Suzy Says

View from the porch today

The forecast this week is for cold and rain, and I have learned the chilly way that temperatures in Hooterville are approximately ten degrees lower than they are in the balmy Bay Area. Henry Etta and I have stayed close to the heater today, she retreating to the depths of her faux sheepskin bed and me in two sweaters.

Her eyes seem less gloppy today, though she is leaving little land mines all over the house, necessitating footwear and cautious foot placement at all times. She mostly stays in bed, except if I crinkle a plastic bag in the kitchen. This happens more often than you’d think, especially since I wash and re-use my Ziploc bags until they no longer zip or loc. She runs into the kitchen and meows loudly for food. She sounds like I slammed the car door on her tail. Oddly, since moving inside, she has become louder and more demanding of food, even though it is available at all times.

On the other hand, the bulimia seems to have stopped.

Megan is stopping in at the vet’s office on her way to work today to get a kitty valium for Henry Etta and to make an appointment. The idea is to give The H some Vitamin V to settle her down enough that Dr. Karen can examine her and take blood without having to sedate her again. We need to make sure that the metacam isn’t affecting her kidneys and liver. And I’d like to get an idea what her lethargy and other symptoms are all about. Hopefully we can get in sometime this rainy week.

I’ll keep you posted.

June and Audrey are getting used to the new cat door upstairs. I had to shove them through it a couple of times before they grasped the concept (even though they’ve had one between the main house and the studio for several months now). It’s great not having to leave the door ajar all night, especially now that the cold and rain are making yet another farewell appearance.

I had a vain hope that they might use the cat flap exclusively, making me obsolete as a doorman, even while knowing it was on the unrealistic side. But I’m slated to go to San Francisco next week, and while I know Megan and Rob will take good care of them while I’m gone, it will be nice to know that the cats can come in and out at will while I’m away. Maybe it will even train them to use the cat flap instead of the doorman. A girl can dream.

Somehow the heat got turned off last night, and it was 46 fun-filled degrees in the house when I got up at a semi-respectable 7:30 this morning. I varied my usual routine (turn off outside lights, turn on computer, turn up heat, start coffee) by turning on the heat first. Then I looked out the sliding glass doors and saw that the outside temperature was around 38.

Told you it’s like living in a tent. My thimbleful of coffee was cold before I could finish drinking it.

It’s been sunny all week, and clear, starry nights tend to be cold ones with no cloud cover to tuck us in at night and keep us warm. But temperatures have been 60 or more by early afternoon. It still surprises me that temperatures can change so much in one day.

This particular day is my father’s birthday. He would have been 79 today.

To the rest of the world, it’s a day to drink and dye things green, the weirder the better, but for me, it’s a day of sadness and memories. I feel out of step with everyone else.

At my old job, one of my co-workers had her first baby. We all dutifully trooped to the hospital to visit them, and as I held that day-old baby, I felt as if I were watching my colleagues across a divide. All of them still had their parents, and half of them were older than I was. I was the only one who had lost a parent and knew that particular pain. I both envied them for not knowing what it was like, and pitied them, knowing that one day they would, even that newborn baby.

Today the sun is shining and Dad isn’t here to see it. I can’t call him to wish him happy birthday or look forward to an email telling me what he made for his birthday dinner. Nine years after his untimely death, it can still hurt as much as when I first heard the news and my life was divided into “Before” and “After”.

In these After days, I should try and focus on the many happy memories: Dad carrying me on his shoulders; calling the birds in the woods so they answered him; coming home after work in his white lab coat when I was a kid; reading me stories, even when I was grown-up; hugging me across the barrier at Heathrow; walking his beloved dog Jesse on Wimbledon Common; singing tunelessly as he cooked. I know I’m lucky to have had a father who was also my best friend. But sometimes the loss is hard to bear.

Happy birthday, old bear. I will always love you.

Blurry picture of Henry taken through the sliding glass doors this afternoon

Day Four of getting up at 6 (or earlier). I think this officially qualifies as a bad habit now.

And speaking of bad: the bad habit of Daylight Savings Time means it’s dark and even more depressing at that benighted hour.

As I made coffee, I considered the expression “the early bird gets the worm”. What incentive is that to get up early? “The early girl gets the tiara” would be much more motivating for Self.

