Suzy Says

New cat door!

Rob turned up while I was still sipping my coffee and regaining consciousness. If you ever visit, just walk right in. Don’t bother to knock. The door doesn’t have a lock, anyway, so come on in. Everyone else does.

Of course, if I’ve gone to town (aka the Three Hour Tour), it could be a long wait. Good thing for you there are books, movies, and magazines galore. And cats to let in and out, even though they now have their very own cat door in the door leading to the balcony.

That’s why Rob stopped by, to install the cat door. While I woke up slowly, he installed the door upstairs. It’s very relaxing to watch other people work, I find.

Afterwards, I asked him to put up tiebacks for the curtains in the living room, and he:

• Pointed out that they were made in China, something of which he does not approve for many reasons;
• Pointed out that they have a serious design flaw when it comes to installing them – it’s nearly impossible to get the screwdriver at the appropriate, weird angle (though he did manage it in the end);
• Made fun of the entire tiebacks concept. After all, he is a boy.

They look great, by the way.

When the chores were finished, we watched the news together for a while, and then he went on his way. I made a mental note to buy him some beer to say thanks and was glad yet again to have Rob in my life, even unexpectedly and first thing in the morning.

Drinking coffee from my tiny demitasse cup and saucer makes me feel so elegant. Even when I’m wearing one of my oddly assorted morning ensembles*, like flowered pajamas, polka dotted socks, and two unmatching sweaters. You’d never think I had a subscription to “Vogue”.

The other morning, I put a thimble of coffee in the microwave, pressed the button, and turned away to do something else while the coffee was (re)heating. I had barely taken two steps when it turned off. Even though it was a bright and sunny day, my first thought was that the power had gone out. But it hadn’t.

Now, some people will tell you that it’s because reheating yesterday’s coffee is just wrong and this is the universe’s way of telling me to knock it off. But I think it’s due to the eccentric wiring in my hippie hovel. Don’t forget that my lights turn on by turning the switch down so it reads “no”. When I was at my sister’s last weekend, I kept hitting the light switch downward. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to flip it up.

I’m the entertainment wherever I go.

I left a message for Mark, and he appeared later in the day. He won second place in his age class at the Whale Run, and his daughters won second and sixth place in theirs. I was so excited for them I almost forgot that the refrigerator, microwave, front porch, hallway, and bathroom were powerless.

Mark showed me how to fix the breaker switches, which are located outside (like the flash heater and the phone box) by turning them all the way back and then forward. Let there be light!

A couple of days later, he needed a jump start and I was glad to help. It’s only fair to power up a guy’s car after he powers up your house. I think the universe would approve of that, at least.

*As usual, my sister trumps me with this, too. She has been known to appear at my house wearing scrubs, a bathrobe, and bee boots, clutching a cup of coffee and wearing sunglasses.

I got a new cell phone a few days ago. Before the gadget-minded among you get all excited, I hasten to add that it’s supposed to get better reception here in Hooterville, and that’s the only reason for getting it.

Cell phones being the complicated and annoying things they are, the new one has to be programmed and somehow the old info has to be transferred to the new one, and if you do it in the wrong order or just plain wrong, it won’t work. Not only that, our tech person told me that if it isn’t done correctly, we could be charged the whole price for the thing instead of the discounted price.

Despite the fact that she emailed me detailed instructions on how to do this, I was betting on my Calamity Suzy skills and general techtardness to screw it up.

Fortunately, there happens to be a Verizon store in town now, and Megan happened to be stopping by there anyway on her way to work. Supposedly they offer a 25% discount to hospital workers, so she wanted to talk to them about that.

I packed up all the stuff that came with the new phone, plus the old phone and the instructions, thrilled that I’d be spared a trip to town and having to deal with the phone. Yay!

My sister called me a few hours later to tell me that the only cell tower around here had been vandalized, so no programming was possible, at least until it’s fixed (though, in the mysterious way of cell phones, they still work).

I couldn’t stop laughing.

Also, the Verizon employee had never heard of the discount, so he’s supposed to look into that. All in all, not a lot achieved on that particular trip.

