Suzy Says

Well, this was the Mondayest Monday ever – the day after the dreaded time change. You know, the one where they steal an hour of our weekend and then expect us to get up extra early the next day, merrily adding insult to injury. You know a week that starts with a full (super) moon right after the hour theft and ends with Friday the 13th is going to be a weird one. There was also an earthquake on Sunday night, a long, slow one that was a little alarming, but didn’t damage anything.

Oddly enough, I felt just fine the morning after, despite being a robbery victim. I actually got up 15 minutes before the alarm went off, just as I usually do. Go figure. I was trying not to think about the purloined time, much like I used to do when I went to London all the time. I just adapted to the time zone I was in and didn’t think about how it was midnight or yesterday or whatever back in San Francisco.

Whatever it was, it didn’t really bother me this year.

Back in the olden times, on Saturday, I went over to the property for a Girl Night™ with Megan and Lu. I had a peek in the greenhouse and the garden. Here’s how it looked:

The peach trees were in bloom. So were the plum trees:

The plum trees are very popular with the bees. The trees just hum with them.

Inside the greenhouse, things are rocking and rolling. There’s lettuce, bok choy, and green onions*. Also Megan’s Meyer lemon tree:

Outside, the strawberry plants are beginning to leaf out and there are still some hardy herbs, like rosemary and thyme. Most of the garden is still asleep, but spring has definitely arrived.

When Rob drove me home, the moon was so bright that I didn’t need my flashlight. It was amazing to see it beaming over the ocean.

*These always make me think of my mother’s father, who grew them and loved them. Sometimes he’d walk back to the house humming and eating a green onion, somehow looking like a little farm boy instead of a grown man.

A YEAR AGO: If there’s anything more fun than pizza in the present and gowns from the past, I don’t know what it is!

FIVE YEARS AGO: We all got plunged into darkness again. But my brother also plunged into the icy river. For a good cause.

TEN YEARS AGO: Winter was making a comeback.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: It may have been winter everywhere else, but it was spring training in Florida.

It was an unromantic and unenjoyable Valentine’s Day at Chez Suzy.

Once again, my sinks were full of sewage (but empty of dishes). Once again my landlord Danielle came to the rescue, helping to clean up and, perhaps more importantly, calling the septic surgeon and pleading with him to come and operate on the wayward septic system.

It’s pretty hard to say no to Danielle, and the septic wizard was no exception to this rule. It’s reassuring to know there are some things in this crazy world that a girl can count on. Whatever the septic wizard did, it fixed the situation, and he apparently needs to come back and do something to clear the roots out for good. With my limited understanding of this subject, it sounds like the issue is partly that my house is far away from the septic tank and leach field, located near Danielle’s house, and partly that the redwood trees, while beautiful and majestic, have serious roots which are seriously encroaching on the pipe leading from my house to the septic tank. So the experts will have to ream it out somehow. It sounds both icky and expensive. What’s not to hate? I’m just happy I can flush the toilet again.

It’s the little things in life.

While cleaning up the aftermath, the power went out, despite the clear skies and complete lack of wind or anything else that usually leads to power outages. It was either someone driving into a pole, which seemed unlikely, given how far down the road I live and how lightly populated it is at this point (at least by humans), or inept tree fellers employed by our frenemies at PG&E, which seemed more likely. In an attempt to restore their popularity after inflicting the days-long power outage on us, they are starting to cut back trees and do the work they should have done years ago. And in order to do this, they have been hiring people who are not as skilled as they should be.

I discovered that 30 people were affected by the outage, which made me feel really special. Later I learned the pole in question was just outside my gate. Fortunately, heat and light were restored before darkness fell, and it was high time for some sparkling pink wine. Here’s to working plumbing and electricity!

A YEAR AGO: The seemingly endless loop of being sick and the power going out.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Farewell to the jobette.

TEN YERAS AGO: The many joys of the Citrus Fair with Megan, Lu, and Jessica. Jessica was so little! And I miss her so much.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Some Florida lessons.

I got to work one morning to find a box on my desk.

I knew I hadn’t left it there, and you will probably not be surprised to learn that I like to leave my desk tidy to make the reentry to work as pleasant as possible, just like I always made sure to come home to a clean house back in the long ago days when I used to travel*.

Upon investigation, I discovered that it was an iPhone 7, with a sparkly pink case and a screen protector. Megan got it for me refurbished from Amazon! I was both surprised and touched.

I knew I needed a new phone. I had a 5S, which is obsolete by technology standards. The battery did not hold a charge, and the phone would die suddenly and then when I plugged it back in again it would be at 43% or something, never a good sign.

I was also unable to text from the house most of the time, since there is no cell reception and my phone was too old to use wifi for texting. Texts would sometimes go if I stood right by the bedroom window, but not always and not reliably. Mostly I would get a little red “Undeliverable” message.

After work that day, I took the new phone and the old one to the Verizon store (amazingly, there actually is one in the Big Town), where they tried not to laugh at the age of the old one. They charged me $21.76 to transfer my data from old to new. When I got home, I discovered that my apps, texts, and contacts had not been transferred. I went back the next day after work, but failed to bring old phone with me, so a third visit was required.

It was a different person on each visit, and on this one, they told me that my old phone was too old to transfer the apps to the new one and that I would have to download them individually from the cloud. I was more saddened than I should have been to discover that this reset my game scores to 0. At least they were able to recover the other information, though it took an hour and a half to do so. I guess the lesson here is to replace the phone before it becomes completely obsolete.

*It appears to be four years since I was in San Francisco! I am not sure when the last time was that I left the County. I’m pretty sure it’s been a while.

A YEAR AGO: Thinking about the past and how it still lives on.

FIVE YEARS AGO: It seems to be a nostalgic time of year. I’m sorry to tell you that our childhood home has been destroyed and replaced by a monstrosity, and also that most of the land has been sold off in parcels. You really can’t go home again.