It was 34 chilly degrees as I drank my thimbleful of strong dark coffee, while simultaneously checking my emails and petting scruffy old Henry. I wonder if they make sweaters for cats, and if so, would Henry Etta wear one? I’m a little worried that her extreme thinness makes her as uninsulated as the house and I know she really feels the cold.

As I write, it’s around 1 pm, and it’s a sunny 61 degrees now. Henry actually ventured out of the house yesterday (when I put out the recycling, she followed me and then wandered off) and today (I opened the front door to get some air and she went out, seeking a sunny spot – I later saw her basking by the disused hot tub). I think she’s beginning to realize that if she goes outside, she can still come back in. I think that was her concern before, though I could be wrong. I wish she could talk and tell me her story and what she’s thinking.

I think she’ll enjoy the summer!

Lookin’ out my front door

Rain pounding on the curved roof/wall woke me up at 6:00 this morning. Since we haven’t yet been subjected to the absurdity of daylight savings time, it’s light-ish out. Light enough for me to turn off the mountain lion deterring outside lights, anyway.

Returning to bed, Audrey was curled up neatly on her side (she tends to sleep in a ball, whereas June tends to stretch out and cover as much real estate as she can) and June was placed exactly where my feet should go, pinning down the covers. Henry of course was in her bed by the heater, dreaming of sunshine.

I figured it was safe to shut the balcony door and go back to bed for a little while.

Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard the distinctive sound of the Audrometer, clawing madly at the recently closed balcony door. “Audrey, cut it out!” I yelled from under the covers. “What’s that you say? Ignore you completely and keep doing what I was already doing?” I tried to ignore her frantic clawing and clacking. After a while, I heard her quick, graceful steps on the stairs and then, you guessed it, more clawing and pounding at that door.

Giving in to the inevitable, I put my sleep mask and ear plugs away in a little brass box by my bed (so June won’t play with them into oblivion and/or eat the ear plugs). As I put on another sweater, I gazed at June, sleeping happily through the whole thing, then grumped my way downstairs.

I let Audrey out into the pouring rain, and as I write, she’s still out in it somewhere, even though it’s raining hard enough to bounce back up again. It’s dark enough to have the light on, which reminds me: why do TV shows and movies always have lights on, even when it’s broad daylight?

Visions of power outages dancing in my head, I warmed up coffee in my tiny, as-yet unbroken cup and turned the heat up from the night’s 52 to the day’s 62. This is the best part of Henry’s day, other than getting her Sea Flex treats. She melts out of her bed with happiness as the warm air toasts her tiny body. Bliss!

As I hauled on my winter coat and scarf yesterday afternoon, I thought “I might as well be living back East.”

Actually, I would have been doing better if I had been living back East. I was talking to my colleague in New York and he told me that it was about 60 degrees there, whereas it was a paltry 45 here. In the afternoon.

Making my way through the short cut to Megan’s house, I noticed how much storm damage there was: trees uprooted or fallen, bushes battered to their knees. Threading my way through the detritus made it a little less of a short cut*. Arriving at my sister’s, I just left my coat on. She had surprises for me: another $400 Amerigas bill** (the gift that keeps on giving!), some ribollita soup from Sunday night dinner, and a hat made for me by Lu. Just in time for winter’s comeback appearance!

I have to say it amazes me that one can take what is essentially a string and make it into a hat or sweater.

It rained like crazy last night, and I feel lucky that it wasn’t snow, since it’s 32F (0C for the Fahrenheit challenged) this morning. I piled on two quits and three blankets besides wearing my customary sweater to bed. I discovered that my Lu hat tends to come off in the course of a restless night’s sleep, but adds just the right note to my morning ensemble of pajamas, socks, and two sweaters. I’m writing to you with a quilt on my lap and all of us girls are huddled by the heater.

On the bright side, it is sunny out. Rob and I have a date today. He and my brother spent some time on Sunday trying to figure out why my car’s indicators have gone on strike. They seem to have narrowed it down, and if it’s not what they think it is, I’ll order a $100 part and hopefully that will fix it. It’s practically illegal to actually use your indicators in California, but I’d like to get it fixed before I go to the city next month.

Update: Rob came by and did some things and stuff, and now it all magically works again, including the hazard lights, which never did before. Come to think of it, I should have hazard lights on my person at all times. Just in case.