My “office” on Friday

It was 80 degrees and sunny on Friday. How could I be expected to deal with work on a day like that?

Actually, I did, in the form of taking cell phone calls by the beach with a friendly Rottweiler winding his leash around my wrist as I tried to act professional. It was hard to hear the market chatter over the crashing surf.

With work dealt with momentarily, Megan, Lu and I walked along the path by the beach with our small (Harlow), medium (Schatzi) and large (Marco) dogs in the bright sunlight. Despite application of SPF 70 sun block before I left the house, I acquired the first sunburn of the year. After about an hour, Lu gave me her baseball hat, saying I was “pink”. So was the hat, bearing the logo of her home state team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In Arizona, Lu grew up with temperatures that reached 120 degrees in the summer. But Marco and I feel the heat, and he flopped down in a stream on the beach, where he charmingly bit at the water as he chillaxed.

Chilling is a foreign notion to the pit bulls, who chased each other all over the dunes. Honestly, you’d never know that Harlow was the baby and Schatzi the old lady. The Schatz can outrun almost any dog around, and you’d never know she was 10 years old. People are as amazed by her persistent youthfulness as they are by Dick Clark’s.

As the dogs played, we watched horseback riders on the beach:

There were beautiful colors on the dunes:

And a warning:

Even though the seals were tiny white blobs basking on a distant rock.

The perfect ending to a perfect day was a barbecue at Megan’s, and dinner al fresco in the storm-tossed garden as the sun set.

Parking lot at the local store

I try to avoid buying gas at the local store, since it’s considerably more expensive than the gas in town (especially if you buy it at the Speedex, near the Feed & Pet, instead of at, say, the Chevron in the middle of town) and I am now the most frugal (cheap) hedonist known to girlkind.

But sometimes a girl like I forgets to buy gas, her pretty little head being otherwise occupied with far more important things, like taking Jessica to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party next Saturday, what to make for dinner, and whether someone will give me that set of Mad Men Barbies for my birthday.

Sometimes I don’t notice this deficiency until the little red light comes on. Once I didn’t notice this until I was at the point on 128 where there’s no gas until Cloverdale, and I ended up coasting down the hills and around corners and praying uphill. There are few atheists when the little red light is on in the car. For the record, I did make it to Cloverdale that time, but I apparently learned nothing, since here I was, with the light on again. In my case, the light is on, but no-one’s home, it seems.

At least this time I only had to go the five and a quarter miles to the store, and after the Cloverdale adventure, I was pretty sure I’d make it.

The gas pumps at the store are the old fashioned kind that don’t take credit cards. You put the gas in your car and then go in and tell them how much it was while catching up on local gossip, such as the clerk’s horse making a surprise appearance in her living room. It’s a longer process than it is in town, but it’s more fun, too.

Here’s one of the gas pumps:

Note explanatory handwritten signs. In case you weren’t sure.

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.

I got up at 7 this morning after dreaming I had an apartment right next door to San Quentin. It was 40 degrees this morning, so all around, it was an improvement.

Henry Etta, however, did not seem to find it all that warm. She was nestled so far back in her cozy bed that I could hardly see her. She poked her nose out when I turned the heat on, though, and now she’s basking.

It’s sunny again and supposed to be above 60 again, so maybe spring really is here, a few days ahead of schedule.

Despite the warming trend, the bathroom remains its chilly, uninviting self. I still have to psych myself to face taking a shower, and once I’m in it, I have to psych myself up again to face the cold (and now foggy) room. Only the thought of the pricy propane burning away merrily stops me from postponing the inevitable indefinitely.

I came across a small electric heater the other day and decided to put it to good use in the icy salle de bains. You will be relieved to hear that I placed it carefully on the bureau-esque thing (several shelves but no doors, and the teeny sink is embedded in it) several feet away from the shower. Even if it did fall down, which is highly unlikely, it would only fall on the lime green plywood floor.

Still trying to keep those new year’s resolutions.

Initial experiments have proved successful. I put the heater on, shut both bathroom doors, and let it preheat* for about 10 minutes. By then, the bathroom is warm enough to undress without fear, and same goes for exiting the shower. I was excited to actually be warm after getting dressed, instead of shivering.

