Snow and wood

Not here, no snow here. But a substantial amount in Lockwood Valley and down the road until you descend and turn right into Dry Creek.  Not so dry right now with all the snow and the recent rains. The ground was damp and not dusty like it was in late summer and fall.  We set out to harvest wood again because we are running out.  There is always a bonus to the wood harvesting, Olive can run free. We stopped before the descent so that she could play with her orange ball in the snow while we ate our sandwiches.  She is part reindeer when in snow, hopping and leaping and fascinated by pushing the ball until it disappears and then digging again to recover it.

This is the time of year when wood harvesting means driving around to find "blow downs." In Dry Creek I take Olive and we scout while Ric works on a tall stump.  We find part of a downed tree and then further an entire tree, which is the prize. The truck can't go where the real prized one is so we have to walk the wood a distance and we do.  Olive helps out by running ahead and running around but keeping in sensible range of us.

It was 45 degrees and sunny at Dry Creek. The Los Padres in the distance were covered in white, the wash (aka) creek was running and for most of the time we were by ourselves. Toward the end a couple and their Retriever walked down the road, and then a woman driving on the 4-wheel road too fast flew by in her Toyota Land Cruiser.  Then we heard the shots of the hunters or the target practicers.  We were pretty much done and that put a cap on our day.

Now, at home after making more headway on my taxes I am on the couch by the fire with Olive snoring. Ric is on the other couch next to mine and I think it won't be too much longer until he doesn't hear my voice when I tell him it is time to go up to the loft. It is quiet tonight, no coyotes or owls or dogs. It is still dark, the waning full moon comes out late, after all it is Saturday night.

Sunny and cool with a slight breeze

Next week the big event happens.  AmeriGas comes and moves the Propane tank. It took 6 months for us to get our propane down to a level that is safe for them to move.  And once moved we will be able to extend the backyard, create a place to back in the Element and the Tacoma.

Sunny but cool

It's light sweater weather. I am standing in the exercise/storage room surrounded by the disgarded elements of mine and other's.  The contents include, left over pine universal eco friendly engineered wood flooring, Michael's Michigan blue and gold game day cooler, two obsolete HP ink jet color printers, two cat carriers for Frank and Jetson, Michael's portable keyboard, the Halloween and Christmas plastic containers, random boxes of  tax documentation, three large wooden shutters we say we are going to put on the laundry area on barn door rails, and much more.

I think I need a dumpster or to write plea on Craig's List---Come and get it. So little of what is here is needed but it sticks to us and remains.

Sunny but soaked

The water continues to drain off the mountain, running in the streets, muddy depressions in the dirt roads are filled with earthen pools that reflect the sun.  Small cast off branches litter the streets of my walk with Olive just before sunset.

And everywhere green. Grass grows before my eyes  just like time lapsed photography. The green expansive meadows are back in the State park and the creeks are flowing to the Pacific. More rain is on the way down from the North. There was frost last night and likely more tonight.

All this is happening in the Santa Monica range while there are traffic jams in the other mountains. Mountain villages run out of food and gas and people spend more time in their cars then they will in the snow. But it's the journey one guy from Orange County said on the news and it is for the kids. 

I spent Sunday cleaning the house and reading the LA Times inbetween jobs. I hate cleaning the stove about equal to cleaning the kitchen floor.  The kitchen is a trouble spot and try as I might to see it as a meditation. As one of the noble repeating chores, I've come to put it off. 

The theme of my reading today:  The inexorable move to digital.  First it was what will happen to writing on the eve of the Apple iTablet, iSlate, iPad, i? announcement. For some reason that announcement has now sent a wave of discomfort through the collective unconscious.  I've read at least three articles in the last week where the writer is beguiled and spooked by what we've become in a blink of time. The constant connection to the digital world and disconnect or distance from the physical world.

I think it is the speed at which we consume that has changed. What becomes necessary that was not even thought of before.  And here we have another thing about to come forward that many have begun to feel we'll not be able to do without. 

A game changer. A need that will make us, what?  What exactly will this new device do to us?

All the mountain ranges

Leaving the canyon to take Olive over for a play date with Zuma I was stunned by the San Gabriels and the Los Padres. The storm dropped so much snow it looked like the high Sierra. So much more snow than in the past several years, closer to what must be normal or what must have been normal.