*I was reminded of our friend Paul, who specializes in taking “short cuts” that actually add an hour or more to driving time. He is always surprised when this happens, though no-one else is.

**Surely propane is the only utility where you have to pay a huge sum of money and then use it up, instead of paying as you go. All in all, not a good system.

I woke up with a headache this morning. I’m not sure if it was the nearly sleepless night or the endless allergies or an unlovely combo platter of the two, but when I wake up with a headache, it’s usually my close companion for the rest of the day.

Thoughts of Advil danced in my head as I started the coffee brewing, but I have finally learned my lesson that taking anything to offset a headache results in what I refer to as “aspirin tummy” as well as the headache. Better to keep calm and carry on.

On the bright side, there was no Henry barf on the rug this morning. On the down side, the flash heater was out again and refused to respond to my lame-ish ministrations. I have to admit that I didn’t invest a lot of time in trying to resuscitate it, partly because I was uncaffeinated and partly because it was a two sweater morning and standing outside shivering and ineptly assaulting an inanimate object was not the most appealing prospect. I’ll call Mark later.

The night had started out well enough. I finally had the new Michael Connelly, which I requested from the library in October, and the reassuring thought that there is another one coming out this October. I had changed the sheets and fluffed up the feather bed and feather pillows, so the bed was a haven of comfort. I just settled down for a cozy read when I heard a tiny sound. I put the book down and listened. There it was again. I got out of bed and peered down the stairs.

It was Henry Etta, sitting on the stairs and sounding tiny and sad.

I called her and she came up the stairs slowly, then jumped on the bed (thank you, metacam and Sea Flex!). June, who was already ensconced in her usual place, gave Henry Etta the stink eye until I told her to knock it off. She turned her back on me and huffily resumed her beauty sleep. Henry sat next to me for a while and I petted her and talked to her while I read.

I must have bored her, though, or else the heat came on, because after half an hour or so she repaired to her cozy bed by the heater. It was nice while it lasted and I hope she does it again. She hasn’t been up there in months, as far as I know.

Sleep was hard to come by last night, and when it finally arrived, I was woken up by a heavy storm, slashing rain against the roof/walls and wind howling through the trees. I was almost sure there would be another power outage and waited anxiously in the dark, listening to the storm crescendo and thinking about the precarious electrical arrangements on the property and the foolishness of not clearing enough trees around the houses.

The power didn’t go out, though I eventually did. I dreamed of Dad. We were making dinner for a party of unknown dream people, and we were marinating fish in lime juice. One of the party goers asked Dad if he’d take a drink from his wineskin, which he offered. Dad laughed and said no, he’d stick to his 1952 Margaux. He would have in real life, too, since excellent wine rarely, if ever, comes out of a bag. Or box.

In my dreams, Dad is never dead.

I was awakened by the balcony door slamming open in the wind. I lay in the darkness for a long moment, remembering all over again that he’s gone. That’s the worst thing about dreams: waking up to reality.

I got up and closed the door.

Yesterday, I woke up to a dark, stormy day.

As I watched the trees toss their heads through the skylight in my bedroom, I thought, “It’s just a matter of time until the power goes out.” I heard trees falling and things being blown over as I worked, but the power stayed on. I also heard a truck going down the driveway.

Peeking out the window, I saw the Amerigas truck driving slowly down the rutted dirt road. It stopped at Mark’s, where Luna announced his presence (“Hello, this is Luna, your doorman!”). He was afraid to get out of the cab, so I got an umbrella and ran down there in the pouring rain, shooing Luna away. I had to tell him about ten times that Luna wouldn’t bite him before he believed me. She’s all bark and no bite. I asked him to fill up my tank, throwing caution to the winds with the insouciance of a girl who had finally paid off her most recent $400 propane bill. I was down to about 20% and that’s as low as the gas limbo is supposed to go.

Feeling smug, I went inside to do the dishes. The water wouldn’t heat up, meaning the flash heater was out. I called Mark, and he came over to have a look. It was worse than I thought, though, because he had to take the bottom of the housing off to see what was going on in there. Apparently the wind and rain had both blown out and soaked the pilot light, so it took awhile to persuade it to work. This is why having your flash heater outside is a less than stellar idea.

While he was working outside, I went back to work inside. For about five minutes. Until the power went out.