Of course, I figured it out now that spring is here, but that’s the Suzy way.

*How can you “preheat” an oven? You turn it on and it heats. That’s it. It’s not heating before it’s heating.

Audrey inspects the bee boots

I got up at 5:30 this morning. For no particular reason. I can’t even blame the cats, even juvenile delinquent Audrey. As I write, they’re both still outside in the 34 degree pre-dawn chill. Just think: tomorrow it will be this cold and dark at 7 am instead of 6! Nice job, government!

I keep telling myself I can go back to bed later, but I know I won’t. I told myself that yesterday, and it never happened. It amazes me that I actually got to work at 6 am, in time for the markets opening in New York, for almost ten years. It seems slightly insane to me now, and also like something that happened to somebody else.

Yesterday, Meg, Schatzi and I braved the storms to go to town and shop, the best form of cardio known to girl. We started at the Feed & Pet, where I personally selected the wild fowl flavor of Taste of the Wild for Miss Schatzi, since she had wild bison and venison the last time. There were baby chicks in incubators, peeping away and just adorable: yellow ones, brown ones, striped ones. They’re a sign of spring, too.

We dashed across the rainy street to the saddlery, so Meg could get laces for her (non-riding) boots, and I wished I had my camera with me, because there was a poster for an NRA fundraiser later this month posted in the window.

Next stop was the Safeway, where Megan ran into the usual number of friends and acquaintances (I think she and Lu between them know half the county – this also happened at the magic show), slowing down the shopping experience, but also making it more enjoyable, as if we were at a local market instead of an enormous chain store.

After that, we went to Harvest Market, where we got another turkey breast for dinner, the last one having been so popular, and assorted other things. Like a shower curtain patterned with goldfish and a plush terra-cotta colored rug for Megan’s bathroom. Instant update for $40! Take that, “Design on a Dime”! She also bought a pair of bright yellow rain boots patterned with bees. Bee boots!

We were amazed that the cute boots came in grown-up sizes. We asked the saleslady for the right size, and she said she was pregnant, indicating a little bulge, but that her associate would be back from lunch in five minutes and he would be happy to dig around in the warehouse to find the boots. While we waited, she told us that she was eight months pregnant and had only gained eight pounds. Also that it was a boy named Liam and that she was never doing it again, pregnancy being a hideous experience. Not beautiful and mystical at all.

The assistant came back and with boots triumphantly in hand and congratulations to the mom to be, we headed out. Poor Schatz was bored out of her mind by now but it was too rainy to walk her.

By the time we got home and decanted all the groceries from the car, it was practically time to start dinner, which was the turkey breast roasted on top of tiny red potatoes, red pearl onions, carrots, and parsnips tossed with very good olive oil and sea salt. Meg snipped some herbs and we put those under the turkey’s skin and put it all in the oven to roast. One dish dinner!

As dinner cooked, Meg put on her new boots and we all went out for a stroll around the storm-tossed garden, drinks in hand. Megan pointed out various plants she is going to put on my deck when the weather gets warmer. We inspected the buds on the lilac tree and the apple trees, carefully stepping over the phone line, which came down several storms ago and now snakes blackly through the garden.

It reminded me of how I used to walk through Dad’s garden with him, glass of wine in hand, when dinner was started and we had a few minutes. His birthday is coming up next week, so he’s been on our minds more than usual lately.

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.

Yesterday, I took advantage of a raylet of sunshine, setting up the clothes drying frame outside. I went back inside for the wet clothes, put them in the basket they had recently vacated in their prewashed state, and took them outside. There was a single pine needle in the bottom of the washing machine.

One of the advantages of my house is there are doors everywhere, so I took the laundry room/pantry/cat dining room door (the one which is also used for the giant extension cord from the generator when the power goes out) into the garden.

Every time I walk through the garden, I mentally clean it out, though I never actually do anything about it. That’s the Suzy way. Maybe in the spring I’ll go through and purge all the weird hippie crap and detritus built up over thirty years.

Or not.

