Peeking into the rock

Not of general interest.
( seriously, only read the next bit if you're interested in osteoarthritis and old lady health )

On another front, it rained and rained last night. On my laundry, but I note this more as a note of humor than a true complaint, because hey, it rained and rained! We love rain.

I decided not to buy and install a rain barrel this year (they are only 45 dollars from the city water department) because there wasn't any rain.

I believe that today I could have filled the whole thing.

I am filling what I can, but I won't be able to save it for long.

It's a week and a half since Truffle had an abcessed tooth and two tumors removed. Today she is lively, happy, willing to venture out in the wet, and you'd never know she'd been through that, or that she had arthritis.

I betcha if it was me I'd still be complaining.

Also, you know how I said it was raining when I woke up? It's not still raining, but's it's still wet, and the forecast shows chance of showers nearly every day this week. It's not enough to break the drought, but every drop counts.

(normally it would be raining two days out of five or something for the last two months).

And I did a bad thing today. Yesterday I finished a four-day process of making candied orange peels and I had syrup left that had dripped off the orange peels. I coated walnuts with it and cooked them in butter and . . . ate them.

Also yesterday I saw poppy plants that were bigger than two fists together already.

And I went and watched adorable children dancing Greek dances, but that deserves its own post.

I had got to the point where I was not only pain-free but it felt actively good to use my legs. I forgot the exercises for less than a week. Weeks and weeks of exercising again later the pain was still getting worse to the point where it was about as bad as it was before physical therapy. So I went back. The wonderful physical therapist did a new assessment, and says I have "myofascial adhesions" and demonstrated that the skin doesn't slide over my lower legs or much of my upper legs at all -- it's like a solid block of material. He gave me a freview of my exercises -- I was certain that I was doing something wrong, and I was, but it wasn't causing my situation, just failing to alleviate it as much as if I was doing it right. Next time he's going to teach me how to walk right and do some deep-tissue massage.

Pain makes a person tired and gloomy, but I perked uop when I recalled that actually this is the state my arms were in twenty years ago or so and the things the first physical therapist did, and taught me to do, for that, have resulted in permanent improvement. Even though I don't always do all the right things. And ditto the things the other physical therapist did and taught me to do for my shoulders.

I think this is about to devolve into advice for the young: go to the physical therapist early and often and do what they tell you to do. I have had this kind of ridiculous "oh it must be in my head so I'll ignore it" pain all of my life. If I had been going to the physical therapist every time it persisted more than a month, starting at an early age, who knows what all would have been better in my life. In any case, I'm looking forward to losing this latest round of ridiculous sleep-destroying, distracting, annoying pain.

On another front: it rained again this morning, which is good for the land and destroys my plan of riding the bike to the workshop on preschool physical development I am going to in fifteen minutes.

So I'm writing along, minding my own business, trying to get some stuff in there to prevent everything happening at once and still have no pointless filler, when this fellow steps out of the crowd and bumps into my Yanek who is exploring the capital on his own. I'm trying to figure out who he is and he insists that he is the same soldier Yanek's supposed to meet two years (and a chapter or so) later. What the hell? And the conversation they're having is kind of creepy: it sounds like he's flirting with Yanek, which might make sense in two years when they're actually supposed to meet, but just now it's really creepy, as Yanek is sixteen and very, very small for his age and people still confuse him with a child.

I am going to have to fix this next writing session but for now I have to go to work early today. One way or another: either to go with the creepy and what the hell does that mean for the story? Or throw out the scene and do something else with the rest of this chapter.

It occurs to me that the appearance of this soldier might only just signify that I'm worrying about the wrong things and maybe I need to find an economical way to skip ahead to the events two years in the future and not worry about everything happening at once. Or he could be foreshadowng the creepiness of Yanek's army life.

On another front, the physical therapist is of course making magical things happen and I am in fact walking around and riding the bike as a bike now. If the rain ever returns I will have to return it to the stand in my bedroom. It is way too long since the last rain but the last few years have had divided rainy seasons, with big dry spells in the middle, and we've had normal-to-wet years anyway. A dry year will happen eventually, though, it could be now.