I looked out at the clearing skies and wondered what was up with that, since the storm appeared to have blown over. Rob came by to get the generator going so I could continue my degenerate lifestyle, and he said there were other, bigger outages, so PG&E may have shut ours off temporarily to fix the others. It wasn’t out long, and all was back to what passes for normal by the time I went to bed.

You know, when we left Cloverdale after the Citrus Fair, I noticed clouds of clover in the fields. Who knew? In addition to daffodils by the side of the road. In my garden, they grow right by phallic cactus and art:

I wonder if Rose planted them.

Right outside the glass doors in the living room is a vine I thought was dead, but is an awakening honeysuckle.

Huckleberries are the eccentrics of the neighborhood. They are blooming now, but they won’t fruit until July. What’s up with that? And yet we’re still picking them – barely – at Thanksgiving. Go figure.

Between the age of my camera, my lack of skills, and the falling pine needles, you’ll have to take my word on this one. The manzanita flowers look like lilies of the valley. They were the favorite flowers of my mother and her mother.

I have no idea what this is. It’s planted in a big wine vat. And it’s been blooming like crazy:

“Now I see that my world has only begun” — Gene Clark

High surf, Mendocino

I heard a strange sound.

At first, I thought it was one of the kitties scrabbling around in the pots and pans, but it wasn’t. I went over to investigate, and discovered that my roof/ceiling (it’s hard to tell when your walls curve up to a central beam and it’s kind of like living in a giant, overturned rowboat) was leaking.

It was leaking right onto the paper shade of the hanging lamp in the kitchen. You know, the one that goes on and off at will, making me think there’s a power outage coming.

I thought it was a good idea to leave it off for the time being, as I put out a pot to catch the leak. Before I could stand up, another drop of water hit me in the head. Maybe leaks are like mice, and there’s never just one. In the end, I put out three pots and hoped for the best.

Megan came by and asked me if I were blowing her off.

“??”

“Well, I’ve called you twice today and you haven’t answered the phone, so I figured you were blowing me off.”

In the interests of cheapness, I don’t have caller ID, so it’s a surprise every time I answer the phone (though to be fair, it’s mostly one of my siblings instead of secret admirers). I also don’t have call waiting. Partly because of the frugality thing, and partly because no-one ever hangs up on the other person to talk to me, so I’m kind of against it. So even if I wanted to blow someone off, I’d be hampered by not knowing who it was in the first place.

We checked the phone, and there was a dial tone. We called it, using my little purple cell phone, and it didn’t ring. Hmm. We notified Rob, and he came over to look into it. After a couple of minutes, he peered inside the glass doors and asked me if I knew the phone box was open.

Well, I didn’t even know where the phone box was (or, to be completely honest, that there was one), so I guess someone else opened it or maybe the wind blew it open. Anyway, the wires got wet, and when they are too wet, your phone won’t ring, though you can dial out. Almost an ideal phone situation, really.

But Rob did something, and the second call worked. So if you call me, I won’t blow you off.

Well, the rain has made the leap from faithful companion to stalker. It’s a fine line, but after about a month of rain and gloom, I think it’s safe to say the line has been well and truly crossed. And it’s making me cross.

Megan and I were thinking of going to town to run some errands, but looking at the pouring rain made us change our minds. At least for now. It did, however, inspire me to do the laundry and polish some silver.

I guess you know what it takes to make me domestic.

Given the endless rain and my miserliness at using up the expensive propane supply, I invested in a clothes rack to dry my clothes in the living room. This does not lend a note of elegance to one’s decor, and I’ll have to see how effective it is. In Oakland I could hang the clothes out on the porch and they’d dry in a day or two, but here it’s too rainy and damp. And much colder. So I’m hoping that the clothes rack will work out.

It’s not without its hazards, however. While carrying the clothes from the laundry room/pantry, I tripped and fell flat on my hands and knees, scattering clean clothes everywhere. I also scattered the boxes piled up by the laundry room door, where I had carefully placed them to keep them away from the open flame of the dryer.

As I got up, I thought that I haven’t been doing so well with this resolution thing. Maybe I need to scale it back to something like “no major mishaps” or “Only one minor accident a month”.

Last night, I was sure that my dreams of the city would be washed away in the rain that pounded away at my roof as I prepared for a possible power outage and anxiously scanned the National Weather Service advisories.

When I went to bed, the power was still on, and the rain had stopped.