TEN YEARS AGO: The beautiful June Bug (Audrey’s sister) was taking a nap. She would disappear forever just four months later. I will always miss her.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: My crazy road trip to Florida.

As soon as the power came back on, I ran around hiding all the signs that it was ever out, madly washing dishes and putting away the lanterns. More than a week after the whole thing ended, I am still recovering from it emotionally. It’s not at all like losing power because of a storm, which is nature and an expected part of each winter. Having it wrested away from you for an extended period of time because of greed and negligence and having absolutely no recourse is not. And it’s super upsetting.

So it was in a state of emotional fragility that I woke up last Saturday morning and went downstairs to make coffee only to find both of the kitchen sinks full of raw sewage. Yes, the power was back on, but the septic system was on strike.

I let my landlord Danielle know, and while I was waiting for her arrival, discovered that the seepage was also in the closet where the washer and dryer are. I pulled everything out of there, and Danielle arrived with cloths to sop up the closet, along with a very long snake and an industrial Shop Vac to deal with the septic situation. Her son Alex, who lives in the house next to me, joined her on this mucky and unpleasant operation. They were both remarkably cheerful about it.

It took a while to deal with it, and Danielle told me that the issue is that the septic was put in many years ago, and now the redwood roots are beginning to encroach on it. Eventually it will need an overhaul, but hopefully not in the immediate future.

Once everything was done, Danielle scattered a lot of wood ash outside and I started bleaching and cleaning inside. I was very thankful that there were no dishes in or even near the sink. Everything was thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed. By that time, I was both hungry and disinclined to cook anything, so I jumped in the car and headed for Queenie’s, where I had a wonderful grilled Reuben sandwich on rye bread made just for Queenie’s. It was everything a Reuben should be.

The clocks went back an hour that night, just adding to the weekend’s weirdness. And making my sister, who had the bad luck to be working that night, have to work an extra hour.

A YEAR AGO: The state was burning up. It was scary.

FIVE YEARS AGO: The horror of looking for a job.

TEN YEARS AGO: My deer neighbor.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Viva Las Vegas!

Hi! I’m back! You may have heard about a little something they’re calling the Public Safety Power Shut Off (PSPS), which was inflicted on the unsuspecting residents of our huge, underpopulated and underfunded County by Their Satanic Majesties, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

Now that you’re up on your California-related acronyms, let’s talk power outage, or outrage, as the local message boards quite appropriately call it.

Out of the literally clear blue sky, PG&E decided that they would cut off the power to millions of people with very little notice or time to prepare. Nor did they deign to tell people which counties or cities would be affected. They did not update their online maps or website (which crashed anyway), or realize that having a website be your prime source of alleged information when there is no power or internet is ridiculous.

Also ridiculous is my landlord receiving a call THREE DAYS after the power went out telling her that there “might” be an outage.

We had no idea how long it would last as it dragged on day after dark, cold day. I had no heat – and the temperature was below freezing on some of the days – and no light on these short days. I was so tired of the cold and dark. I went over to the family estate to shower, recharge my laptop and phone, and use the internet in a vain attempt to find out if or when the outage would ever end. My siblings are wise enough to live off the grid and rely on sun power and their own ingenuity.

Supposedly, the power was shut off because of high winds creating fire risk, but there wasn’t a breath of wind on the Coast and we were nowhere near the places that did have high winds. So there was no reason to do this to us. And the fires that did occur were once again caused by PG&E, just like the ones last year and the year before. They chose to give their shareholders $4.5 billion (yes, that’s “billion”, with a “b”) instead of maintaining equipment, cutting back brush, and burying power lines as they were supposed to do.

Basically, they chose to spend money on executive salaries and bonuses instead of maintaining their equipment and keeping the public safe. They cost the homes and lives of people who lost everything in the fires PG&E caused. Again. They cost us on the Coast thousands of dollars in lost wages, food that rotted in refrigerators, businesses that didn’t have a generator and couldn’t stay open. My cell phone doesn’t work at my house and the landline didn’t work as it usually does in a power outage, so I had no way to communicate with the outside world. If I needed to call 911, I was out of luck.

One of the therapists at the clinic where I work told me that knowledge being withheld and the knowledge that information is being withheld is very traumatic for human beings. And I can honestly say that it is. I was relieved to hear that it wasn’t just me who was traumatized by the ordeal of five days without power.

I still can’t believe it happened. And I think we are all still recovering from it in many ways. Something has to change.

A YEAR AGO: There was power. And family dinner.

FIVE YEARS AGO: There was power. And the Giants were world champions!

TEN YEARS AGO: There was power. Rob Suzy proofed the house after I fell off the sleeping loft. Thank you, Rob!

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: The power was on. And I was a bad hostess.

It might surprise you that a girl who is as much of a sparkly princess as I am doesn’t live in a Jayne Mansfield style glory of pink and glitter. My décor is actually quite neutral. I mentioned to my long-time friend A, whose hobbies include interior design and restaurant reviewing, that the cats* were taking their toll on the beige linen upholstery on the living room chair, and she suggested that I switch out both the couch and the chair for blush velvet ones. She says blush velvet can read as neutral with the right accessories and would provide a welcome note of luxe in my country abode. Also that cats do not enjoy clawing velvet.

A did a lot of research on couches and chairs, and we narrowed down her selection to the dream couch and chair, but they will have to remain a dream for the moment, since I recently made a major investment in car repairs and have no budget for furniture or other frivolities at the moment.

So while I wait for my ever-tenuous finances to recover – if they do – I have been adding new cushions to the couch, which will be compatible with pink velvet if it ever occurs. A gave me the beautiful vintage hand-made suzani which is draped over the back of the couch, and also the hand-embroidered turquoise cushion on the left. I added the white, purple and pink embroidered cushion on the right. Allergy sufferers, beware: all the pillows in my house are feather.

