Suzy Says

So I had the interview for the permanent job yesterday.

Fortunately, it was only in the Big Town, aka my usual commute, so I was spared trekking to the county seat. Luck was with me, since the forecasters were predicting another Stormageddon, and I feared the effect on my hair and make-up, but there were just a few sprinkles and my beauty remained intact. We haven’t had a drop of rain since the Christmas Eve storm with its power outage, and it was the driest January in recorded California history, so we need it, but it seems to be feast or famine this winter: pouring or nothing.

I arrived early for the interview, and was surprised that they also started the interview early. This time, I knew that it would be a panel interview, so I was better prepared, and I had spent some time thinking about my answers to the questions that had stymied me last time. At least I didn’t blush this time!

I was so relieved when it was over that I totally forgot to ask what the next steps were and when they might reach a decision. There are two jobs, so I’m hoping that will increase my chances of getting one of them. I have the indefinite temp job starting on the 17th, so I do have a fall back position and money coming in while I wait for or find a permanent job.

As I write, it’s pouring and windy out, and I feel as if we’re trembling on the verge of a power outage. The cats ran out and ran back in this morning, soaked and indignant.

Will our heroine get a job? Will the drought end? Will the cats wreck the house out of total boredom? Stay tuned ’til next time for As the Suzy Turns…

A YEAR AGO: Shopping with the lovely Miss Stella.

Frosty Fern

Happy new year, y’all! It started out a frosty one here, -2C outside and +4 inside, which is not that much of a plus. Ever notice that everything is worse in metric? Temperatures are colder and distances are further (though bra sizes are stupendous).

My brother was working a 72 hour shift, so I went over to his place to make sure the pipes had not burst in the sub-freezing temperatures. Though it’s only about a quarter of a mile away, it’s also about 5 Fahrenheit degrees colder over there in the winter, so the entire garden was heavily frosted, sparkling in the sun.

No pipes were harmed during the cold night, but I left his tap dripping, just in case. And fed Scout, the mini cat whose tiny body contains the loudest meows known to catdom. Since we were inside, I could pet her silky fur – not even Jonathan can pet her outside. Her youth spent as a stray cat is too deeply imprinted, and she must be very clever to have escaped the many predators for as long as she did – she was at least a year old when she turned up on my brother’s doorstep one day.

Back at home, I continued my tidying up activities. I had the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and I decided to use the gift of time to try and create a little order from chaos, especially in the studio/storage room. There’s still a long way to go, but I’ve made significant inroads. And there were a couple of unexpected rewards (in addition to unusual virtue). I found the lovely Rita’s ID tag:

I have put it carefully away in my jewelry box, remembering the happy times I spent with that beautiful, wonderful girl, the star of the neighborhood.

I also came across an “At Home” card my maternal grandparents sent out after their wedding in 1924:

The only wedding picture I have of them shows them in a field with a grumpy preacher and one attendant each, so I get the impression that this was not a conventional wedding, and might even have been an elopement, given that my grandmother left home in order to go to high school*. I always think my grandfather looks like he won the lottery:

The card still smelled faintly of my grandmother’s lily of the valley perfume, even though she’s been gone for almost 40 years. I am lucky to have so many wonderful memories.

My delightful co-worker Erin gifted me with a lovely red clock for Christmas. It was out of the box for less than two minutes before it found itself on the wall, looking perfect:

I also organized the books by color:

Pretty, no? A good start to the new year so far, I’d say!

A YEAR AGO: Back home from the last trip of the year to San Francisco.

*She moved in with her scandalous Aunt Luella, who got married in a pink dress and wore the dress to parties afterwards, bobbed her hair, and went to teacher’s college. She taught at the same high school where my grandfather was the principal – and my mother was a student.

It’s a wild and stormy Christmas Eve. Reports are that the power is out at home, and a call to my friends at the PG&E Outage Line gave me the sad information that it may be “extended” due to many outages. So far this seems to be worse than the storm that wasn’t, though it’s supposed to pass through quickly. Maybe it was speeding.

