Peeking into the rock

I'm probably overthinking this.

So I got a bill from Blue Shield for over two hundred dollars for my first month of 2016. Considering that my original fee had been a dollar a month, and last year's had been $22 a month, it seemed out of line. Granted, percentage-wise it was less of an increase (a bit more than 2000% the first year and a bit less than 1000% the second year)...and of course my income has not risen at all and my other costs keep increasing too.

So I called to straighten it out, and eventually, after a couple of days of bad connections, frightening error messages, and lots of apologetic confusion from the stalwart souls who staff the front lines at the Blue Shield and Covered California call centers, it emerged that I didn't belong on Covered California because I don't make enough money. I was supposed to go to Medi_Cal instead.

California residents will understand my mixed feelings when I got this news. Medi-Cal is free, the coverage is fine...but doctors generally don't take Medi-Cal patients. I mean they flat-out don't, or they say they do "but we're not taking new patients just now." Plus, there's the issue that if I make any money at all, I'll be kicked off again and have to go back to the exchange and find a plan I can afford that will cover what I need.

First things first: according to the website, my primary doctor takes Medi-Cal. So if that works out, I'll be fine.

But let's return to my eligibilty. This freaks me out no end, because: Covered California uses line 37 of the tax return to determine eligibility, and Medi-Cal uses gross income. And if I understood all those people correctly the lower limit for Covered California this year is $16K+something. I can't confirm or correct this number looking around online: it seems to be a secret that you only learn if you dip below it. Meanwhile, according to the letter I got from Medi-Cal, if my income goes above $13,354 a month, I'm no longer eligibile. That's almost the same number: it might be exactly the same number.

However, line 37 on the tax return is the adjusted gross income and it is lower than the entire gross income. Why this matters to me is that my Covered California income is therefore under $10K a year, while my Medi-Cal income is about $20 a month less than the cap. If I get a job or sell a story will I have to change medical coverage again? I was thinking that since my legs work again I could be a substitute teacher. Will I have to change medical coverage during the school year and again in the summer? If I sell one story, I'll be over the limit for Medi-Cal that month but under the limit for Covered California for the year. I'm afraid to ask about it, actually. I considered dropping olut of the system but my barebones prescriptions (5 medicines, the rest are OTC) are four hundred dollars a month without coverage. I've been working towards dropping more drugs, but I can't drop them all.

Can we say it together? SOCIALIZE THE GODDAMN MEDICINE. Save your grandma!

Which reminds me of the thing I think is going on with the right wing: they really, really, really hate their mothers. Everything else derives from that.

On another front, it has rained sixteen out of twenty days here, but we're still running lower than average in rainfall totals and we're still at 67% full in the reservoirs here. It's worse in some areas. 

The latest attempt to split California into little bitty pieces has achieved a pile of signatures to turn in. I never did figure out how to complain about the deceptive signature gathering techniques being used in Santa Cruz. The man with the clipboards was asking people if they wanted to sign a petiution to allow local governments to outlaw fracking on their own. Only after the mark had the pen in their hand did he add "it will create six separate governments --"

So this morning I'm trying to fiund out. I don't know his name, and it was a couple of months ago that I interacted with him, but I feel that I must say something.

Headlines are that California residential water use actually increased in the month of May, but only in two places: the Los Angeles basin and the far northeast. The rest of us made cuts, the biggest being in the north coast. The central coast, which was already using less per capita water than most, cut ten percent more.

We were asked to cut twenty percent. (My house cut 36 per cent, but that was partly because we had a leak that we had been trying to fix and we finally fixed it)

So now the state's authorized fines for water wastage and has instituted outdoor water restrictions.

Well, good and all, but when I read what the Valley local governments were calling for as water conservation methods for their communities, I was kind of appalled at how minimal they were. They were asking for an end to midday sprinkling, for example. That crap's been off the table for decades in the Central Coast.

Last night there was a power shortage. It wasn't long, and it was really local, but it's the kind of thing that used to get a sentence in the local news roundup in the paper. When I went to see if there was any explanation on the Santa Cruz Sentinel website I didn't find it, which was a minor annoyance, but the "breaking news" local page had nothing that was actually local breaking news by any definition. Everything was human interest, several days old, and most of it was Salinas. The fact that the editor's mailto address had the domain of the Monterey Herald is not enough to explain this. They do still pay a couple of local reporters. But they aren't covering any breaking news. Let me be clear: although I went there to see if there was an explanation for my power outage, the lack of coverage on that issue was not what struck me. It was the lack of any kind of news whatever. Now, it's the geographically smallest county in the state aside from San Francisco, but demographically, it's above the median (number 24 out of 58). That's a quarter of a million people whose doings are of no interest to the local newspaper of record.

On another front. the "normal summer weather pattern" has been very moist here locally, advancing nearly to rain status. The normal summer weather pattern is fog (high fog in Santa Cruz) in the mornings and evenings, and sun in the afternoon. Usually we get one good rainstorm sometime in July. This is not that. This is more like the fog is heavier than usual, though still high in the sky, and is letting some of its moisture loose. The ground is getting wet, anyway, which is good.

Surprisingly enough, my plums are ready now, almost a month earlier than usual.

How bad is it? This is how bad it is. I tried to find a better view of the map, but basically, there's no water anywhere, and there's even less water in the Central Coast and the southern Valley. I live in the Central Coast. One good/bad thing is that all our water comes from here -- no water from the Sierra Nevada, no water from the Delta, no water from the Feds -- probably mostly good this year because nobody's turning out water off but Mother Nature. There's other places where the feds have turned off the water, literally shutting down valves to the irrigation canals.

