The Marvelous A

I Street Bridge Lets the Hornblower By

2011-04-12T17:09:00.005-06:00

I recommend watching this with the volume off, since there's nothing to hear but the river wind, the incessant clanging of the warning bells, and Brent's sudden, violent sneeze (after which I bless him). (Also, it doesn't really get interesting until about the :50 mark, so feel free to skip ahead.)

This is the I Street Bridge in Sacramento, a historic metal truss swing bridge that neither lifts nor draws but actually spins on the most amazing giant iron gear system to get out of the way of boats when the river is high, as it is now. (We compared the Sacramento River's current depth on the scale at Tower Bridge, 23', to the river depth last July when family came to visit: a mere 7'. What a difference some rain makes!) The I Street Bridge is a dual-level affair, carrying vehicle and foot traffic on the top and trains on the bottom. A favorite landmark of mine.

The Bear Flag and the Delta Breeze

2011-04-11T23:35:00.000-06:00

The language of Southern California is the dialect of an obscenely populous coastal desert, preoccupied with palm and gull, marine layer and sand and stucco and soft Spanish vowels. Los Angeles and San Diego sprawl side by side on the coast, eyeing each other, cohabiting but not codependent. L.A. harbors the bustling entertainment industry, San Diego the U.S. Navy, and surf culture roils in between. Throughout the desert suburbs, into the steep eucalyptus canyons dividing residential rashes both glitzy and grim, ghettos, barrios, strip malls, golf courses, amusement parks, campuses, and all the concrete capillaries buzz with the charge of economic and cultural interests at complete odds with the seat of State government an entire workday's drive north on Interstate 5. (And there's still several hours' worth of state north of that.)

I lived in California nine years and never heard the term "Bear Flag."

I never thought about Sacramento sharing California realty with San Diego and L.A., much less as the capital. I never thought about Sacramento at all. I was a teenager, and uninterested in politics or geography unless people I loved were located in a place, and I knew nobody north of Barstow. I was aware when I moved here last year that politics might be inescapable. As it turns out, I didn't have time to give it much thought until budget woes and water issues began to directly impact my job. (The water issues I anticipated. They're why I moved here in the first place.)

As I traveled around California this year, I began to encounter the living legacies of things I learned in elementary school, before I even knew I would one day consider myself largely a product of this state and therefore entitled to call its history my own. I was the only person in my 8th grade history class, my first month in California, who already knew who Junipero Serra was and what John Sutter discovered and how the Donner Party died that terrible winter of 1846. Most of the children who were born in southern California did not know their own history. But it's one thing to read history in a book, and another altogether to see the places where it was made.

I remember becoming aware of the bear on the California State flag back then and, looking around at the palm trees and stucco, wondering what it had to do with California. I thought Yosemite Sam was from Texas. The Redwood Forest was only a recurring lyric in the Woodie Guthrie folk song and redwood itself was just the splintered, bleached boards of backyard fences in Kemmerer, Wyoming. I didn't know about Napa's famous wine or the State Water Project or the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, or all the parts of California that really are still wilderness, Mt. Shasta and the northern counties. Not yet.

Driving up I-5 last week my coworker and I noticed a sign, and a light went on in my head. There are bears in California. Elk and deer, too, and jack rabbits the size of Rottweilers.

You hear it all over Northern California, especially here around the capital, "Bear Flag" this and "Bear Flag" that. Celebrations, businesses, brews, brands. In Yreka last week we learned how the U.S.A. almost got a 51st state, the State of Jefferson, made up of several Northern California and Southern Oregon counties that feel at odds with the economic and cultural and political interests of the rest of their respective states. The movement is still very much alive, at least in Siskiyou County, California.

There are other differences between North and South, and the big one is the one and only thing I was conscious of as a resident of the South: water. Specifically, its scarcity. In San Diego in the 90's you didn't flush the toilet unless it was... necessary. You didn't run the water while brushing your teeth. You didn't hose down the driveway or water the lawn daily, or waste water in any other way. Not to mention water was prohibitively expensive (and now I know why). But as someone in Yreka put it the other day, up here "we've got more water than we know what to do with." Which is why the State has been shipping it south since 1935.

The California State Water Project is as extensive as the American railroad system and as divisive as the Civil War. (I won't go into the politics now; that's another post entirely. But believe me, there's blood.) The SWP is comprised of 34 storage facilities, reservoirs and lakes, 20 pumping plants, 4 pumping-generating plants, 5 hydroelectric power plants, and over 700 miles of pipelines and open canals. It uses over 20% of the electricity consumed in the state. It supplies water to two-thirds of the residents of California from the Bay Area to the Mexican border, and irrigates 750,000 acres of farmland. In other words, it almost singlehandedly allowed the State of California to become the 7th largest economy in the world. It also provides recreation, water quality management, and flood control. Which brings me to the next thing that so fascinates me about what I consider "northern" California. (The people in Yreka think Northern California begins in Dunsmuir. They think of Redding as the South. Redding is 13 hours from San Diego.)

1928 saw the release of a Buster Keaton film called Steamboat Bill, Jr. You've seen a piece of this film whether you know it or not; the universally recognizable scene where the front facade of a house keels over on Keaton, who remains standing in the open window of the downed wall, scratching his head. Set in Mississippi, it was filmed on the Sacramento River, which, especially during the rainy season (November through April), could certainly pass for the Mississippi if you're only looking at one bank. And the romance of that movie river isn't just movie magic.

Like the Mississippi, the Sacramento River (joined near downtown by the American River) is a commercial conveyance, transporting goods down the delta to San Francisco. The grain towers near my corporate office in West Sacramento proudly say, "Port of Sacramento - Serving the Rice Industry." Having never lived near a large river before I'm amazed by the way people use rivers, and having never lived near a large river that runs into a major delta, I'm amazed by the way rivers shape people.

I remember flying in and out of Sacramento weekly a year ago and seeing from above the irrigated cropland, water standing in silver squares from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the sea. I remember a connecting flight in Portland that took me north over the rivers I would later come to know and bridge: the Feather, the Russian, the Eel, the American and Sacramento; and connecting flights in L.A. that took me over the delta, the Merced and San Joaquin.

I've had to learn a whole new language, living in this new California, in this wet place. It's the language of levees and rivers used, controlled, elevated, blocked, bled and rerouted: bypass and floodgate, dam, wetland, watershed, confluence, the language of raging watery nature barely contained. (Mom watched a History Channel show about degrading American infrastructure that featured a 15-minute segment on the Sacramento levees and how they're sure to fail if tested.)

But there's one thing I'll remember even long after I've moved on, when the North, this foggy, soggy green growing place, this wilderness, is nothing more than my history. That one thing is the side effect of powerful, unstoppable rivers combining, their evaporating ions wrangling the coastal barometer as they widen and writhe and slide into the San Francisco Bay (when we let them): the Delta Breeze. On baking, stifling Sacramento city nights, the oppressive stillness is often relieved by that wonder of wonders, referred to in tones of reverence and hope by everyone I met when I first arrived, before summer started in earnest. You can always count on the Delta Breeze.

But not on rivers.

Hearst Castle and Highway 101

2011-04-09T17:01:00.003-06:00

My second workshop day in Morro Bay was finished by noon, so I had the afternoon to meander up the 101. I didn't really intend to stop at Hearst Castle, but when I saw it shimmering on the hill I had to pull off. It was everything promised by Mom and Kathleen, who went during their trip to Monterey. A marvel of architecture and art, it was worth every penny and the three-hour delay that put me in traffic just outside of Carmel later.

The facades reminded me so much of Balboa Park in San Diego -- and indeed, the architect modeled them after those buildings -- that I couldn't wait for my February trip down south.

Big Sur

Pacific sunset, Hwy 101 south of Carmel. Bring your A game on this drive or you could very easily die.

January

2011-04-09T16:51:00.005-06:00

January meant another welcome trip to Morro Bay. It was unseasonably gorgeous.

I love colorful infrastructure. This irrigation backflow assembly prevents cross connections with the drinking water supply.

Sea Shanty, Cayucos.

Semi-operational power plant on Morro Bay.

December

2011-04-01T22:00:00.004-06:00

Brent found a recipe for a gingerbread cake with Guinness, so I made it. Twice. We took one to my company Christmas party, where I felt I had to warn people it contained two sticks of butter.

In December I flew to Washington D.C. for the RCAP national convention. The weather was gloomy but I still spent a lot of time between meetings walking around town and taking the subway. The highlight of the trip was the National Cathedral, which I walked to twice from my hotel at Wardman Park. It's absolutely stunning from all angles. It's been 16 years since I was in Paris, but the National Cathedral seems more beautiful even than Notre Dame.

I took the docent tour with a girl from Ireland who was in the country visiting her sister... who lives in Redlands, CA but was in D.C. on business. We hung out for the rest of the afternoon.

It was difficult to photograph all the interior details because of the light, and there were thousands. So much history and care.

Cathedral grounds.

Wisconsin Ave. townhouses.

National Cathedral from Wardman Park Marriott.

We went to Berkeley to see KU (Brent's alma mater) play Cal. It was a brutal game, and KU won, so we got out of town in a hurry since we were decked out in Jayhawk gear. It's tough to talk about this right now because KU got knocked out of the national championship last weekend in the Elite 8 round... March Madness is aptly named.

I found this Lanco ball watch at the antique mall a few blocks away. I mentioned it to Brent and he snuck off to look for it... but I hadn't described it well and he wasn't sure. We went over and picked it up on Christmas Eve. I'm spoiled.

Our first Christmas together... with a fireplace!

Snapshots

2011-03-25T13:09:00.003-06:00

I keep finding random pictures to fill in the gaps.

Kitty wasn't exactly neglected during B.C.'s illness, but she didn't get much attention, either, and she's never been demanding... until now. Seems she was always sort of standoffish because she didn't want to draw his attention to herself; he could be a bully, and he harassed her a lot. Now that he's gone she's extremely vocal, much more content and active, but still fairly crotchety. Brent calls her the Mouthy Broad. I'm just trying not to love her fur off while she's here.

I took her to the vet for a once-over since she hadn't been in forever, and at nearly 12 she's in very good shape. Great teeth, extreme groomer, eyes and ears and paws intact. We did a blood draw just to see what "normal" is for her, however, and the news came back: early onset renal failure. Apparently her kidneys have been failing very slowly for quite a while, but her body is adapting and her urine is concentrating normally. So there's no reason she shouldn't be around for quite some time, unless things suddenly pick up the pace... powdered phosphorous binders twice a day and lots of clean, fresh water, and she'll be comfortable and active for the long haul. She shows absolutely no signs of decline.

Rainy sunset, flight into Ontario, CA, August.

Neighborhood trees, October. I worried that Sacramento wouldn't be very interesting during my favorite season, fall, but I worried for nothing. I can't believe the area doesn't get more press for fall foliage... it's absolutely gorgeous, pulls out all the stops. We have a lot of hardwoods like maple, elm, and oak, and lots of flowering, fruit-bearing, flourishing trees. We had every color of the autumn rainbow, from deep reds and browns to bright yellow, and coupled with evergreens like Redwoods and our date palms and certain leafy trees that are apparently not deciduous, the place was a riot of color. So gratifying.

Auburn, CA, on a technical assistance visit to a small water system in October.

East Sacramento's East Portal Park, October afternoon.

November

2011-03-24T21:35:00.002-06:00

In November I had workshops "down south" and fell in love with a little town called Morro Bay. Just north of San Luis Obispo, which has the highest quality of life in the U.S. (according to numerous studies I'm too lazy to look up right now), Morro Bay boasts an amazing estuary and wildlife preserve, a great little marina, a surprisingly appealing power plant just on the water, and a giant volcanic cone at the mouth of the bay called Morro Rock (which is also a bird preserve of some kind). An amazing place in so many ways, peaceful and outdoorsy, with sea shell shops and great Thai food. While I worried about Brent and Big Cat back home, I hung out in Cayucos and had a fried squid sandwich at The Sea Shanty.

Morro Rock

Tall Ship

Bikes at the Inn at Morro Bay

Hats on the ceiling at The Sea Shanty in Cayucos

Morro Bay Estuary

Near Paso Robles, just off the highway

Almost to I-5, abandoned tanks and grain repository

A-maze-ing

2011-03-24T21:25:00.004-06:00

We accomplished something from my bucket list in October when we conquered the largest corn maze in the world. At night. In three hours.

Brent with the map.

It really was this scary... not to mention the inebriated teenagers crashing through the walls of corn.

FINALLY. Light!

I'm going to find some second-hand pink flamingos at Goodwill and make these. LOVE.

The Missing Months

2011-03-24T21:03:00.005-06:00

September and October were our last months with Suitcase. Had I known we were going to lose the big guy, I might have spent more time with him, taken more pictures. As it is I have a lot of pictures over his lifetime... a few videos, recordings of his purring, a tuft of his amazing soft fur... and a lovely box of cat ashes boxed up by Sacramento Animal Hospital, our heroes. The whole ordeal really shook me throughout October and November, and I have very little memory of August and September as a result, and not many photos to piece them together. I'm working on it.

Despite everything, in October we snuck off to Santa Rosa to check out the filming location of Alfred Hitchcock's excellent Shadow of a Doubt. We did locate the house, the depot, and the court house, but the rest of the town was unrecognizable. As Brent put it, "What they've done to this town is a step back." The city center has been built up with ugly modern malls and storefronts, and otherwise the town looks like any other in the region, sort of generic. Disappointing, since the town we saw in the film was gorgeous... but we did find a costume shop where we bought the most amazing giant horse head mask for Morgan's "7 Deadly Sins" costume for a Jaycees event we attended when I zipped home to Wyoming the end of the month for our annual Halloween party. Pictures of that to follow.

Basking

Posing behind our orange couch, just before the end. He's nearly half his normal weight.

I took this in my travels (somewhere around Valley Springs) and tagged Cordale when I posted it on Facebook.

Morgan got tagged, too.

Historic Santa Rosa estate, being painstakingly refurbished by the City.

Santa Rosa depot where a scene from Shadow of a Doubt was filmed.

The house from the same movie.

Cyclisk, an obelisk made of bicycle parts.

Santa Rosa court house.

YES.

What's Not in a Name

2011-03-23T17:54:00.002-06:00

My name is Adriane Skinner. That's it. I have no middle name. My grandfather told my mother it was a waste of ink (despite having given my father his own forename, Bartley, as a middle name), and it was apparently hard enough to come up with one name Mom and Dad agreed upon (or two, since they had to come up with Morgan first). This has never been a problem... until now.

I recently received a letter from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, which oversees drinking water operator certification in the state of Wyoming, where I am certified at the Treatment III and Water Systems I levels (the system is different in California, where I am a Treatment III, Distribution II). The letter stated that they had recently renewed my Water Systems I certification using qualifying training hours I had on record, which is fine. But there was more.

They're restructuring their database to match operators' records with their middle name or initial and birthdate, instead of the last 6 digits of our social security numbers, which was the old method (to which a lot of people rightly objected). The DEQ wrote to tell me that they are unable to print a copy of my renewed certification because they are "missing a vital piece of information." Seriously, it's that serious. The letter was addressed to "Adriane x Skinner", probably to illustrate the point.

I rarely meet another person without a middle name, apart from my older sister Morgan, who also got shafted. I even know people who have two middle names or more. Having a middle name is like having a secret, a special, hidden code name (not unlike that of a Jellicle Cat) that only certain people in your inner circle -- and some admin specialists at your doctor's office and probably your accountant -- are privy to. You might be years into a friendship before, during idle conversation, it occurs to you to ask your friend's middle name or share your own. Learning someone's middle name can be such a fun surprise (and also a new source of torment to capitalize on).

Not having a middle name is a secret of its own kind, but it's a secret shame. Like an appellatory handicap, a dearth of separate syllables stunts my signature and truncates my monogram. People occasionally react to this revelation with oddly exaggerated shock, which is why I grew up thinking it must be either a major faux pas or just really unusual. I also suspect it took some of the steam out of Grandma's disciplinary tactics when I was small... using a child's full, triple name is a sure way to let them know you mean business, am I right? Anyway, the fact that I have no middle name used to be one of the most interesting things about me. (I later became a much more interesting person.) Not a problem, until now.

As I was responding to the letter (requesting that they just use the letter "X" like a clerk at Blockbuster once inadvertently did when their system wouldn't take no for an answer, either), it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that when Brent and I get married, I can't just back Skinner up one slot and create myself a middle name I'd be glad to hang on to (I'm the last of the Skinner line in name, since Dad was Grandpa's only child), finally have a complete set of letters. Why not? Brent's last name is Shepherd. You do the monogramic math. So I will just be plain Adriane Shepherd, which, I just realized, will take decades to get used to.

If you have a middle name, treasure it. Keep it a secret and only share it with those who love you the most. It's your superpower, the one thing that, on a luggage tag or credit report, might distinguish you from the hundred or two other people who share your particular combination of forename and surname. And if you, like me, don't have a middle name at all, why then... let's start a club. We're special too.

Jump Start

2011-03-20T23:38:00.006-06:00

I was just sitting on the couch watching Brent doze across the room in his chair while trying to read a book about Billy Wilder, and it occurred to me that I should be blogging. I don't know where the last four months went. That's not true; they went down the road. I'm sitting instead of cleaning the kitchen or pinning quilt blocks or doing something else useful because I needed some time on the hot pad... all those miles slouching in the driver's seat of my car have herniated a disc that's pinching my sciatic nerve, and on a scale of 1 to 10 this pain ranges between a 4 and a 7, and I have a high tolerance to pain. The proof:

That's right. 50,000 big ones. I can't even remember how many miles we had when we got here; I only know that 77 nights in hotel rooms later and many, many days on California roads and this is the state we're in. Ha!

I'd be lying if I said I've been too busy to blog, although I have been busy. I've had plenty of free time, but it's usually in the evenings (read: 1 a.m.) and we've been watching a lot of movies (I knew I was moving in with a film nut, but damn) and old episodes of 30 Rock and Arrested Development. It's how we unwind, and it's been fun. Neither of us has taken much time for creative pursuits while we settled into life together (Brent blogged about Bullitt, I tie-dyed a T-shirt and learned to cook), and maybe we've developed some bad habits. But as lazy as we are, we've also done some pretty awesome stuff.

Besides, all the weekday travel is exhausting, and it doesn't leave me a lot of motivation to be very mobile or productive in the evenings and on weekends. For instance:

The Eel River, Hwy 101.

What's so special about these trees?

Well...

They're 500-1,000 years old, and some are over 300 feet tall.