When I woke up, it still wasn’t raining! I called Caltrans and learned that the road was open. I threw a few things in a bag, did a conference call, and just after noon, I was on my way.

The road was still dotted with yellow FLOODED signs (probably staying nearby to be ready for the next one), and the Navarro river was pretty darn high. The brown, muddy waters reached high up the tree trunks on its banks. But the sun actually peeked out, and traffic was a breeze: I made the trip in three hours.

I have to admit that I enjoyed crossing the good bridge. Also that I feel like much less of a loser coming in from the country than I did from the suburbs. I’m now safely ensconced in a modest motel about a block from my old apartment (is it weird/sad/pathetic that I always stay in my old neighborhood?), enjoying the lightning-fast WiFi, Thai delivery menu at hand.

I called Meg to tell her that the Mouse had done its job and I had arrived safely. This is another of our family traditions, like waving until the departing person is out of sight. If one of us goes to the city, or, rarely, ventures further afield, we always call when we arrive.

Now neither of us has a thing to worry about. When I lived in Oakland, I was always worried about someone breaking in when I was away, in addition to worrying about the kitties. Now Rob is hanging out at my place during the day while Megan is sleeping. He can watch TV, play guitar, and listen to music with no fear of waking his sleeping wife. The cats have company, and so does Schatzi, since she goes with him. It makes me happy to know that Rob can enjoy himself there, since he does so much for me.

Yesterday, Megan, Rob and I braved the wind and rain to attend the Fourth Sunday Breakfast at the Caspar Community Center.

We met up with Lu, still limping from her recent ankle injury at work (she’s an EMT), and her boyfriend Rick. Despite the pain, Lu couldn’t resist the book sale across the hall from the room where breakfast was being served. It was an interesting selection of books, and Megan snared one on spicy sauces and dips, which will have to be toned down for me. I always say that food should be hot, medium, mild, and Suzy.

The breakfast room had long tables covered with bright table cloths. You collect your silverware at the door, find space at one of the tables – a challenge for a party of five – and a server takes your order. We had huevos rancheros made with organic, local ingredients and a basket of “bread”, which was really tiny corn muffins, banana muffins, currant scones, and cranberry scones. I had a thimbleful of local organic apple cider, too.

It was nice to catch up with Rick and Lu, and we stayed talking until the servers started to roll up the table cloths and give us meaningful looks.

In the parking lot, a man was playing with his dog. He bent over with his arms making an “O”, and the dog jumped through! I was so delighted that I asked him to do it again, and he did. We laughed all the way to the car.

On the way home, I noticed that the cherry trees are beginning to blossom.

When we got home, Megan brought her laundry over and got that done while we watched “Gone with the Wind”. It was the perfect thing for a rainy Sunday afternoon. No matter how many times I see it, I get swept up in the epic story, Vivien Leigh’s exquisite beauty, and the tragic romance. I always get choked up at the end, and tried to hide it by going to put on the porch light to light my brother’s way when he came over for dinner that night.

When he did, he arrived with cloverleaf dinner rolls he’d invented and made. Meg and I made macaroni and cheese and a salad of spring greens and curly endive. It was a particularly cozy evening, with the rain pouring down outside and the light and warmth inside.

As I write, the rain is still pouring down, and I’m hoping that the one road which leads to the city won’t be closed again tomorrow. I’m planning to go to San Francisco tomorrow and attend to business on Wednesday. Of course, being me, I’m also planning to take in one of the films at the Noir Festival and the Cartier and America exhibit.

We’ll see!

Yesterday, we had a break from the week of storms. I almost didn’t recognize my old friend the sun when she peeped shyly from the spectacular clouds.

I went over to Megan’s and said, “Quick! Before it rains again!” We bundled Miss Schatzi into the car and took off for Mendocino. Needless to say, the Schatz was thrilled. She’s enjoyed being stuck inside all week even less than we humans have.

We went to a different part of the headlands, at the north part of town. There is a spectacular clearing with trees fallen from long-ago winter storms:

I once came across a wedding there – what a beautiful setting:

Everything is so green from the rain!

Past the clearing and down a narrow path past wind-bent trees, we came upon the ocean:

It was considerably calmer than the 27 foot waves earlier this week, but it was still pretty spectacular:

As my sister says, “A pissed-off ocean is a beautiful thing.”