We're all geared up for First Flush, but there's no sign of imminent rain.  I thought I heard the surf rats who work the Farmer's Market on Saturday talking about incoming storms, but they were actually talking about something to do with waves.  Of course.  I think an extra high tide.  I have misplaced my tide book and I can't be bothered tolook it up otherwise.  And speaking of waves, the season has turned at the beach: It's Beach on Saturday was carved almost in half, with a really steep drop between the high and low part of the beach.  I forgot it happened this early.  

I heard something last night that sounded like rain -- rather, early this morning.  I was really puzzled as I woke up from my twentieth try to sleep: I thought "it's too early.  Wouldn't somebody have said something if a storm was coming in?  Wouldn't we be on alert?  I'm not really ready!!"  But it wasn't rain.  Probably the neighbor was taking a shower.  That's happened before.

It was really, really hot yesterday for probably the first time all summer.  It's been a bit hot before, but we haven't gotten a real, knock-your-socks-off, can't-sleep, burning-up heat wave all summer.  But last night I was hot enough that I was a bit worried and went to drink more water.

I had my first pomegranate today and it was a mistake.  It looked good but it was really bad.  Not weird and sour like the ones in my yard, just truly bad.  Flavorless and not sweet and faintly bitter, like not food at all.  I will wait for the real pomegranate season starting around Halloween, thank you.

There's something sweet and tropical smelling blooming around the corner but I can't find it.  There's a narrow front strip in front of an apartment building with a couple of plum trees, some star jasmine, some lantana, and some agapanthus, and that thing that hedges like box but has big fat leaves with red backs and fuzz on them.  The lantana is the only thing visibly blooming, and it smells like lantana (like nasty musky sharp pennyroyal or mint, but more pleasant than that sounds).  The agapanthus has just finished blooming and there are dead flowers clinging to the seed pods.  The plum is of course tryuing to decide whether or not to be altogether dormant, and since it just got cruely bitchered it's really confused and putting out a few measly untimely leaves.  The star jasmine is out of bloom and the smell isn't like sar jasmine anyway.

It's a mystery.

I don't know. Are the world's avians getting stupider for some reason? The week before last I had to rescue an idiot hummingbird that was trying to dash out its tiny little head on the glass of the casement window at work. It had somehow gotten itself trapped between the glass and the screen. Not an easy thing to do. I had to carefully move the screen just enough to get my hands in and not enough to allow the stupid liitle thug access to the classroom, and then maneuver it out the side of the window without crushing its tender little wings.

Was it grateful? I don't know. I haven't seen it since.

Now last night -- worse. This drab brown feathered thing -- adolescent? towhee? I don't know the medium-to-small perching and hopping birds one from another. I should, shouldn't I? Anyway, this bird hung out in my kitchen for hours, breaking crap everywhere it went. I don't know why. It perched lightly on some dried poppy stems, but it knocked over my glass window shelf, destroying it to little bits while somehow sparing the crockery which no longer has a place. And scattering tempered glass chunks all over the kitchen. Also broke a borrowed bowl which was sitting next to the cat's dish on the other side of the kitchenb.

Cat. That cat just sat there hunched up and kvetching while the bird flew panicky from one weird corner of the kitchen to another. He didn't even thinking of catching and eating it. He's not that old! He just wanted me to do something about it. I couldn't for a long time. I did all the smart things. I turned off all the lights except the ones that lead to the outside. I walked around the kitchen being menacing and leaving escape routes to the outside. I carried a pillowcase so I could throw it over the idiot bird if it ever rested in my reach. But it wouldn't go towards the outside, and it never rested in my reach, though it dove under the stove several times. Seriously, under the stove?

The dog is another story. She thought the bird was really exciting and offensive, and figured that the cat had not noticed this, nor I, nor, even, the bird, so she thought it was iuncumbent on her to explain in really enthusiastic terms to me, the cat, and the bird that the house was being violated by a Thing of the Outside, a Feathered Thing Without Domestic Rights, something that might poop on a food dish! Something that somebody ought to do something about! And it's probably your fault, kvetching cat!