Fortunately, my oven is gas, and my brother is smoking the ham over the BBQ all day tomorrow, so we can still have Christmas dinner. On my way to the jobette yesterday, I stopped at the grocery store in the Village and bought two pieces of Gruyere. Nothing more, nothing less. The clerk looked at me quizzically and asked “Having a craving?” I explained that I needed it for cheese biscuits and that there was no substitute, and there isn’t.

Last night, I put all the Christmas stockings together, an undertaking that required a glass or two of wine, a realization I came to after completing the first one. Stockings always have a quarter and a tangerine in the toe and a candy cane at the top, and contain a couple of little gifts – like the guitar pick made from a quarter and a gift card for the coffee shop in the Village for Rob* – and this year I had the bright idea of wrapping these, which made the process longer. The rest is candy and silly things like cap guns. We exchange Christmas stockings instead of gifts, and I love that tradition.

Tomorrow, even if the power is out, I will roast the pears for the salad and make the dressing for the salad, and make my world famous cheese biscuits. At some point before noon, I will bring the ham, a bottle of cider and one of Jack Daniel’s to my brother’s place, where he will make his fabulous glaze for the ham and smoke it all day over apple wood.

Erica and Jessica were planning to come over early in the day to watch Christmas movies and the Rockettes, but it may be board games and sparkling conversation instead. Stay tuned!

Update: Power is back on, the sun is shining, and all systems are go! Merry Christmas to all of you!

*I have no concerns about him reading this, since he has never had an email address or belonged to Facebook or done anything on line other than look for tools.

A YEAR AGO: Working hard? Or hardly working?

Looks like we have weathered the storm! Power stayed on at my house – undoubtedly because Mark lent me his generator before taking his family to Mexico for a month – no trees crushed anything or anyone and nothing leaked. Apparently the rest of the country is mocking us for freaking out about the storm, since they have real weather. Sometimes I think the best thing about winter is watching it on TV from California, so maybe we deserve the teasing. Much was made about our rushing to make sure our various electronic devices were charged (true in my case) and debating over what to call the storm (less so). Rainpocalypse? Stormageddon? Hellastorm?

Tweets included:

“Is that the sound of a light sprinkle or is it just the east coast laughing at us?”

“Portland is laughing at you.”

“#BayAreaStorm warning: you may see small droplets of water falling from the sky. They are dangerous. Do NOT approach.”

You can see more here.

Meanwhile, back in Hooterville, it was a wild and windy night. I was awake during the worst of it, from 2 to 5 am (the worst part of any night, really), listening to the torrential rain and howling winds. I kept expecting the power to go out, but it didn’t, even as lightning flashed across the skylight. Clyde was sleeping happily against my legs, Audrey on my bedside table (her latest and most inconvenient spot yet, tending to scatter library books and alarm clock with abandon), and Roscoe was curled against me, trying to keep me calm. Storms make me nervous.

In the morning, the rain gauge was filled to capacity, which is 5 inches, so there may have been even more rain than that. The purple honeysuckle on the side of the house had blown over as usual, but nothing else in the garden seemed to be damaged.

The river flooded and closed the highway to the city, as you can see in the picture above. Even after the waters had receded, it remained closed as crews removed river slime and downed trees. There were a few mud or rock slides and power did go out in some places in the area, but on the whole, it wasn’t as bad as predicted, and I’m fine with that.

A YEAR AGO: ‘Tis the season.

Gloomy morning to you! It’s the calm before the storm.

The weather seers are calling for the worst storm in a decade, with high winds and torrential amounts of rain (6 to 8 inches in a 24 hour period). It even has its own hashtag on Facebook. The National Weather Service is predicting that the highway will flood this afternoon and cause the powers that be to close it. Speaking of power, we may not have any a few hours from now, which is why I have the Christmas tree on and sparkling while I can:

Also it’s cheery in the gloom.

I wasn’t intending to put the tree up this year. It’s 65 years old or more (time to retire?), very sheddy, and a little on the Charlie Brown side, as you can see. I was going to get some branches of greenery, put the ornaments on them, and put it on the table, but I realized that table space is at a premium, and I need somewhere to put the stockings.