As I carefully placed the clothes on the rack to maximize the limited space (it supposedly has 25 feet of drying space, but it’s a very different experience from 25 feet of clothesline), I enjoyed the sun on my back and the company of Luna, who seems to be constantly wet and muddy without minding it in the least. I did try and keep Her Muddiness away from the freshly washed clothes, though.

As often happens when I do a routine task, my thoughts drifted, and they landed on my paternal grandmother, Grammie. Grammie hung out her clothes year round in her tiny, yet beautiful garden in Surrey. She never had a washer, boiling her clothes on top of her gas stove or washing them in the sink by hand. I was startled when spending the summer with her in 1977 to find her stirring her clothes with a giant wooden stick one morning. Dad finally convinced her to get a spin dryer, which took out most of the water, but she resolutely refused to get a washer and dryer. “Unnecessary,” she said.

She was highly offended when the parquet floor started coming up after 50 years of constant use. “In my day, we built things to last“, she sniffed.

On the other hand and the other side of the pond, my mother’s mother embraced new technology. She had escaped the farm to go to college, shingle her hair, and have a career – she had no interest in the past. She and my grandfather had a color TV years before we ever did, and they always had up to the minute appliances. She never hung her wash out.

Here I am, two centuries after they were born, a combination of the two. I work, I have a washing machine which mostly works, but I hang my clothes out to dry, either inside or outside. I like to think that my grandmothers are still with me in some ways. And they both inspire me.

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.

Magnolias at the library, Saturday afternoon

Hey! I successfully lit the oven tonight without exploding it, or Self, or even burning off eyebrows or other valued body parts. This always gives me a feeling of accomplishment, especially since it’s a new month and so far I’ve gotten through a whole day without even a minor injury. Hopefully it’s not like “In like a lion and out like a lamb” and I end the month in traction.

Here in Hooterville, March came in more like a lazy cat than a lion or a lamb. it just kind of sat there, grey and unmoving, all day. Yesterday, however, it was sunny enough for a local beekeeper to come and inspect the remains of the hive.

On the bright side, the Queen is alive (long live the Queen!), but the population is pretty much decimated. I’m not sure if it was mites or the fact that the bottom of the hive is mesh (which the previous owner failed to mention) and they probably froze to death, the poor things. But the Queen is still reigning over her depleted realm, and there is a LOT of honey. I hope the bees recover and/or we can find a new colony to join the survivors.

We had a more festive dinner than usual last night. I had the genius idea of making Thanksgiving Lite, so I got a couple of turkey breasts (since none of us likes the dark meat and there’s no carcass to deal with) and roasted them. I made dressing/stuffing with leftover bread and et ceteras, including corn bread (score!) and herbs from Megan’s garden. I learned at Safeway that they don’t carry fresh cranberries after the holidays, so canned it was. Add in some fresh green beans and too many bottles of local-ish wine (from the next county over) and you have a fun dinner on your hands. The boys gradually dispersed, and Meg and I stayed up too late, listening to music and having just one more glass of wine.

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.

My sister’s car was parked in my driveway this morning, and I’m sure it wasn’t there last night.

She was so stressed and sleep-deprived yesterday that Rob took her to work last night and Jonathan picked her up this morning, bright and early at 6 am, once again making him the best brother ever. So the car’s presence here was even stranger.

Later I found it was because Lu thought she might drop off a load of wood at Megan’s so Rob moved the car to make way for the potential transaction.

And I thought it was because being seen in my driveway had such cachet.

Less mysterious, but still delightful, was the dozen Betty eggs she left on my table. Betty’s hens are laying again now that spring is closer.

In other mysteries, whenever I go to town and pick up an armload of books from the library, as I did yesterday, I almost invariably find more have arrived by the time I get home or check my library holds the next day. How do they do it?

And why do the cats claw the hell out of the wood on either side of the door when they have a woods full of trees all around them? It isn’t just Audrey clawing frantically to go in or out, either, since that is done by clawing the glass in the door for extra squeak. June claws the house, too, and Megan’s cats do the same thing at their house. Why? Why?

The ways of cats are inscrutable. I love it when I let them in one door and they walk straight to another door and ask to be let out of that one. Just because they can, I guess.