My plan was to replace the dark, beaded pillows on the ends. I still like them, but they don’t work so well with the new color scheme. I’m planning to see if Megan wants them, since she has no couch cushions and a nice, dark leather couch.

I consulted with A and we chose a pretty cushion on line, thinking that if I liked it enough, I’d get another one to match it. I ordered it two weeks ago and it has yet to arrive. The tracking number said it had arrived last Monday. I checked my post office box on Tuesday on my way to work. I picked up a box, which upon opening, revealed itself to be full of little bottles**, which I had not ordered. A look at the mailing label revealed that it was addressed to my brother, who has a PO box he shares with our sister. Megan checked their PO box in case my package was delivered there instead. Nope.

I checked with the shipper, who told me to wait a couple of days in case it turned up. I did and it didn’t. I contacted them again and they traced the package. Apparently, it was delivered to my old street address. Note that this does not mean it went to my old house. Deliveries to the old address went to a sort of decaying shed at the front of the property. Sometimes, they went to the front door of the rarely occupied front house. I am guessing this is what happened on this occasion. Fed Ex told me that the driver went to see what happened to the package and whoever is currently living in the front house kept screaming at him that she was not me and he should get out of there, which he eventually did. I’m guessing the screamer kept the cushion.

Fed Ex said it was their fault for not verifying my address. I pointed out that the shipper should not have allowed me to enter a PO box address if they were planning to ship by Fed Ex. Fed Ex also said that I might be surprised by the amount of fraud that goes on around missing packages. She gave an example of someone who said she never received her treadmill. When Fed Ex said they would have to send the sheriff around to investigate, she “found” it in her garage.

Anyway, it’s been a lot of fuss for a $20 cushion and I hope I love it if/when it ever gets here.

*To be fair, none of them goes outside anymore. But even when they did, they tended to claw indoor items or the house itself rather than the giant outdoor scratching posts, which you and I refer to as “trees” or “the woods”.

**For home-made hot sauce, made from the peppers they grew this summer.

A YEAR AGO: A wonderful sleepover with the wonderful Jessica!

FIVE YEARS AGO: A delightful evening with Megan and Lu.

TEN YEARS AGO: Getting ready to leave Oakhampton. And not a moment too soon.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: A few updates.

Spraying the garbage cans with ammonia and water seems to have deterred Mr. (or Ms.) Bear, at least so far. Either I am no longer on the regular buffet route, or he or she has started hibernating, if in fact they do hibernate here. I have no idea if they do or what causes it if so, since we don’t get snow* and don’t even get a dramatic enough temperature change to change the leaves in most cases. Maybe it is daylight (or lack of it), though. I have had a few days where it’s been dark when I went to work and dark when I went home. Winter’s here!

I am pleased to report that I managed to avoid being “de-energized”, as our frenemies at PG&E call it. The lights stayed on at work and at home, and the threat of being powerless made me revisit my power outage capabilities at home, making sure I have water and lanterns. I was concerned that I would not be able to use my stove, since it uses electricity to ignite, but a friend told me that I could use a match. He suggested a long one, I will try it out before it becomes a total necessity. At least, that’s my intention. Hopefully the threat of not being able to have coffee or cook will motivate me to actually do it.

It also made me fill up my car sooner than my designated day of Friday, even though the gas tank was close to half full. It was soon overflowing. I usually set the pump to fill and then go and put my wallet away in the car, and this time, when I turned around, gas was spurting out of the side of my car at an alarming rate. I hastily yanked out the spout and replaced it, trying to avoid dousing myself and walking in the spilled gas any more than was strictly necessary.

I went and told the gas station cashier and she put a red “out of order” sleeve on the spout and said she’d clean up the spilled gas. I washed off the side of the car and the bottoms of my shoes with the windshield wiper squeegee thoughtfully provided, but I was sure my car smelled like gas and wondered if I had gotten it on my clothes, too. I’m pretty sure some of the $41 I spent on gas was for spillage, not Wednesday.

After work, I went to pick up many barbecued pork dinners at the high school. It was a fundraiser for the school’s agriculture program, and young men don’t cook dinner for me as often as I’d like. I picked up dinner for myself, my sister, and my boss and her husband, retracing my steps to deliver the dinners to the ER to await my sister’s arrival and to my boss to take home if/when she ever left work that evening. On the way home, I wondered if my car smelled more like barbecue or gasoline.

*What, never? No, never! What, Never? Hardly ever!

A YEAR AGO: Pearls and cocktails. What could be Suzier than that?

FIVE YEARS AGO: Sick and tired.

TEN YEARS AGO: Polished.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Eeek! A mouse!

The day of my crowning arrived appropriately gloomily. As prescribed, I had taken the Valium the night before, though I failed to sleep like a baby as promised, unless babies wake up every two hours worrying about doom. Maybe they do and that’s what fussing is all about.

I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that the Valium I took for the actual procedure just made me feel messed up while leaving the anxiety in full control. So I was nervous in my body and stoned in my head, which is not an enjoyable combo platter, at least not for this girl. It somewhat saddens me that drugs are not fun for me. I hated how the Vicodin made me feel when I had the toothache from hell (and indeed, Advil was much more effective at handling the agony), and the same goes for the non-pain killing pain killers I took after falling off the sleeping loft onto the unsuspecting floor below. I have never enjoyed Mendocino’s most famous product. It just makes me paranoid. Give me a glass or three of wine any day or a cocktail at my favorite seaside bar. I’m old school like that.

Fortunately for Self and the public at large, I walked to the dentist’s office just a couple of blocks away. The lengthy appointment was as delightful as I expected. It seemed that they took about a thousand goopy and gag-inducing impressions (Why? Why? I was in no position to ask), and of course there was the fun of smelling burning bone as they sawed away at my root canaled tooth.