Schatzi wasn’t ready to leave, but we had run out of paths. She waited patiently in the car as we picked up groceries from Mendosa’s (we made chicken enchiladas for dinner last night). Her patience was rewarded by a second walk, in a place that was new to me.

Across from Gordon Lane is a vast expanse of hilly fields leading to the ocean. This was originally farmland, but is now fallow:

The dreaded Scotch Broom is in bloom now, and the huckleberry bushes have the tiniest of buds. The pine trees are beginning to make new pine cones:

It was encouraging to see some early signs of the spring to come, and to lift our faces to the sunlight. And it gladdened our hearts to watch Schatzi, sniffing gopher holes and the sea air, trotting happily through the fields, looking back at us to make sure her pack was still with her.

Just as Megan left for work last night, another thunderstorm started. I’ve lost track by now, but I think that makes around 9,000 of them over the past week. I’ve endured more thunderstorms here in the past few days than I ever did in all the years that I lived in the Bay Area. It’s amazing how different the weather is, considering it’s only 150 miles away.

Not that you could drive there now, since the one road that goes there is flooded and closed.

I’m in serious danger of turning into a mushroom. And you know how I feel about mushrooms.

About an hour after Megan left for work, I was cowering through the roar of the thunder, the clatter of the hail, and the battering of the rain when the phone rang.

One of the other unexpected things about the power outage earlier this week is that cordless phones don’t work. Fortunately, Rose left behind a truly hideous brown corded phone. And because it’s corded, I always know where it is, unlike the cordless ones which I leave all over the place and then have to search for when they ring.

I answered the phone, and a weird man’s voice asked for me.

I cautiously admitted it was me, wondering who it was.

It was Rob, and he burst out laughing at the tone of my voice. He called to say that Meg had arrived safely at work, and that if the power went out again, he’d come over and get the generator going for me.

Isn’t that nice? On the other hand, he characterized the storm that was freaking me out as “not that bad”, making me wonder what would be considered bad. Hmmm.

Before I went to bed, I made sure the coffee was ground (so I could use the French press) and filled a couple of pots with water (so I could boil it for coffee) and the dishes done. I have jugs of water and a couple of buckets full for bathroom purposes, and a flashlight by the bed, so I was as prepared as I could be. Fortunately, it turned out that I didn’t need any of it, since the power valiantly stayed on.

As I write, it’s still dark and rainy, and the future looks as gloomy as the present. At least according to the weather forecasters. I think they’re the only ones enjoying this.

Good morning!

Silence.

I woke up at 5:30 yesterday morning. Not because of the Audrometer, who was adorably cuddled up to her big sister June, but because of the silence. And darkness.

Yes, the depths of the country are pitch-black at night, and almost oppressively silent, but I still sport my Marilyn Monroe sleep mask and ear plugs. The ear plugs are to ward off Audrey’s early morning pleas for escape, and the sleep mask is because the satellite internet doodads are located in the sleeping loft (for now; I’m hoping to persuade the long-suffering Rob to relocate them for me) and their weird blue light bothers me when I’m trying to sleep*.

Taking off the sleep mask, I immediately noticed that it was completely unnecessary, because the power was out. My battery-powered clock informed me that it was 5:30, so I went back to sleep for a while. When I got up, it was still dark. I had thoughtfully provided myself with an LED lamp on my bedside table, but I had neglected to observe where the power switch was, so I ended up creeping carefully downstairs in the dark anyway.

I’m pleased to report that I’m still injury-free!

Letting the girls out, I noticed that the top of a cypress tree had relocated to my front porch, yanking the jerry-rigged (Or is it jury-rigged? Discuss. And while you’re at it, is it “Not by a long shot” or “Not by a long chalk”?) electric line with it (see above).

Inside, I discovered that I couldn’t make coffee (fortunately, I’m sufficiently degenerate to drink yesterday’s coffee cold) and also that you need electricity to make water come out of your tap or shower and to flush the toilet. Who knew?

I plugged the heater into the car battery thingie devised by the boys last month, and turned it on, to Henry’s immense relief. She had been huddling against it, looking at me pleadingly as if to ask where the hell the heat was.