So I hauled the tree down from the storage loft and put it up, then wound lights along the banister:

I went with non twinkling white lights this year, and I really like the look and the glow. The colored lights went out on the balcony:

Christmas lights look better with a palm tree:

And finally, the wreath that matches the tree went on the door:

So the house is as ready for the holidays and the storm as I can get.

When I was driving to and from the jobette yesterday, it was hard not to be both mesmerized and terrified by the ocean, which was spectacular with crashing waves and high surf, but that terrible beauty usually heralds a storm and a half. Stay tuned!

A YEAR AGO: It was a lot colder, with frozen pipes and water buckets.

Of the many delights of finally getting some real rain (not having to water the garden; not feeling guilty about either watering or not watering the garden; frogs singing; making a dent in the drought), driving and walking dogs are not among them.

As you all know, I’m not one of Nature’s drivers, even in the best of circumstances, and I think we can all agree that pouring rain on rough and curvy roads are not the best of circumstances. Visibility was poor enough and the rain was pouring enough the other day that my back was aching from tension by the time I got home from the jobette. On the bright side, though: no power outages yet.

At Megan’s house, the dogs were bored out of their minds, while yet not wanting to go outside into the suboptimal weather. Megan had to drag them outside for necessary business, and they tried to get back inside as soon as possible. Once inside, they immediately expressed their boredom by sighing, getting in the way as much as caninely possible, and generally making a nuisance of themselves until Megan gave them bones to chew, which is the dog equivalent of sitting your kid in front of the TV.

We took advantage of a break between storms to get the dogs out of the house and hopefully get some of the naughtiness out of the dogs. We headed for the Headlands, overlooked by the village:

Ravens wheeled lazily over the ocean:

I love to watch them waft lightly in the air currents, like they’re surfing on the air.

Stella watched them with me. One of the surprising things about Stella, who does everything 150%, 150% of the time, is that she likes to watch birds, butterflies, and the ocean:

We enjoyed watching the waves together, and I enjoyed watching Stella gaze at the scenery with her golden eyes. We caught up with Megan and Star, and watched a little girl fly a kite with her father before heading back to the car.

At Megan’s house, we attacked the carcass of Turkzilla together, removing the remaining meat and breaking it up to make broth. While the broth was brothing, we made a turkey pot pie, Megan making the roux and sauce while I cut things it up. It was nice to be cooking together in her little kitchen with the fire roaring, the rain falling outside, and the dogs napping on the couch. It was a great day, full of simple pleasures.

A YEAR AGO:

A long day heading home from San Francisco.

We were gifted with another inch and a half of rain! It’s very early in the season, and it’s making me hopeful for a rainy winter.

During the rainfall, I realized that I did not have any sauce for the pasta I was planning to make for dinner. So I pulled on my little flowered rain boots and the hat I bought at the fair one year, and skipped through the puddles to my sister’s house, where she was getting ready for work.

The dogs were more excited than usual to see me, and that’s pretty excited. I don’t think anyone in the world is ever happier to see me than Star. Even my Dad made less fuss when I flew halfway around the world in coach to see him. The dogs were bored out of their minds in the way dogs are when it rains. They went out to pee, but couldn’t wait to get back in the house and out of the wetness. If possible, Stella actually hates the rain more than Star. So they are bored, but don’t want to go out and play. An appearance by Auntie Suzy just brightens up the dullness of their day.

Fortunately for me, Megan had some tomato sauce, and also tomatoes from the epic family garden which are due to be made into sauce any day. I also used onions, garlic and peppers from the family estate to make the sauce.

While I was at Megan’s, Rob showed me that he had done some work in their bathroom, repainting and planning to replace their sink with a better one he found somewhere, as Rob does. So he’s been cheating on my bathroom with his own bathroom. 🙂

There’s really not much left to do in my bathroom. Rob came by last night and put on a coat of primer. There’s just the walls to be painted white and the door to be painted black, along with installing the new door knob set. Here’s how it looked before the primer went on:

And here’s how it looked before Rob made it beautiful:

Amazing difference, isn’t it? Rob suggested taking down that shelf and it makes the whole room look bigger. I love how Rob was so creative in finding and using things. It’s been so fun spending more time with him. And of course, Clyde did an excellent job of supervising.