Theoretically, since the root or whatever had been removed, I wasn’t supposed to feel anything, but I did feel the post installation and whatever crap they were doing inside the tooth before closing it up for what is hopefully posterity. I have come to the sad conclusion that I can never be completely numbed and that going to the dentist is always going to be horrible, especially since the daytime Valium does not seem to help.

And because reality bites, and usually bites me in the wallet, I do owe the old dentist $740 and I will probably owe the new dentist about the same for the unpleasantness listed above. Once again I am mystified by how I can (or will somehow have to) come up with $1,400 in dental fees but not, say, to go to Hawaii. Would anyone like to buy a soul? Only slightly shopworn?

As they merrily sawed and gooped and drilled away at me, the dentist and his assistant compared the vacations they had just returned from in Cozumel and Oahu respectively. Not for the first time, I have the feeling I’m in the wrong line of work.

A YEAR AGO: The end of the mattress fiasco.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A day at the beach.

TEN YEARS AGO: A veritable mountain of boxes.

The dreaded spring time change hit me with a vengeance this year. Surveying my calendar, I realized that the day after Black Monday included a 12 hour work day and a dental appointment. Why not pack all the bad stuff into one day?

The appointment was with a new dentist. My former dentist retired rather suddenly, sending me a $740 bill as a farewell gift. It was not itemized, and since I hadn’t been there since September or October, I was mystified as well as horrified. I called and asked for an itemization, which I received, and for my records to be sent to the new dentist, which they were not. They only sent my most recent x-rays.

The giant bill included some things that were rejected by the insurance company, and my boss is going to try to get them to see reason. Stay tuned…

In the meantime, I went to meet the new dentist, filled with fear that he’d find something (or somethings) wrong and worried about the tooth that was so expensively and wretchedly root canaled in the fall. Former Dentist had put a temporary filling on it which is supposed to last a year. New Dentist said he normally does a permanent cap within six weeks of a root canal. Fortunately, everything looks OK in there and I am scheduled to have the permanent cap done in early April. Unfortunately, it is scheduled to take an hour and a half, just like the root canal, so I’m pre=worrying, despite a prescription for Valium to soften the blow. I should get another one to go with the bill.

I also had a library meeting on Friday, so it was a long and busy week for a girl who lost an hour of beauty sleep the night before it all started. I was under the impression that Californians had voted to stop the madness of daylight saving time in the last election, but apparently we only voted that someone could introduce the necessary legislation that could then be ratified by Congress or whoever runs these things, which really would stop it. I don’t know which one they would decide on as the permanent time, but I just wish they’d pick one and go with it.

A YEAR AGO: The beginning of the mattress débâcle. That lesson is learned. Still love the comforter set.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Oh, that Clyde! So naughty, and yet so cute!

TEN YEARS AGO: Some valuable lessons learned from film noir. Don’t pick up a crazed killer. Or let one give you a ride.

Here it comes!

I am glad to say that the power came back on Friday night, after three powerless days. It was nice to have light, not see my breath in the living room, and be able to flush the toilet. I was planning to go home and watch an old movie with a couple of adult beverages to celebrate the long-awaited return of civilization to my humble abode, but I ended up going to bed after one drink and not even messaging a distant friend as I had intended. Have I lost the will to drink?

I’m sorry to report that the power went out yet again on Saturday night, plunging me once more into darkness and despair. I called my friends at PG&E to report it and was saddened to hear that their recording still related to the outage which ended on Saturday. So I couldn’t report the new one. I hung up, hoping that one of my neighbors would eventually be able to report it. It appeared that someone did, since it came back on about six hours later.

For some reason, I have been finding all these outages hard to take. Maybe my nerves are overtaxed with the horror of the annual fundraiser. I am in the throes of it right now, along with my regularly scheduled job and all the irregularities that go along with that. I keep telling myself, it’s all over on Saturday and I can make it if I take it day by day.

We are back to sunny days and I hope the power outage chances are minimal, at least for now.

Update: Well, that didn’t last long. Power out AGAIN Monday morning at 8 am. Third one in a week. On a sunny, clear, windless day.

Another Update: Power is back on. We’ll see how long it lasts this time. Is it really even worth setting all the clocks?

When I was a kid, my Dad used to jokingly say, “When things were bad, they told me, ‘Cheer up! Things could get worse!’ So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!” Well, I never did cheer up from the effects of 2017, but 2018 was even worse. I really can’t see it end soon enough.

Besides the horrors nationally and globally, Erica’s mother died suddenly and horribly just days before the equally sudden and unexpected death of the best man at my long-ago wedding. The effects of these losses continue to echo, most notably with Erica and Jessica fleeing not just the county, but the country. There was no Junapalooza this year and there never may be again without the assistance and inimitable presence of my near birthday twin and aesthetic soulmate.

Megan and Rob moved away, too, leaving me the last one standing at the property our brother first moved to 25 years ago. They lived in that little house for 20 years – the only house they ever lived in, in fact. Before that, they lived on a boat at Pier 39, and before that, Megan lived in an apartment with me. Mom spent the last few years of her life in that house, and Dad visited us there, including the Thanksgiving when he had a stroke on the driveway. And don’t forget my Christmas concussion in Megan’s living room! There are a lot of memories in that tiny place. Megan and Rob live just down the road now, but I miss having them here. Another ending.

Add in some expensive and agonizing dental hell and seemingly endless problems and drama on the property where I live, and you have the kind of year where a girl who loves Christmas doesn’t have any decorations up and in fact ignored the whole thing. I didn’t send any cards out this year, so if you didn’t get one from me, it’s not you, it’s me.

It’s probably not surprising in this underperforming year that I read only 102 books versus last year’s 114, and we have only received a paltry 10 inches of rain so far this season.

On the bright side (though not as far as Audrey is concerned), I adopted a little Siamese cat named Dodge, and he’s still alive so far, defying the odds.

Here’s to a less crappy New Year. I don’t think I can take it if I’m back here a year from now, telling you how 2018 looks like the good times.

