Suzy Says

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.

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.

Henry hangs out

Here’s a first: Henry was more interested in being petted than eating this morning. He came running to greet me as usual, with his gruff yet muted meows, but after I put the food in his dish, he followed me when I went to put the measuring cup back into the food container. I petted him, and he pushed his head against my hand, and when I went to leave, he followed me again. I petted him more, and led him back to his dish, where I petted him until he started eating. I have to say it made me really happy, even though the girls were glaring furiously from the porch at this disgusting PDA.

In other news, it appears that the Mexicans have moved out, taking their incessantly yappy dogs with them. A moving truck appeared on Saturday, and yesterday, they seemed to be packing up the last of their things, including the aforementioned yappers. They actually swept up the poo from the ce-ment back yard, so it must be official. And the quiet was blissful! I hadn’t realized how hard the constant barking was on my nerves until it was gone.

It’s strange having the house next door dark and empty. It reminds me of the eerie stillness following a power outage, the background hum of appliances suddenly extinguished.

They cut every single flower from their garden before they left.

There was a power outage during the transition from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. I’m secretly convinced it was Santa, protesting the total lack of cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer. He did drop off Jessica’s gift on the front porch, though. I guess by the time he gets to Albion, he’s too tired to mess around with chimneys and things like that.

I feared the worst, since I know Albion is low priority for power restoration (which is why my brother has a generator), but it came back on in less than two hours and – thankfully – in time for coffee. After coffee, my sister and I took Schatzi for a muddy walk during a sunny break in the rainy day. Just minutes after we returned, it started raining and hailing and looking a lot like Christmas.

Jessica and her mother arrived sometime after noon in a flurry of hugs and kisses. It’s so great having a rental kid for Christmas: getting to sleep in and getting the wide-eyed wonder. Naturally, Jessica was the exception to the stockings only rule, and it was fun watching her open her gifts, which included no fewer than ten books. She is already reading the “Little House” books, and has written a letter herself to Neil Gaiman – and received a response, handwritten in fountain pen. Look out, world!

After the presents, we all pitched in to make dinner. The boys cut apple wood, put it in the barbecue, and set the ham to smoke with a maple-bourbon glaze for a couple of hours, while my sister made pie from the huckleberries she picked this summer and I made my world-famous cheese biscuits. Oven-roasted vegetables and mashed potatoes rounded out the meal (and us)!

After dinner, my brother read some of Jessica’s new books aloud, and I have to say, he really inherited Dad’s gift for reading stories to an audience. We were all mesmerized as he did all the voices. I think we may have a new Christmas tradition on our hands.

It’s been in the 80s over the past few days, which both the kittens and I find a little on the toasty side. My sister thinks it’s the “last hurrah” before winter sets in, but the forecast says otherwise for now. To be fair, winter is harsher where she and my brother live (colder, with the occasional hard frost, lots more rain, frequent power outages and road closures) than in the Bay Area, so her dread is reasonable. Especially since she heats her house with a wood stove. I can tell you from personal experience how hard it is to keep the home fires burning.

The kittens and I decided to see if there were any breezes to be had on the back porch yesterday evening. Henry noticed our arrival, and strolled over and started clawing at the mat at the foot of the stairs that lead to the screen door of the porch. He has done this before, and it drives June and Audrey bananas. I think he knows it does, and likes pointing out that he gets to roam around wherever he likes, while they’re trapped inside.

He decided to take it a step further and actually walked up the stairs to the screen door. Hissing ensued, and there was a blur of claws and curses until I managed to move the girls from the door. I’m very fond of Henry, but who knows if he has rabies or worse? Also, I could just see the combined strength of the three cats tearing a hole in the door, with wholesale mayhem following.

Fortunately, disaster was averted. Henry sat aggravatingly on the lawn, having a post-fight bath, while the girls watched enviously. Good thing they can’t say what they’re thinking – sometimes.

I don’t know if it’s the dog days or the death days, but my creativity seems to have withered like the pansies in my windowbox during the heatwave. The heatwave is mercifully over, but inside my head looks like one of those bleak landscapes by Salvador Dali (of course, the watches have melted from the heatwave, and my landscape would be littered with martini glasses, lipstick, and a scattering of diamonds, but you get the picture). No movie nights, no reminiscences, no nothing.

However, all this should change this weekend, when I am finally able to attend my dear Kathleen’s Birthday Baseball Extravaganza. For the past two years, Mom was either dying or dead, so I had to send my truly regretful regrets, but this year, I can join a couple dozen of Kathleen’s closest friends and admirers at the Detroit Tigers game on Saturday! I’m also planning to take the Ford Factory Tour, only fitting for a girl whose only car was a Ford.

In construction site news, yesterday the big crane managed to hit an electrical wire, causing a power outage chez moi, and, less importantly, the entire block. Fortunately, I was out for several hours going to the gym and primping (I had my eyebrows threaded for the first time and the results are fab) for the Birthday Baseball Extravaganza. When I got home, the power was back on, and Rita thought I looked mahvelous. She should know.

Rita’s charm seems to be off the charts these days. Maybe it’s the grooming, maybe it’s just her native loveliness, but when I was walking her the other evening, an older gentleman came out of his house as we passed to pet her and fuss over her. When the construction workers convene in the morning, they fuss over her, too, and sometimes give her part of their lunches. She’s the Queen of the ‘Hood. Guess that makes me her Lady in Waiting*.

*Especially when she’s sniffing around in the bushes so long that I’m afraid she’s found a body.

My sister’s little house in the pygmy woods (the soil is too acidic for the redwoods to reach their usual majestic heights, so it’s known as pygmy forest, though pygmy is relative) is far too pygmy itself to accommodate the entire clan. It?s overpopulated as it is, with Megan and her husband; Mom’s hospital bed in the living room, and my other sister Beth sleeping on the couch.

So I’ve been sleeping in a tent in Megan’s garden, like Claudia Salinger in Party of Five, only outside. Sleeping in the tent has made me understand more about silence and darkness. It’s not just the absence of noise and light, but the presence of the silence and the darkness. The silence is so intense you can feel it – it almost presses against the city dweller’s ears, as strong a contrast to the usual city noises as a sudden power outage.

But after a while, you realize that the silence itself is made of many components. The wind in the trees, which almost sounds like the ocean. Distant crickets. Grass rustling. An animal walking through the woods: a cat? A raccoon? A skunk? Maybe even a deer? The mylar ribbons on the flower beds (supposed to deter marauding birds) softly rattling as they turn in the wind. You know how they say, you could hear a pin drop? You can hear a pine needle fall, and you do.

The darkness is as shocking to a city girl’s eyes as the silence is to her ears. There’s no ambient light from a nearby city or town, and no streetlights. So if I’m going to be out at night, I need a flashlight to light the way immediately ahead of me. I am returned to my childhood, when it seemed that any sort of monster or imaginary creature could be hiding in the woods, ready to leap out at me. The shadows in the flashlight’s beam, even my own, grow and move alarmingly and in a very monster-like manner.

But if I look up and away from what’s right in front of me, I see something beautiful: countless silvery stars against the blackness of the sky. Light in darkness. Hope.