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

We had a power outage yesterday evening.

Megan was at my house, and we were making dinner from the Book of Dad*. I went to grudgingly throw my green bin contents into the woods (I still think it’s gross and will attract an undesirable animal element, but apparently it makes me a better person and I can use all the help I can get), and when I came back in, the house was dark.

“??”

“The power’s out.”

“Oh.”

I put on the battery powered lamps and Megan called Jonathan, who came over right away. He was slightly delayed by a freaky guy who walked right up to his gate and was ranting about nothing and everything. The guy wandered away, and when he described the guy to Megan, she knew who it was right away. Most of the local crazies end up in the ER at one time or another.

The oven, of course, was still merrily cooking away, being gas, but Henry’s bed, which was in the washer, was not.

Jonathan set up the generator, plugged things in, and soon we had heat and light. Then, like most super heroes, he was on his way.

The power came on before we went to bed that night. There was even enough time to finish washing Henry Etta’s bed and get her settled into it.

*Braised honey-mustard chicken, to be precise. Also broccoli and almond pilaf. It was great. Dad food is the best food.

Orange trees at the fair. Note the blue sky!

Yesterday was a girls’ day out. At the 118th annual Citrus Fair!

Megan and I went to meet Lu in beautiful downtown Hooterville. While waiting for Lu, someone called out from her car, “Hey, Megan! I was never so glad to see you in my life as I was at that call!” It was the official paramedic from the call where Megan and Lu unofficially helped a week earlier.

We were getting a little cold waiting for Lu and reading the signs posted on the store’s bulletin board (do I really need a free, 14 year old ostrich who “like room to run”?), so we went in and chatted with the cashier. She regaled us with stories of shoplifters past, including a drunk guy who used to hide wine in his pants, deny it, and then get busted when the bottles fell out of the pants legs onto the floor.

Lu pulled up as we mused on how stupid you’d have to be to steal at the only store in town, and the only store for several miles, and we piled in.

In Boonville, we stopped off to pick up Jessica, who was anxiously awaiting our arrival. Erica was, too, because she had 200 pastries to make that day, and making 200 pastries is a lot easier when you don’t have to brat-bash, as my father would say. I traded her a “New Yorker” with an article on Neil Gaiman for her only child, and we both thought we got a pretty good deal.

Big news: Jessica is no longer subject to the indignity of the car seat! And she is tall enough to ride that ride.

Arriving at the fair, Jessica and I were thrilled by the sight of the Citrus Fair Queen in her red cape and sparkly tiara. We waved, and the Queen waved back very regally for a high school student. Jessica said that she thought she could be a Citrus Fair Queen one of these days, and I bet she could.

Even more exciting than the Queen sighting for Miss Jess were the rides, the more dizzying, the better.

All the grownups were either too scared (Me) or nauseous (everyone else) to accompany the kidlet on the rides. After all, I am the same girl who was horrified by the Ferris wheel at the Florida State Fair a few years ago. Though we did make sure that she was tall enough (she actually exceeded the height requirements) and that there were sufficient safety mechanisms in place. Then we just watched her be delighted. That girl is fearless.

She also caught a couple of toy fish, winning prizes, and wound up the ride experience with a relatively tame carousel ride (I tried not to think about that scene from “Strangers on a Train”, especially since they were playing the same song).

After that, it was time for a BBQ lunch with garlic fries while being serenaded by a mariachi band. Sitting at the picnic table in the sun, I said that I was actually afraid of getting a sunburn. Megan had a sunblock stick in her bag, and we all put some on. It was wonderful to bask in the sun and blue skies, which never did make it to Hooterville that day.

After lunch, we visited the pygmy goats, including twin babies:

We also petted the world’s softest rabbit. He felt like suede.

Megan and I went to a talk on beekeeping from a gentleman who has been a beekeeper for more than 60 years (his father was a life-long beekeeper, and so is his daughter, who gives classes we’re hoping to attend this spring). Among the many things we learned was that in the 1950s, the US exported 60% of its honey. Now it imports 60%. Also that most beekeepers are now 65 or older, so that just strengthened our commitment to truly learning this difficult art.