I have to say, it’s been fun coming home and finding Rob here. The way he thinks is both unique and entertaining. Also it’s fun to see the developments on the bathroom front.

Yesterday, I arrived just as Rob was installing the shower pan. The new drain hole was in a different spot than the old one, so Rob cut a new hole and put the cut out piece in the old hole to seal it. Or as he put it, “I put the new hole in the old hole!” After installing the shower pan, he created a confection of towels and wood to clamp it in place as it dried overnight:

As you can see in the background, Rob has cancelled the window, as Mark puts it, by sheetrocking over it. He also removed the peeling green wallpaper from around the shower and painted over it, ready to tile. Here’s the cancelled window from the outside:

Yes, having a drafty window in my shower was a little odd, and the wood was rotten, but it always makes me sad to see windows boarded up and know that no-one will ever look out of them again. Also the bathroom is a dark cave without a window, so Rob is trying to figure out if he can cut one in the door to the back porch or maybe put a narrow one beside the shower, or both. Stay tuned.

We’re on Day Three of the latest heatwave, which broke records in downtown San Francisco yesterday by hitting 90 degrees, and it was about the same here in Hooterville. Today is supposed to be the final day of this hellacious weather – for now, they always come back in my bitter experience – and it was the perfect time to enjoy the outdoor shower on the back porch:

It’s a relic from the good old (or possibly bad old) days when there was no bathroom at all, simply an outhouse and an outdoor shower, both of which must have been uncomfortable when it was below freezing in the winter. But on a warm morning like this, it was delightful to shower outside and admire the view:

It’s close to high noon and the temperatures are inching up inexorably. Audrey is lounging in a lounge chair on the balcony and the boys are puddles of melted fur in front of the floor fan. Let’s hope Karl the Fog comes riding in on his silvery mist to save us all soon.

Rhododendrons in my garden this evening

The calendar may say April – just – but summer has come to Hooterville.

In the usual way of summer, it made a dramatic entrance, hitting its unsuspecting audience over the head with a sledgehammer of heat while giggling wickedly. When I came home from the cool climes of the jobette yesterday evening, I was surprised to discover that it was 80 degrees both inside and outside my house.

Before removing work wear, accessories and make-up, usually the first things I do, I dragged out all the fans – the upstairs, the downstairs, and the portable one which can be positioned to blow air directly on Self – and placed them throughout the house, as well as turning on the ceiling fan, even though it’s really more of a whisk stirring the hot air around than anything else. As usual, the outside cooled down long before the inside, and I slept with the balcony door open and the screen door closed, sadly coated in a sheet and dreaming of blankets.

That was once I got to bed, though. On the first warm night of the year, Roscoe was scarce. I kept calling him, even though I knew it to be pointless. He finally swanned in just after midnight, had a fashionably late dinner, and then went to bed.

We were all awakened at 6:30 by Mark’s rooster crowing loudly and repeatedly. I gave up and got up, releasing the cats into the garden, not to appear again until dinner time.

I had quarterly calls scheduled all day today (and tomorrow, and all of Friday morning), and I did them in the shady parts of the garden, moving my chair as the sun shifted. It gave me time to notice the damage done by Mark’s rabbit, Changa (it means “monkey”) on her frequent visits. It occurred to me that the rabbit ornament on my “front” door may in fact be a secret sign to rabbits everywhere that there’s an all you can eat buffet on the premises, much as hobos used to leave coded symbols scratched on people’s front doors during the Great Depression.

So really, I may have brought it on myself.

The rain is really trying to make it up to us. According to my friend and neighbor Jim, we got more than three inches of rain yesterday, and I emptied more than five out of the rain gauge this morning, and five is as high as the rain gauge goes.

I can believe it – it was pouring last night when I drove home from the Village. I went to see a play of the beloved film The Breakfast Club, which made its début thirty years ago this week.

This production was my friends’ daughter Maya’s senior year project. She wrote the play script based on the movie, designed the set, chose the actors, acted in it, and directed. Did I mention that she is sixteen and is going to college in the Fall?