That's right, I finally got to see the Redwoods.

They're unbelievable.

The forest feels magical.

These aren't even the big ones.

Okay, this one is pretty big.

Eel River.

Willits, home of the Skunk Train! Hwy 101, CA.

And this was just one trip last year. I've got folders full of pictures of hamlets and bays and barns and fields, orchards, rivers, strange buildings, dirty city streets, clean city parks, wharfs, warehouses, tanks, factories, you name it. My writing is rusty, accustomed as I am to speaking out loud now... and speaking in front of groups takes a while to get the knack of. I'm good at it, and I'm enjoying it. But things may not be staying the same.

I'm really enjoying my job. It took a while to figure out what was going on, and I know in a year I'll be even better at it. I've helped a lot of people and spread a lot of knowledge and learned more than I ever thought possible. I've met some truly stellar people and not a single really bad person and many wonderful people who are right in between.

The next few months will tell, however, whether or not I get to keep doing this. Funding for our function is being cut at the Federal and State levels, and the company's future is uncertain. Will I regret having to shift back into operator mode if I have to? No. Knowing what I know now I have more incentive than ever to strap on the steel toes and pick up a wrench, and opportunities are out there. Time will tell.

In the meantime we're just enjoying life, trying to be grateful every day that we're finally together. We're getting along incredibly well... everybody says the first year's the hardest, and if that's the case, the rest of our life together should be a breeze, because it's been truly easy and lovely, a relief and a joy. Even the cat would agree, if her constant chatter made any sense. We sleep three across on a queen-size bed.

I'm organizing photo folders and will post more here. Happy and eventful and grateful as it is, my life doesn't feel complete until it's blogged.

Black and Tan

2010-12-28T13:34:00.004-07:00

It didn't pass me by; I was aware of it. December 17th marked the 3-year anniversary of the day I first drove Puck off the lot at Evanston Motor Company (an elegant name for a modern car dealership, don't you think?). Yesterday I registered Puck in the State of California, and while I was digging for specifics (tax paid, original registration date) I found Dave's thank-you note to me. "What a wonderful Christmas present from you to you." And it was.

Puck and I have gone 47,849 miles together. I paid him off in November and the release of Lien arrived from Chrysler within two weeks, along with the original title from Uinta County, with Lynne Fox's signature on it. She's no longer the County Clerk. Lots of things have changed in Evanston in the ten months I've been gone, but nothing has changed about the way I feel for this car, the least inanimate object I own.

Since we arrived in California in April, we've sure racked up the mileage reimbursements. We've been to Monterey, Eureka, Visalia, San Diego, Santa Rosa, Napa, Sonoma, Tahoe, Redding, Chico, Placerville, Kettleman City, Ione, Plymouth, San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay, the 17 Mile Drive and the Avenue of the Giants. Twice. We've been up and down I-5, Hwy 101, Hwy 99, Hwy 50, and I-80. In the madness of California's urban traffic -- even in a city as small as Sacramento, and yes, it is small -- a car you trust and know well is imperative. When it rains California drivers lose their minds, it's as simple as that. Sacramento also has frequent thick fog and some of the most inconveniently designed on- and off-ramps I've ever seen.

I'll be on the road non-stop for the first several weeks of the new year and no matter how I feel about what happens when I get where I'm going, I'm always glad to be in this car, my well-appointed home away from home. I miss Monte (I've been tracking his movements, and I'm sad to report he's been sold twice since I let him go, so I don't know whose hands he's in now or how he's being treated) and the Cadillac, who happily went to someone who's sort of family, but Puck is the Now Car. Puck is a large part of my current identity. Puck is the one they see coming. And even with California plates, Puck is still a tie to home and family and the person I was before March, when everything changed.

And before long he's gonna need new shoes.

Giving Thanks

2010-11-26T13:34:00.003-07:00

And so we are a one-cat household.

A few months before Dad died, we were coming home from a visit to the doctor in Riverton, a two-hour drive. We stopped at the rest stop at South Pass, a famous landmark on the Oregon Trail that now boasts a ghost town and abandoned gold mines. Dad had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's, and diabetes had already robbed him of most of his vision and mobility. While Mom was getting out of the driver's seat of the Buick I helped Dad out of the passenger's seat; his legs just wouldn't do what he told them to, so I helped him swing them around. When his feet were on the ground he leaned against the door for a rest -- such a little thing, getting out of a car, and yet it was such an ordeal -- and looked up and said, "Is this me for the rest of my life?" I knew exactly what he meant.

And although B.C. couldn't talk, Monday morning when I was trying to get him to eat some pureed salmon, he sighed and looked into my eyes for a long, heartbreaking moment, and I heard Dad's words again. B.C. was saying the same thing, without talking. It was agony. I couldn't do anything for Dad, but I could do something for B.C.

Appetite wasn't the problem, so the appetite stimulants the vet suggested were a moot point. He'd been losing weight continuously, despite showing a lot of interest in food. He just couldn't get much down at one time, and about half of what he got down came back up. And he absolutely refused to drink water. Thursday night while I was on the road, I arranged for Brent to take B.C. in for subcutaneous injections, knowing he was severely dehydrated. Brent visited with our vet for 20 minutes or so, and when they got home, a newly recharged B.C. went straight to the kibble he hadn't touched in weeks and chowed down. It was an anomaly, though... as good as he must have instantly felt to be rehydrated, whatever discomfort the mass in his chest was causing took over again. I took him for another flush Saturday and by Sunday he was back to lethargy and agitation. We started dosing him with pain meds at night.

We had ruled out further diagnosis and surgery... it just seemed impossibly unfair to put him through more. At 12 years old, two long-term anesthesia events and major invasive surgery into the chest cavity (after what he'd already been through, and if the thing was even operable) were pretty much out of the question. Not to our surgeon, but to us. I kept thinking of Morgan's red Molly dog... after several surgeries to remove the recurring tumor on her leg, they finally took the leg off. She died 8 months later of kidney failure. She was 12. Their other dog Rosie, the 15-year-old spaniel, had a 5-lb. tumor removed from her abdomen this spring. She's still kicking, but she's aged a lot, is getting senile and slow, her hips failing. And then there was Grandpa. After surgery to remove a lemon-sized tumor from his brain, he died within weeks, unable to speak or function, flailing and mumbling. Why do we try so hard to keep pets and people alive when there's a merciful, gentle end available? Because we love them. Because we don't want to be without them.

Once the decision was made it was easy. He made it easy. I made the appointment on Tuesday for Wednesday afternoon so Brent could be there. He's gotten more attached to the cats than he expected, I think. That morning B.C. was gurgling and wheezing, although moving around and alert, lolling in the sun by the sliding glass door. He spent most of the day purring in my arms, stretching and rolling when I'd rub his bare gut with the long, invisible scar. Brent picked us up, B.C. wrapped in a towel for the drive. Our regular vet was out (which was probably a good thing; she's been calling from home to check on us, so invested in our boy, and in me) but the woman we got was absolutely wonderful. She listened attentively, talked about our options, and assured me we were making the right decision. "I'd want to come back as your pet." It was over so quickly.

In the month between his first surgery and the end, I'd worried about him every waking moment. It had become habit. The first thing I thought each time I woke up in the night and again on Thanksgiving morning was, "I need to check on B.C." Then I'd remember. I can admit now, it's a relief. I had no way of knowing how much he was suffering, stoic creature, and it was beginning to take a toll. Trying to find things he could eat, watching him for signs of pain, wondering what to do.

I'm peaceful now. I miss his purring and his soft fur and the pleasing sight of him... I like to remember him the way he was before, filled out and fluffy and regal. He had aged so much the last few months, even a year, and lost so much weight. Looking at photos I imagine I can tell when he began to look strained and unhappy, distressed, sometime in early summer. Sitting on the couch, facing the fireplace, it's easy to pretend he's still passed out by the back door behind me. If I'm in bed I can imagine he's curled up on the couch. If I'm in the kitchen I see him curled up in the bed on the hearth. I know the hurt fades with time. I have such good memories, photos, even a recording of him purring and a video of him playing.

And I still have Kitty, who seems thrilled, although without competition for food she's ballooned a bit, become uncharacteristically round and thick. We'll work on that. B.C. bullied her occasionally, and I know she never cared much for him. Since he became so inactive she's gone a bit berserk, zipping around, climbing the cat condo like a gecko, becoming more vocal, demanding we pull her toy string. She knew something was wrong with him, would approach and sniff him once in a while or hiss if he came near. (Although she's always done that.) She's been needy and flirty the last two days. Probably worried we'll take her away, too. Who knows what cats think. Although I'm still confident I knew what B.C. was thinking the last few days. Probably much longer.

But I'm so grateful for the 12 years we got. 20 years, 50 would not have been enough. We know we'll lose them, and we're never ready. We'll enjoy Kitty while we've got her (Brent has named her Fancy, because she is, crosses her knees and lifts her pinky when drinking tea), which could be several good years. And maybe someday, after we've traveled a bit, maybe when our theoretical kid (twins run in Brent's family, OH PLEASE NO) is starting school, we'll rescue a dog from the pound. And I have informed Brent that I refuse to live the rest of my life without another cat. When the time is right, pets will come along. They always do.

Dammit.

2010-11-13T14:02:00.003-07:00

1,111th post. No cause for celebration.

"The real troubles of your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday." - Mary Schmich, from the 1997 Chicago Tribune column "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young"

For the second time in two weeks, I took B.C. to the vet expecting something routine, something predictable and manageable, and brought away with me the probability that he cannot continue to live.

He was recovering beautifully, purring recklessly, playful (inasmuch as he has ever been active), pink and alive. He showed a lot of interest in food (although I admit to tempting him with everything from scrambled eggs to feta cheese and black beans to baked salmon to liver-based Fancy Feast gravy slurries to Cat Sip cat milk to ham and beef baby food), despite never being able to eat much at one time. He didn't seem to be gaining weight, and I feared he was losing. The incision healed without incident, no swelling, bleeding, or leaking, and he showed no interest in it, so we risked leaving the Cone of Shame off since, as all pet owners know, it's utterly discouraging and frustrating to an animal and I feared he would hurt himself running into objects or falling off the bed or couch.

Once off the antibiotics and pain killers, he seemed to be gaining ground, and I hoped his appetite would improve. It didn't. So we made the appointment to get his stitches out and see what else could be going on. The surgeon grilled me and listened and palpitated to her heart's content and decided he might have an intestinal blockage... could we run some X-rays? Of course.

I waited for two hours, admiring cats and dogs that were in for everything from routine shots to hip replacements. One lovely Sheltie actually had no hip sockets. A boisterous yellow Lab had an oozing raw hole in his side the size of a chicken egg. A chocolate Dachshund named Tootsie needed dental work. I spent most of the time with an overweight Doberman named Maxx, who needed his expensive meds regulated. Congestive heart failure, pendulous growths. A pit-boxer mix wanted to play with every other dog in sight, including a golden retriever and his partner, a gorgeous Aussie with shiny, flowing locks. I sat with the sun on my back, making shade for Maxx. Then the tech invited me back.

The intestinal blockage turned out to be fecal matter, but something else showed up in the X-ray. A mass in the chest cavity, clearly pressing on the esophagus. It was visible in the post-op X-ray but was masquerading as a collapsed lung so wasn't identifiable as a potential problem. It could be a twisted lung lobe, a lung tumor, a free tumor, an interstitial tumor in the fatty tissue around the heart. The only way to tell what exactly and whether or not it's operable is a $1,500 CT scan (CAT scan, HA!). The surgery, if it's operable, would be around $4,000. (They go high on the estimates... the first surgery was predicted to cost $3,500 and turned out to be $2,700. We've done $400 worth of X-rays since the beginning.) I asked to bring him home for the weekend to think about it.

Meanwhile, B.C. continues to be his affectionate, debonaire self, purring and lolling, in my lap most of the time. He eats a little, preferably from my hand. But he is not well. He's as tall and long as ever, but painfully thin, bony, ropy. His walk is unsteady, his expression occasionally unsettled. If he's not sleeping on my lap or in the block of sun by the sliding glass doors, he's under a chair on in a corner or in his bed on the hearth.

It isn't the money... it's all the uncertainty, and the thought of making him suffer anything more than what he's already been through. If we did the CT scan and they found an inoperable tumor, they'd want to do chemo. I wouldn't do that to him. (It's hard enough on humans, who understand why they're being made to suffer.) If it is an operable twisted lung lobe or lung tumor, there would be surgery, and he would live another two years at the most (the surgeon was quite clear), unless something else came up (at this point? Probable). Whatever it is, it won't go away on its own, and even if it occasionally shifts and stops constricting the esophagus, he can't live like that.

I can hardly bear the thought of my life without him in it. I'd hate for anyone to have cause to judge me for not being willing to spend endless amounts just for the chance at a little more time, when it may not even be quality time for him. He's had about 12 wonderful years, spoiled and beloved, admired, needed, wanted. In my hands and in my house, he's suffered no abuse, no neglect, no terror, no starvation. Which is more than can be said for a sad percentage of cats and dogs in this world. I wanted 20 years. I also hate the thought of watching him age and the eventual end I won't be able to prevent. My wise cousin Roger posted on my troubled Facebook status, "You are his Power of Attorney - he chose you because he knows he can trust you. Do what he tells you even if it isn't what you want. " And he's right. I desperately wish he could have passed gently in his sleep and I wasn't faced with this choice.

I'm traveling extensively for work the next two weeks... neither Brent or I will be around to spoon-feed him every few hours, syringe milk and water into him to stave off dehydration. He'll suffer. His organs may fail. So that is where things stand... I'm going to call his regular vet Monday and see what she says. If she agrees it's probably best, I'll ask if she can put him to sleep at home. We're only a few blocks from the clinic.

I'll keep you posted, and I'd love your thoughts.

Frankencat

2010-11-02T13:53:00.001-06:00

13 stitches and a new hairdo.

Friday Was Worth It

2010-10-30T15:28:00.005-06:00

I dropped B.C. off at the vet Friday morning to have a couple teeth pulled and the rest cleaned. His teeth have always been bad, and I suspect it's because he doesn't actually chew the hard food, but swallows it whole (he only licks the gravy off soft food, so we don't go there). Also, bad pH balance, gingivitis, etc. Anyway we had also planned a chest X-ray because he's been wheezing and coughing very violently lately, and we thought it was best to check if there was a blockage or something, maybe asthma. He's been lethargic and losing weight rapidly the last 8 weeks and I thought it was because his teeth hurt.

His doctor called within an hour. "The X-ray is exciting. Not in a good way." And then she blew my world apart. Her words, not mine.

He had an abdominal hernia: the diaphragm between the chest and abdominal cavities just wasn't there. She couldn't tell from the X-ray whether it was a recent development or a congenital thing he's had his whole life that just now started causing him problems, for whatever reason. She thought probably the latter. What she could tell from the X-ray was that his intestines, liver, and most of his colon had moved up into the chest cavity, crowding his tiny heart and constricting his wispy lungs. When I saw the images and his two round kidneys floating in the abyss of his empty abdominal cavity (the stomach and bladder were there, but almost invisible), and everything else crammed up under the stark white ribs, I had to sit down.

The doctor said she'd seen the condition a few years ago, in one of her own technician's younger cats, and that surgery was the best thing, and soon, before any of his jumbled organs got pinched or punctured, killing him quickly and horribly. She didn't lie; the other cat she knew hadn't made it through the surgery, and there was the tiniest possibility that if this was a congenital condition it wasn't the problem with B.C.'s appetite; there might be something else wrong. Although I think we both doubted it. It was definitely the problem with his breathing.

She sent me to the local veterinary referral center, an emergency and surgical unit that specializes in extremes (there was also the veterinary department at U.C. Davis, 15 miles away, but she felt the people at the VRC were perfectly capable). A surgeon examined his X-rays and was certain it's a lifelong problem that only recently became volatile. I had a hard time digesting that: my big, substantial boy with such a mess inside, but come to think of it, he's always been odd; he was never particularly active like most young cats, and I have rarely seen him run (when he does it's an awkward lope, very brief) while even crotchety Kitty still tears around the house almost daily for 15 crazed minutes or so. Also the surgeon said the abdominal organs may have slipped in and out of the chest cavity over the years, especially since the hernia was so big. Her worry was that because it was discovered so late in life, some of the organs might have adhered together, making the separation difficult or impossible. There was no telling without going in.

At this point I had to choose: have my companion of almost 12 years -- his whole life and more than a third of mine -- put down right away, serene and dignified, instantly relieving what was probably severe discomfort, and avoid the trauma and pain and confusion of an intense, invasive surgery? Or do the selfish thing, putting him through this amazing ordeal just for the chance to have him around a few more days, weeks, months, years, simply because I love his presence in my life?

There were several scenarios with the second option: one, they'd open him up and find there was too much adhesion, too much organ damage, and they'd have to stop the procedure and euthanize, or other complications -- like reaction to the anesthesia -- would lead to his death on the table. Two, they'd get him sorted out and repair the diaphragm, he'd survive the surgery, but his lungs might collapse and possibly release a fatal amount of built-up toxins (depending on the length of time they've been severely constricted) into his system, shutting down his other organs and killing him within minutes or hours. Three, he could survive the surgery, his lung capacity increased and oxygenation improved, heart function improved and blood pressure reduced, abdominal organ function restored, and we might have a cat with a new lease on life and several good years ahead of him.

Terrible odds, numerous unknowns and frightening possibilities, exorbitant price.

You know what I chose.

He went in for surgery within an hour.

Later his surgeon, a brief woman with big eyes and an intense need to fix my cat, called. He had come through the surgery with flying colors. No adhesion of the organs, plenty of material to repair the diaphragm. His oxygen levels were way up and his blood pressure went immediately down. His lungs had partially collapsed, but there was no sign of toxicity. There was a slight mottled place on his liver, probably from being constricted, but she had taken biopsies of the liver and intestine -- which looked far better than expected -- and foresaw no problems. He would be in the ICU overnight and they would call me in the morning. Visiting hours on weekends are from noon to 2.

We -- and I should have been saying "we" all along, because I was on and off the phone with Brent the entire time and he graciously endorsed some serious capital outlay despite reasonable reservations and the very good possibility it was all for naught -- went to visit a while ago. Not only did B.C. survive the night, but he came out of the anesthesia remarkably well and the tech boasted that she'd had him purring and he'd even eaten a little. An I.V. fed him pain medication that made his pupils huge and his eyelids heavy, but he was clearly glad to see us, although he couldn't muster much more than a cheek rub and quiet purr. We should have him home by Monday.

