Tips from the Weatherman

“If you can see your air, it’s not good.” Really?! Who knew. I never thought I would say this, but… I am looking forward to going to LA this weekend because the air will be clearer. Seriously. How fucked up must the air be here, to make LA air seem good?

I go work in the garage at night and I can see haze in the garage. The garage is 20×20. It is completely ridiculous! My couch smells like ash. Not ass, ASH. You can’t open the windows and doors and turn on the fans in the evening, to let in the slightly cooler air, because you are blowing smoky air right into the house. GAHHHH!

Plus, it is hot. Around 103. The smoke supposedly keeps the UV from reaching the ground and is keeping the temps lower than they would be normally. But everything is completely still and oppressive, like a blanket held over a smoldering fire. We had blue sky two days ago when I woke up. It stayed for about 4 hours and was gradually replaced by the yellow/orange sky. Anyone out there needing footage for an end-of-the-world movie; come on down! Footage galore.
On the bright side, the fires are mostly contained and my house didn’t burn up. And as long as I don’t breathe, I have my health.

I keep thinking I will wash my truck (on the lawn to maximize the water usage) and make her all sparkly, then I wonder “why?” because the next day she will be covered with ash again. I put a box in the truck a couple days ago, and left the windows down because of the heat. I took the box out today and had to wipe the whole thing down, it was coated with fine ash. It’s like living next to the 405 again.

Wait, I was concentrating on the bright side, wasn’t I?!? Hm. Happy hour! That was a bright thing. I wanted to go get some food at Chevy’s today. I had gone to my psuedo-job for 3 hours, then ran some errands. I was hungry and getting headachy from both hunger and the smoke. I really wanted someone else to fix my food. And i really wanted a blended mango marguerita. But I really shouldn’t spend $20 on eating out, blah blah blah. After much dithering, which included a trip in to the restaurant, and then leaving before I ordered (mmmm, guilt) I finally threw caution to the wind and went back to have some grub. No mango marg, but they did have fresh watermelon margs, yippee!! I ordered one of those, ordered the mini chimichangas appetizer, pulled the basket of chips and bowl of salsa over, directly under my chin (the better to facilitate the shovelling of food), and opened my book

You ever notice how it is less loser-like to eat in a restaurant alone, if you have a book?

Read my book, ate my meal, drank my drink. Got the check from the cutie who waited on me. $6.71. Yeah for Happy Hour!!! You can’t even eat a decent meal at home for $6.71!! I could eat there Mon thru Fri, every week of the year, and spend less than I would on cooking food at home. ‘Course the menu is somewhat limited, but who gets tired of chips and salsa and melted cheese? Not me!

I am SO GLAD I moved up here for the clean air, blue skies and all the trees. Here’s a photo of Redding back in the day, when the sky was clear and shit was not on fire.

Bench on Sac River Trail

P.S. You might have seen in the news that a firefighter rescued a little black bear cub from the surrounding burnt mountains. Poor thing. His little paw pads were all burnt (and apparently he lost a couple toes, ouchie ouch ouch!) and he is severely dehydrated. No mommy bear anywhere. They flew him, and the firefighter, to an animal rehabilitation/rescue facility in Lake Tahoe, to treat him, with hopes that he will recover and be able to be released back into the wild. The firefighter named the little guy Lil Smokey. The original Smokey Bear was also rescued from a fire, back in 1950, I think. If you want to check it out, you can go here.
and here.

Something I thought I would hate, but turned out nice.

I had a friend visit this past weekend, amid all the heat and smoke. He thought he would escape all the heat in the Bay Area by coming up here. HA! I took him to Turtle Bay Exploration Park, to see the butterflies. They have an enclosure there, which is full of trees, flowers, misters, and butterflies. It is really neat. Lola and I visited last summer and were enchanted. It’s cool and the butterflies flit around, landing on the gorgeous array of flowers and flat fruit feeders. They have low benches spread around to sit on, and if you sit still, for a length of time, the butterflies might land on you. It is nice to watch the delight on the kids faces, I have to admit.

Kid and Butterfly

It is very serene, and did I mention, cool. It is a permanent exhibit, so if you ever head this way, stop by, it is very much worth it.

Jakes photo

Orange on coleus

Buckeye

Monarch

The title of the exhibit is “Birds & Butterflies”. To get to the butterfly exhibit, you must pass a gigantic cage, filled with squawking, dive-bombing, crapping birds. Not fun. At all. Birds in cages are gross. Birds in the wild are neat, as long as they do not dive bomb me, or try to steal my sammich. So I had never gone in the bird exhibit. My friend wanted to go in. Supressing my queasiness, I went in. It wasn’t so bad, they weren’t dive bombing, so that was alright. It was kinda engaging, the way they turned their little bright eyes on you, and cocked their little feathered heads. Most of the birds were cockatiels and parakeets, but they had a few “small” parrots, very colorful, like tye-dye. I was photographing one these fine specimens, when he leapt onto my arm. I almost crapped myself.