Maya did a great job. I was surprised that the minimal set worked so well and that Maya was able to effectively capture scenes like the chase in the hallway and the dance in the library. I really enjoyed it, and on my way out, I told the kid who played Bender what a great job he did. He ducked his head with embarrassment and thanked me.

I ran to the car, but was soaked anyway. When I got home, the kitties greeted me happily. This morning, though, they didn’t care that I got to bed late. Audrey insisted on going out at 6:30, and I fed the insistent Clyde and went back to bed. Clyde had other ideas, though, and kept making his distinctive ClydeSounds™ while walking all over me. I gave up and got up and let him out into the rain. I guess the cats have their own Breakfast Club.

It’s raining, it’s pouring

Woke up about 3:00 am to the oppressive and depressing silence of a power outage – other than the howling of the wind and pounding of the rain. I miss the comforting hum, light, and warmth of civilization pretty much immediately. Fortunately, there is a little emergency light beside the sliding glass doors in the kitchen, giving a beam of hope in the darkness of the night, so I was able to make my way downstairs to my cell phone* (I generally leave it plugged in when I’m at home, since the lack of cell service makes it keep looking for a signal, which in turn runs down the battery).

I called the familiar PG&E Outage Line – one of the most important of my contacts – and heard the even more depressing news that I was the first to report the outage. As I write, it’s about 7:15 am, and the house is still discouragingly dark. Fortunately, I was able to boil water on the gas stove and make coffee with the pre-ground coffee I bring on trips to the city (the coffee grinder being out of commission) and make coffee in my trusty French press, which doesn’t care about the power or the lack of it.

Welcome to the first power outage of the season and the year!

Update, 10:00 am: Power (obviously) back on. Immediately washed dishes, filled Brita pitcher and kettle and other water-related activities. Fingers crossed it stays on. Thousands are without power in the Bay Area.

*After more than a year, the iPhone has failed to ruin my life or obsess me, as some people warned. Maybe this is due to the aforementioned lack of service in the county.** I recently updated the IOS and wish I hadn’t, since I dislike the Disneyfied cartoon look of the icons and the apparent impossibility of dismissing incoming calls, which is essential when you have two jobs. At least I can run the Secret app.

**The major complaint of tourists, followed by the curviness of the roads and the insane price of gas in the Village – about twice what it costs in the Big Town, ten minutes away.

It’s raining petals

We got about six inches of rain since I last checked in with you. It was wonderful to hear the rain pattering against the roof/walls in my little house. You could practically hear the garden saying “Aaahhh….”, even though it still looks pretty terrible*. The power even stayed on!

The kitties were less delighted than I was, coming home soaked to the skin with their fur all spiky, except, of course, for Audrey, who has the ability to come in out of the pouring rain with magically dry fur. Roscoe got bored with the rain and napped, whereas Clyde perched on the porch and watched the weather for a while before giving up and joining his brother in a rainy day snooze.

The dogs hated the rain even more than the cats. And Stella finds the rain even more objectionable than Star does, which I didn’t think was possible. Megan literally had to drag them outside. As far as they were concerned, the call of nature could stay on hold or go straight to voicemail. I still remember how Schatzi actually pretended to pee once when I was taking care of her one stormy winter night in San Francisco so that she could go back inside.

Unlike the cats, the dogs were bored out of their minds, while refusing to go outside and play. Megan took advantage of breaks in the downpour to take them out, but another storm is slated to move in tonight or tomorrow and last for a few days. I don’t think Star and Stella will greet the next downpour with the same enthusiasm as their Staff.

*Basically whatever the bitter cold snap didn’t ruin, the drought did. When the County is asking everyone to cut back on water usage by 20%, you can’t really justify watering your garden, no matter how sad it looks. I was planning to do more in the garden this year, but it looks like that will have to be on hold unless the weather changes dramatically.

I started the new year with a new Me! A sick Me! Not an improvement over the old Me.

I get sick so rarely that when I do, I am sort of offended, disappointed that my vintage body is letting me down. I should probably get used to that instead of experiencing the usual dismay and consternation. I am convinced that I picked up this flu in the mall, where I made an unaccustomed visit during my most recent Bay Area trip.