January: I still had the plague from the old year. Not a good way to start the new one. When is a potato bucket not a potato bucket? When it’s a cat latrine, of course. Watching the surfers and ballerinas in Point Arena. The beauty of the lunar eclipse – and a perfect cocktail or two.

February: Both the weather and the mail were delightfully surprising. It was the Mondayest of Mondays and the smallest of small town days. I note that Wednesday’s engine light is still on, a full year later. A power outage at work, but not at home. Thankfully.

March: Rob’s amazing ceramic art. The most unpleasant time change of the year, and a delightful visit to Angelika’s little salon in the big woods. The beginning of the dreaded mattress saga. Not one of my finer decision-making moments. Celebrating Dad’s birthday. Stormy weather and the continuing mattress saga. Mark repaired some problems at my house. I note that he mentioned then that he was planning to move, and he eventually did.

April: Spring arrived, along with more silliness on my part than usual. Spring fever? A huge storm dumped a bunch of rain on us. Amazingly, the power stayed on. The horror of the mattress saga finally ended. Enjoying some local history and scandal. My blog turned 17 and Jessica turned 15.

May: Considering joining the library Board. A delightful dinner, a creepy play, and the debut of Lu and Rik’s first grandchild. A road trip to Willits to buy plants for the garden, and Star’s 10 birthday! Two sudden and unspeakably tragic deaths in one week.

June: A memorial service right before Erica’s and my birthdays inspired us to skip the celebrations. There was no Junapalooza either. I had taken time off for my birthday and was rewarded by getting the flu again less than six months after having it. The welcome discovery of wood-fired pizza in the Village. Despite everything, I’m grateful for the love and support around me.

July: My DNA test results. The beauty of the annual quilt show. A delightful outing to Point Arena, replete with delicacies from Franny’s and a play streamed from London. Both my back and my heart ached with the news of my former mother-in-law’s death. Rest in peace, dear Marj. The breathtaking Flynn Creek Circus and the terrifying wildfires.

August: Megan and Rob get ready to move from their home of 20 years onto the family estate. Giving away the things that wouldn’t fit in their new place. The seventeenth anniversary of Dad’s untimely and unnecessary death. I will never stop loving or missing him. The arrival of little Dodge, the beautiful little Siamese cat.

September: Megan and Rob were all moved in to their new place, and Dodge was finding his place in his new family. The beginning of Dental Hell, leading to my first (and hopefully last) root canal. The delights of the Fair.

October: The case of the disappearing landlord. Catching you up on some details. A trip to the hospital for my string of pearls. The last sleepover with Jessica. A lovely lunch and an enchanting garden.

November: The annual cider pressing. Swamped in smoke from distant, late season wildfires. In November! More updates about various things around the Manor. Hint: Not many of them are good. Remembering my grandfathers on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Sometimes I feel like John and I are the only people in California who wear poppies for Remembrance Day.

December: A memorable version of King Lear with the amazing Sir Ian McKellen. The great escape. The always delightful festival of lights. A lovely evening, including a live (and lively) 1940s style radio play. The Christmas that wasn’t.

A YEAR AGO: Looking back at another bad year.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Lots of trips to San Francisco, a shiny new divorce, a new car, and the arrival of Stella, among other good things.

TEN YEARS AGO: Adjusting to life in Oaktown.

Fires:

The Camp fire, located 200 miles away, is only 35% contained. The Woolsey fire is doing a little better at around 45%. It still amazes me that we are having such huge fires so late in the season. Maybe we will start having fires year round instead of a fire season. How scary is that? I am surprised that a fire 200 miles away made the air so unbreathable while smoke from fires that were only 50 miles away didn’t come anywhere near us. I am also perturbed by the fire raging all the way to the ocean in Malibu. I always thought that we were safer here on the coast due to topography and proximity to water, but apparently I was wrong about that, as I am about so many things.

H2OhNo:

Speaking of water, we do have it, at least for now. I still don’t understand what the problem is. It may have something to do with the underground pump or the electricity or something else that is beyond my limited means of understanding. My fear is that it is also beyond the people who are dealing with it, and that they don’t know enough to know they don’t know enough. I am pretty sure we will have to call out the cavalry in the form of Rob, even though they keep saying they don’t need his help. The fact that Rob lived on the property for 20 years and used to maintain the well along with my brother suggests otherwise, as does Rob’s general mechanical ability. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m keeping my buckets loaded and my fingers crossed.

Kitties:

Audrey has been scarce lately. She no longer asks to go out in the morning, and most days I don’t even see her before I go to work to make money for cat food and litter. She has a mystery spot somewhere. She does still sit on her throne (aka the armoire) sometimes so she can look down on everyone both literally and figuratively. She still hates Dodge and is not shy about letting him know this. Dodge is unconcerned by her disdain. He just looks at her when she growls at him, and maybe this infuriates her even more. Clyde on the other hand has been completely won over by Dodge. They play together and give each other baths. Clyde even shares his quilt with Dodge:

And they often sleep together. Dodge is coming out of his shell and is spending more time downstairs with the rest of the family instead of hanging out on the bed, where he could be comfortable but also have a vantage point to keep an eye out for possible enemies. He slept a lot when I first got him. I imagine living on the streets was very stressful. He was terribly thin and missing a lot of fur when I first adopted him, but now his fur is plush and he has filled out. I think he’s beginning to feel safe and comfortable. Both boys are staying in all the time now, and I’m not sure if that will ever change. It’s nice not to worry about them. Audrey, as the undisputed winner of Survivor: Hooterville, still has outside privileges, but she doesn’t use them all that much.

Holidays:

Basically, they are not happening. The pre-conversion Grinch would be proud. We are having Thanksgiving at Rio’s this year. I have to admit I am rather disappointed that we will not have one last Thanksgiving with Erica and Jessica at my house. They will be leaving the day after Thanksgiving and they will probably never be back for Thanksgiving ever again. They may be able to come for Christmas next year, but who knows? It’s a long way from Nanaimo to darkest Hooterville.

