the laundry, or fed the cat-------0   
Number of visits to Miracle Ear------3
Number of doctor's appointments-----6
Number of times my mom has asked people if it ever gets warm here------dozens
Number of pounds my mom has gained------6.7
Drugs she no longer has to take-----2 (not including the cessation of nebulizer treatments)
Sets of long underwear my mom is now in possession of---2 1/2
Hummingbird feeders now on my patio-----3
Martinis consumed-----unconfirmed
Wine bottles in my recycling bin------who's counting?
Cigarettes smoked------approximately 300
Home cooked dinners-----31

Further notes: My mother now reads the L.A. Times on the iPad every morning, and frequently asks, "Is there anything new on Facebook?" 

Last night we walked all the way to my mailbox--which is one of those neighborhood communal ones. It's maybe a third of a block away. "Oooooh!" she said when she saw the waxing moon, a slice of gold in the night sky.

If you can't stand the heat, come to my kitchen.

The world seems to be burning down. Foreign embassies, the hills around Los Angeles. Great sheets of ice are melting. But in here in Ventura County, the sea breezes blow through my kitchen. It's downright chilly for the unacclimated.

I cooked and baked much of the day today in preparation for my mom's birthday gathering tomorrow, but my mom kept her long underwear on, and M did her reading under a blanket on the couch.

The menu for tomorrow:

Marinated Pasta Salad
Rice and Vegetable Salad
Fruit Salad
Green Bean Salad
Warm French Bread/Butter
Carrot Cake

The Weather Report from Iowa

Riding in the back of my brother's minivan to and from his three-year-old granddaughter's birthday party, the tassels on the cornfields were spun into gold by the late afternoon sunlight. Each farmplace was a micro-metropolis as it rose out of the molten glow. Skylines of silos, grain bins, and an occasional windmill towered above barns, houses, machine sheds, and a scattering of outbuildings--each farm isolated from the next by a moat of rolling fields.

The drought has not been completely devastating here in this part of Iowa, but some farmers are chopping their corn earlier than usual. The empty fields might be a harbinger of early fall, the days already unseasonably cool; the mosquitos perhaps departed for warmer, sweatier places where there's more bare skin. Of course, everything can shift with the slightest whisper of notice. Too hot, too cold, too dry too wet, too good to last is what farmers say about the weather.