There's no telling what his life -- however long it lasts -- will be like from here on out. He may not survive. There might be something else wrong: intestinal disease, cancer. He might not only make a full recovery but enjoy the kind of health and energy he's never had before. I tried, but can't seem to mentally shift the cost of the procedure to any other kind of benefit we could have gotten from those dollars in our life: a European vacation, the down-payment on a new car, even the security of food on the table and rent in the bank.* Nothing seems as valuable to me as that one cat's purring weight on the blankets at night, his long white hair on my black pants, his fluffy tail vibrating at the sight of me opening a can of tuna.

He is one tiny speck in the universe, no more or less than any other pet or, in the end, any other living thing, his life worth only what I am willing to pay for it. My life is only worth what an insurance company is willing to pay for it, after all, if something strikes me down. My life is finite, and I want the things I love for as long as I can have them, and we had the money. (I'm incredibly grateful for that, although I would willingly have gone into debt to accomplish the same means.) I can live with the guilt that I selfishly put him through something horrible that he will never understand, never even associate with any improvement it renders him. I am confident that in many ways he will forget it as soon as that improvement occurs, and I am confident that it will occur. And I am also confident that I would have bitterly regretted for the rest of my finite life not giving him the chance -- or myself the possibility -- of a few more good years together, even if the money turned out wasted. Everything so far indicates it is not.

Long story short, I can't put a price on love.

* (Side note: I also feel there are better ways of contributing to charity or causes than donating money, since most of the money donated in this country does not go where donors believe it goes. For instance: 23% or less of the money that goes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation goes to research; the CEO of that foundation makes $450k a year. They channel funds into numerous other beneficial uses, of course, but they market the perception that they're funding the cure. And they're one of the most legitimate and responsible foundations out there. For this reason I generally donate time, appropriate materials, my limited knowledge, etc., but rarely money.)

Weekends, Unscripted

2010-10-07T17:49:00.002-06:00

B.C. in a tent made from the front page of the Sacramento Bee.

I have developed a crippling obsession with vanity plates. I will change several lanes and even miss an exit if I feel I'm on the trail of a good one. It's that bad.

Dillon Beach, near Petaluma.

Dog in the American River

Apple Orchard on Apple Hill

Alpacas! I have 150 yards of beautiful, dye-free yarn from Julio there on the right.

Denver Dan's Quonset hut

Placerville, CA

Placerville alley

San Francisco on a Certain Sunday

2010-10-07T16:24:00.004-06:00

Bay Bridge

Castro Street

The Folsom Street Fair was in full swing. We knew, but we didn't know. That town was unhinged.

We found the San Francisco campus of my alma mater by accident on our way to Macy's.

Town hall is fancier than the State Capitol building.

Castro Theater

The Mayor of Castro Street, Harvey Milk.

Fairy Tales Do Come True

2010-09-20T23:44:00.002-06:00

We walked The Crooked Mile at Fairy Tale Town.

And had photo ops on King Arthur's throne.

And made sure the cheese did not stand alone.

I'm in ur carriage, stealin' ur happy ending.

Early Halloween... in July

2010-09-20T23:40:00.002-06:00

Mom in Old Town Sacramento.

Morgan masquerades.

My girls.

Pony Express monument.

Just desserts at Rick's Dessert Diner.

Belated... July

2010-09-20T23:26:00.002-06:00

Yard art on 41st.

A rat hanging out in the support iron of our stoop. Brent said, "Ask him if he can cook." A while later he rethought that and said, "Stop talking to it. It's vermin." We didn't have rats in Wyoming, save as pets. I thought he was cute. And gutsy.

Already. And it's almost 42,000 now. He'll be paid off in December, the fastest three years of my life.

Brent cycling between Midtown and East Sac.

Mural.

Classic...

... and not so classic.

Under Construction

2010-07-15T20:17:00.009-06:00

As you probably guessed, yes! I'm retrofitting the blog to be easier on the eyes and hoping to post more photos and art, at least, even if I can't get more writing done for a while.

Seriously, I spent three nights in hotels this week, and even though I was home every night (weird series of events) or maybe because I was home every night and had to leave again, I'm looking forward to being a really flaky employee all week next week and probably tomorrow, too, because I feel like I earned it. All that time in the car means a lot of thinking that wants to be blogged, but by the time I get home I have other priorities (travel reports, staring at Brent, vacuuming, spending hours reading Hyperbole and a Half because Allie is GENIUS with the pixel-y bears, gratuitous bloody imaginary childhood drama, and the furry Alot).

Anyway I want to unlock the blog and that means giving it a little attitude adjustment and fine-tuning my philosophy. The journal of a new life needs a shiny new book, with archives available, of course.

All that driving also means I'm getting a crash course in Northern California life. I have decided I am pretty much guaranteed to fall in love with every place I will ever live, because every square inch of this planet is unique and worthy and wonderful. But California is special to me, almost as special as Wyoming, and Northern California is proving to be a fascinating microcosm of the American Dream in a way I didn't anticipate.

For instance, today after a half-day workshop on membrane filtration, I drove home. I drove about 55 miles, through Calaveras, Amador, and Sacramento counties, and over Pardee Dam. And in that short distance -- because relatively, for me, it is a short distance -- I saw: corn fields, vineyards, goat ranches, llama ranches, turkey ranches, a quarry and gravel plant, cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, hawks, junkyards, a nursery with acres of flowering shrubs and fruit trees, reservoirs, wetlands, general stores, town squares, cemeteries, grasslands, taco shops, donut shops, market stands offering fresh strawberries and white nectarines, the unmistakable pot-bellied reactor towers of the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant (which was closed by public referendum in June of 1989), several bronze representations of Mark Twain, and, in a strip mall on Folsom as I came into town, a store called Spy Outlet.

What's in your 55-mile radius?

I didn't get pictures of any of that; between the BlackBerry and the Garmin GPS, there are enough devices threatening my life by distracting my attention without me taking photos from the window of my moving vehicle. But I did snap my favorite local landmark, the beacon on the horizon that means I'm minutes from my front door, the 3-million gallon concrete Alhambra Reservoir, looming over East Sacramento in the afternoon sun. There's a public art installation on the side that makes it an incredibly striking and unique component of our public water system. It's quite possibly the most beautiful drinking water storage tank I have ever seen.

My new neighborhood cornerstone weighs quite a bit when it's empty, but the water it contains, when it's full, weighs 12,500 tons. Wow.

Getting Settled

2010-06-26T15:35:00.002-06:00

I've been hoping to have a chance to catch everyone up on the last six weeks, but there's always something; traveling and preparing for workshops, meetings, work-related correspondence and material development, community band rehearsal or concerts, weddings (not ours, don't worry, but it's certainly June), unpacking, a little socializing, and lots of "us" time as Brent and I adjust to living in the same house.

It's only been several weeks, so it's hard to tell how the rest of our first year (that's the tough one, right?) will go, but so far it's been sort of magical. I feel we've both been very accommodating and sensitive to the other's needs, and we're settling into routines and habits that take into account both our preferences, interests, and our combined budget. We have gratitude on our side; we often have to remind ourselves that this is our life now, that at the end of a few days or a week one or the other of us doesn't have to leave. We're both surprisingly tolerant for people who have lived alone for so long, and it's been fun to put the puzzle of our combined belongings together bit by bit.

May was a month of both stress and absolute relief at once... our stuff arrived and with it my ability to prepare meals, hang clothes, and CLEAN. But I'm also so sick of the smell of cardboard -- boxes are still stacked in the living room, garage, and office -- that I can't wait for the rest of our stuff to find a place here or go to the curb for charity collection so we can get rid of the rest of it; cardboard in a humid climate (everyone insists this is unusual this time of year) starts to smell strongly sour, like wet wood chips that are beginning to decompose.

Since there were so many transitions going on in May Brent didn't have time to job hunt beyond quick perusals of online job boards and introductory letters to local publications. We hadn't seen each other in four months so we felt we deserved some time together, which is how he wound up coming to Tahoe with me twice in two weeks and home to Wyoming with me for a cousin's wedding (and very necessary family fix), which took up the last week of May.

We've been bike riding on the riverfront trails, stocking our pantry with bulk basics and trying to resist the strong temptation of a multitude of great restaurants nearby, and figuring out how to maximize the cross-breeze through the house so we can minimize the use of the air conditioner. The power bill has been low -- $25 average; in fact all our utility bills have been much lower than everyone warned us -- but as someone who works in the water industry I can't bear the thought of the water that air conditioning units evaporate when allowed to run for hours. The house stays very cool until about 5 p.m., when the thermostat creeps up towards 80 (it's been in the low 90's at the hottest part of the day, which everyone tells us is also unusual), but it starts to cool down outside about 6 or 7, which makes an evening stroll (it's usually after 9 before we get around to it, sometimes as late as 11) just lovely. We can open the windows about 7 and turn on the fan in the bedroom and sleep very comfortably.

So we're adjusting to life in Sacramento. I'm enjoying my job, and the more I learn the more I understand that the returns will be directly related to what I put into it. I'm encountering a vast range of personalities in my colleagues, the people in the communities we serve, and in my community band (which is in Roseville, about 20 miles north; long story, which I'll get to eventually) and our neighborhood in general. It's been challenging and fascinating.

Because of the organizational skills I've had to develop in my new line of work, I've caught myself making outlines for blog posts. No kidding. Also lists of blog posts, their order and priority, which photos to include with which stories, etc. I'm disappointed by the occasional large gaps in this digital, online record of my life for the past five years or more, and I've come to the conclusion that blogging isn't something I'm prepared to sacrifice just yet. It just needs to be moved up on the list. Life is a juggling act.

I'll leave you with some footage of Lake Tahoe, which is neither northern California's largest freshwater lake, nor its prettiest, in my opinion, but for whatever reason it's an icon of the environmental movement for lifelong residents here, and I can respect that. I see more "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper stickers than anything else. So without further delay:

I've conducted two workshops in North Tahoe. It's no Bear Lake or Middle Piney, because it's crowded and almost completely surrounded by structures, but it sure beats having workshops in Visalia (feedlot country).

This is where we stay in North Tahoe.

Tahoe in May.

Hotel California

2010-05-10T21:11:00.008-06:00

I got my hair cut Friday morning, which in itself wasn't too exciting except that I can now stand to look in the mirror. In all the hubbub some things got neglected, including my appearance; I haven't had a haircut since September, I've been eating garbage-y road food, exercising sporadically, and then there's the stress. My adorably earnest new beautician put it in perspective when, after hearing my typically condensed salon life story, she listed the top ten most stressful life events a person can endure and pointed out that I've got about half of them on my plate right now.

Am I complaining?

Hell no.

Okay, maybe just a little. But only because I'm frequently frustrated with my own inability to cope with all this change efficiently and calmly. I know there are people who would have handled the move differently, planned better, been more organized, wasted less time. You know, people who would have thought to bring a fork, at least. For a while there my focus was so completely scattered that even my beloved lists were completely ineffective. I've made late payments, something I never do, completely missed a minor meeting while repeatedly swatting away the digital alert that was reminding me I had a meeting, and misunderstood simple instructions. I literally hardly remember April, except for a very disconnected feeling.

That said, now the dust is settling, the happiness and forward momentum we've been hoping for for almost three years is vivid on the horizon. Brent arrived a week ago after overseeing the loading of both our households onto the 85-foot Atlas tractor trailer; I had to leave for a Holiday Inn in the San Joaquin valley Tuesday morning, and by the time I got home Thursday evening there was all our stuff. It was everywhere. It took me a full hour to process the visual impact this had on the house I've been living in completely empty for a month, but by the time I got my bearings between the boxes I realized that the bed didn't take up nearly as much of the bedroom as I feared. That observation led to many more positive discoveries about spacial relations, our stuff, and the capacity within our new walls.

The only way I can describe how I still feel about Sacramento is that we're on vacation at a theme park designed to seem like the perfect place for us right now. It's too nice, it's too green, too clean, too livable. I keep waiting for someone to come and tell me the holiday's over and I have to go back to my old life, give back the washer and dryer, the palm trees and calla lilies, the job that allows me the freedom to practically come and go as I please.

But the best part, the part that already seems the most real, is Brent, humming Tchaikovsky while he unpacks our combined kitchen and its formidable faction of barware, striding confidently in the wrong direction as we part ways to our respective barber shops (in his defense, the first few days in our neighborhood would send any competent navigator around in circles), deftly demonstrating the steam feature on his beloved Capresso coffee machine. I've spent three of the seven nights since his arrival on the road; this is going to be typical of our life together at this stage. Having him there makes leaving home awful and returning home much, much nicer. I don't worry so much about the cats while I'm gone, and it sure beats not seeing him at all for four months at a time.

I get one night at home this week, and then it's off to Tahoe for another workshop; sweet Susan at Corporate booked both trainers lake-view rooms with king beds and suggested we each invite our favorite person.

That was easy.

Point A to Point B

2010-04-13T12:42:00.004-06:00

Bonneville Salt Flats, western Utah.

You might recognize this region from various car commercials (Acura and Lexus really like it out here) and the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Parallel universe? Oh Nevada.

"Deeth Starr Valley." Really.

Our orange tree. I'll be buying a juicer.

Front yard floral arrangement with ferns.

House around the corner, typical of the neighborhood.

I love the yellow chairs and spiral shrubbery.

Local barber shop.

Puck in the driveway makes it really real.

The things you see on Folsom Boulevard...

J Street metal bridge.

American River, evening, looking north from CSUS foot bridge towards J Street.

Scottish Rite Center, across from the fire station.

Without a Chair in the World

2010-04-04T21:05:00.002-06:00

Dispatches from the new world:

I'm parked in front of the public library, which sits in beautiful McKinley park, about a twenty-minute walk from home. I'm parked in the dark in the rain, which shows no signs of letting up, and I won't have wi-fi at home until at least Tuesday. I found a coffee house that is open 365 days a year and spent a few hours of Easter Sunday communing with Brent over Webcam and complaining about everything I could think of to complain about, just to get it out of my system. I do that when it rains.

I will never be able to relate all the details of the events of March of 2010. I will only be able to record impressions and expressions, and load the blog up with photos and descriptive language. I can tell you that there are a lot of speed bumps in this town -- literal upheavals in the asphalt -- and that nobody seems to be able to agree what to call them. One block it's "Speed Humps," the next it's "Speed Lumps," and a third might actually say "Undulations." At least the symbols are consistent.

No place will ever supplant San Diego as my idea of the perfect city. However, I can say with a lot of emphasis that Sacramento is clearly going to be a very nice place to live for as long as we're here (and I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I have no idea how long that will be. Five years? Twenty? It's a mystery, a book missing its whole second half). It's soothing and green and overflowing with flowers and restaurants and unpretentious people (for the most part, at least compared to L.A. It is still California, you know). But it is nothing like Southern California. There are times when it feels as alien as Oz or Wonderland or New York City in 1889, and I am Dorothy, Alice, and Jo March all in one, dazzled and dazed, overwhelmed. I am not in love with Sacramento. Yet. But I do like it. And I am looking forward to the stopping of the rain.

I am settled in on B Street, inasmuch as a person can be settled in without furniture, kitchen implements, or seating of any kind. I eat perched on the wide whitewashed brick hearth, fending off the cats, and the meals I do manage to prepare I eat with a plastic spork out of a plastic take-home container from the local delicatessen. Nothing hot. I drink skim milk out of a Gatorade jug and cut zucchini and carrots and oranges from my own tree with the tiny blade of the Leatherman Micra Kelly got me for Christmas several years ago. I brought home a frozen pizza one night before realizing that I had nothing to take it out of the oven or cut it with; I managed okay once I remembered I had some dishtowels in a bag of clean laundry and the little Leatherman.

I travel so much that it really isn't a hardship to be so simplified and reduced, except weekends like these where I have no idea what to do with myself. It doesn't surprise me that I am somewhat defined by my stuff, but I'm also surprisingly flexible. If you ever want to know what you can really live without, try it for a month. I have a hula-hoop for exercise (when it rains; when it's not raining I'm roaming the neighborhoods) and all my electronics, and one non-fiction book about Los Angeles smog that I'm having a hard time getting through.

I do have a washer and dryer, a beautiful pair of mid-priced front-loading white Samsungs I bought from Gus at Sears. They were delivered Thursday and I've already washed everything I can find to wash and can't wait until I have more laundry to do. I think up excuses to use them, to hear their little digital chimes, like tossing a wrinkled sweater into the dryer with my damp bath towel to work out the creases and beat off the cat hair. Fabric comes out pristine and fluffy, and I am inexpressibly happy. Having my own washer and dryer is the main reason I moved to California, you know.

That and, well, everything else. Brent (who will be here soon). The job (which is a whole other post altogether; rest assured it's going fine). The weather (which will surely be lovely when it stops RAINING). March was stressful, overwhelming, exhausting. April is a month of limbo, of exploring, of apprehension and anticipation.

I could write all night, but I really should get out of here before somebody gets suspicious. More to come.

The Hot Seat

2010-03-24T22:54:00.006-06:00

I still have had absolutely no time to regroup since the beginning of March. I've been on ten flights already since the 1st and have two more before it's over; I'm flying home Friday, gathering up the cats and anything I'll need for five weeks of very basic living, and driving out Sunday. The movers will load Brent up the end of April, load my stuff (including piano!) on the way through Evanston, and we'll officially be moved.

Last weekend I was home for literally only 38 hours (due to the early nature of a Sunday flight booked at the last minute), 13 of which I spent asleep. Thank goodness for Mom and Morgan and Kelly; the girls packed a good 85% of my stuff and Kelly, along with Henry, sent us to a day spa for some major pampering Saturday. There was also some Cheesecake Factory involved.

I dropped the cashier's check for my deposit off with the property manager at our new place Sunday; his little daughter came running across the driveway calling my name. It's a sweet old duplex east of Midtown in a deliciously walkable neighborhood, safe and well-lit, 8 miles from my office. There are coffee houses, a vet, a crepe restaurant, a diner that offers ostrich burgers, a bike shop, a Trader Joe's, and several huge and wonderful parks. Also there are pubs, groceries, and liquor stores. We can bicycle to the 28-mile river bike trail. I can't wait. I found this house by driving around the neighborhoods I liked and calling the numbers on rental signs in front of places I thought we'd like living in. Voila:

Blue spruce, automatic garage door, yard care included, sprinkler system, lilies and geraniums.

How cute is that?

Washer and dryer hookups in the garage, which is common in California.

I wish this hadn't turned out so fuzzy. This is one end of the huge living room.

Dining area.

Double-size sliding glass doors, porch and patio.