A beautiful but cold day today.  Edean had car trouble so our plans of taking the dogs to the Calabasas Bark Park fell through. Instead I went over to Mt. Washington and we decided not to take them anywhere when they could act like idiots in the yard while we spent time together.  I drove her to Whole Foods in Glendale and I wandered around, she had a list on her Blackberry.  We ended up trying out different Pacifica scents and I mixed up so many there was an unpleasant chain reaction.  Of course, I'd already squirted on lotions before we got to the Pacifica display.

I reminded myself of my mother who would try the lotions and scents in stores. I was mortified. But it wasn't like she was breaking the law. It was my shame of standing out. I was never able to be really cool to my surroundings, never could master a bored expression. The adolescent chapter of my life  has proven, so far, to have been the most uncomfortable part of my life. So much desire and so little confidence and even less understanding of who I was. Even if I did feel like I occupied my body it felt frightening.
There was no end to the examination of me by me. No end to the judgment.

Now, I meditate my way out and breath my way through. There is no point to the constant critique, but on it goes, automatic and ubiquitous. It smothers the awareness of "now" and it takes my attention off the mountain range, white and sharp against the blue and sunny day.

Here I am again in my studio with the rain pelting and the wind throwing down pine cones and small branches on to the metal roof.  The red tulip stained glass window by the iron bed is leaking. A dramatic afternoon.

**
Night now, in the living room by the fire. The wind is so fierce the windows and moving. Lightening, thunder, hail. This storm has all the resources at its fingertips.

Wind and Rain

And occasional tornados often referred to as “water spouts” which is denial. Yep, denial that there are such things in Southern California.  Really that’s the stuff of Florida and surrounding states. But it happens and it did yesterday in some Marina in Orange County.  Pick up the private boats and spun around some catamarans and deposited them on top of other private boats. Quite the site for the owners of the Marina.

Now we are in the center of a storm that is slamming rain against the East facing sections of our house, water is seeping through the cinderblock into our guest room.  Now we have another thing to put on the endless list of what to fix on this never ending home improvement project. Over time I’ve begun to wonder if there was something I should have respected when I got scared of this house. When I first saw it I was a entranced by the open, high ceiling living room and freaked by what seemed to be a troubled lower floor.  I’m putting a wrapper on this right now. I was repulsed and dismissive of the house.  The realtor really wanted me to see the value, the views, the location. I had something else in mind. 

What I had in mind was more of what I had lived in, a vintage house.  I wanted the wildlife setting without the haphazard architecture that came with an unincorporated, zoned light agriculture, long unzoned housing, once hippy canyon.

Perhaps I should have respected my reaction.

Wind

Well, yes, this time the weather people were spot on.  All the attention to this weather event was warranted today.  Although the rain came in sheets for hours, it was the wind that impressed.  60 mile a hour gusts.  Now gusts makes it seem as if it was intermittent which under normal conditions would make sense. But we were not in normal conditions.  It was gusting every three episodes of wind and it lasted so that the Olive by the deck was bending to the ground and the standing up and whipping back in the other direction. 

Wind the sound of thunder or semi’s or g-force, all of those combined and punctuated with pine cones and tree debris hurled on to the metal roof of my studio.  All day I kept thinking that Olive, my Pit Bull/Pointer/Greyhound etc and I would end up like Dorothy and Todo, thrust up to a strange land.

Nothing that dramatic or fanciful took place.  I muddled through my job until the power went off. Olive tunneled under the covers of the studio day bed while the studio leaked from the Red Tulip window, the south window and the door.  

Rain

What I check every day is the weather.  It annoys people closest to me. I live in Topanga Canyon, California.  Southern California is mostly but not always sunny. But when it isn't sunny it is usually a disaster.  Today is apparently the beginning of one.  Rain measured in feet. Special weather statements, hazardous weather statements, hydrologic outlooks,small stream flooding, dry wash flows, landslides, rock slides, soil saturation, mud flow, small stream flooding, main stem river flooding concerns, and low lying area and coastal flooding. I am sure the list will lengthen as this storm series slides down the coast.

It is as if nature saves up, looks at our tally, then lobs one at us.

The weather people are movie stars at times like these.  They tempt us with all the details and string us along throughout the broadcast. I have to listen. And more than once, more than one network.  Local and national news and NOAA via my FSR radio. I have to know what's coming even if it stalls off of Point Conception.