I am now completely unused to malls, and when I go into one, I am immediately overwhelmed and appalled by the tidal waves of perfumes and people. My mind also immediately goes on hold and I forget why I’m there, gazing around me in a daze at how huge the place is and how packed with people and stuff. How is this possible? What did I want to buy? What’s that thing?

At the Whole Foods, I nearly lost what little is left of my mind while trying to buy something for dinner. You’d think it would be pretty simple to just take a number and order some food to go, but it was a free for all in the style of an Italian bank. I was practically whimpering by the time I got out of there. I think it’s fair to say that the bumpkinization process is now complete.

I hadn’t realized that a flu bug hitched a ride home with me until last Friday, when I began to suspect that something was wrong. On Saturday, I woke up with chills, fever, achiness, coughing, etc. and emailed my boss at the jobette to say I wouldn’t be in on Monday. Later I extended it to Tuesday, and although I’m at the jobette today, I still feel under the weather.

Speaking of weather: I woke up to a sprinkle of welcome rain. Just enough to make the road slippery and ruin one’s hairdo, but not enough to help the drought. My county just declared a state of emergency. I guess it’s better than the extreme cold and snow people have been facing back East, but it’s scary nonetheless. Here’s hoping both health and weather improve soon!

Inland snow

The record-breaking cold snap is finally beginning to lose its grip, though it’s still a lot colder than it should be. It’s beginning to feel like the White Witch is running things around here – always freezing, no rain. At least it’s stayed above freezing the past couple of nights and the pipes have stayed unfrozen, which is the way I like them.

Yesterday I took a walk around the garden and I must say it was dispiriting. Anything that wasn’t zapped by the extended deep freeze had been eaten by Mark’s rabbit. I’m finding it a lot less cute right about now. At least the indoor paper whites are beginning to bloom.

As for the Christmas tree, every morning I collect the ornaments from the floor and put them back on again. Maybe the woodland theme was an especially bad idea. Today I found all of the acorns on the floor, and most of the snowflakes had fallen, not as pretty a sight as the picture above, taken in the county seat last Friday.

It seems that I forget every year about the cats’ propensity for playing with ornaments and attempting to take down the tree until it’s too late. Then it’s a six week battle until I put the tree and ornaments back in the box, swearing never to do this again. And just plain swearing.

So the pipes are frozen. Again.

They were also frozen yesterday morning, despite the fact that I left the tap running in the bathroom both nights, not an easy thing for a Californian to do after so little rain for so long. Not that it helped, though. So I apparently wasted water for nothing.

Even the emergency buckets of ice outside are frozen over so hard that I need an implement to break the ice. No conversational gambit was equal to the task.

Good thing I filled the kettle for coffee and took a shower last night, just in case.

The cold does make it feel seasonal, though, and I believe there was snow inland when we got that half inch of rain the other day. Might as well put up the Christmas decorations, And after all, it was the first Saturday in December, which we all know is the correct day for putting them up (not before Thanksgiving, whatever the stores would have you believe).

This year, my theme for the white, vintage Christmas tree from long ago Gimbels:

was artificial woodland. I love having a fake tree in a house surrounded by real trees, and I decorated it with faux nests with robin’s eggs:

And little acorns on ribbons.

These are made from real acorn caps and felted white wool. Finished it off with clear snowflakes and of course white twinkle lights.

I wrapped lights around the banister:

And the glass roof of the back porch:

In case you’re wondering why I took the pictures in the daytime, it’s because my camera steadfastly refuses to focus when it thinks it’s too dark, which is almost always in the winter. And it looks (and feels) like it’s going to be a long one.

As I write, it’s raining outside. And inside, too – I was temporarily blinded by cold rainwater dripping in my eye on the way to the coffee pot this morning. I can hear the soft plop of rain falling on the wood floor as I type.

Oddly, the kitties are outside. The boys will eventually come in with soaked, spiky fur and muddy paws, and Audrey will somehow be magically dry, slipping through the door with a noise that’s somewhere between a purr and a complaint. They will try the other doors and discover that the weather is equally bad through each of them, and then either sit and stare at the rain as if they can psych it out, or zone out. Megan and I think our pets do that when nothing is fun is happening – they turn off. Not really asleep, just kind of a dial tone.