Orange tree! Our very own CITRUS TREE!

Garage walkway.

Kitchen looking towards the hall, coat closet and bathroom visible.

Front door!

Patio!

Original GE oven controls in the wall. Not functional; the oven is a built in unit, and older GE but still very nice. Electric, not gas, which is weird in California.

Copper clock built into the kitchen wall.

Copper hinges and handles.

Giant kitchen.

Cabinets built along the wall of the second bedroom.

The butter yellow bathroom, separate tub and shower.

Master bedroom, with high, frosted windows and SEVEN power outlets, and a brand-new Hunter fan.

Also a built-in cork board and big closets.

This week at work is Office Week, when the entire 100-plus staff convenes in Sacramento (from field offices in 11 western states, including Hawaii and Alaska). There's been a lot of socializing, a lot of good information, networking, meetings, hotel catering, coffee, and fun. It's also exhausting. I had a vocally debilitating cold the second week of March (when I was home, luckily, mediating online training sessions from my bed, with a cat on either side and a cup of hot tea and my laptop) that now has my manager squeaking like a barn door, and I feel a little something coming on again. So it's off to bed, and hopefully I'll have more spare time when I'm not spending 16 hours a week on planes or rushing to airports. I have so much to tell you.

Green and Gold

2010-03-07T23:38:00.002-07:00

So much has happened to me since the 15th of February that I haven't been able to make sense of it, much less type it up. Pictures are going to have to fill in the blanks for now. When I get established it should be easier to start blogging again, because I feel like I have as much to share (and a safer forum to share it in) as I did five years ago when the blog was going strong. I can't guarantee anything, but that's what I hope.

Somewhere between Visalia and San Luis Obispo, California, sunset over either the Diablo or Santa Lucia range after rain.

Hwy 41.

Avila Beach, California

Blooming orchards along I-5.

Celebration of Life

2010-02-15T20:02:00.002-07:00

Kelly and Molly at Slate Creek Campground, May 2009.

I should be packing and organizing and studying. Instead I'm moping. We lost Molly today, the sweet and mild red mongrel chow mix Morgan adopted while going to college in Casper 14 years ago. A bout of diarrhea and vomiting lead to a diagnosis of kidney failure, and when flushing her system didn't improve her numbers, Morg and Kelly had to make the tough decision to let her go. It would make no sense to have her laying in a kennel at the animal hospital, hooked up to an IV. It was quick and easy. And it's okay.

She had been through a lot, our Red Dog, having been down to three legs for eight months now, and having been through half a dozen surgeries on that bad leg over the last several years. And that's hard on a dog that was born to run. I think our favorite memories will be of her bounding through the sagebrush and galloping alongside the pickup on dirt roads, but she was also so nice to have just crashed in her favorite place along the couch. Such a good, beautiful dog is always an ornament to a living room carpet, as much as to human hearts.

She was utterly devoted to Morgan, having chosen her. If Morgan was home, Molly was never more than a few feet away from her, even after it got hard for her to maneuver with just three legs. We have always said she was Morgan's canine soulmate, and Sud used to say that she loved Morgan, and just tolerated everyone else. I like to think that she loved me, too, and I know she loved Kelly and Mom and June.

Losing a pet is a different thing, but it's just as hard as losing people. Having been accustomed to her presence in the house for 14 years, the hole she leaves is going to be very obvious, even with three other dogs. Maybe because of the three other dogs. Since her leg was removed I had gotten into the habit, when I arrived at the house, of beating off the two boisterous, slobbering Labs, holding Rosie the wriggling spaniel mix off with one foot, hooking my arm around Molly's rib cage to support her front half, and gently roughing her up good with scratching and petting and a soft head butt or two. Then I could move on to the other three. She was always special.

Blast Off

2010-02-12T18:27:00.004-07:00

I meant what I said about more blogging. But something, or some things, I guess... happened.

2010 seems determined to pummel me with everything it's got. I'm battered and breathless, I'm bound and determined. Misery. Mirth. Mayhem. A miraculous phone call.

In the space of two weeks my life has done an about-face. Think rocket ship. Think lottery. I just landed my dream job.

We're moving to Sacramento.

Stay tuned.

Changes

2010-01-16T00:07:00.004-07:00

Sorry for the inconvenience; it's a tough decision, but I've had to go invite-only to keep the blog up. It's just gotten to the point where I need more control over who has access for a lot of reasons. I realize you may have to remove me from your blog roll if I have a place there, although friends of my friends are always welcome here. My openness and honesty have become something of a liability, sad to say, and what with the job search and all and my full name on here making me ridiculously searchable, something had to be done. Please keep me in your RSS feed or stop by often; I'll be blogging a lot more now.

The Next Best Thing

2010-01-14T20:15:00.004-07:00

So, about Facebook (for those who inquired)... I've been on there for a few years, since my cousin Angie invited me back when it was still a college networking site. You create a page with links to your profile, photos, and whatever contact information you feel like offering, and you can connect and interact with anyone else who's a member. And, of course, in the last year or so it's exploded; I now have 137 friends, mostly high school classmates and family. It was more effective when I only had 30 friends and could keep track of everyone, but now it's sort of a time suck if I'm not careful.

In addition to posting on your own wall (short status updates, videos, links, etc.) and on your friends' walls, you can play games (there are hundreds to choose from) and assault each other with imaginary pies, pillows, hugs, insults, gifts, what-have-you. I got addicted to something called Farm Town for a while, where you plant crops, harvest and sell them, buy seeds to plant more crops, buy livestock, houses, fences, wells... it gets insane. I quit after a few weeks.

The really great thing about it is that I'm keeping connected with my girls in San Diego, cousins in Wyoming, and friends all over the country. I'm getting to know Brent's excellent friends and accidentally alienating one feisty niece (don't worry, she's mellowing out some. Hormones, angst), and mine are getting to know him.

The really bad thing is just that; over the internet, sarcasm is a deadly trap, assumptions fly, and tempers flare over politics and social attitudes. A vague status update (I'm a chronic perpetrator) can lead to disaster if you never bother to elaborate. It's a tricky thing, who to "friend" (yes, verb) and who to "ignore." Plus, I don't always think about who's reading and share too much (or plop down an opinion that gets challenged), and sometimes my sweet, clever, devoted friend who happens to be working on a full-body tattoo gets a little profane and I cringe thinking, Mom's going to see that. But Mom knows her, and knows what she's been through. It's probably okay.

Overall it's great. For example, in the last month here are several things that, without Facebook, I would have completely missed out on (the great and sad): Kym's beloved Great Dane, Frankie, died; Cory revealed she's pregnant after she and Dave returned from a trip to India; Cara got her dream job in Denver; Dori posted pictures of little Thomas; Bekah posted pics of little Will (and burned her bra- I still have to find out what that was all about); Jesse sent me a Pig Hug; Andre, Michele and the girls hit the Washington slopes and nobody got hurt; Annie decided to have a year-end equipment sale and I got to purchase her Canon 20D (a $1,500 digital SLR camera) for $200; Tonetta ate garlic-flavored pita chips in bed and regretted it.

See how much fun? I could live without Facebook. I'm even cutting back, mostly because my attention is elsewhere (see two previous posts) but it's still nice to post a cranky status update at 1 a.m. and have several people chime in sympathetically. Connecting is, admittedly, much better face to face. But when you just can't do it... there's always Facebook.

Second Chance

2010-01-14T16:09:00.003-07:00

This happened yesterday, and I'm still elated. In fact, it got me through today, which -- as Thursdays often are at the plant -- was sort of excruciating (it's the boss's Friday, and he feels pressured to wind things up and make check marks on a long list of accomplishments for the week, which often translates to a hectic, angsty day).

In the fall I interviewed with a company in southern California for a water-industry position that would land me in Palm Springs doing exactly what I want to do. I didn't get the job and, unlike most of the interviews I've been to lately, was notified via a relatively generic rejection letter, so I had no idea how close I'd really gotten; I began to fear that I'd said something wrong in the interview or that my experience wasn't quite adequate for the positions I've been applying for.

While I love the water industry, working at a plant is repetitive and isolating. The jobs I've been going after are with organizations who employ circuit riders, specialists and technicians who assist rural communities with water issues, whether environmental, treatment, distribution, consumer, regulatory, financial, etc. My short five years at the plant have been pretty action-packed, and I really do feel qualified to help operators in small systems get funding, repair equipment, solve problems, and receive training (a big part of these jobs is lining up and conducting conferences and classes; fun, right?) I'm diplomatic, a great communicator, a sharp researcher, I'm tough and fun but can be professional and polite. Also, I've got some administrative and financial experience under my belt, and I know how to deal with small-town politicians (hint: if you can avoid it at all, do so).

So yesterday one of the members of the panel that interviewed me down south called to let me know that they're looking to fill the same position up north, home base Sacramento, frequently deployed in the surrounding area from the coast to the Sierra Nevadas. No one could be more appreciative to have been remembered, much less informed that they had made an impression and were considered qualified. He had recently run into a manager from another group I interviewed with last August, and while they were talking about openings in this organization my name came up when he mentioned a girl from Wyoming he had been impressed with. The other manager remembered me, a close second in his own round of interviews, and realized at once who he was talking about. So my name's out there; it's only a matter of time.

I'm glad they found the perfect person for the job down south; now all I have to do is let them know I will work my tail off to be the perfect person for the job up north. Brent and I already convinced ourselves once that Sacramento would be perfectly feasible, and it only took a split second for it to happen again. Affordable (no, really!), an hour or so from all that is delightful (Yosemite! Tahoe! Reno! Monterey! San Francisco! Napa/Sonoma!), and just a 12-hour drive from home (a little longer to get to Kansas City, but we like to fly). When I was sure the connection was closed, I screamed out loud.

I've submitted my application packet and look forward to another interview among the palms, especially since the panel member that contacted me is a most pleasant and sensible person, and I want a chance to tell him in person how absolutely grateful I am.

I'll keep you posted.

Song and Dance

2010-01-13T21:04:00.004-07:00

I hope everyone had lovely holidays and began the new year fresh and fit; I'm afraid I keep up better on Facebook than I do over here; it's quicker, I've tricked myself into believing. I'm going to start posting my short, vague statuses from Facebook here, something to try, the theory being that it will help me find a balance between too little and too much.

I keep starting posts that quickly get out of hand, trying to fill in all the blanks and express all the hopes and frustrations and create reason and sense where there isn't any. I thought around the new year that I'd do a quick rundown of 2009, especially the months I didn't post much (and sadly, that's more than half), but "brief" ballooned into "bulky" and I couldn't find a way to trim it down. I feel so much, and I have so much to say.

Seriously, I have at least 20 unfinished, unpublished posts that just go on and on and on, and even though there's some lovely language and information I'd love to share, I also fear I'm guilty of sharing too much. My reasons for blogging have to be different now; I'm so different than I was when I started this over five years ago, and a lot of what I had to say I had no one else to say it to. The returns from the blogosphere have been amazing, it's been great to have a way to keep in touch with friends and family when we haven't had time to actually get together, and I've loved (as I've stated before) being able to go back and see where I was, what I was doing, and how I was feeling. I think I'm emotionally healthier when I use this outlet, even though I have someone now I can't help but tell everything. He doesn't seem to mind; in fact, I he seems to like it. But he also likes reading me here. It's where he found me.

I have a hard time focusing. I have come to the conclusion that if I ever run out of artistic mediums to explore, I'll simply drop dead. So I'm working on a way to combine them all, believe it or not. The basic concept is that when I find a creative outlet I'm mad about, suddenly every other thing I've ever tried is as obsessive as it was when I first discovered it, and since childhood I've discovered myriad modes of artistic expression. I write; I draw in pencil, charcoal, and pen and ink; I paint in watercolors, oils, gauche and acrylics; I play several musical instruments; I take photographs; I carve wood; I crochet; and now, friends, I kid you not, I'm making jewelry. I discovered simple silversmithing and PMC precious metal clay, bought a kiln and some steel blocks, hammer, and solder, and went to town with the abandon I use to attack anything creative. And it's as rewarding as everything else. And suddenly everything else is rewarding in whole new ways. And while I was watching Coraline tonight, I had an idea.

I've been trying to conform. Imagine! I've been trying to tailor the things I create to meet the appetites of a society that is almost completely homogenized. The same movies come out over and over, the same music plays again and again, the last novel I read I swear I'd already seen, word for word. I went to Kansas City for a week after Christmas and dipped my toes in suburbia, where everyone eats at chain restaurants and sees the same movies and wears the same clothes from the bland stores at the mall (except for the remarkable few who have somehow managed to carve out a unique life of creativity and inspiration; some of those are Brent's friends, thank goodness).

And I got to thinking: it's the people who don't do this, who can't stand this, who run in the other direction screaming and spewing creative works in the wrong colors and styles and sounds (Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, Poe, Michael Jackons, Georgia O'Keefe, et. al.) who we really admire. Who really live. And I thought about the only line in the 1994 film adaptation of Little Women that really should have been in the book: "... you have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to lead an ordinary life?" And I'm a little grateful to have spent nearly a decade in a small town where I was protected, for the most part, from the mainstream. I've had the Internet and magazine subscriptions, a brief foray into cable, healing time with family, a short drive to a decent-sized city, and plenty of time to simmer in my own creative juices.

Anyway, in 2010 I intend to let go. I am plagued by self-doubt; anyone who knows me knows that. But I'm 30, I'm clever and able, and there's no reason I can't produce whatever artistic whims lead me to without caring about what people think. So here goes.

This should be interesting.

November Remembered

2009-12-03T22:00:00.003-07:00

Sun breaks through on the Overthrust, Evanston, WY

Bowling Balls at Fireside Lanes

Anonymous Cuteness

Brent and A walk by the Ice Ponds

Brent and A at the relocated and refurbished Moondance Diner, LaBarge, WY

Dance floor at the Legal Tender

Self Portrait with Trombone and Books

I got to play tonight, perform tonight. Allan, Tom, and Kevin (who lived in the house I grew up in in Kemmerer when he was 3) invited me to fill out a brass quartet for some Christmas chorales in the warm coffee shop while everyone else froze their butts off on parade floats decked to the hilt with lights and trees and bundled kids. I rehearse with the city big band once a week and immensely enjoy just making music with a group, but there's something about performing in public -- no matter how big or small the crowd -- that makes it rewarding in a way I can't explain. Mellow, harmonious brass arrangements of Christmas carols put me right in the holiday mood tonight, and Mom was the best thing about it, snapping pictures and beaming and appreciating like she has ever since I picked up the trombone at the age of 10. Twenty years, me and the slide trombone. Wow. The big band is booked for the City Christmas Party next week, which enables me to go without really having to interact with anyone (you have to be present to win the $500 drawing). Perfect.

It's been crazy busy, holiday busy. But I have some milestones to mark and some musing to do, so hopefully I can carve out a quiet corner this weekend and sculpt my thoughts into phrases that make sense. I've been attempting more sleep, more gratitude, and more organization, but I might be trying to stuff a square peg into a round hole. Except for the gratitude thing. That's coming along fine. So is The Thing Up My Sleeve, and I can't wait to show you, but not tonight.

Belated and Incomplete Halloween

2009-12-03T21:37:00.005-07:00

I'm still sorting through photos to make sure I get one of everybody, so don't feel left out if I missed you. We are a big crew.

Dead Clown Cupcakes

Marilyn the Clown and Morgan the Bear

Mark the Gorilla and Libby the Carny

Roger the Pile of... well, just watch your step.

Louann the Clown with Fingers

Mom the Elephant and More Bear

Bear's makeup starts to run.

Ringmaster A

Old Bar, New Home

Sally Reprise (A on Halloween, about to judge costumes at the Legal Tender Lounge)

Rob... Zombie.

Rocking Chairs

2009-11-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

Lindbergh Field, San Diego, CA

It Might Just Be a Mirage

2009-11-05T20:08:00.004-07:00

Palm Springs never called, and that's OK. If you drew a line on a map from me in the southwest corner of Wyoming to all the places I've sent applications, you would have a veritable web, albeit a pretty lopsided one. But then, for all their love of geometric architecture, spiders don't seem to care much about symmetry.

One of those far-flung dots is Tempe (actually, I haven't yet submitted the application; I'm waiting for the state of Arizona to approve my reciprocal certifications in distribution and treatment; pretty soon I'll be certified in most of the western states), a suburb of Phoenix between the municipal airport and the suburb of Mesa.

I woke up one sunny morning in Mesa when I was less than ten; Morgan was stirring beside me, and out one window I could see a tree in the backyard (the other window looked out onto the the wall of the fire station). The tree was either dead or of a desert species that appeared especially menacing, because my overall impression was that this tree was haunted. Probably it was fall -- I don't know what holiday or occasion it was that found us there, but southern Arizona, as you know, seems summery year-round, hence its appeal for me -- and it had just been pruned, because its figure included only a rough-looking gray trunk with several blunt stumps of large amputated branches angling from its top with a few bare sticks in between. I think I avoided the scary tree whenever we were in Grandma's backyard, amongst the hot bricks and crisped weeds.

Dad's mother was undeniably gifted -- she was musical and creative, crafty with crochet hooks and knitting needles -- and most agreeable to us, if occasionally she entertained some very silly ideas and was rather a martyr to aches and pains and little complaints, but I can see how some people found her difficult. Not difficult enough to warrant avoiding her during the long illness that finally got her, if you lived as near to her as my cousins did, two blocks, but that's how they are; if I move to Tempe, those are not acquaintances I would wish to renew. That uncle was Dad's half brother, and I loved his father as much as I loved Dad's father. This is how I grew up with two grandfathers even though Mom's father died when she was only 11. A step-father was not as common in the 50's as it is now, but he was a good man and a good father to my own, and he was wonderful to me.

So I have family history in Arizona; Dad used to tell stories about drag racing on Indian School Road. He was born in Phoenix (or in what is now a suburb; I can't remember) and played football there in High School. Rose, his stepmother (who is my last living grandparent), says she remembers him telling her he quit because he didn't want to hurt another student. He was big even then. His little sister, who was adopted when he was around 20, lives there still with her family; she was so much younger than he was that it seemed strange to call her "aunt." It would be nice to live near her.

It would be nice to live somewhere warm. This morning's safety meeting at Public Works involved a Wyoming Department of Transportation video on snowplow safety, and the footage left me rather distraught. I know winter's coming. We've had a little snow already, nothing that stayed. And it was in the 60's today, but it's coming, and I'm dreading it.