As the chill began to lift (though not from my coffee) and the storm continued to batter the house, I reflected on how people always say how great it is to get away from modern conveniences and rediscover nature, etc. I disagree entirely. Not only am I already surrounded by Nature, but my view is that now we’ve emerged from caves, why go back? While finding cellphones and reality TV deplorable, I don’t want to go back to pounding my laundry on a rock and chopping my own wood. I missed the modern conveniences pretty much instantly.

Fortunately for me, the Super Brothers were on hand to rescue me after just a few hours of darkness and cold. Rob and Jonathan appeared with a generator, which they placed under the little deck outside the laundry room, running the power cord under the door:

and then putting a très expensive extension cord/outlet device in the living room, so I could plug in my laptop (oh, joy!), refrigerator, lights, and other necessities:

Then they flew away to rescue other damsels in distress. Or check on Jonathan’s solar panels. I’m not sure which.

The power came back on after several hours, and it’s nice to know that I have everything ready for the next outage. And that I have the best brothers in the whole wide world.

*Basically I’m the same as my father, who grew up with total blackout conditions during WWII and also had to sleep in total darkness. Oddly, I used to be afraid of the dark until a few years ago, when I slept in a tent in my sister’s garden for a month and finally got over it. Being Me, of course I had to go to the opposite extreme.

It wasn’t the Audrometer that woke me up this morning, though at first I thought it was. It turned out to be rain pounding on the roof. Audrey was innocently asleep on my pillows.

It’s still so dark that I have the light on. I hate having lights on during the daytime. It looks so…sordid, somehow. As I look out of the glass doors in the living room at the pouring rain and trees tossing their heads in the wind, I think: a) Thank Rob the doors are all sealed up; and 2) I just know the power is going to go out this week.

I dread the inevitable power outage with all the fear of a dilettante completely lacking in the pioneer spirit. I mean, how long will my computer battery work? Can I live without blogging and, more importantly, how will you all survive being summarily cut off from my words of wisdom? I shudder just thinking about it. I have to admit that the thought of huddling over an LED light and reading in the dark silence is pretty damn unappealing.

On the other hand, I’d have a great excuse not to work.

San Francisco is slated to get eight inches of rain this week, so that means we’ll get more. If I were a betting girl, I’d wager that 128, the only road out of here, is going to flood this week. And I’d further bet that even though the weather forecasters* are calling for endless supplies of rain for the foreseeable future, everyone will still be wringing their hands and bemoaning the drought.

Personally, I love a good drought. Bring it on, I say!

*I have an irrational hatred of their constant winter refrain of “The storm door is open”. i’d like to slam it shut.

There was a thunderstorm last night.

I hate thunderstorms.

Fortunately, we don’t get them very often, and when we do, they don’t have the verve and ferocity of East Coast storms. I still remember the storms we had during the summers in Maine when I was a kid: lightning smashing a tree in half right outside our cottage (conveniently located on a pond, for extra lightning attraction); lightning crackling out of the outlets in the walls; the house shaking with the might of thunder.

I shook right along with it, but my father and brother would count the time between the thunder and lightning, calculating how far away the storm was and when it was (thankfully) going to bother someone else.

Here in my little house surrounded by trees threatening to blow down in the storm and crush roof, car, or Self, it’s impossible to escape the storm. The living room has big sliding glass doors, a window above them, and from the couch I can also see the glass-paned front door and the skylight in the bedroom. In the bedroom, there’s the shaky balcony door, which blows open in the wind, and the afore-mentioned skylight. Since it’s a loft, I can also see the glass doors and living room window, even when I’m in bed. It’s like living in a fishbowl, especially when you’re trying to avoid the sightning of lightning and the rumbling of thunder.

It’s not a completely unreasonable fear. I mean, people do get struck by lightning. My grandmother once told me the story of a relative who was engaged to a man with a crotchety old mother. Apparently, he couldn’t get married until the old lady had shaken off this mortal coil, and she took her time about it. Eventually he was free to marry, though the parties involved were no longer young. But before they could make it to the altar, she was hit by lightning when crossing a field and died an old maid. The horror! I’m not sure if it’s a true story or an Awful Warning meant to keep silly girls from venturing out in thunder storms, but considering that I still remember it after more than 30 years suggests that it made an impression.

The storm seems to passed during the night, and I was happy to wake up and find that the power hadn’t been knocked out. Every time it’s rainy and windy I worry about that. Megan and Rob have had two trees fall in their garden so far this winter, but both of them fell politely away from the house and damage was avoided. For now.