The rain is very unusual for this time of year. We rarely get rain in the summer months. We hardly got any rain in January and February, the traditional rainy months, so maybe this is all part of climate change. The timing of the unseasonal and unreasonable rain does mean that I missed the Super Moon, a disappointment given my close relationship with the moon. I’m trying to convince myself that I couldn’t have seen it through the trees anyway.

At least we aren’t flooded, like those poor people in Calgary, and I won’t have to water the garden for a couple of days. I hate watering, unsurprising since I dislike anything dull and inconvenient. If someone could invent a hose that didn’t kink, they’d be my personal hero. Especially if it didn’t weigh about 5,000 pounds. My current hoses (one for the front, one for the back, and one on the balcony) are super heavy and not supposed to kink, but you know they do anyway, usually as far away from me as possible so I get to trek over, unkink it, and get sprayed by the end that’s suddenly working again. Until the next kink. I’m pretty sure my hoses’ kink is sadism.

On the bright (sunny?) side, it’s my Friday. We hired a new guy at the jobette who took over working on Saturdays, so my new schedule is Sunday through Tuesday, plus the first Wednesday of each month. We will probably close on Sundays during the winter, so I’ll go back to Monday through Wednesday and have weekends free. Whether it rains or not.

Well, the heat wavelet turned out to be wishful thinking. We’ve been blasted by temperatures in the high 80s for the past four days, which is about four days too long.

True, we don’t have the bone-crushing humidity they have back East, and unlike that side of the country, it actually cools down at night to about 45 or 50 degrees. This should be good for sleeping, but when you live in a house shaped like an upside down rowboat, the heat congregates up in the pointy part, which is where I (try) to sleep. It throws a pretty smokin’ party up there and tends to multiply. You know how some parties can be.

Though thankful for the screen door Rob installed (and not a moment too soon) and having a fan up there, it’s been pretty hard to sleep for the past three nights. I’ve gone through a three pound bag of ice in as many days.

It’s nearly impossible to get an accurate weather forecast, partly because of the many microclimates and partly because we live in such an obscure corner of the world, but it appears that the heat is going to be moving on tomorrow, though it may just be more wishful thinking on my part.

On Thursday, Megan, Rob and I sweated our way to the Big Town for the open house at the fine woodworking school. You may recall how impressed I was by the show in February, and I was excited about sharing it with them.

We were warmly greeted by the students, and Rob, a former carpenter and wood worker himself, had some good conversations. I was pleased to meet the creator of my favorite piece from the earlier show, the delightfully named Sarah Marriage, and tell her how much I love her roll top desk:

I was completely enchanted by these lamps:

They would look perfect on my curved walls, don’t you think?

I was charmed by this curvaceous chair:

This spectacular table was made of madrone, a local wood, and jarrah, a member of the eucalyptus family, which was new to me:

The cutting board on the table has a note explaining that it was made of “wood found in the firebox”. Nice use of scraps:

Behind the school were the mock ups, or drafts, of the beautiful finished work. It was fun to see them:

We also admired the view:

There’s a stream and in the distance you can almost see the trestle the historic Skunk Train passes over. It’s a beautiful setting for a building full of beautiful things.

Megan and Rob enjoyed the show as much as I did, and we had a lot to talk about as we headed to the local brewery’s Tap Room & Grill for dinner. We discovered that the menu had changed quite a bit, but I enjoyed my Carolina BBQ and Rob his fish and chips. Megan was a little less enthused with her pizza, but we had a good time together and enjoyed the cool of the restaurant and the iced tea.

After dinner, we got some handmade local ice cream. Of course, we didn’t forget Miss Star, who enjoyed her little scoop of vanilla hugely:

After that, we headed home in the setting sun, replete with a good dinner and a happy evening together.

Shadows

It was hot’n’heinous yesterday and slated to be the same today. This is an unusual (I hope) phenomenon here on the Coast.