Also it's been nearly two and a half years since Brent and I met in person. We're better than most at the long-distance relationship, being very good communicators and ridiculously in sync and uniquely committed to frequent travel, but it is hard, and we'd like to get on with our lives. It just happened that the economy tanked about the time we started looking for jobs, and it's been strange times since. I suppose it might occur to people to wonder why he doesn't just move here or I move there; it's this simple: we don't really want to live either place. It would be especially difficult for him to find anything in his line of work here, neither of us likes the climate, and we both prefer urban locales. Kansas City is urban but also occasionally wintry, and we'd like to make a fresh start somewhere, just the two of us, without family and friends to interfere.

Does that sound bizarre? I can't tell you how many young couples' (or new couples, as it were) early years together I have seen complicated in very unhealthy ways by the close proximity of family. Everybody knows I love my fabulous family; Mom and Morgan in particular it's going to kill me to leave. Brent adores his family, too, and I think they're excellent; after all, they produced such a man. But we'd like some space, is that so odd? And we'd like palm trees. Please.

I hate this time of year, the sluggish flies dying on the windowsills, the swift and permanent darkness by 5 p.m., the imminent threat of being stranded here by snow for days at a time. (I don't leave town very often, but I want to be able to go at any time.) My hair is like straw and my face is flaky and bumpy red, I'm plagued by static electricity, and even my love of accessorizing can't make hats and mittens seem appealing. (There's always room for scarves, though; I love scarves.)

But the holidays are coming, and I often enjoy Christmas shopping and the downtown activities that take place on freezing weeknights, like the light parade and Festival of Trees. I have cautious hopes for the holidays this year; last year Christmas was such an awful, unprecedented disaster (one bad seed in the family my sister married into has a talent for misery and denial, and she was bent on sharing the wealth) that this year can only be an improvement. And Brent will be here for Thanksgiving, which we'll spend with my family (unless there's a blizzard). We'll get some rare time to just hang out, doing nothing unless we decide to go to the coffee house or Kate's or watch Amelie more than once. Which I am totally in favor of.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm always discontent. I try to remind myself of the value of gratitude (and I have so much to be grateful for!) often. I think what you focus on tends to manifest itself, and I am, by nature, an optimist. I just seem to vent on here, and that's unfortunate. I think I'll challenge myself to try posting something positive and hopeful soon; it's just that when I'm in that mood, I'm usually being otherwise productive. But now I'm babbling. And sleepy. It seems early to sleep, but then, it was 10:30 this time a week ago.

Have I mentioned how unnecessary I believe time-change to be? It's ridiculous. Good night.

Adventures in Cat Hygiene

2009-11-02T13:21:00.005-07:00

Today's Cat Bath Experiment went rather well. My 11-year-old cats are indoor cats, so they're not dirty; I decided to try bathing them occasionally in an attempt to mitigate the constant shedding that seems to be getting worse as they age. I can tolerate the hair, but I'm worried about that angle of involuntary cat cohabitation being a major irritant to Brent, and also the hairball problem is just not going away despite lubricating snack gel and specialty treats and hairball-formula dry food. I'm justifying what I know is an unnatural (and detestable, to them) thing to subject cats, who are obviously self-cleaning, to by remembering that domestication is pretty unnatural anyway, so I should be able to do whatever's necessary to make life more enjoyable for all of us. And they don't appear to enjoy whorking up hairballs any more than they enjoyed being bathed. It seems to particularly knock B.C. for a loop.

Kitty, who is the less docile and braver of the two, made many more bids for freedom from the tub than B.C., but she never made a sound. She actually made herself useful by halfheartedly trying to climb up the far wall, so I could scrub her exposed belly with two hands instead of one while trapping her two front legs with the other. B.C. hardly struggled but howled loudly and plaintively twice, early on; I think the exaggerated sound of his own voice echoing in the bathroom upset him more than the relief of vocally protesting comforted him, because he never did it again. Brent wondered if the experience would cure him of spending most of his time in the tub, waiting for the faucet to drip, but I'm not so sure it will. He's a weird cat. I am not at all surprised that neither cat attempted to scratch me, hissed, or bit. They're very passive and good-natured cats; I can't get them to play rough even when I try. Kitty just hissed at B.C. when he walked by her... but that's not unusual.

After an hour and a half, both cats have already eaten, purred, and acted playful when they weren't compulsively licking themselves in front of the radiators (I cranked the heat up so they wouldn't get chilled while they dry), so I'm considering it a success (or at least not sufficiently traumatic to prevent ever doing it again). Their backs and front legs are already fluffy and glossy, but their bellies and back legs are still curly and damp. I've brushed them both a few times and got a lot of gray underfur out, more than usual when I brush them. My hand still comes away from B.C.'s black back with a few hairs on it when I pet him, and there really wasn't all that much fur in the tub when we got done. So we'll see in the next few days if there was really any benefit or if it's something we never need to go through again. I also want to make sure the pet shampoo doesn't dry their skin out too much.

My next pet project pertains to B.C.'s teeth, since I had his teeth professionally cleaned in March and his mouth already smells like a crypt; he can knock me out from the other side of the room with a well-aimed yawn. But that's later. Now I'm going to vacuum really good and get the hair off their favorite surfaces (the empty side of the bed, the stuffed stingray, the papasan cushion, Marilyn's rug by the door) to see if any less collects than before the bath. Then I'm going for a walk, because it's unseasonably beautiful outside, and it's hot in here. And the dirty looks are starting to hurt my feelings.

Waiting on a Phone Call, Yet Again, and it's Starting to Take its Toll

2009-10-15T17:22:00.004-06:00

I've been laboring in the Halloween Workshop, surfing the Internet, and flying around to warm places in the world trying to get someone to give me a job that will carry me away from winter. Monday I flew to San Diego (third time this year! Although the first two times I drove, so...) to get more carne asada burritos and interview for a job that is a lot like the last one I flew to California to interview for, only broader and a lot more organized.

I have so much to say about this process, about attempting to make a major and positive life change (because so many life changes just come to us without our seeking them, changes good and bad), that I have no idea where to start. It's all about the job: the right, rewarding job, in the right place for both Brent and I, making the right amount of money. But in general, life does not operate on such lovely and polite and distinct terms, obeying such definitives. And we may have to settle a little, on someplace that doesn't seem exactly ideal at first but could be made to work if we tried hard enough. Someplace unexpected and totally compelling to me in a way I would not have expected. (What redundancy?) Someplace that meets maybe nine out of ten of our highest-priority criteria, but the one it's missing is rather a doozy (it's not exactly the best place for Brent to get on with his career, unless we quickly work some magic), which is a shame because it meets about five of them really well (warm, western [and there were exceptions to that rule], recreational, cultural, affordable) and the other four quite well enough, if not perfectly (metropolitan [it has 60k people, roughly], proximal [yeah, it's a little... remote], entertaining, and stable.

That's too much math to load you down with and this is all too jumbled and vague, because they may call this Monday and tell me I didn't get the job after all (I always have a feeling I will, because I'm an optimist, and out of perhaps 20 interviews I've had in my life, I've gotten about 16 jobs, and those are good odds, but I could be wrong; I've been wrong before), and it will be back to the drawing board and the computer screen and the airport terminals with the vinyl seats and hateful automatic faucets.

Which reminds me: I hate turbulence.

And I wonder, and feel empty because I can't ask him, not ever, what Dad would say to me living in Palm Springs. (That's what bereavement is: lost potential. Answers, time. I miss asking him questions just to see what he'd say. I want his answers. I want to mull them over and add them in. I should just pepper Mom with question after question until she insists that I stop, because I can still get answers from her, and I want them, too.)

Yes, I said Palm Springs. Really.

I think it would be a positive reaction.

Just a hunch.

Sunday Hike

2009-10-04T23:35:00.011-06:00

A week ago Mom, Morgan and I hiked up the mountain behind where the White Pine ski area is now. Mom spent several childhood summers here where her parents ran a sawmill. The mill and other structures (cabins, bunkhouse) had to be moved according to forestry regulations, but we went in search of a specific site and found it after just a few hours. She remembered things being bigger.

One hike, three cameras, White Pine ski runs in the background.

In case of bears!

Elk tracks.

Fremont Lake.

Mom begins to recognize things, and soon we know we've found the homesite she left over 51 years ago when logging operations in the area shut down, shortly before her father died. Gram shot a bear across this meadow when it got to close to Mom and her brother, Jerry, who were playing in the creek.

This is the spring they got their water from; planks were still there from the box Mom's dad built to hold milk, butter, etc. in the ice-cold water.

A pile of rocks Mom remembered behind the cabin.

Spring from up the hill.

Lodgepole pines.

White Pine Lodge.

San Diego via Vegas

2009-09-29T22:13:00.009-06:00

West on Tropicana.

Excalibur.

Flags at the Bellagio.

Murano glass ceiling detail at Bellagio.

Unexpected fireworks, San Diego.

San Diego downtown from Coronado.

Hans (right).

Ed.

Tapioca gets a lift.

MINE. By firelight, even.

Organ concert, Balboa Park.

Water lilies, Balboa Park.

The Wave

2009-09-18T20:30:00.004-06:00

Richard isn't dead, but he's surely gone.

He lived in the last unit in the row of elderly-living apartments on the cul-de-sac that hides the entrance to the top secret compound where we make the water. Every three years we undertake the massive undertaking that is Lead and Copper Sampling for the E.P.A., the only round of samples -- 50 samples, to be exact, taken in miniature plastic milk jugs that hold about a pint -- the public gets to participate in. Because they must be taken in the morning before any use on a particular tap, but one that does see regular use, we ask specific members of the community at representative points in our distribution system to collect the samples for us.

Richard was an enthusiastic volunteer.

Because his house number was one digit away from ours, even though we rarely have mail delivered to the plant (mostly it goes to City Hall, gets sorted, and ends up in our box at Public Works), he occasionally wound up with an envelope filled with advertisements for pump parts and vinyl hose. He had sold his car and probably didn't trust his frail legs to make the walk over the hill, so he would stand in his driveway, leaning on the wall in the shade under the carport, and wave the envelope as we drove past on our way to and from the plant. Sometimes it took several passes for one of us to notice, but Richard was persistent.

On one such occasion, I stopped on my way back from lunch to collect our misdirected correspondence. He was wearing gray sweats and a white T-shirt, and he apologized for not being decent; every time I arrived him after that, he wore trousers and a striped shirt with suspenders... and his false teeth, which were conspicuously absent that visit. We had a nice conversation about Cadillacs (he admired mine) and the Internet, of which he was a big fan. He showed me his hulking new Dell laptop, on which he was impressively proficient, and pictures of his grandkids' weddings and his deceased wife (a pretty, plump, collected-looking person). We also discussed the length of teenage girls' pants. It seems he could care less how short girls' skirts get, but it bothers him that the hems of their jeans drag on the ground and get frayed. I made a mental note to visit the tailor.

Before I left he remarked what a hurry everybody is always in, and I promised to slow down and wave every time I passed. I made him promise to wave back. From the street one could clearly see him through the vertical blinds most hours of the day , ensconced in a maroon armchair in the enclosed porch of his comfortable little house, often dozing in the sun with his chin on his chest and the paper spread across his bony knees.

We both kept our word and five days a week for almost four years I slowed and we waved, and I worried when he was absent and was relieved when he reappeared. When I left work for lunch Tuesday after our vacation, however, I noticed a car with California plates and a pickup in his driveway, bed full of furniture, including Richard's chair. There were two older gentlemen visiting on the lawn, so I pulled over. One of them shouted, "What can we do you out of?" And when I inquired about Richard, the other introduced himself as Richard's son. He was tickled to hear my story about our routine and explained that his dad had been moved to the local assisted-care facility. "Dad's almost 90, you know." He said he'd pass on my regards, and maybe I'll think to take him a basket of treats around the holidays and hope he remembers me without my car.

Funny how you get used to things like that, a tiny flash in your long day, contact, however brief and distant, with a person you hardly know. It was absolutely habit, and I still find myself slowing down as I approach Richard's lawn, probably will for a while. Someone else will move in (they're excellent little places, surprisingly roomy, with washers and dryers and big islands in the kitchens, and Housing Authority takes great care of the lawns and is very prompt about snow removal, and I'd kill to live there, but alas, it's strictly for those 60-plus) and probably won't mind doing taking a sample for us. But Richard is one less thing I'll have to add to the list of things I'll miss when I go.

I miss him already.

Old Haunts and Unexpected Fireworks

2009-09-13T17:25:00.008-06:00

I keep telling everybody who will listen that over Labor Day weekend, San Diego was beastly hot and humid, appallingly crowded, decidedly uncivilized... and still just heavenly.

I picked Brent up at McCarran (Las Vegas) on Wednesday night and we were promptly installed in our tiny, fabulous, mod closet of a room at the Motel 6 on Tropicana. We obtained mountains of beefy, eggy nourishment at the MGM Grand about 11 and walked to the Bellagio around 1 a.m., at which time the famed fountains did not go off, so we wandered home. I insisted on a quick swim in the salty little Motel 6 pool (perfect: very clean and cool, very uninhabited, slightly salty) Thursday morning before we found a Starbucks and hit the road.

Invariably, the first thing I do when I get to San Diego is head straight for the South Bay to get an inimitable carne asada burrito at Don Pancho's taco shack in Imperial Beach. There was no reason to break with tradition (plus we were starving; it was almost 4 p.m.), so we obtained Mexican food forthwith and got on with our vacation. First on the agenda was a tour of the scenes of my major developmental years (ages 12 through 21), including my family's house on California street, my high school, my apartment on 13th Street, the library, significant parks, pools, and promenades, and the Silver Strand, the stretch of highway that runs north from Imperial Beach to the man-made "island," Coronado, home of one crown jewel of a municipality that could not be more different from its neighbor several miles to the south.

Thursday evening we tracked down someone who could reassure me that my high school band director, Fred Lee, was in fact not dead. Kym had been told at the Symphony box office that he was in a medically-induced coma fighting some kind of bacterial infection; she had been checking the obituaries. We checked into the Hampton Inn on Pacific Highway downtown and met Brent's fantastic friend and former Disney coworker, Annie, at a British Pub in Little Italy. (I know. I'm telling you, that's why I love San Diego. Anything goes.)

Friday consisted of a late start (we discovered that some prankster among our rather sketchy fellow guests had stolen our "Do Not Disturb" sign in the night, and the maids kept trying to open the door; thank goodness for that little u-bolt doohickey, or we would have had unwanted company every morning) and breakfast at Perry's Cafe, which is authentic, always busy, located in a former Sambo's sort of perched perilously on a lonely little asphalt island between the arched overpasses of the I-8 and I-5 interchange. I love Perry's because it's not a tourist hangout (not yet, anyway) and the parade of regulars is fabulous: retirees, students, surfers, artists, families, suspected sports figures. Dad used to take us there on weekends; I love how, looking back, he fit right in among the locals slurping coffee at the bar.

We went to the Zales at Plaza Bonita (which was the hopelessly anemic skeleton of an indoor mall when I left in 2001; now it's a monster Westfield Shoppingtown) where we hoped to find the last on-site jeweler in a Zales anywhere in the country. We did, but his schedule was weird and busy, and rather than have somebody rush the job and have to wrangle our plans around, we left. We met Brent's delightful cousins at their home in El Cajon and they took us to dinner at a great Mexican place in Grossmont. There's a story behind this particular eatery, but it's long; the moral is that San Diegans are extremely loyal to small businesses, especially restaurants, and that corporations who outbid and overtake don't survive, not even in a tourist trap like the Plaza Del Mundo in Old Town, which was its original location.

We left our lovely hosts and headed to the Ferry Landing in Coronado just before 9 p.m. and found it crowded, but we elbowed into a parking space and headed for the waterfront. As we hit the rail to look out across the bay at the colorful lights of downtown, I swore I could hear Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812 from the direction of the convention center. And that's when the fireworks started. If you've never watched fireworks over water, you can't imagine how glorious it is. Especially when it's a total surprise. Turns out it was the last night of the symphony's Summer Pops series. I should have known.

Saturday was another late start and a stop at International Blends (we called it I.B. Blends, because it's in Imperial Beach), my favorite hole-in-the-wall coffee shop on Palm Avenue, two blocks from the beach. We got pastries and each ordered The Barge, an extremely sweet concoction involving espresso, cinnamon, and steamed chocolate milk. We basked for a while and did the crossword in the local paper, then drove to Coronado, skulls buzzing from the sugar.

We got round-trip tickets on the ferry to downtown (at $6.50 per adult, it's well worth it for a mild little harbor excursion, and you can get off downtown and take in Seaport Village before you head back to Coronado, or do it the other way around. If you don't do well on boats, stay on the lower level and watch the horizon, because you do get pretty tossed) but had half an hour to kill, so we sat on the grass under the jacarandas and listened to a combo playing Don't Get Around Much Anymore and some samba numbers that thrilled a few toddlers; the vocal stylings made Brent cringe. The sax player, Hans, was with the community band in Coronado when it first began; I played bass trombone with the group from the first rehearsal, as well. Hans runs the coffee cart at the Ferry Landing: Kafeen's.

During our ferry ride, we got a text from Twinkie that suggested we bring fruit and firewood to her barbecue. We found a Vons in North Park and got pineapples, oranges, a watermelon, some compressed logs, a bottle of blackberry wine (that turned out to be sweet, carbonated goodness and I drank nearly the whole bottle myself with fruit mashed into it, a la sangria, since everybody else had brought their own drink of choice), and a twelve-pack of Blue Moon. We were fashionably late but had a wonderful time, roasting marshmallows and playing cards long into the night. Twinkie grilled obscene amounts of meat so it made no sense that at 10:30 p.m. when we staggered home we were hungry, but we found a pizzeria on India Street (and avoided a minor fiasco back at the hotel; the parking structure was full) that sold decadent slices with real Italian sausage and ricotta, barbecue sauce and chicken, among other combinations.

Sunday brought another trip to Perry's (I love the chewy, eggy waffles with a pile of soggy strawberries) and a pilgrimage to the rose garden in Balboa Park, which was crazy busy, and I mean nuts. While jostling for parking Puck's rubber rear bumper met the rubber front bumper of a minivan; luckily it was an older vehicle and the driver seemed fairly unconcerned, or didn't want to hassle over whose fault it was, or wasn't insured anyway, so we went on our way, and I'll have to work on the rubbed place on the corner, but it's almost not noticeable unless I point it out. I prefer Balboa nearly deserted, rainy if possible, and tourist-free, but we whipped through the botanical building and hit all the free highlights in a hurry, including an organ concert and the International Houses, which are little huts that each represent a U.N. member. They share regional food and music and pass out tourism propaganda; a lot of fun when there's room to move. Labor Day weekend, not so much.