It took me more than ten minutes to get the hard frost off the windshield and car windows this morning. Blasting the defrost didn’t do much, if anything, so I found a piece of wood and used that for a scraper, which worked pretty well. The whole car glittered with frost in the bright winter sunshine.

The Ridge was icy, and there was enough frost on the grass at the sides of the road to look like a light dusting of snow. As I approached town, I thought how strange it is to see palm trees lurking among the pines and redwoods when it’s below freezing. Not to mention people mowing their lawns all bundled up!

There was one angry cat in the back seat. Henrietta knew something was up this morning. She hid in the studio, and I had to pull a horrible trick on her by pretending to feed the cats and then scooping up all four and a half pounds of her and sweeping her into the carrier. She howled, spat, and clawed at the bars like crazy.

She was not amused.

She’s spending most of the day at the vet’s, since they’ll have to sedate her to examine her and do blood tests. I’ve used the time by buying Christmas stocking items, groceries, and 200 feet of electrical wire. Apparently the bears have been feeling the cold too and have been eyeing our bee hive, so my brother is going to get the fence surrounding the bees electrified as soon as possible.

I’m multi-tasking here at the Mendocino Cookie Company, enjoying the free wi fi while I participate in a conference call and wait for Henrietta to be ready. I’m looking forward to learning more about her. Stay tuned!

Woke up this morning to frozen pipes. A tiny trickle of water came out of the tap, so I was eventually able to make coffee, for the good of all concerned.

I also discovered that the Amerigas fairy had come by and filled up my tank unbeknownst to me and despite the fact that I still haven’t paid off the last staggering bill. I’m glad he did, though, because I’ve had to have the heat on all day and all night for the past couple of days, and today is the coldest yet.

When it was a more civilized hour, I called Mark and he said all the pipes on our property are frozen, including the water tank. He observed, “You must wonder where it is you find yourself”, and I have to agree. All the papers say it’s record-breaking cold, and I certainly can’t remember the last time I saw snow on Bay Area hills or below-freezing temperatures.

Mark came over to work on the pipes and clear out the little loft area above the bathroom. Among the items removed were an old futon and a couple of mattresses. Lucky the deer wasted no time in pulling apart the futon filling and nibbling on it, while June (and I) watched in horror. Mark and his family are going to visit relatives in Mexico for a month, so he wants to get as much done as he can before he goes. I hope he sends some warmer temperatures up this way!

While the freeze is on, I’ll leave the taps dripping and try not to think of our state’s perpetual state of drought. I’ll also finally get started on those Christmas cards. ‘Tis the season!

It’s a good thing we enjoyed the sun and warmth of Berkeley, because the weather here in Hooterville’s been more North Pole than Northern California since we got back.

It was 27 fun-filled degrees this morning when I woke up and shivered my way to the heater, where Henry(etta) was firmly ensconced, soaking up every one of the 54 degrees I allow for overnight. I turned it up to 64 and peeked out at the thermometer, which showed a below-freezing temperature in the bright, ironic sunshine. I’m pretty sure there was a light dusting of snow on the hot tub* cover and the wooden platform beside it. My brother said there was a dusting over at his place, and the papers are full of photos of snow on the hills in the Bay Area, such as this one at Mt. Diablo:

It’s supposed to be even colder tonight. At 2:00 in the afternoon, it’s still only 41 degrees. I know those of you who live back East and in other areas where it’s freeze or fry, depending on the time of year, are laughing at me and thinking how pathetic I am, but unless you’ve experienced the stupidity of California building first-hand, you can’t imagine how uncomfortable it is. For some reason, insulation is an unknown concept, so it’s basically like living in a tent.

Even though I’ve visited here many times over the past several years, I never really “got” how cold it was. It was 45 in San Francisco this morning when it was 27 here – a pretty big difference. I honestly think that San Francisco may be the only climate this princess can tolerate. Its entire range of temperature is from say, 40 to 80 at the most. Don’t forget the ocean breezes and fog, the natural air conditioner for the summer.

At least it won’t be unbearably hot here in the summer. Will it?

*The hot tub kind of works. I think. But it works by a combination of electricity, which Mark pays for, and gas, which I pay for, and neither of us want to pay for anything that isn’t strictly necessary. So let’s guess it will remain unused, other than a place for the cats to pounce on each other.