After several hours of this it finally flew into the laundry room -- or as Ted used to call it, the "service porch" (I can't really make sense of that term). I closed the door between it and the kitchen, leaving the hysterical dog and kvetching cat on the other side, and opened all the windows that would open and the door to the outside. No dice. The bird decided to perch out of reach and peep aggrievedly at long intervalks the rest of the night. It was still there in the morning. But after the sun was up and the windows were light, the bird decided to heave itself pathetically against the one window that would not open. Repeatedly, losing feathers here and there and getting visibly weaker. But every time I approached it would fling itself under the pile of stuff next to the window. It finally got so weak I was able to just move the stuff around and throw my pillowcase over it and carry it outside to the ceanothus tree (which is pretty confused itself, and is in a state of half-full bloom for some inscrutable reason). I tried to place it on a branch but it plummeted.

I didn't go look. I can only care so much about bird brains. I saved it fromthe evil that is my house, I'm not about to defend it against raccoons.


on another front, it wasn't supposed to, but it rained a tiny bit today, between 2:30 and 4:00 sometime while I was being amused by three year olds, who thought it was the height of humor and excitement to throw playdough birthday parties for everyone in sight and call us all by other people's names.

writing front: I'm still making notes. Some things have come together.

Also I have spent the last two days trying to figure out why I couldn't get online. The phone cord for the DSL line is acting up, apparently, but in comprehensible and fixable ways.

You know it's really raining when the intercom at the school goes off and the office manager of the school comes on and says stuff like "Please use the front doors only and keep the side doors closed. The rain's getting in to the classrooms!" and then half an hour later "All students who live on Swanton Road, call your parents -- a mandatory evacuation has been called for Swanton Road and you can't go home --"

Swanton Road is just below the big burn that happened a month ago, which means massive landslides in weather like this, all over the roads and houses. Also, the radio keeps being interrupted with automated emergency broadcast network announcements about flash flood warnings for different areas along the coast. And small craft advisory which means "fishermen, sailors, kayakers and surfers, stay home for the love of all that lives, you will die out there."

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.

I think I've been through four jars of salsa already. Finished one off today, it had gone that taste just before bad: it's a bit soured, but maybe better than when you first open it.

An awkward friend commiserated with me for my life being shit, but it's not, you know? There's too much in it that's beautiful. That sounds like a fakish chipperupper, but it's the stark truth. But.

Anyway, I've been doing a little writing, not enough to start counting it, and I've lost half the post-disaster weight gain. I'm being serious about it. Also my fridge is almost clean: I emptied a really old box of papers and sorted the little dab I'm keeping and filled it with his vintage softcore tapes to hand on to a friend who also likes that. What? Am I going to suppress the fact that my sweetie liked to watch films of lovely women being actively naked? Seriously. That's not a vice, that's a virtue.

So I have this bead with a bit of Ted's ashes in it. The one I have is a new design, not shown in the website: it has a bit of turquoise in it and consequently looks like the water off the Monterey Peninsula. I have the large opaque amber beads he gave me. I want to combine them and I'm taking my time designing what I'll do. I think I need to put a few other colors and textures with it in order to make them go together. But I also don't want the design to be so overwhelmingly gorgeous that I couldn't wear it, taking into account that I don't wear jewelry. I'm listening to suggestions. Some of the things I'm thinking about because they have some significance to me in our history are garnets (Little Sur River), obsidian (a couple of stories and several places), petrified wood, dark jade (Big Sur), agates, quartz, and cobalt blue glass. And I know someone who wants to give me tektites because of the meteor shower trips. I'm pretty sure not all of those! Though sometimes I think when you combine enoguh strong colors, they mud-out, and maybe that would make the thing less flashy than not . . . I don't need to have this accomplished until next summer. I have a lot of time to figure out how it goes together.

I'm eating mushrooms with garlic, rosemary and plum wine for lunch. Yeah, that plum wine. It's sweeter than I would usually use for a pupose like this, but it works nicely. Free association: I simply don't understand why grocery stores stock rosemary, when every block has at least four rosemary plants, usually more, and all different types too. You can get a year's supply of rosemary on an afternoon walk, without extending yourself or impacting your neighbors' landscaping in any noticeable way. So why would anybody buy the stuff?

Rain forecast for Friday night/Saturday morning . . .