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?

Stand-off with an Evil Traffic Elf

You can't make this shit up.

Remember Santa on the tractor the day I brought my mother home from the hospital? How shall we top that?

 Like this.

Perhaps it was bad planning on my part yesterday morning to go to the Farmer's Market for the fresh fish and fresh veggies that I'd planned for dinner, but the signs only warned of delays, not quarantine. The Christmas Jog-a-thoners in Santa Hats and reindeer ears? Well, they weren't exactly moving like Donder and Blitzen. Stragglers, I thought. This will all be over my the time I mull over the carrots and cauliflowers, decide on Fuji or Pink Ladies.

Over the course of the hour that I was cordoned off from my home (and my ancient and frail mother) I felt more and more like the Grinch. After my fourth attempt, by a fourth route, to get back into my neighborhood when I was once again waved off into the opposite direction by an adamant and irate traffic cop who yelled at me when I rolled down my window and asked for help, I drove my cheery Christmas red Prius over the sidewalk and onto a vacant lot and got out.

"M'am," he said, as I walked toward him, "I have a job to do. You cannot approach me." I stepped back while telling him that I needed to get home. That my mother had just gotten out of the hospital and was home alone, and that I couldn't figure out how to get there. "M'am, I can't talk to you, I am directing traffic," snarled the evil traffic elf with the heart as cold the North Pole. I repeated that I needed to get home and he yelled at me to step onto the sidewalk. A Christmas Jog-a-Thon stand off.

There was no way to get to my house that I hadn't already attempted, so I just let it happen. I burst into tears. As I stood on the corner crying, a couple came up to me immediately and asked if I was all right. I explained the situation to them, and they took me by the arms and we approached Mr. Evil Traffic Elf again. He was pissy, but he listened as they explained and I cried. He told me to get into my car, turn it around, and he would let me turn right.

And then ten minutes after I got home, would you believe I had to go out again to pick the man who loves me up from the train station? Thankfully, by the time we returned to my neighborhood, all of the power drunk traffic elves had gotten into their sleighs and gone away.

It's been awhile since I've spontaneously exploded into tears. Back when I was mired in Divoreville, it happened frequently. My attorney's office, courtrooms, airplanes, restaurants. It was like I had a deck of cards (or maybe half a deck) with all of the cards the same--crazy divorced lady.

Well, I don't live in Divorceville any more.
And now, having spent most of the morning in Pillville with dispensing of antibiotics, INR testing, calls to the doctor, and my mother's financial matters, I'm now off to a suburb of Margaritaville--The City of Naps. I may end up in Oz, however, due to the winds. Plastic owls and patio cushions are sailing through the air. And earlier this morning, the guardian of the marina, a.k.a. my mom, noticed that one of the neighborhood boats had lost one of its mooring lines and was rapidly on its way to taking an unplanned sail. I called harbor patrol and they came and tied it up again. Maybe I should have called them yesterday. They could have delivered me back home by boat.

My bed is strung with Christmas lights all year long.

Another Margarita Monday

Clouds are featherbeds for greedy gods

while top-hatted trash cans stagger toward safe harbor

and the tern's hairdo is made either more ridiculous or more fabulous by the wind.

The color of the ocean is as un-nameable as fear

And there are no lifeguards who will save us.

A note on the photographs: Except for the tern, all were take by me. Tern photo from www.nambucca.com.au

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.

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.

Trees, Zombies, and Trancendence

It's a start. I spent something like three hours this morning cleaning up after the winds. I'll probably fill another four or five bags with leaves. The grevellia tree is the Halloween costumer of the tree world. When the wind blows it laces its dead brown fern-like leaves into all the other plants, making it seems as if they're half-dead. I released the camellias and the potted plants, the blueberry, and the hibiscus from their zombie shrouds this morning and swept up ankle-deep piles of grevalia leaves as well as leaves from trees that don't grow anywhere near my patio. My next door neighbor has a whole tree on his patio.

This evening after my shift at the DWC I went to a program at the Central Library, "Dark Carols: A Christmas Cycle." It was the world premiere of a series of songs/sung poems accompanied by piano.

Here is my favorite:

This tree would rather be outside,

asleep, and growing thirstily.

Of all the trees, why me?

Why is it I must die here, cozily? 

Dying slowly, drily, and exhibited so piteously,

hung with lights, 

I blaze with anger, pain, and electricity.

How I long to incandesce by accident into transcendence,

rocketing up to the cold starred heavens, with my 

murderers in attendance.

(lyrics byPhilip Littell)

I found this piece particularly dark and funny, as did most of the audience, it seemed, judging by their laughter.

For years my favorite Christmas attraction as been Altadena's Christmas Tree Lane. No dead trees there. Although I do believe at least one was lost in the windstorm.

I'm spending Christmas in St. Paul this year. I won't have a tree--live, dead, or artificial at my house. The streets of St. Paul will be full of un-murdered trees and transcendence.