On the other hand, Thanksgiving is next week and I have not had to plan, shop, cook, or clean. Nor will my house be a FEMA worthy disaster on Black Friday, so score.

Due to my siblings’ work schedules and the depressing lack of Erica and Jessica, Christmas has effectively been cancelled. I am not sending out cards or putting up the tree or decorations. This may make Twelfth Night much less depressing. Or it might just maintain the current level of depressingness. As my one concession to the holidays, I have set out the two amaryllis plants from last year, and will be interested to see if once again one is the overachiever and one is the underachiever.

A YEAR AGO: Unwilling to get ready for winter.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Sigh.

TEN YEARS AGO: Libraries past and present. Tomorrow I’m heading to a library Board meeting.

When we last saw our heroine, the right side of her formerly lovely face was swollen up like the Great Pumpkin. She figured she should give the antibiotics time to work, and the swelling would go away. As so often happens, she was wrong about this, because the swelling mutated overnight and started creeping under her lip.

Of course, it was a Friday, and rather than the prospect of the weekend being a happy one, it was a frightening abyss of no available dental services other than the dreaded and expensive ER. Dr. Megan nagged her resistant sister into going to the walk-in clinic at the clinic where she works. The doctor examined her with that fascinated look on his face that doctors get when something is really horrible*, and prescribed another antibiotic to join the first one. This is not the kind of cocktail our heroine enjoys. He left the room with the cheery news that the itchy indignity of a yeast infection would almost certainly ensue**.

Hoping that the pharmacy staff didn’t suspect her of having a particularly resistant STD, our heroine picked up the second antibiotic. The pharmacist suggested applying ibuprophen instead of ineffective opiates to attempt to dull the pain, and this suggestion was actually helpful in dealing with the astronomical pain, though taking 2 antibiotics and 4 ibuprophen every 6 hours is suboptimal and not without its unpleasant side effects.

On Thursday, the dreaded endodontist appointment rolled around, the fifth dental appointment in two weeks, a personal best (or worst). It was 96 degrees in the County seat, versus 63 at the coast. The endodontist’s office was quite fancy, and staffed by girls with giant false eyelashes***. Sadly for our heroine, the Valium she had taken did nothing to allay her quite reasonable fears. It was hard not to cry as the endodontist spoke cheerfully about opening up the tooth. Or the fact that the procedure would take about an hour or more.

Despite the application of nitrous oxide, our heroine remained inconsolable as the operation proceeded, with its alarming noises, smells, and the sight of smoke rising before her horrified eyes****. That horror, however, was nothing compared to the bill. The Eyelashed One expected nearly $700 to be paid immediately. She expressed surprise that no one had informed our hapless heroine of this term and condition.

The solution was to get Care Credit. The charges would go on that account and have to be paid off within a designated number of months in order to avoid the 30% interest that would ensue. Other unwelcome news was that a crown was required to cover the root canaled tooth, and I seem to remember from the last time that this was in the Beverly Hills neighborhood of $900. Oh, and this is WITH dental insurance. Though mathiness is not our heroine’s strong suit, this means that she has to come up with around $1,500 while spending half of her monthly pittance on rent. It’s hard to see how this is economically feasible. It is not surprising that the long withheld tears were finally indulged in once the sanctuary of the car was reached.

There are still at least two dental appointments to come, so it’s not over yet.

*I will never forget visiting my ex-boyfriend, who was hospitalized for a raging case of meningitis, and going up in the elevator with two doctors. One said to the other, “You have to check out that meningitis case. All the classic symptoms! You gotta see it before he dies.” He didn’t die, but it was close.

****When I mentioned this to Megan, she said, “Yeah…I didn’t want to tell you about that.”

A YEAR AGO: At the County Fair with our beloved Ben.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A triumphant Fair for Erica.

TEN YEARS AGO: The thrill of the sheepdog trials at the County Fair.

Darkness is creeping back again. If it weren’t so foggy in the mornings this week, I would have put the high beams on. I am always glad to see the fog, though this summer, it hasn’t been as cool as I would like even when it is foggy. I can’t remember the last time I slept without the fans on. It’s not that it is exceptionally hot, just that it hasn’t been as cool as usual for the coast and never gets really cold at night the way it used to. Maybe it’s an anomaly and maybe it’s the new normal. Did you ever notice that anytime it’s a “new normal” it’s never good?

Hopefully this Fogust will not give way to a hellacious heat wave the way it did last year.

It’s been a long and dreary week for our heroine. It kicked off with a dental appointment, which is never a good way to start the week. No cavities this time, but unenjoyable nonetheless, especially since they insist on making an appointment for six months later before you leave, so you don’t even get to enjoy what Gilbert and Sullivan called “the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.” It’s already hanging over you even though it’s next year, and you can’t really feel like you’ve checked it off your ever-expanding to do list.

Dental duty was followed by two long days. One had 4 hours of meetings in its 12 hours, and the other had setting up for and attending a work-related party/reception in its mere 10 hours. I’m not sure which of these was worse, but I do know when I got in the car 11 hours after I had gotten out of it, it all seemed a little too familiar.

Add in looking after my boss with some health issues and a Board meeting at the library and you have a week you are glad to see end.

Despite spending much of my working life in finance, math and I are not close friends. And you will not be surprised to hear that logic and I are but distant acquaintances. However, no matter how slow on the uptake I may be and the fact that I still don’t know all my times tables (and at this point, I think it’s safe to say I never will), it has become abundantly clear to me that:

Let’s review, shall we?

The last time I took time off and had the temerity to venture over the county line, I got the flu from hell which took forever to recover from.

The time before that, it was the Worst Long Weekend Ever, with day after day of blistering temperatures, inside and out, after a summer of working six days a week.