My new pal

He was very interested in me. He (it?) kept creeping closer and closer to my face, cocking his head back and forth. I thought he liked the sound of my dulcet tones. Then I realized he was checkin’ his look in my glasses. I brought him right up to them and he pressed his head and beak against the lens, and held it there. So frakkin’ cute!! Then he decided to try them on himself and tried to remove them from my face, by grabbing at the bridge with his beak.

May I try these on, please?

You could buy little sticks with food hot-glued onto them, to feed the birds with. So my friend bought one, and brought it over. We stood there for a few minutes, the bird contentedly munching, me watching him. The next thing I know, amid an explosion of feathers, the food stick had gotten heavier.

Food thief

My original visitor was like “WTF?”
Then the take-off, if anything, even more alarming than the dive bombing. That’s the thief’s tail in the upper left corner. The corner I am cringing away from.

Take-off

Ahhh, nature. OK, captive nature, really, but still, you gotta love it!

My deodorant has failed me

What is the deal?!? My deodorant has utterly, utterly failed me. Lady Speed Stick 24/7 in Satin Pear, which handled LA like a veteran call girl, has been completely defeated by Redding. By late afternoon I smell like a gym room, which is to say, really really gross. I worked for this guy (years ago) who would wear his shirts 2 or 3 times between washings. He stank. I smell like that. I offend even myself. I am actually self-conscious, not of the hair showing in my pit, but of the stench wafting from the region.

I have never been much of a “sweat-er”. On the rare occasion that I work out, I don’t sweat much. I get fat hand syndrome, where my hands and feet swell up until my poor strained digits look like the slightest pressure or movement will cause them to explode goo in a five foot radius. When I garden, I get the rare one or two drops on pearly perspiration on my brow, a little crescent of moisture under my bra line. But that is about it. I thought I would breeze through the hot flash part of menopause.

but NOOOOOOOOOOO! Now I sweat. (not like a pig, as pigs do not have functional sweat glands, so do not, in fact, sweat) but more like mmmmm, not a horse either, with all that gross lather… well let’s just say I sweat like a really sweaty person. The slightest exertion cause a fine mist to break out all over my body. This morning I went out into the garage to fold some clothes; broke out in a sweat. Sitting still, working on glass, I can feel it rolling greasily down my backbone. If I am working in the garden, or outside at all and the temp is over 75, it just rolls off me, like a soaker hose. I get these huge drops welling up under my eyes… and my hairline, the back of my neck, just sopping wet. It is really gross! Ashes stick to me! The ashes floating in the air, stick to the fine sheen of moisture on my arms and legs.

You know what I hate the most? Getting out of the shower. Trying to dry my hair. There is just no way. BY the time I have heated up my scalp to the point where my hair will dry, I need to get back in the fucking shower! Great big man-sized sweat, dripping down my temples. And forget using the flatiron. The thing is like a sauna. A $40 sauna. Just hold it near an area and watch the sweat pop out. The hair all around my hairline gets soaked with sweat, and dries all wavy and jacked up anyway, once I use the dryer and flatiron, so it is a self-defeating purpose. Most of the time I just put a plastic headband on. And make-up is out of the question. The mascara doesn’t even dry. The eyeliner pencils are so warm and soft that they are impossible to use, like a crayon left in the back of a station wagon, all day, in the sun. Good thing I don’t have a job, huh?

It’s getting a little too real.

The hills are alive... with smoke and flame

Or maybe surreal is the correct term. In regards to the fires and smoke, things were getting better for a few days; the smoke was clearing, the firefighters were getting handle on the worst blazes, fine ash was no longer raining down like obscene snow, blue sky was seen. Then the temperatures started climbing and the fires burst forth with renewed vigor.

Yesterday ash began floating gently out of the sky again, the pieces a bit larger than before. Today, the ash is often the size of nickels, with the occasional white, quarter-sized flakes. On the back deck I noticed a dark gray leaf, complete with fine traceries of veins. I reached out and touched it and it dissolved into fine ash. We ran some errands this afternoon and stopped to have lunch at a local mexican place I wanted to try. The food was the worst psuedo-mexican food I have had in a long while. When we came out we were presented with a great view of the mountains immediately surrounding the town. The only problem? They had huge plumes of smoke billowing out of them.

This shit is getting close, and that’s worrisome. We aren’t in danger of actually being burnt out, there is too much established building between us and the hillsides, but to see the hills actively burning, so close, is freaky. I drove around and took some photos.