There was just enough time to watch Scotty and Trink juggle knives – and fire – on unicycles:

all while making the audience laugh.

It was a great day.

When we left Erica and Jessica, Jessica called after us: “Goodbye, enourage!”

For some reason, there are always pine needles in the shower. I have no idea how they get there.

The floor of the shower is painted, so it’s a little slippery. I’m pretty sure that the resolution ending Calamity Suzy episode of all time is going to happen in there, sooner or later. To try and avert the inevitable, the last time I was in the city, I picked up some clear pebble Tub Treadz* and a matching bath mat. I thought the pebbly look was good for the country. And everything in this house is slightly (or extremely) irregular.

I was slightly stymied, as so often happens, by the instructions. “Apply to a clean, dry surface”, it says in a breezy manner, as if that were something easily attained. It’s almost impossible to attain either for me. The shower never drains completely, and there’s always renegade dirt and pine needles in there. I’m not sure how to achieve the requisite cleanliness and dryness, so the Tub Treadz are still cutely in their package for now, and possibly forever.

I have been using the bath mat, but I overlooked the fact that plastic doesn’t absorb either water or the aforementioned detritus of Nature the way fabric bath mats did. Although it’s a little cold and squishy to step onto, it doesn’t show the dirt or add yet another color to the tiny room.

The inside of the doors is red, while the outsides are blue. The floor is lime green. Electric lime green. And it extends into what should be the foyer, which has a blue door. One of these days, I’d like to put black and white tiles down and paint the blue door white. In the meantime, I try to avert my eyes. Though the lime green is somewhat toned down by the mud that is inevitably tracked into the house.

The bathroom itself is unheated, and the walls appear to be made of particle board or plywood mostly, as is the lime green floor. So it’s really not all that far, literally or figuratively, from the outdoor shower, which is on the porch right outside the bathroom. Especially when you factor in the wildlife that likes to congregate in there: spiders and bugs, and I once found a huge black slug in the non-draining shower and a tiny scorpion in the equally tiny sink.

It’s nice and warm when you’re actually in the shower – assuming that the flash heater doesn’t get blown out – and you can enjoy the view of the garden and the non-functioning hot tub as you shampoo. You might even see a passing PG&E meter reader or a deer. When you get out, though, it’s pretty chilly, despite the room being fogged up. But that’s easily solved by opening both doors: the one to the back porch and the one to the foyer.

*They reminded me of the rubber daisies we use to have in the bathtub when I was a kid.

My former neighbor

I recently learned that Gene Clark of the Byrds used to live right here in Hooterville.

Not only right here, but about two miles from where I live. I have to admit to a certain amount of posthumous stalking, driving down his road to look for his house, immortalized on a record cover. Said house was sold to him by none other than the husband of Betty of the famous Betty eggs. He’s something like a sixth generation Hootervillite, and these are extremely rare. I think he’s the only one.

He’s pulled over to say hello to Megan and me when we’ve been walking the Schatz, regaling us with tales of hunting for wild mushrooms (don’t pick the ones with the gills underneath) and elk (no luck this year), and one of these days, I’m going to ask him about Gene Clark.

For some reason, maybe because Gene, at the height of his considerable fame, turned his back on Hollywood to come to this obscure corner of the world – the same corner that has become my refuge – he’s been haunting me. I always look down his road when I pass, and I think how the road almost certainly looks the same that it did forty years ago, when he lived here.

He would have reached the same place on the road to the store where the ocean is first glimpsed through the trees in its many moods and different beauties. He would have driven across the wooden bridge across the river (built during WWII and now the only surviving wooden bridge on Highway 1) on his way to the Little River Inn for his habitual drinks.

When I pass the beautiful Little River Cemetery, of my earlier posts, I wish he was there instead of Missouri (he died young, at the age of 46).

And his songs have been in my head, my soundtrack as I drive the same roads he did: Eight Miles High, No Other, I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better (covered successfully and almost identically by Tom Petty on the hit CD Full Moon Fever). His haunting voice, the artistic inspiration which I can clearly see and hear came from this rugged, beautiful landscape.