This time, I took two days off in honor of my birthday and ended up with the flu. At least it’s not as bad as last time, but come on! That was a mere six months ago.

I felt so horrible I couldn’t sleep, and texted with Megan, who is up and on duty at 2 am. She stopped by on her way home from work with Pringles, ginger ale, Sudafed, and Afrin. I spent the day on the couch and hopefully tomorrow will be back at work. I wish I didn’t feel so guilty about missing work and letting my boss down. Maybe it really is three strikes and you’re out, and next time I take time off it will actually be fun.

It was a long and nervewracking drive to work this morning in the stormy darkness (thank you, Daylight Savings Time!). The rain was sluicing down and it was super windy, so the roads were littered with branches and the Ridge was semi flooded with its deep ditches overflowing across the road. I pulled over at the firehouse, about three miles from my house, since I could barely see the road and it was like driving through a waterfall. I waited until it slowed down enough to see the road, and then went slowly on my way. There was a big slide at Dark Gulch, with rocks strewn all over the road. It’s more like winter three days into “spring” than it was in actual winter.

The mattress saga continues. If I ever tell you I’m getting a new one ever again, I expect you to stage an intervention for my own good.

I decided to send back the new mattress, since its enjoyability did not even come close to matching its staggering sticker price. But I had to find another one to replace it before I could send it back, which required more research and decision-making, which is clearly not one of my few and trivial talents.

I chose one which has a pillow top and memory foam, showing that my dream of cloud-like comfort has not completely vanished. It arrived quickly, but did not fit into Wednesday’s trunk or back seat. So I heaved it onto the roof of the car and drove very slowly down the potholed and puddly driveway. Arriving home, the herd of Mark’s dogs came to inspect the new arrival, but declined to lend a paw in getting it into the house.

Audrey and Clyde greeted the arrival of a new box with the joy it deserves. I don’t think there is a cat anywhere who does not enjoy a good box.

I set about trying to return the new, now demoted to old, mattress. Of course this was harder than I anticipated, and I have yet to try out the new and hopefully improved mattress. Supposedly the old one will be picked up next Friday, which seems like a very long time from now. And since it took so long to even arrange the pick up, I will have to make a payment for something I am returning, even though I will (allegedly) get the payment back once the old mattress is deported.

I feel that I should have learned a valuable lesson or three from this, but all it has really done is highlight my utter lack of decision making ability and remind me of how very faux an adult I am. Maybe I should only spend that kind of money on things that sparkle.

A YEAR AGO: Some happy surprises came my way.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Country roads, take me home…

TEN YEARS AGO: A really good mail day.

Well, Thursday was a day and a half. Or maybe more…

It kicked off with a power outage about 10 minutes after I arrived at work, out of the proverbial, and in this case, literal, blue sky. In keeping with the theme of the day, the weather would alternate in a schizo manner between blazing sun, high winds, blasting hail, and intense rain. There was snow on higher elevations.

As usual, I was the first one to report the outage to our friends at PG&E. I guess everyone else thinks someone else is doing it, and they’re right. I am.

I texted my boss to let her know what was happening, and looking out of the window, discovered that the people who were running the scrubs sale scheduled for that day had arrived early. They had made the long drive from Oregon and were good sports about unloading their wares into the dark and heat-free conference room.

I held the door open for them since the lack of electricity meant that the doors would not stay open on their own. A behavioral health patient turned up half an hour early for her appointment, in floods of tears. Since she was half an hour early, there was no qualified staff available so I did my best to calm her down while doing my Carlton imitation in the chilly early morning.

Eventually all the scrubs were decanted and the patient delivered into qualified hands, at which point I discovered that there were a couple of conflicts with meetings scheduled in the conference rooms that day. It was too late to cancel anything, so I had to somehow, some way find alternate spaces for said meetings, which I did, moving furniture and trying not to inconvenience anyone more than necessary.

On the bright side, the power was back on by then, so there was light and heat.

I had barely settled back in my office to deal with things needed for a six hour meeting on the following day when one of the meeting participants came out and said that her fellow meeting goers were asking about food. I pointed out that it was 2:00 in the afternoon, and she said that they thought I had made dinner reservations, which I had not, since a) no-one had asked me to; and 2) this was the first I heard of it. Later I had to set up a conference call for them and then call the guy who was supposed to be on the call, only to find that he was on vacation and had to, yes, call yet another person.

I got that sorted out and was then notified that we had been contacted by a doctor who was interested in interviewing. I can’t even tell you how hard it is to find doctors who are willing to work in the middle of nowhere for way less money than they would make working somewhere that is somewhere, so I wanted to schedule the interview with my boss and the Medical Director as soon as Suzily possible.

I went over to medical to check on his schedule, and while checking on it, he appeared. I asked him what his schedule was on the day in question and he said he would be in San Francisco that day and the day before it. I pointed out that there was a standing meeting with all the doctors that day which he led, and asked if I should cancel it. He said yes and disappeared, leaving me unsure of what to do next.

For those of you who do not work in the medical field, I will just say that scheduling doctors’ days is very complicated. The good news here is that the doctors could see patients instead of spending non billable time in meetings, but the challenges are that they have things they need to talk about and letting them know that the meeting was canceled, since many of them do not work on Fridays and others do not work on Mondays. Also finding someone with the correct credentials to open their schedules.

I did get it done, though, and somehow survived the crazy day.

Arriving home, I discovered that the underachieving amaryllis had attempted suicide and was lying on the rug beside the heater with its bud broken off and its blossoming flower was damaged and poured a glass of overdue wine. On the bright side, the Leafs beat the Islanders, unlike the time I actually saw them play.

*I see my photo included the glorious Mats Sundin, number 13. The Leafs have never had such a captain since Sundin retired.

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather and darkness.

FIVE YEARS AGO: My brother took a courageous leap.

TEN YEARS AGO: A mental vacation in the pages of the New York Times section section.