We met Toni for coffee in the afternoon; when she saw us through the Starbucks window, she plastered herself against the glass. I'm happy to say that Brent seemed to simply fit in without any effort at all (rather than recoil in horror, which is always a potential reaction), but when I think about it, that only makes sense. Of course my guy shares many important qualities with my girls; otherwise, how could I love him?

The hours flew by and the sun went down, and we found ourselves back at the hotel adding layers of clothing and considering yet more food, so we sprinted to I.B. to see if Don Pancho's was still open, thinking In'n'Out would be our backup plan, or Luigi's again (the pizzeria, within very easy walking distance of our hotel). We found the taco shack open, obtained nachos, burritos, and horchata, and headed to the beach. I.B. has a bevy of delightful beachside parks and plazas with picnic tables, public art, and playground equipment. We swept the sand off a concrete table, chowed down, and walked up the pier one last time. It was late, almost 10 p.m., but the pier was crowded with families walking, laughing, and fishing, casting underhand into the foaming black Pacific with bobbers that glowed Kryptonite green. When we got back to the parking garage it was stuffed to the gills again, save one spot near the elevators that was inexplicably blocked by an orange traffic cone. (Before we got into the elevator, I put the errant cone back by the concrete pillar where I found it. Those things are heavier than they look.)

We were not halfway down my list of must-see San Diego, but he flew home the next morning and I made the 12-hour drive across the Mojave alone, pulling into Evanston at 11:30, having lost an hour crossing back into the Mountain time zone. (It's very weird to make that drive while on the phone with someone you dropped off at the airport in San Diego that morning only to find them happily ensconced in a living room in Kansas with a fluffy white dog by 4 p.m., while you're still slogging through the wasteland of southern Utah at 80 mph.) Labor Day traffic on I-15 south was bumper-to-bumper from Vegas to Barstow, but my drive was smooth sailing all the way.

He didn't put up much of a fight (okay, none), but San Diego has seduced far harsher critics (he had been there before, anyway, and really, it's L.A.'s pretty, unpretentious, nice-smelling little sister). I hope we wind up living there someday; there are times when I miss it so much I can hardly breathe. I miss those ubiquitous low hedges with the glossy green leaves and waxy white petals that reek of fierce perfume at night, and the pepper trees and swaying palms, and the soft pink lines of all the buildings with their mantles of ivy and bougainvillea. I miss the serenity of the beach and the energy of downtown and the fascinating rainbow of skin colors, the grab-bag of global ideologies, and the fact that no matter where you go, no matter what you're wearing, in that city you are never underdressed. Flip-flops and cargo shorts? Right this way, sir. Welcome to San Diego.

(Photos, of course, to follow.)

Post-August Update

2009-09-08T21:17:00.001-06:00

I don't know where to start.

Sunday August 23rd was my 30th birthday, and my family pulled out all the stops to make it my best birthday ever. Mostly because nothing could be better than having most of them in one place together, just being their down-to-earth, obscenely generous, witty, wildly attractive selves. With balloons, silly string, four-wheelers (I nearly got Brent killed by assuming he'd been on one before), and lots of food. (Morgan not only made my favorite cake with my favorite frosting [Rainbow Chip], but she also -- detail-oriented miracle worker that she is -- came up with my favorite tortilla and potato chips and moose burgers, and Mom made her potato salad, baked beans, and smoked trout. SHEESH.)

This event came on the heels of a week the likes of which I've rarely experienced in my life, a week of highs and lows (and really, it's been that kind of year) so extreme that I'm still recovering. Monday the 17th I left home at 4:30 a.m. to make a round-trip journey to Sacramento, California for a job interview. It went ridiculously well but the day was very long, and I rolled Puck into the driveway just after midnight, feet throbbing from the high heels I had to wear because the pants I had my heart set on wearing are just a little too long. I will have them hemmed forthwith, because that Vegas airport is roughly the size of France. Anyway, I'll stop complaining because I'm sure I am not the first person to embark on four separate flights in one day on top of a three-hour round-trip drive to the airport.

The job would be in the water industry, dealing with source water protection for rural communities, and would allow me to live anywhere in the state. The executive director, who is just the kind of guy I want to work for (not that I don't want to work for Jeff anymore; I just don't want to work here, and I can't take him with me), called Friday the 21st to say they'd had a very hard time deciding between two of us, but they'd finally gone with a girl who had a hydrogeology degree. (Who does that? What? That's the degree I was considering? Oh.) I was disappointed (OK, devastated), but he seemed genuinely sorry to deliver the news and gave me a glimmer of hope by promising to keep my resume at the top of the pile for a position he may have opening up within the next two or three months and insisting that I had impressed them very much during the interview. I'll take it. (But in the meantime, I've put in for the same position in four other states, including this one. It's right up my alley and I need a big change like NOW.)

I got to pick Brent up at the airport that night and he promptly fixed all my hurts, you know, like he does, but I had to take him back Monday morning so he could make his niece's 16th birthday party back in Kansas City that evening. On the way home from Salt Lake, I stopped at the Zales in Park City to have my engagement ring resized =====SCREECH! No, what? Really. He whipped a little black box out of his bag at the bottom of the airport escalator, in the spot where I always stand under the overhang of the convenience store with the stacked stone wall so I can see his Reeboks and his hand on the rubber rail, and he can see my feet (in a variety of shoes) before we actually see each other. He didn't even ask; he just said, "See if it fits." Which was fine, because he already knew what the answer would be. Best. Birthday present. Ever. My family was thrilled.

Luckily, we only had to wait a couple of weeks to see each other again. I picked him up at McCarran in Vegas last Wednesday night, and we left Sin City the next morning (reluctantly, because our room at the Motel 6 in Vegas was the coolest little time-travel pod ever) and drove to San Diego. Labor Day weekend in San Diego gets its own post, I promise, because we did too much and saw too many people to detail in an update that's only trying to make up for the bulk of August's neglect. I got home late again last night after a 12-hour drive, which is why I'm brushing my teeth while I finish this post and heading to bed early.

But I lived to tell, and even though September shows no signs of slowing down (especially if I jump into a new job like it's a coupe with welded doors and peel out down the road), I'm ready for it. We had a short, cold, sort of crummy summer (come on, global warming!) (I kid) that didn't do much for me until the end of August, which is hardly summer here anymore anyway, and autumn is my favorite season.

So bring on the crunchy leaves, the hot fruit pies, the long walks in sweaters, the evening bonfires, and Halloween. And bring on the changes. I'm ready.

Too Much

2009-08-06T21:12:00.003-06:00

I'm still here. Everything's fine. It's just so busy.

If it's any consolation, I don't post much on Facebook, either, mostly because it's been invaded by people I'm not comfortable sharing all my oddities with. Friends and family (mine and Brent's!) are wonderful to keep track of, but there are... other elements that complicate things. (How can you harmlessly, vaguely vent about somebody who drives you a little bit mad when they might read your Facebook status and figure it out?)

I'm good. We're all good. A week after the miscarriage, by which time we had all gotten over the worst of the shock and heartbreak and started to look forward again, I sent them on their way, loaded to the gills in Kelly's Chevy truck en route to Canada (by way of Devil's Tower, Crazy Horse, and Mt. Rushmore, all in one day, and Morgan live-blogged the adventure for Mom and I via texts while Kelly drove and Cordale read tourism pamphlets from the back seat) for a ten-day vacation that will mostly be spent fishing on a remote lake. I can't imagine better therapy.

They were ridiculously excited, so tickled that I can't even be put out that they left me with the dogs, who have been model orphans. I stop by and feed them, water them, love them up, and let them out of the big kennel to run in the yard twice a day, walk an alternating Lab every night, kick the ball for them for a while, check Bear's bark collar to make sure it still lights up, sponge the goo out of Rosie's infected ear and rub alcohol in it to dry it, entice Molly to eat, one kibble at a time (sometimes while she's laying flat on her side, lazy girl), since she gives up after about half a bowl, and make sure Daisy and Rose each get the proper dose of thyroid medication. I washed them all in the blue plastic pool in the back yard Monday and brushed them each that night so they'll be fluffy and pretty and nice-smelling when their parents return. And for my troubles I get unconditional love, great exercise, and a quiet place to go when things get crazy on Morse Lee Street.

And things are crazy on Morse Lee Street, let me tell you. My landlady's daughter and her husband and kids moved in next door and have set about working on the two vacant apartments in the basement, one of which, my old home, they don't plan to rent but will use for family company instead. They also cleaned out the garage behind the house, which was fascinating. In addition to three loads of defunct appliances (mostly fridges), mouse-holed cushions, and 70's formica tables, there was an antique metal push-car toy, piles of vintage games in their faded cardboard boxes, vintage tin trays, golf clubs in rotting bags, tennis rackets, and other treasures.

I had a fun visit tonight with the snappy son-in-law, a career Navy man with one more tour of Afghanistan before he's done for good, and an avid off-roader, judging by their vehicles, both of which are SUVs packed with every mountain-climbing goody you can stick on a vehicle and jacked up to the hilt. And here's the thing... he wants to buy Monte, my little square white truck, my first vehicle, for his teenage son. And far from being freaked out at the thought of parting with him, I think I might be thrilled. Because of all people, this is the guy that will make sure Monte's taken care of, who'll put a little money into him, replace all the leaking engine seals, scrape down the body and repaint him, rust-free. He'll probably put big tires on him, maybe new rims, maybe even a roof rack. And he'll skin the kid alive if anything happens to a vehicle he's put that much care into. So I guess it's time. We went for a little amble tonight, and I'm ready to say goodbye. We've had a good ride.

Mom and I met in Kemmerer for the Oyster Ridge Music Festival Sunday, and I got to meet the new addition to their fleet; a very hot metallic charcoal 2009 Chevy Impala with glossy woodgrain interior trim and much additional fanciness, including mp3 jack. She looks great in it. We shopped a bit and had tasty pizza with June.

Some extraordinary things are brewing that I'm afraid to talk about for fear I'll jinx myself, but by the end of the month I'll know whether I'm hallucinating or wishfully thinking, or whether the pieces of some universal puzzle are finally falling into place for me, because that's seriously what it feels like. Some hints: job interview. California (oh, sometimes that word looks like "Paradise" to me, but when I'm there I'll miss here. It's just that it means so many possibilities, especially for Brent and I). There's a very prophetic fortune cookie involved, and the most exquisite cover letter that was ever edited by one's very talented boyfriend (whose birthday was yesterday, but we'll celebrate when he gets here to celebrate mine on the 23rd). And even if all this doesn't work out, there's a San Diego vacation to look forward to over Labor Day weekend.

And that'll be fun... if we aren't so overwhelmed by then that we both sleep the whole time.

More July, As Promised

2009-08-03T08:20:00.005-06:00

Downtown Denver

Colorado state capitol.

North of Grand Junction, CO. (The pale, squiggly line is the road I came in on.)

Blue Mountain, between Dinosaur and Vernal.

Mountain lake in the Uintas.

Flaming Gorge from the Utah end.

Sulphur Creek Reservoir on a choppy day.

Katie, Monique, and Dawn paddleboat on the Ice Ponds.

Rough day at the plant.

Mom in biker gear!

Henry's Harley

Tripod III (or IV?), getting around like she's not missing anything. She even runs.

Sulphur Creek, glass-smooth on a quiet morning.

Once more, with sheep.

July

2009-08-01T17:25:00.005-06:00

There will be more July. July squared. I got as far as Denver on the 10th and had to go to bed.

4th of July cannons on the Porters' trailer at the plant.

4th of July rodeo.

E-town on fire.

Columns of fire not 40 yards from MY WATER PLANT. Luckily nothing went wrong.

Puck hits 20k on the way to Logan, UT.

Storm brewing north of Cheyenne, around Vedauvoo.

Downtown Denver.

A Major Setback

2009-07-25T22:53:00.008-06:00

I'll just have to wait a little longer to be an aunt, that's all.

Wednesday night we went to the movies. By the time the trailers were over and the appropriately gloomy opening credits of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince appeared, my sister Morgan, who was four months pregnant, had started to squirm, and pretty soon she leaned over and whispered, "I think something's wrong." The rest of the evening -- the restroom floor, trying to follow the ambulance without breaking any traffic laws, the vials of morphine administered in the E.R., the devastating ultrasound -- are a horrific blur.

Miscarriages are, we're learning, a very common tragedy (nearly everyone we talk to has either had one or knows more than one woman who has), although this one occurred relatively late and came with an unusual amount of severe pain. Morgan and I, being of, as we like to say, hearty pioneer stock, have a high tolerance to pain, but this pain had her in eye-rolling, howling, incoherent, paste-white, sweat-drenched, writhing agony and had Kelly and I afraid for her life. It all happened so fast, less than three hours from the previews to the bad news: no tiny, fluttering heartbeat, and an unstoppable, awful process already in motion.

Diagnosis, prescriptions, and instructions received, we got our groggy girl home and to bed, gave her the water she had desperately needed for three hours and the recommended dose of Percocet. We washed the blood out of her clothes and tried to comprehend; Kelly and I bumbled around, angry without a target and in despair without relief. She was chilled so I piled on extra blankets and he crawled in bed to warm her, finally dropping off after 1. I curled up at the foot of the bed at first but sometime in the night -- we were up periodically, and she was strangely lucid at 2 -- I moved up next to her, wrapped in a quilt, with a pillow from the couch. Funny how, at times like this, you discover that you can sleep in any way and anywhere.

Everything moves on; sunny days and rainy days, the County fair, the downtown Brewfest. I didn't work Thursday -- I made crepes for breakfast and tried to be useful and made M laugh with icanhascheezburger.com -- but went back Friday and Saturday, both long days at the plant, which keeps trying to malfunction for various reasons. I would say Morgan and Kelly are doing well, that we're all doing very well. I know a miscarriage is hard at any stage, but it seems to me it's more difficult the later it occurs. Four months is a short time in the grand scheme of things, but is a long time to wake up every day with the knowledge that an immense and wonderful change is happening; they had already been shopping for baby supplies, had told everybody the news (which was particularly welcome to a family who hasn't had a baby around since Libby came along about 14 years ago), had been preparing to finish the basement. The baby, who was a boy, was four inches long and already had tiny fingers and toes, and it's hard not to think what might have been. We're all prone to little fits of weeping, and the oddest things set me off.

A miscarriage almost always means that the body detected something wrong with the fetus (and think of all the things there are to go wrong! We're horrendously complex) or any of the numerous temporary components of gestation: a malfunctioning umbilical cord, an incomplete placenta, etc. ("It's the body's quality control kicking in," said the E.R. doctor.) An extremely high percentage of women go on to have a normal pregnancy soon after. We have the responsibility now to remind M that it wasn't anything she did or didn't do; she had, in fact, done absolutely everything right, following the sage advice in What to Expect When You're Expecting and What to Eat When You're Expecting to the letter and getting the kind of sleep I only dream of in my fitful, insufficient hours of unconsciousness.

In the meantime there's a lot to do and a good-hearted (and equally disappointed) step-nephew to console us, although he's 15 and decidedly un-baby-like. And there are still four dogs to be roughed-up and walked, and one of them needs extra love to make up for a missing leg, although she's getting around better every day and has even figured out how to run. (Is it awful of me to call her Tripod? She doesn't seem to mind, as long as I'm scratching.) This has all been tragic but not discouraging, I think, and I'm sure it won't seem like much time has passed when they get to announce the news again. And it was pretty fun the first time.

Things like this tend to pull us together as a family, and we have a remarkable family. Poor Kelly got more than he bargained for when he married a girl with a sister like me, but M and I have what I suspect is a rather rare sibling relationship. Something about the pairing of our very different personalities, a good age difference (3 years- not too close, not too far), and a shared history in a relatively healthy, happy family (with its own quirks, it's true, but we're still unusually functional) made us close in a way that only the best of friends ever get to be. I'd never survive without her, and Wednesday night was quite a scare. My relief at her progressing recovery and my faith in her resilience makes this bearable. There is no one I admire more and very few people I love as well.

Life is made up of the good and bad. This could have turned out worse, but it was pretty horrible. Still, like Kelly says, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And we're already pretty strong. (I'm glad nobody has said to me, "It is what it is." I hate that line. LOATHE it. I think it is what you make it; nothing's black and white.)

After I got off work tonight, after the week I've had, I was lost. M said she'd need me tomorrow when Kelly goes back to work and I should get some rest, and that's what I did: slept for four hours, paused to walk for an hour in the cool, quiet night and share this story with you, and now I'm going back to bed, where I hope to forget that the dishes need done and the floor needs vacuumed and I'm going to have to put away the little blue Winnie the Pooh booties I bought... for just a little while.

Love and Reason

2009-07-19T23:03:00.003-06:00

"There's nothing better than being in love with your car." - Tom Magliozzi, Car Talk, Show Number 200929 (No foolin': you can download a podcast of this episode at cartalk.com.)

Mom and I spent the afternoon and early evening yesterday at one of our favorite family outposts (the genius of it is that, from the freeway, it looks like a gas station, a barn, and a trailer park stuck out in the middle of the desert, and yet, to my eyes, it is one of the most beloved sights in the world). On the way home Puck's antenna picked up NPR around Little America and found Tom and Ray accusing a caller of putting transmission oil in the wrong hole on their automotive talk show, Car Talk.

I stopped the station scanner.

I didn't pay much attention to the next caller, who was talking about breaking in brake pads, but the final caller amused me to no end. Sensible, rational caller Wendy is a self-described "proverbial suburban soccer mom" who drives a nearly-paid-off 1999 Toyota Sienna, and she has a problem. She took her two sons, 9 and 11, to a car show one day, just for fun, sat in a Jeep Liberty with a retractable roof -- "the opposite of a Smart Car!" she lamented -- and developed a severe and abiding Car Crush bordering on obsession. (Don't laugh. It could happen to you.) She called the show to have Tom and Ray talk her out of buying what she, having read Consumer Reports and Motor Trend, sees as as a less reliable, less sensible car than her current ride. They pretty much blew it.

Part of the conversation touched on the feverish cult that is Jeep Culture, the result of insanely clever advertising on Jeep's part but also the result of something much more insidious, something anybody who's driven a Jeep knows: they may handle like crap and they're noisy and not remotely fuel efficient, but they're FUN. Ray asked Wendy what the car said to her when she sat in it, and that was the first, very emphatic word out of her mouth. "Fun. It said fun." She asserted that maybe she is just having a midlife crisis, or, as her sons call it, a "midlife Chrysler." Tom and Ray suggested she rent a Liberty and drive it every day for a week to see if it would really fill her vehicular needs the way the minivan does, which I thought was good advice... but there was already no question. "I'm getting it, right?" asked Wendy. "Yeah, well, we know that." said Ray.