Actual flame

If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you can see flame just above the flat ridge to the left of the zig-zagging trail.

Ever watch Dante’s Peak? I loved that movie, cheesy as it was. The special effects were great. And i am not saying that this is anything like having a volcano erupt in your backyard, or even an event like, say, Hurricane Katrina, but it is creepy and scary, regardless. The light is yellow, an intense golden-orange tone, and makes everything look cartoonish. The sun is orange, and as it shiines through the trees, it paints orange designs on the fence and sidewalk, reliefs of the branches the light has passed through. On the radio they are broadcasting “severe weather condition” warnings, which usually means snow and are broadcast in the winter. The air quality is through the roof, and the “Shasta Visibility Camera” at the county Air Quality Bureau is “out of commission”. Nice.

We drove up the 299 towards Old Shasta and Keswick. Both of these are tiny little hamlets with a hundred or so inhabitants. Both received warnings to plan for mandatory evacuations. Keswick is 6 miles from my house, Shasta is another 2 miles further. About one miles or so past Old Shasta, the road is closed. Not the 299, but another road thru the hills. There were alot of fire trucks going in, and alot of cars full of stuff, and towing boats, coming out. Whiskeytown Lake is 5 miles past Old Shasta hand has been closed to the public for several days now. So much for carefree country life, eh?

I know why Martha Stewart went to Jail

Well, we all know why she went to jail, stock fraud or whatever; but I know why she did it. She was bored! She wanted a change from doing shit around the house. Something more exciting and invigorating than arranging another tea party or figuring out a more clever way to launder doilies. So she came up with an inappropriate stock transaction. Brilliant!

Bitching about not working probably cuts no ice with you folks who work your asses off everyday. I don’t have to get up at any certain time; I don’t have to put on makeup or clothes more respectable than a paint-splattered T-shirt and baggy, clashing shorts; I don’t have to come home and play with the kids, do their homework with them and get them ready for and into bed; I don’t have a spouse, with all the attendant good and bad that goes with the license.

What I do have, is GUILT. A mighty motivating thing, guilt. It is what gets my lazy fanny out of bed before 8am. Guilt is what has me wracking my brain for some chore to do around the house so my existence isn’t wasted. And I am not even Catholic. After 10 months though, guilt is losing its hold. There really isn’t much more I can do around the house without a major infusion of cash. I can vacuum only so often; the furniture can only be arranged in a finite number of configurations. Which I have done, a few times. Once you start bolting shelves to the wall though, and making other semi-permanent decisions, it’s more difficult to change them.

I’ve rearranged the living room twice, the office three times. Can’t do to much with either bathroom, and I love my bedroom, so no changes needed there. The dining area is good, limited configurations there, so not many choices. That leaves the kitchen, garage, front and back yards. The kitchen, front and back yards need cashola to do any real work in. I did what I could; painted the dark wood cabinets in the kitchen (now that I think about it, I never did finish the drawers…), put jazzy shelf liners in. Without ripping the whole thing out, there is not much more to do. Same with the yards. Too hot to work in the yards anyway. Just moving the sprinkler around causes me to sweat like I just ran a marathon.

The garage has been moved around twice. No… three times. The latest being a restructuring of my glass workshop area. It is much better now. But now it is done, and I have no other things to do!!!

I guess I will have to tackle my closet next. I’m really stretching here.

Getting a job

Why is it so frakkin’ difficult to get a job, or even an interview, here? It’s not like I don’t try, daily, to secure employment. The structure of the spa industry here is much different than LA. In LA, you are an employee; they schedule stuff for you, you show up, do the work, they pay you. Or you have your own place. Simple. Here, in a town glutted with “spa” businesses, there are 4 places where you can be an employee. Two, I have worked at, briefly. The other two have no openings, and haven’t for 9 months. Everyplace else is booth rental, and booth rental is a money pit unless you already have a clientele, which I do not.

 

” Think outside the box”. ok. I have applied everywhere, with the exception of fast food places. Ralph’s, Safeway, Holiday market, the local organic store. Macy’s, Sears, OSH, Home Depot, Kohl’s. All the framing shops in town. RiteAid, Walgreens, Ross, CostPlus, a local coffehouse. All these places were hiring, I got a couple interviews, but no job offer. As for fast food, it is difficult to contemplate working in an industry that I think is unhealthy and exploitive. I thought about prostitution for about 8 seconds. One guy told me that I am “overqualified” for a retail position, that they would rather hire someone out of high school than someone with my experience because high-schoolers are “easier to train”. Read: easier to manipulate and take advantage of.