You guys! It was 70 degrees yesterday! Above you see the magnificent magnolia in blossom outside the library on Friday afternoon, when it was a mere 65 degrees. Last night, I slept with the balcony door open. It is February, isn’t it?

I stopped at the post office on my way to work one day this week (I was also the wino fairy, dropping off the unopened giant jug of cheapo red wine someone brought to Christmas dinner outside the Gro, undoubtedly to someone’s delight) and discovered that they had just installed a bank of new parcel lockers next to the old one. But apparently not for me, since I found two yellow slips inside my post office box.

The delivery problem is especially annoying since Amazon refused to ship to my PO box in the first place, forcing me to use the street address where I do not receive mail. Last weekend, my landlord Mark turned up with a letter marked “extremely urgent” and a postmark of over a year ago. This is why I have a PO box. Often things that are directed to the street address end up at the PO anyway, like these packages.

I expected one of the packages to contain a DVD among more mundane things, which although mundane, are not readily available in our little corner of the world. When I finally got my hard-won packages, I was displeased to note that it did not include the DVD, though everything else was present and accounted for.

Looking up my account on Amazon, I discovered that I had, in fact, failed to order the DVD along with everything else. So its absence was entirely my fault, and you know how I hate it when I have no one to blame but myself.

I rectified my ordering error – and had the new package delivered to my PO box – and grumpily went to open the second package. Imagine my surprise to find it was a beautiful book sent from a dear friend (and wonderful writer) in Alaska, containing several of the articles he had written. My grumpy mood vanished as quickly as it came, and I have hours of happy reading ahead of me.

A YEAR AGO: A delightful day with the most delightful girls.

FIVE YEARS AGO: An avian intruder.

TEN YEARS AGO: The surreal water bill.

It’s a good thing I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions, since I have not done a thing this entire new year except Be Sick. Either I am really good at it, or really bad at it, since I have been plague-stricken for over a week now, with no signs of the malady’s departure.

So, yes, I was sick the entire time I was off work, and even when I returned to work, I failed to work one entire day all week, leaving early for two days and finally taking yesterday off in the desperate hope that I would be restored to humanity today, but once again my hopes were dashed by whatever the Plague is.

Despite my apparently eternal illness, at some point I will have to get out of bed and get on with the Saddest Day of the Year, when all the Christmas ornaments are stowed away and the bleak winter house is stripped of its temporary sparkle and finery, just when we need it most.

So far, not a great start to the new year.

A YEAR AGO: The power was out on the Saddest Day of the Year. Things can be worse!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Back home with the kitties.

Yesterday Megan and I both enjoyed getting up after the sun did, putting the heat on in our frigid houses, and scampering back to bed with coffee and our neatly paired animal companions (two dogs for her; two cats for me) for more than an hour. How luxurious is that?

Eventually, we got up and got dressed. I headed over to Megan’s place and we then made our way to our brother’s place with a bag of mesquite, the Christmas ham, stockings for him and Rio to stuff, and a mason jar of Jack Daniel’s, an integral part of Jonathan’s masterful ham glaze.

We had a brief discussion about Wednesday’s ailments, and had independently arrived at the conclusion that he should buy the expensive parts and fix the non threatening emissions issue, on the grounds that one day the ever-on engine light might mean something is really wrong and I would ignore it, thinking it wasn’t, until Something Bad happened, like permanent stoppage of said car. So he will order the parts and we’ll get that particular show on the road. Wish Santa shopped at Napa.

After that, Megan turned her little red car toward the magical south coast. As we wended our way past the lavender ocean and the wind-twisted trees, we talked about how we hadn’t seen Lichen in ages. For both of us, the most recent interaction was texts on his birthday last month. Passing through Elk, Megan spied Lichen himself at the side of the road, with his sweet dog, Keeper. She stopped immediately and raced across the road shouting his birth name so he’d know he was in trouble. By the time I caught up, we were hugging and laughing and being introduced to the guy with him.

This town being as minute as it is, the guy turned out to be a neighbor of my friend Alison, who I had just met for a drink this week (and said drink was interrupted by the appearance of my old boss, my current boss, the event coordinator from work, and others). He was supposed to look after Alison’s dog over the holidays, but she got the flu and her plans changed at the last minute.

As for Lichen, he has been training as a massage therapist and now has his own little studio! So that’s what he’s been up to instead of hanging out with us. It was good to catch up with him, but we had a schedule to keep, so we continued south.

Arriving in Point Arena, we went straight for Franny’s, as any right-thinking person does, where we equipped ourselves with delicacies before going even further south to acquire still more delicacies for dinner at Anchor Bay Thai.

We were worried about being late for the play, but we made it back to the theater in time to wade through throngs of kids and into balcony seats right by the wall, a decision we would come to regret in about 10 minutes.

The play was a production of “Peter Pan”, streamed from the National Theatre in London, and our Sleeping Beauty deprived hearts were looking forward to it. Our hopes were dashed almost immediately by the weirdness of the production, in which everyone looked about 45, Nana the dog was played by a guy wearing white ruffled pantalettes, and Tinker Bell by a squat gent with lights on his bicycle helmet and a speech impediment. Also there were songs, which we had not been warned about, and all the magic had been removed.

We wanted to remove ourselves, but were trapped at the wall end of the row. I was all for pushing past everyone and hightailing it out of there, but Megan thought it was too rude. I felt that it would be a momentary inconvenience for people we would never see again, but she won out and we spent the rest of our sentence wondering if we could get over the railing in front of us without undue damage to Self. When the welcome release of intermission finally arrived, I raced out of there so fast I forgot my coat (with my phone in the pocket), which Megan grabbed and then chased me down the stairs.

As we peeled out of the parking lot, I observed that we had finally found something that was not fun to do together. It took us a while, but we did it!

A YEAR AGO: Merry Christmas to us!

TEN YEARS AGO: A somewhat dizzy Christmas.