As she was about to hang up, after admitting to having already picked out an ingenious name for her Jeep (Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death."), Tom reassured her with the statement above, a sentiment I wholly subscribe to, and elaborated. "It's a wonderful thing to be in love with your car, because you'll take care of it, and you'll nurture it, and you'll pass it on to your kids, and it'll be more fun to drive because you'll have a connection with it. Wendy, most people hate their cars. They kick the doors closed, they have a disparaging name for the car." I've seen this, and it breaks my heart.

However, after 19 months and 21,800 miles together (even after a new bumper, fender, main shaft and clutch), I can still say that I'm one of those incredibly lucky people -- however rare we are -- who is truly in love with their car.

He's more than half paid off, but my heart still skips a beat when I see Puck across a parking lot, metallic paint glowing, sharp angles threatening. There are moments when, in the middle of an ordinary commute, I glance across the bright, expansive dash and I'm amazed that I called this marvelous machine into being. Because I requested something special, people I will never meet in a factory I will never see pulled together all these parts and pieces that might have gone into other, less unique cars of the same model, assembled these bits of metal and plastic and fabric together according to a generic formula but with a few specific ingredients. Someone who will never know me, someone who may or may not hate his job in an office in an expansive industrial complex in the chilly midwest, filled out a digital form and printed out a piece of paper that provided one of the most gratifying moments of my life.

The problem that resulted in the replacement of the main shaft was a very small thing, a broken plastic ring that has proven to be a common weakness in these cars (it could be much worse), and the clutch had to be replaced due to an excusable error in the installation of the new shaft, a forgotten seal that caused transmission fluid to leak out and soak the clutch lining. Covered by Dodge's lifetime powertrain warranty, the repairs cost me nothing but a month without my beloved car. Even though this hiccup occurred very early in Puck's useful life, I'm not worried that more problems will follow. And even if Puck turns out to be a total lemon before 50,000 miles, I'll stand by him. I'll do whatever it takes to keep him running until he will absolutely go no further simply because I love my car.

I love the way my Dodge Caliber drives and looks, but my deep emotional investment goes beyond engineering and cosmetics. Puck is "living" proof of my financial stability, of my independence and self-reliance. Puck is proof that I learned a hard lesson well. Dad, although he did it once or twice, was dead set against buying a brand new car. They lose value the instant you drive them off the lot! You're paying more than they're worth! "Think how much gas you could buy with that car payment!" he used to say. And he's right. But I can justify the purchase because I will drive Puck into the ground (very gently), I paid no interest, and it's my reward. This car is my gift to myself for having the discipline and endurance to dig myself out of a $30,000 hole in just a few years, and every time I see him I'm reminded that I can now handle money.

I hope Wendy does buy that Jeep Liberty, no matter how much cargo space and fuel efficiency and reliability she sacrifices. I hope when she's driving down the road -- on an ordinary day, with the retractable roof open and the sun shining in and the breezes of upstate New York blowing in her hair -- that she feels like I do when I drive Puck, because there really is nothing like being in love with your car. Because life is too short to make every decision based on cold common sense. I believe that most decisions based on heart and gut turn out just as well, and without them there would be no love stories at all.

Especially love stories about cars.

Chain Link Circus

2009-07-07T20:29:00.004-06:00

When I got to work this morning I went through the old plant and through the lab in the back, where we still do our morning tests, to see what everything looked like (Travis had done them when he came in at 6 a.m. and written the results down on our charts). I left the old plant through the side door of the lab, which opens onto the wide alley, directly across from the rear staircase into the back door of the new plant.

As I was walking to the staircase I heard a scuffle on my left and looked through the chain link fence into the enclosed triangle down the hill, where our two waste lagoons that overflow to the river are. The gate has been open since we started pumping the sludge out of the west lagoon, and thrashing along next to the seven-foot fence with three lines of barbed wire tipped outward at the top was a very confused, very young moose.

I couldn't go into the enclosure; he was already agitated enough to try to jump the fence or possibly charge me if I cornered him, so I took off down the hill around the fence -- along the soft dirt bank of one of the drying beds, currently filled with eight feet of septic sludge -- to the far corner of the fence. I figured if I could spook him back towards the gate, he'd find his way out, but I had to climb a fence into the construction zone of a new home at the end of the street and crawl along behind the duplex units of the elderly housing on the road to the plant.

The moose saw me and went where I intended, but he bypassed the open gate twice making laps along the fence and went back down the hill behind the decant structure and tried to wedge himself between the fence and the metal storage shed I've never bothered to open in almost five years. So I headed back along the houses, through the construction debris, over the fence, and along the drying bed; finally I looked up to see him trotting up the hill and out the open gate. He took a sharp right and passed me at the head of the drying bed, and I watched him lope through the meadow as if the tall, thick sagebrush were merely clover. He covered ground like he was trying to win the Derby.

The last I saw of him he was headed off into the sunrise, down the hill to the highway, which, if he managed to cross without getting hit, would have led him straight back to the State Park and the river where he belongs. How the devil he found his way out of the cottonwoods, across the highway, through the meadow, up the hill, into the alley, through the gate and into the lagoons I'll never know.

Other Duties as Assigned

2009-07-03T17:37:00.005-06:00

Part of our job as operators at the water plant is to respond to customer complaints. We're lucky; we have very few. In the four and a half years I've been at the plant, we've averaged about three a year.

I'm not just tooting my own horn when I say our water is outstanding. We're lucky to have great quality source water in the Bear River and to be the first municipal user on that source. We fill Sulphur Creek Reservoir from the Bear River, but when water sits still for any period of time, it's apt to grow strong green algae in wide, sticky blooms and to dissolve solids like ash, animal fecal matter, dead fish, and dirt, the taste and odor of which are very hard to remove. We do our best to avoid it (especially if we have any sampling to do), but sometimes in the spring when the river turns to mud due to snowmelt in the Uinta Mountains, we have to switch to Sulphur Creek for a month, and sometimes in the late summer when our use of the river is restricted, we have to run a blend of river and reservoir.

Some people claim they can tell when we're on reservoir water, and I don't doubt them. We have to use more polymer and chlorine with Sulphur Creek water, so in general it's not the organics causing taste and odor problems, it's the chemicals. Chlorine is most detectable as an odor when your dosage is too low, actually, but people just assume we're putting too much in if they can smell it in their tap water. And right now, we actually are slightly overdosing; we have some samples to take that we can't risk any bacterial contamination in, and we were getting some unpredictable water out of the river when we switched back to it last week, so I wasn't suprised when Robbie took a complaint call Wednesday and made and appointment for that afternoon to go check it out.

The thing about water complaints is that 9 out of 10 times, the complainer is either elderly, infirm, retired, disabled, a little crazy, or some combination of these things. I'm not saying they're unreasonable complaints; I'm just saying that people who are at home all day get tired of Oprah and Ellen and are apt to pay more attention to what's coming out of their faucet. They are also often starved for conversation and company. On 9 out of 10 visits we make, we get a life story (whether we want it or not; I tend to encourage them, being curious and fairly compassionate [no, really]), most of them sad, some of them shocking. Wednesday's was no different.

We drove around the back of a compound of low-income housing units on the south side of town, right above the river floodplain, and drove through the parking area where some men were peering under the hood of an ancient Chinook RV with peeling brown and orange stripes. We found the correct building near the deserted office and a sandy playground where a few healthy-looking children were swinging and entered through the heavy gray metal door. The exteriors of the structures were bland and the interiors were bleak; the unit we were looking for was on the first floor, behind the staircase in a concrete hall choked with cigarette smoke. We knocked and got no answer, so we went back to the truck to call the customer, a cell number with a Utah area code. As Robbie was dialing, a lanky man with scruffy clothes, hair, and beard, a cigarette and an odd gait strolled up and hailed us, recognizing the City emblem on our truck.

"I thought I was watching, but I must have missed you. Had my head under a hood. You been here long?" The voice was a strange growly whine. We assured him we had just arrived and followed him past a blood-colored spill on the sidewalk, which looked to be, on closer inspection, glittery red nail polish. By the time we reached the metal door (he put his palm, lit cigarette wedged between index and middle fingers, directly in the center of the "No Smoking" sign as he pulled the door open) we had already seen the zig-zagging scar that ran the length of his spine: the beginning of his story, and the evidence of its truth. It made me forget to introduce myself and my coworker; he never asked for our names.

Robbie and I both being animal lovers, we were pleased to be cordially greeted by a very young, surprisingly nimble basset hound with mismatched eyes (one brown, one silver) and one long, soft ear dappled gray. At first glance I thought he was a very large Dachshund; "the runt," said his owner. He was chewing on a mule deer antler (a shed, said our host proudly, which the dog found himself), and there were more antlers mounted on the walls. The small living/dining area, which was cluttered but relatively clean, also held a couch, a large cage containing two parakeets (one blue, one yellow), a TV stand with a small TV, a coffee table strewn with hunting magazines, several blankets, and a dining table covered with stacks of papers and photographs in frames. The walls were covered with hunting calendars and childrens' drawings.

We squeezed into the shoe box of a kitchen and set about sampling the tap water for chlorine and discussing possible solutions to the problem. The dog watched us from under the table, gnawing on his his prize, occasionally coming to wind his long body around our legs and bring us other toys.

Our customer was attentive as we explained the high chlorine residual (time of year, looped distribution main) and the procedure for flushing taps, and he demonstrated the little screw-on DuPont filter he had installed, which removed almost all of the chlorine residual (from .91 mg/L to .02 mg/L, which is normal for even a cheap charcoal filter). We couldn't smell the "putrid" smell, and he conceded it was more of a chemical odor, probably the chlorine. But throughout our visit he constantly circled the conversation around to his health problems and his children and ex-wives, producing X-rays from a closet and photographs from his battered leather wallet.

We learned that his last wife had left him with his two girls (very pretty, happy-looking girls, who must know they have a doting father), 11 and 14 at the time, and that the oldest girl had since had a son and the youngest is now 18. He had buried two sons from his first marriage, one killed at 14 by a blow to the head from the hoof of a deer he was trying to free from a barbed wire fence (they found him face down with his arms at his sides, having tried to walk home; the deer had stumbled 15 feet and died as well), the other at 19, shot in the face by a friend when he refused to drive him somewhere to complete a drug deal. One remaining son was completing a prison sentence in Utah for a crime he claims he didn't commit, a stabbing during a bar brawl he says he doesn't remember. His picture was on the table, long, straight black hair and blue prison tunic, blank face.

The X-rays, held up to the dim kitchen bulb, showcased a variety of steel brackets and giant screws, the two lowest of which had pierced and broken both hip bones when his 250 lb. "little brother" threw him down during an argument and jumped on him. The brother had given him a fine lacquered maple cane he was obviously fond of, but he admitted to rarely using it. "It's demeaning, you know?" (I thought of Dad and the wheelchair he loathed and I nodded.) Doctors suggest another surgery with an 85% chance of paralyzation, but if he doesn't have it he'll eventually be unable to walk anyway. His hips already grind with each step, hence the strange swinging gait. He refuses to use any more morphine.

We were just sympathetic enough to satisfy him, apparently, and he was pacified by promises to flush a hydrant on the main and suggestions to flush his taps, even though he pays for the water he uses. He hadn't talked to management about the problem but said others in the building agreed that the water -- which he insisted was normally the best water he had ever tasted anywhere-- just wasn't right. (People are highly suggestible or may not want to disagree and provoke and argument; we haven't had any other calls from the complex or anywhere else on that end of town.) The high chlorine residual rules out a water softener (when incorrectly adjusted they can make the water taste salty and bitter) and the aerators on his taps, when inspected, proved to be clean (they can get clogged with flakes of calcium and grow bacteria).

I don't think we'll be hearing from him again about the water, however. I believe he really is unsatisfied with it, but we're bringing down the chlorine dose due to better source water and with his little filter and a good hydrant flushing he should notice an improvement. But I suspect that most of our calls really aren't about the water. They're about life. At 52 a man who might ordinarily be healthy and able, working towards retirement and spoiling his grandson, is instead eking by on a disability check in a small, cramped apartment on the outskirts of town. He has scars on his body and heart and needs someone to tell about the pain and frustration, about life not being fair.

We left him at his door with the friendly, well-mannered dog and the children on swings in the sand and the sunshine of July, having done all we could do. Having listened.

Pride and Prejudice

2009-06-30T21:36:00.001-06:00

I'm so incredibly tired. I usually come home from work just fried but tonight I'm so tired I can hardly function, courtesy of the neighborhood jerks who lit off a major piece of celebratory artillery at 12:30 a.m. last night, just after I had forced myself to drift off to sleep. (I've always had a hard time sleeping in the summer.) I should have called the cops, but I wasn't quick enough, so I yelled at them through the front door, and I'm working up the courage to call Kathy and push for their eviction. Between the pit bull's incessant barking, the Harley, the friends at all hours of the night, the slamming doors and yelling, and things like midnight fireworks, I'm done. I lived here first; this is my home, and Kathy will do nearly anything to keep me as long as she can. The other two tenants are great, and I want her to find another adult to occupy Unit 1 so I don't have to babysit anymore.

This month was Hell Month. It rained every day for weeks and the plant got blasted by what must have been a monster bolt of lightning. I'm tired of peering into electrical cabinets full of neat rows of circuit boards bristling with wires and cables, studded with bead-like transducers and block-shaped clear plastic relays clicking impotently while the valves they control sleep like dragons in the concrete vaults below. I'm tired of staring at unresponsive computer screens with Windows error messages and empty white boxes where red numbers normally glow, rising and falling, indicating. I'm tired of guessing, of calculating, of adjusting, of hoping, of waiting, of watching, of worry. I'm tired of flipping through disorganized, overstuffed Operations and Maintenance manuals layered with charts and unintelligible diagrams and installation instructions to equipment and hardware we never have used, sifting to get to the one line in ten thousand that might shed some light on the troublesome symptom, the telltale single tiny blinking light in ten thousand that knows why this piece of hardware won't cooperate with that piece of software and enable us to get on with our lives.

And I want to know how an Apple laptop leaves Shanghai, China at 3:20 p.m. on June 10th, enters the country at Anchorage, Alaska, takes the scenic route to Memphis, Tennessee (freaking why?), arrives in Salt Lake City, Utah, gets trucked a short hop north to Ogden, Utah, and makes it to my door by 10:55 a.m. on Friday, June 12th. When, of course, I was not at home. So I had to wait until Monday, when they made a second attempt and the new MacBook Pro was delivered into my hands.

At first I wasn't sure we were going to get along; I've had to assign and adjust various things to get it to do certain functions that a P.C. does automatically, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that the options of whatever program you're working in are at the top of the screen on an extra bar instead of in the window you're using. It doesn't give me as much information or options without my asking for them as Windows did, and I had gotten used to having certain information available. But the mail client is slick (even though I still have to check a few accounts online, including the incompatible Hotmail), the track pad is phenomenal, the screen is delicious (I can wipe it! With Fantastic, if I want!), bright and clear and not ridiculously fragile, the automatic backlit keyboard is so glamorous, the hard aluminum shell is sleek and about as low-profile as you get, and the battery lasts literally for hours, up to seven if I'm not taxing it with Webcam. And it's all so very, very speedy.

It's imperative that I love my laptop. This is the machine that will know more about me than any living person, the machine that will see more of me than my family. This is the machine I'll tell my secrets to; the machine that will know what I Google when I'm home alone on a Sunday night, bored (usually, apparently, Thai recipes and instructions on how to make your own laser cutter out of a broken scanner and some additional hardware). This is the invention that allows me to keep track of the family and friends I rarely see; the incredible cousin in Colorado -- worthy to be any family's pride and joy, aren't we lucky she's ours? -- who is setting up her very first band room as we speak, the girls in San Diego (who are very likely going to see me -- and a living bonus prize -- sooner than they think), Mom (who now owns a pair of genuine black leather Harley Davidson chaps and who recently endured both a Big & Rich concert -- which she loved -- and Trapt with Collective Soul -- which was a different story, a long one -- in the same week), and the wonderful Wyoming people at Point and the Lazy J and Laramie, and in Arizona and Omaha and beyond.

So as soon as I find my camera buried in the rubble of the house I tore apart trying to prevent B.C. from swallowing a gob of his own shed fur, you'll have pictures of outdoor concerts and desert rainstorms and a Scrabble board or two, and the new MacBook Pro, whose name is Daryl Zero. I named him after Bill Pullman's brilliant but difficult private detective in Zero Effect, which you should all run out and see right away if you haven't, a) because it's Bill Pullman (who cultivates an exotic orchard in a bowl in the Hollywood Hills, no foolin') and b) it's hilarious.

Tired. Cranky. Restless. Swear the second hand on my kitchen clock occasionally makes a few hops backwards and then takes one giant leap forward. Love the cotton from the cottonwood trees floating down like snowflakes, clogging the grass with fluffy white gobs. Love the hedges brimming with Austrian copper roses and the little yellow wild roses Gram's sister planted at Point. I've been walking a lot. I've been down a lot, horribly, violently down (oh, so it wasn't the pill after all. Dang). But nothing will stop me from achieving everything I've set forth to do this year, and as of tonight it's already half over, and I'm only about one-fifth done.

But first, sleep.

Doing Without Frosting

2009-06-24T18:53:00.007-06:00

Today would be Gram's 99th birthday, but there will be no cake. (I'm losing weight, and Morgan's following a best-foods-for-your-baby diet, which limits sugar.) Gram would have tsked us and sought relief for her sweet tooth elsewhere.

I notice that even after more than four years I still feel the gaping wound in my world left by the one person who always had time for me. Not that any of the people who love me, and there are a lot of them, wouldn't drop what they were doing, if they could, and pay attention to me. But I don't usually insist, and when I do I feel selfish and foolish, resentful that I have to ask, and somehow less independent. And my independence is often all I feel I have. I am usually, or I used to be, very grateful for all the time I have to myself. But sometimes I just need someone to talk to, to look at. And I loved her.

Grandma was rather a captive audience and was somehow infinitely interested in me without seeming to be at all. The days at the nursing home passed slowly, and I know she wasn't always aware of time passing. But we passed hours together; what did we talk about? I can't remember. The birds, the trees out the window, the park across the street. She appeared to be absorbed in yesterday's newspaper, although she could rarely get past the headlines, and I told her my plans. I explained e-mail and DVDs. I asked her the important things, when I thought of them, and her answers were usually satisfactory. I took my violin and tried to play quietly, but the violin isn't a quiet instrument, and I found that the other residents, those who could hear, enjoyed my serenades.