It was 85 degrees when I got home around 6:00 last night, just in time to witness the Leafs lose their first playoff game in 8 years in a spectacular fashion. Good thing I stopped at the store for a bag of ice (and Otter Pops) on my way home, so I could put ice in my drink. It melted almost as quickly as I did.

I was very thankful for the screen door Rob installed for me. It still needs a doorknob and a real fastener, but I got a hook and eye and screwed them in. So far it’s keeping the door closed at night. I may be jinxing myself here, but the cats have pretty much ignored it so far, which I find sort of astonishing. I had expected Audrey to be crawling up it and clawing at it immediately. Last night she slept on top of the armoire, which is door (and breeze) adjacent, the clever girl.

It had been a fun day at the jobette. I chatted with a woman who had been a real, live Pan Am stewardess! I told her how much I loved the wonderful, glamorous, far too short-lived show, and she said that the reality was actually much more glamorous. How awesome is that? She said they stayed in the best hotels and had the best of everything, even though they weren’t paid that much.

The political intrigue and drama on the show was accurate, too. She was boarding a flight in Teheran (the friend who got her started as a stewardess was the personal flight attendant for the Shah) when the guy behind the desk took her passport and told her she couldn’t leave the country. She noticed that a Swissair flight was boarding, so she went to their desk and explained the situation. The Swissair guy told her to get on the flight to Geneva and he would get her passport to her. She did so, and just before the door closed, a hand appeared with her passport, which was given to the head flight attendant.

Talking to people and learning their stories is probably my favorite part of the jobette. And I continue to be amazed by how many exceptional people are attracted to this little corner of the world.

It’s been a strange winter. We had storms and power outages much earlier in the season than usual, and last night, we had one much later than usual.

I woke up around midnight when the power went out. Even though it’s always quiet here, I guess the sudden total silence instead of the humming of the refrigerator and other accoutrements of civilization is noticeable, even in sleep.

I could hear the wind howling – later, I learned that it was gusting up to 45 mph, and in San Francisco, they closed the Great Highway since the winds were so high – and the much-needed rain coming down. The rain seemed much louder without the ambient house humming.

I lay there and thought about how I had just emptied out the emergency pails of water – if you don’t do this early enough in the spring time, they become breeding grounds for undesirables, like mosquitoes – and the fact that I could not grind beans for coffee in the morning. There was no leftover coffee to reheat, either. Between dark thoughts like this, the storm, the kitties’ extra naughtiness, checking the PG&E outage phone number for updates, and watching the hours dwindle on my glowing alarm clock, I didn’t get much sleep.

The power eventually came back on, though, so I was able to make coffee before rushing off to the pool for aquafit. I had to get out of the car and drag a branch out of the muddy driveway, and the road to the Big Town was littered with lesser branches and pine needles. The air smelled like Christmas from the fallen needles and battered pine trees, and the sky was clear blue as if nothing had ever happened.

Maybe it was all a dream.

Yesterday was the first official day of spring, or the Vernal Equinox as the scientifically and paganly inclined would have it. Here in Hooterville, it looked a lot more like winter than spring, being rainy, windy, and cold-ish.

It’s been a strange winter. We were slammed with storms early in the season, racking up six power outages by the end of November and so much rain that I had to empty it out of the flooded containers in the garden. I got tired of picking up the purple honeysuckle by the side of the house and just let it lie there dejectedly, waiting for Spring.

January and February were the driest ever recorded in California, and then the first day of spring was heralded with a mini-storm. Maybe it’s all part of the joy of climate change.

The second day of spring looks a lot more like Spring than the first day, sunny and breezy.

The calla lily my neighbor Jim gave me last year is in bloom:

The orchid is just beginning to blossom, making me glad that I kept hauling it inside when the overnight temperatures dipped to the freezing point or lower, which happened a lot this winter. Sunny skies mean starry nights, and starry skies are always cold ones, without clouds for insulation.

Today the PG&E meter reader stopped to look at it and smell it (it doesn’t smell like anything, unfortunately).

I meant to dig up the tulip bulbs and plant new ones, but one way or another it didn’t happen. The tulips were undeterred by this neglect – and possibly enjoyed the cold temperatures – since they sprung up and bloomed anyway:

The persistence of tulips!