Personally, there's been something wrong at my house. Even though none of us are water wasters in general, we've been running 30% over the target (which allows 50 gallons a day for each person). So we've been undertaking various steps to decrease water use and look for problems. Keith found the toilet valve spewing water in a new way: I'm guessing it was leaking more subtly before too. Anyway, he fixed that. I fixed the dishwasher which needed a new door gasket so we can start using that: it's supposed to save significant water over handwashing if you only run it full. We're adjusting bathing and laundry routines. I'm sad to say I am now taking 8 gallon baths twice a week. Apparently that's a lot less than a usual bath uses. But there are consequences. That grey water gets really, really grey when you bathe only twice a week and you use so little water . . . and it means if I'm going to have enough grey water to flush the toilet I have to get pretty fanatical about scooping every drop of water into the buckets. With the water being so grey, I've taken to putting a drop of bleach in each bucket so they don't fester.

I'm actually going ahead with the summer garden, but I'm watering in drips and drops. I have not invested in a dripline because I believe I need to understand my garden better before I do it. Meanwhile I'm checking the soil before I water and only adding enough to make it moist down at the root level. No showering the whole bed to get it over and done with. Naturally I have bought mulch but it's not been applied yet.

On the laundry front -- the one roommate whose cat has a habit of peeing on her bed has decided to use the laundromat sometimes. I haven't had the guts to tell everyone to quite doing weird little loads of one color, because who wants to be the person who says "I don't care if your clothes all turn grey so long as I don't have to pay the fine for being over ration?" Though I've been doing it for years, and I almost never get  running colors or dinge from that source. I do have other issues with laundry, though, which are not relevant here but which would kind of undermine my position that sorting clothes is unnecessary with modern dye technology.

Meanwhile, my drinking water needs seem to keep growing. I'm up to "must drink more than four gallons  four quarts or I will [redacted for TMI issues]"
 But that's less than ten percent   three percent of my allotment.

Upshot! (or temporary upshot anyway) Remember we were thirty percent above our ration? The ration is 200 gallons per day for my house (and most houses in Santa Cruz). So we were using like 260 gallons a day, or more. Today I read my meter and then called the water department for help in understanding what's up with it. In the last twenty-six days we've used seven something or other units, which you multiply by 748 (no typo) to get the number of total gallons. Multiplying by 748 and dividing by 26 is 201, which is . . . wait for it . . .

one gallon per day over the ration!

That's 59 gallons a day less. Considering that the time included is transitional, that is before and after various changes we made, it bodes well.

I left laundry on the line and it's raining raining and I don't care because it's raining
I don't think I remembered to close the car windows all the way and I don't carfe because it's raining raining
and I have to walk to my friend's birthday today and I don't care becausde it's raining raining
and sometimes the dog won't go out in it and she has an accident and I don't care because it's raining raining
and it won't be enough to stop the drought but it's raining raining

It's raining

I woke up and it's raining, really really raining

Hope it lasts all day and all night


edit: it's slowing down already

From the NOAA site, we learn this:


SAN CRUZ COUNTY
BOUC1 LAS CUMBRS PK 2760`......... 5.47
BNDC1 BEN LOMD RAWS 2630`......... 7.53
BUSC1 BURRELL FIRE 1850`.......... 5.24
DAPC1 DAVENPORT 10`............... 2.04
RRDC1 RIDER ROAD 1123`............ 4.53
EKNC1 EUREKA CANYON 1700`......... 5.63
SOQC1 SOQUEL 21`.................. 2.91
PVYC1 PLEASNT VALLEY 360`......... 2.56
CTOC1 CORRALITOS RAWS............. 4.35

Sorry abut the antiquated measurement system, those are inches. This is the first measurable rain since May. To put it into perspective, Ben Lomond gets about 60 inches of rain average (up to 80 in a really disaastrously wet year). Lower elevations get more like 30 inches a year, 20 in South County (the sites are listed north to south).

To put it another way, nine more days like this would fill our quota (but not end the not-quite-official drought, if we really got all the rain in ten days of storm: that would result in all the rain running out to sea and nothing left behind for the watersheds, streams or underground).

Stuff is going to wash down the hillsides, especially the burned-over ones.

A few days ago I first realized that the riverbed is about half dry now, which is damned early. It's kind of cool for the dog -- dogs, actually, because I have the brother-in-law's clueless dog Roxy for another almost two weeks -- because the dry part of the riverbed is glorious to run around on and the river is running slow and safe and shallow so they can wade to their heart's delight. There are flowers blooming in that sand I swear I have never seen before, though they are vaguely reminiscent of other natives and other thugs I have seen before. There's something growing there with a sweet fragrance, too, though I was never able to spot what it was.

Other signs of summer: the Watsonville hillsides are totally brown. The seedheads on the extoci wild grasses are ripe or nearly ripe. We've gotten our yearly water warning. But this year it's more than a warning: we're on stage 2 water restrictions, which are not onerous but are more ominous. We can only water on 2 days a week, depending onoiur house number (or other named factors if those don't apply), before 10 and after 5, except you can always use drip or a wateriung can or a shutoff hose. What's left? sprinklers and open hose ends, that's all. You can always water food crops if you need to, if you use a watering can or a shutoff.

This is the third dry year in a row. Not so dry in itself: 76% of normal. But last year was a nearly-not-dry 81%, and the year before 50-something.

There's nothing unusual about this. As the nice fellow used to say, if you bet every year that it would be drier than average, you would make money over the long run. And not so long run, actually.

But we did get spoiled with about a decade of good wet years, green and juicy, and we got out of the habit of worrying about our water. Or some of us did, anyways.