I drew her pictures. I brought her stacks of large-print books which, when I returned them to the library, yielded a wealthy harvest of bookmarks, folded tissues and newspaper clippings. I had to repeat things, and in the repeating found I could sort things out, clean them up. I learned to babble without regard, because she liked the sound and often seemed not to be listening, but when I stopped I usually found that she had absorbed more than I expected. I learned how to explain concisely, how to squeeze the condensed juice out of a story to hold her focus if I knew she'd enjoy the tale. Sometimes she was alert enough to want details, and I learned how to polish those, too.

Even in California she was my sounding board. I talked to her while we walked slowly, until she couldn't walk more than the length of a few houses or more, and then I'd push her in her wheelchair and talk some more, sometimes casting about the neighborhood for things to talk about. Roses the size of our heads, dogs and cats, kids I knew from school. Occasionally I'd get her bundled in the wheelchair and spin her to the library, and other times I'd put my trombone in its case on her lap, and we'd wheel up to Jazz Band rehearsal at the high school, two blocks from the house. She seemed to remember some songs from dances years before. She always seemed surprised, when we wheeled home, to see palm trees.

I don't remember much about the vast expanse of my childhood, but I remember the underlying consciousness that Grandma was there, always, if I scraped my knee or wanted a snack or if Morgan wouldn't do what I wanted. I remember wanting no one but Mom when I was sick and particularly treasuring weekends when she was home, but Grandma was the daily thing, the constant thing, the thing I took for granted. I don't think we talked much then, but I know I always had her attention, even if she answered me from behind a newspaper without peering over her pink plastic glasses at me... and she paid much more attention to newspapers then.

I guess I should get used to her being gone. I guess I should make more friends or wedge myself more assertively into the lives of my family if I want more attention, since I seem to need it lately, but I have a feeling it won't be the same. Hers is the attention I miss, subtle and undemanding, and I can't get it back. An irreplaceable dynamic. The thing you don't know you have until it's gone.

99 years, the best century. Time is going very fast, and I can't seem to stop thinking about it, noticing it. I get angry when people say "all the time in the world." That's nothing, no time at all. All I can do is look at the span of her life and conclude that a life seems very long, indeed, if you're lucky, sometimes a little too long. I was prepared for the end, mindful that she was, too, but I couldn't have let her go any sooner.

The only time she wouldn't pay attention to me was when I whined. Or if she did, it was only to tell me to buck up. So I will. I can still talk to her. After all, it wasn't always obvious that she was paying attention. I had to go on faith.

Reservoir Dogs

2009-06-19T22:15:00.003-06:00

Bear and Daisy

Daisy

Worm Wrangler

2009-06-15T19:31:00.002-06:00

Eric and the nightcrawler.

Visit from the Stork

2009-06-10T22:08:00.004-06:00

I am sort of distraught counting the posts I've started and not finished. I always think some little condition will be the big change that enables me to finish more of them. I suspect I'm going through a lazy phase.

There's so much going on right now. The advent of three precious months of Wyoming summer, MAD CRAZY project load at work even without a huge crisis like today (we got hit by lightning last night and spent the day troubleshooting and $pending City money), a joyful family pregnancy, my 'lil fledgling art business, virtual farming, etc.

But I thought I'd drop in tonight and report that my shiny new MacBook Pro left Shanghai today (I'm assuming China, unless there's a Shanghai, Connecticut, but that would be CT instead of CN so yeah, CHINA) bundled in the loving arms of some FedEx dude. I ordered a Regular but they super-sized me to Pro because I waited so long that they came out with a new version of the Pro priced lower than the Regular I ordered, so BONUS for $150 less: backlit keyboard, 320 gig hard drive, 4G RAM, SD slot, etc.

Etc. Lots of those tonight. Life, etc. Dang. I'm just tired.

The Later Part of May

2009-06-01T22:22:00.003-06:00

M&K&I "did" our graves in Rock Springs for Memorial Day. We were rather proud of ourselves. (Here, my great-grandparents and great-aunt.)

Grandpa, Uncle Jerry, Grandma, and Dad.

Above the Green River.

Prairie sunset.

Brent's perfect doormat.

Geese in Shawnee Mission Park.

B&A in Shawnee Mission Park.

Fountain downtown.

The Opposite of Good is Bad

2009-06-01T21:47:00.001-06:00

I had to leave Brent (or he had to leave me, technically, at the airport) this morning on our second anniversary, which sucked, but at least we got to spend four whole days and change together doing mostly just whatever we felt like doing. That involved a lot of sleeping (until after 4 p.m. one day) and a lot of coconut sorbet, coffee, frozen custard, and Oreos, but there was also some walking in his new, very walkable neighborhood, two movies in real theaters (a luxury for me- Pixar's UP and The Brothers Bloom, both of which were genius and highly entertaining), a few DVRed episodes of What Not to Wear and the whole hilarious Kung Fu Panda, hanging out at the coffee shop where B. proofread pages for Kansas City's weekly alternative The Pitch and I surfed on his Mac and read a Michael Ondaatje novel, two delightful evenings with assorted excellent friends and dinner and a very nice visit with his parents.

We delve into our time together with very little consideration of the past or future and manage to wring the most happiness possible out of it, and we adjust to being apart altogether too quickly and too well for either of our tastes. It can't possibly frustrate anyone else more than it frustrates us that we still live a thousand miles apart, but we deal with it better than most people do in our situation, maybe because we don't know anything different, maybe because we're certain we'll figure it out soon, maybe because we're excellent communicators on many different levels. Or a combination of all these things.

As usual my life is a tumbling act from season into season, but every time I think I'm out of luck and optimism, something happens to blow my gloom out of the water. After 12 years of marriage and doing half the raising of a very good and special boy who turned 15 Saturday, Morgan and Kelly are expecting spawn of their own. I am going to be an aunt. I am already an aunt to the aforementioned good boy, Cordale Colton (who by all accounts took the news rather well despite having expressed apprehension about the possibility in the past), but this time I get to be around from the beginning. I don't know anybody who's not ridiculously excited about this, but nobody more than the two of them. They're going to be such excellent parents.

I was very grateful, too, because it was great fun to be present when they told the grandmas, who both freaked out in their own charming ways. At first I had this sense that my big sister, my only sister (and only sibling), who has always shared her experiences with me, and vice versa, was going very quickly to a place I couldn't follow, and I felt that distance like a cold wind, a rock wall. But somehow it got righted almost immediately -- because she immediately shared and confided, as she always has, even though she had every right to keep her secret for a while (as if she could stand to!) -- and now it seems like the most natural and simply perfect thing in the world, and I can't wait for the adventure to really get going. It feels now like I've been waiting impatiently all these years.

So, on to a secret of my own. A few months ago I took the very terrifying plunge and started a store on etsy.com, the website to buy and sell all things handmade, selling crocheted items, some crafty things, and prints of some of the art I've posted on this blog. I got several orders right away and felt that the hardest part -- just getting started -- was already over. I was just getting ready to share the link with everybody when I had the epiphany that, even though it's what got me going creatively in the first place, the crafts and crochet aren't really doing it for me (or anyone else for that matter; I've sold numerous prints and gotten a custom order all without any advertising at all, but only one hat and a pair of earrings have gone), so I'm in the process of morphing the store again and I'll share it when I'm ready. But I'm excited about my art again because of the positive response, and I'm going to take it easy; I don't expect the store to take off and enable me to quit my job in a matter of months (although, wouldn't that be nice?), but I do expect it to be incentive enough to create consistently that I manage to put a good portfolio together and take it to the next step, whatever that may be.

Thursday when I checked my e-mail on Brent's Mac I noticed some charges to my bank account (they send me an account update daily) that I didn't make and called quickly to cancel my debit card. I've submitted claims on the three charges that went through and I think I know how the thief got my information; at Christmas I ordered several things online (OK, that's a daily thing for me) and a while later I got a letter from one of the merchants stating that their financial files had been hacked and my account information was probably among the data stolen. I flagged my credit accounts for fraud but completely blanked about my bank account, so I sort of deserved a little wake-up call, and if they get away with less than $50, I'm prepared to be philosophical and sage about the whole thing. I'm ordering a new Mac laptop soon and I want to save up for a stand-up paddleboard, so this is a bad time for a financial snafu, but I have a lot of confidence in Wells Fargo. They've been good to me and handled similar situations very well.

But there's something puzzling about the whole thing. One of the charges was for an herbal weight-loss supplement called Xanithin; the perpetrator had the sample mailed to my address. There were also charges for something called the National Alert Registry and one to NetDetective.com, both of which are online information banks on private individuals. Probably the culprit was looking for more information on me in order to perpetrate a more complete identity theft, but why the skinny pills? Nothing makes sense anymore. Not even crime. Morons. (Lenny had an interesting theory, though; possibly the culprit "runs" those online businesses and that's what he or she does, charges products and services to stolen accounts, perpetuating the charges if possible. For instance, the herbal supplement was a trial that led into a monthly auto-ship plan, which I cancelled.) Live and learn in modern times, I guess. Next time I get a warning like that I'm going to be more proactive, that's for sure.

There's a lot of joyful shrieking coming in through my open kitchen window and earlier the town buzzed with lawnmowers. The lilacs I left barely leafing Wednesday night are bursting into fragrant bloom today. I stopped at the bakery next to my favorite Thai place in downtown Salt Lake and picked up kouing-aman, a flaky caramel/butter pastry I tried to create sometime before Christmas from a recipe I found online, and it turns out I did pretty good; in fact, I almost prefer the texture of mine. The bakery's version had a caramel armor that hurt my teeth and was doughy in the middle; mine was crispy but not hard on the outside, and the inside was flaky and chewy in a dryer, less oozy way. But I won't be making it again anytime soon, because it requires a pound (yes, an entire POUND) of butter, several cups of sugar, and more patience and time chilling between foldings and rollings than I care to spend. Besides, it's spring, and I feel like it's really time to just buckle down and lose that last fifteen or twenty pounds I've been talking about forever and be done with the diet thing, at least for a while. I've maintained this weight for three years without really obsessing over it (or even thinking about it too much) and I'm sure I've for the most part settled into a healthier lifestyle, no matter what my weight is. And no matter what Brent feeds me when we're together, although I'll have to watch myself closely if we ever live together, because he can eat a whole tub of frozen yogurt in a sitting.

And no, I'm not going to try the Xanithin.

Puck finally came home with new blocker rings, a new main shaft, bearing, and seal, and a new clutch after a lengthy three-week stay at the shop. First there were problems with the replacement parts -- one flimsy plastic piece arrived broken -- and then the new main shaft came without a bearing, but the mechanic didn't notice that until he had test-driven it after reassembly, which messed up the slave cylinder and saturated the clutch with transmission fluid, hence the new clutch, which I would have had to pay for if it was the original problem. My lifetime powertrain warranty doesn't cover the clutch but since it was the poor mechanic's error -- I like the guy and his wife gave birth to their first child while Puck was in the shop, so he had to be a bit distracted -- we got a bit of a rewind on the clock, Puck and I. I'm not hard on the manual clutch -- I finesse -- but they are designed to wear out, after all, and I've got an extra 19,000 potential miles now before this one does. And Puck's driving like a dream, tight and smooth and reliable. And LOUD. But that's another post altogether.

We got about three hours of sleep -- never put us in front of a Futurama marathon after midnight -- before getting up at 5:30 to get me to the airport and Brent back to town and to work on time, and despite nodding off on the plane and a brief power nap when I got home, I'm jet-lagged and fried and bereft. Sleep is a welcome prospect tonight, and I haven't even begun to think about returning to work tomorrow, which will come as a rude awakening at 7 a.m., especially since I know Jeff will have been plotting projects the whole time I've been gone, and there's really a lot to do without those extra operations. But nevermind. I can sleep first.

Myetonic Milly

2009-05-25T09:32:00.002-06:00

Because fainting goats are funny.

Behold:

U.P. 844

2009-05-18T22:52:00.003-06:00

Eric is a railfan!

Camping, with Dogs

2009-05-18T20:08:00.006-06:00

Molly says "hi."

Meet the Blueberry.

Highway cleanup near Pilot exit. When we started that morning it was a brisk 17 degrees.

Campground at Slate Creek.

Molly naps.

Bandit, Tuffy, and Duchess seek shade.

Slate Creek Campground.

The Green River, with our little home-away-from-home in the cottonwoods.

Blue Forest.

Ant hill.

It occurs to me that this post is heavy on the Molly. She's got to be the best-tempered dog in the world, despite having had several tumors removed from the same location on her right front leg, which the vet now thinks it might be a good idea to take off. She's an older dog, 13 (I think? I'm horrible about the years), but we'd like to keep her around longer, especially since she's otherwise healthy, and most dogs adjust pretty well to having only three legs. It's sad with any dog, but this one in particular is just a good, good dog. Unlike the next one, who is hyperactive, needy, obsessive and dense:

Bear, being patient (the stick is just outside the frame). But he's got a big heart, and he's fun, and he can take a lot of playful abuse from the boy he loves.

Our shadow on the causeway.

Bluffs near Names Hill.

Green River, Blue Forest

2009-05-18T20:00:00.001-06:00

I used to wish the standard workweek was three days and weekends lasted four; now I know I'd never survive it if it were a weekly occurrence.

Friday the 8th, Mom and I drove the Blueberry (Evanston Motor Co. loaned me an electric blue P.T. Cruiser with 9,000 miles on it to take out of town) to Ogden to shop. Thursday was her birthday, so we hit two craft stores (I needed art supplies), a Target, and two discount stores (I heart Ross and T.J. Maxx) in about four hours before we busted home to meet M and K for dinner at Don Pedro's.

Saturday was the 7:00 a.m. Jaycees' highway cleanup out by Pilot, which went fairly quickly due to a good turnout, but just made me despise humanity even more than I already do. We developed a dangerous game called "Tea or Pee;" truckers (and, to be fair, probably other motorists) have developed the sick and wrong habit of urinating in plastic bottles or jugs and tossing them out the window of the moving vehicle so they don't have to bother stopping at a truck stop unless they need fuel. Why not drop them in a dumpster the next time you do stop, people? Or better yet, STOP AND USE A RESTROOM. We also picked up a lot of empty cigarette packs (we can't get all the butts; there's no point trying), broken CDs, cans and beer bottles, napkins, chip bags, foil, chunks of cardboard, oil filters, broken bungee cords, clothing and rags, a pillow, hubcaps, tools, fast food debris, vehicle trim, awning arms from campers and R.V.s, and the occasional $5 bill or sex toy. We leave the neon orange garbage bags for WYDOT to pick up and flag items that might be dangerous, like the Arizona tea jugs full of cloudy urine, and hypodermic needles.

After the cleanup we all bathed (because EW) and got ready to camp. M and K bought their 35-foot camper late in the season last year and weren't able to use it before winter set in, so this was the inaugural voyage of the as-yet-unnamed home-on-wheels. It required a lot of preparation -- flushing tanks and hoses, locking and leveling, airing and securing, loading generators and propane tanks -- but eventually we got on the road after Kelly built the dogs an ingenious in-bed kennel for his big Chevy pickup out of PVC pipe, zip ties, and chicken wire. It looks a bit Beverly Hillbillies but works like a charm to contain the four dogs, two giant Labs and two good-sized mutts, none of whom listen very well when there's the great outdoors to explore. We got to our campsite at Slate Creek, just yards from the Green River, a few miles south of the Fontonelle dam, a bit late and found Mom waiting with hot coals ready in her little charcoal grill.

I have to say, I'm ambiguous about camping. I like running hot water and a soft bed, and I hate being damp, and it seems like you're always damp in a tent, no matter the weather or season. But the idea of camping is so appealing -- toasting marshmallows while the owls hoot, tossing sticks in the river for the dogs to dive after while you amble long and slow up the river bank, breathing fresh, clean air -- that I almost always go when invited, even if I remember how dirty I wound up the last time. When we got home I had enough unidentified debris under my fingernails to pot a plant in, and that was even with running water and a good bar of soap. But I was so tired I slept like a rock on the pull-out couch, and in the morning Morgan made muffins, eggs and sausage in kitchen far roomier and nicer than the one in my apartment.

Sunday was delightful. We drove up on a high desert plateau and turned the dogs loose to crawl around in the Blue Forest. The Blue Forest is the kind of thing that makes Wyoming so bizarre: a forest without trees. Or, a forest with trees, but you have to dig three feet down in the loose orange shale to get to them (mind the scorpions and fire ants), and when you find them, you find they're stone, beautifully preserved, sticks and bark and in many cases solid trunks that are five and eight feet long. Drillers in the 70's discovered this rare phenomenon, a place where ancient sediment perfectly fossilized trees that must have been on the bank of what once was a vast ocean; Wyoming was the sea floor. Not too far east of the Blue Forest is something called the Green River Formation, and a family in Kemmerer named Ulrich has a fantastic gallery out there showcasing fascinating, rare whole fossils of many kinds of prehistoric fish and plant life.

The sagebrush plain called Eden Valley is pitted with holes, some short and shallow, some the size of a grave, where people have unearthed petrified wood and hauled it away. You can't use power equipment; the law requires only hand tools, and you have to be able to haul what you find out in your vehicle, no dump trucks, and the quantity is limited. We found lots of interesting things to bring home, but my favorite are the small, flat, pink chips of wood that look like they might be from a dry cottonwood that died a decade ago; on closer inspection, they're solid rock, millions of years old. Some larger specimens have layers of blue agate or chalcedony, hence the name "Blue Forest," but there's no amber or other precious stones here, unless you count the wood, just orange calcite in crystals and blobs that I think are as pretty as amber.

After a weekend by the river in the desert we zipped to Mom's and swapped the camper for a pair of Henry's snowmobiles that have come to live with Morgan and Kelly, including my beloved little Polaris 600. The workweek flew by (with some angst and a lot of trauma due to my schedule change) and I wound up with a nasty cold and had a three-day weekend this weekend which consisted mostly of sleeping.

That's a lot of information to take in, I know. Stand by for photos.

Moondance Diner

2009-05-12T22:01:00.004-06:00

Belated pics of the Moondance, now that I've been a couple of times. The Pierces have done a nice job on the remodel, even using the former exterior metal corrugated siding -- complete with authentic graffiti -- under the chair rail around the booths. It's cozy, and we're glad to have it.