 

And then there are all the uplifting stories on google news and the NY Times. It is all ominously familiar. Unemployment has risen for the 6th consecutive month, new construction coming to a stand still, the housing slump, the mortgage crisis, the cost of food and transportation going up. I have noticed that the commercials on the radio are leaning heavily on debt resolution services. A couple nights ago, I watched a clip of George Carlin (R.I.P. dude), his dead-on “stuff” riff, from the mid-70’s. In it, he mentions 18% credit card rates, which is where we are now, again. I was 10 in 1976. I remember Carter, waiting in long lines at the gas station every other day, Trix cereal going from 1.29 to 2.19 seemingly overnight. I remember the drought, and the dead yellow lawn, and the local swimming pool closing. I remember the day it hit 112 in Concord, a record, a day so hot that all I could do was lay on the red plaid couch and try to read, feeling the sweat from my bent knee drip down the back of my pudgy thigh. I used to lay in bed with  my mom and watch the evening news, the somber faces relating the latest statistics on the economic crisis. I remember the worry on my mom’s face as she sat hunched over the checkbook and the stack of bills. And how she always smiled and hugged me and said “No sweetie, everything is fine” when I asked her if things were OK.

 

And here we are again. This time though, I don’t have the mental protection of being 10. I am forty-two now, the same age as my mother in those long ago times. And now it is my turn to be responsible for her, to hunch over the checkbook, or computer, and look worried as I pay the bills.  She is wise, she doesn’t ask if things are OK. She places her hand on the top of my head, gently, and runs it down, slowly, to the nape of my neck, giving the only comfort she able to give; love and understanding.

Skunks!

In the fall, shortly after I moved in, a neighbor told us we were sharing the property with a mama skunk and her skunklettes (potentially numbering four, yikes!), so to beware. We smelled them often, but didn’t see them until the big rainstorm at the end of October. I was out in the rain, taking pictures. and enjoying the site and feel of all that water. I felt like a dried out sponge after being dropped in a bowl of water. It was fantastic. I turned to head for home and caught sight of a small, bedraggled, distinctive shape rolling across the street, at what I think was a dead run.

ahhhhhh, how cute. I LOVE this nature shit!

Then a few months ago we had a skunk die off in my neighborhood. Over 100 skunks were found, dead or dying. Turns out it was canine distemper, nasty stuff. I hadn’t seen “my” skunk for months, and I was afraid she and her babies had died, which made me super sad to think about. A week or so ago, I was sitting out front reading, in the blessedly cool night air, and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. My skunk!!! yeah!! As she calmly moved into my yard and inspected the ground, moving ever closer to me, my initial excitement turned to anxiety. “Stay by the fence, little skunk…” I telepathically urged it. As it wandering over to the steps leading up to lawn, and my chair, the gentle urgings in my mind changed to “NO! NO! NO! DON’T COME UP HERE! NOOoooooo…” Being a receptiv to mental vibrations, she turned away, walked the fence line and disappeared.

A couple night later, my mom and I were both sitting out front, late. Again, movement, this time, across the street. Two skunks! Sweet! One was slightly larger than the other, and the larger one looked as though it was nudging the smaller one to stay out of the street. The toodled along for a bit, up the street, then disappeared under a car. Sweet! Anxiety-free nature. I was so tickled to have seen them. And i was super happy to see that one of the babies had survived.

Last night, I went to the front door to urge the kids in the for the night. (They have taken to laying out front, on the porch, and watching the world go by. I usually mist out there in the evening, so the pavement is cool.) They were all looking intently into the side yard, ears perked up, pupils huge. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it in the area. Peeking through a small break in the fence, was a little black face with a white stripe on its crown. Skunk! Awesome! I stealth watched it from the house, occasionally turned on the flashlight to follow its progress towards the backyard. After a while, I decided to leave well enough alone, and let it be.

Around midnight, I was lazing in bed, reading a book, when I realized I had been hearing rustling noises for some time. Grab flashlight, put on pants (cause pants make you safer!), and tiptoed out onto the deck. Right there, under the apple tree, was the skunk! Digging around, looking for grubs and stuff. The cats were completely unfazed, they must have already agreed on terms for sharing the property. The skunk dug around in the leaf pile for a bit, then moved along the fence towards the compost pile. AAAHHHH! I thought the compost was breaking down awfully fast. Seems that skunks like their veggies, and their egg shells. I guess I can expect more visits… don’t expect a photo though.

We are the Borg!

Our device is smaller, and we smile, but looking around, i am pretty sure we are the Borg as of July 1st.

A small article in the local paper: a woman crashed her car into a fence and tore out a yard-size swath of landscaping, ending up pressed intimately against a telephone pole. Nobody was injured, thankfully, but there was extensive landscape damage to two yards and a fence. Turns out, she had just purchased her Bluetooth device at Costco and was trying to figure out how to use it. While driving home. This person should not be allowed to breed.