Sunny

The rain has moved on as did the double rainbow in the late afternoon. My post from yesterday got delayed by circumstances that were in my control but got out of control because I got tired and fell asleep.  

Right now with this clear and sunny day, everything seems possible. I am in the loft, which is the bedroom. It has the most spectacular view in the house. Or views really since the East window looks out at the State Park and the West, Henry Ridge and the beginnings of the Mesa. It is my most favorite room in the house. 



Everyone but me is sleeping. Ricardo next to me, Olive came up on the bed early this morning and is now at the foot of the bed. Jetson is curled in his perch.  Frank must be somewhere else in the house but for sure sleeping since that is what Frank, the old man, does best and most often.


I leave for Chicago tomorrow early morning. Just a couple of days there but looking forward to it. Very cold which means I have to pack very carefully. I need to locate my gloves or go and get a pair of leather gloves at Macys. I am thinking about boots too.


+++


It 8:45 pm now and they are sleeping again, here by the fire in the great room.  I am drying the pants I want to wear tomorrow and I'm mostly packed.  I am not terribly concerned if I didn't pack correctly because I am going to be on Michigan Avenue and within walking distance of all the shops that I could drive to in Santa Monica.  Uniform nation.  


The sunny day was a cool winter sun.  The coyotes are howling to the West right now. And, as usual there are more lights in Fernwood than on other evenings.  The Sunday night effect in Topanga.  People start out at home I guess. 

Downpour, later double rainbow

 The way the day started out and continued

Exactly that, sheets of rain, curtains of rain, songs of rain.  Yep all of it.  During one episode this morning I hear the sound of the rain hitting the Live Coastal Oak leaves and it was a sound like nothing I've heard before. So much rain it is actully bringing out the new leaves on the tree of heaven and the first lovely light pink flowers on the ornamental plum. A long drink of water for the land.

The way it was at 5 pm

So there was the sound and then there was the downpour. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out there would be a rainbow and there was a strong one and its shadow in the distance. The emotions of the day played out in the weather.  

Edean's serious news hovers.  

I am happy that I bought flowers, white daisies.

Overcast with breeze but

It's another one of those weather buildups.  Storm that will cause damage, drive evacuations, cause flooding, come down heavy, happen in the middle of the night again. I sent Edean an email because they flooded last time and poor beautiful Zuma was in his crate in water.  Being a water loving surfer dog as he is, it's hard to know if this actually caused him stress or was part fun.

We have things pretty sewed up because these storms seem to be coming one after another. The rain earlier this week was weak and then drizzle that was relentless and because it lasted it soaked things. But in that deep soak way, the way one puts in drip systems to accomplish this.

I say bring on the rain.  Ricardo planted the small Redwood that was once our Christmas tree so it will benefit.  And I've put down fertilizer so whatever I spread it on will be thankful for the water to activate it.  I want more citrus fruit. Since one of the storms has such sever winds, Ric trimmed the sacred Coastal Live Oak and now the citrus orchard is getting the light it needs again.  And now the water and food.

I am looking forward to the rain.  Should go out a buy a couple of books so that I can have something to read both for the rain day and for the trip to Chicago. Now, I'll have a serious winter experience there with snow for my arrival and departure and just plain cold the rest of the time. I love Chicago so I'm always happy to go no matter the weather. And Heather made reservations at one of Rick Bayless restaurants so how much nicer can it get.

I can hear Olive from my studio. She's in the backyard and her squeaky ball is louder right now than the wind chimes. Ric is home from teaching 4th graders and everyone on my work front seems to have disappeared today.  Work/life balance improving by the moment apparently.

So today was all about tea.  Yep, I had no coffee today and I don't have a headache which is a first for this transition.  I love coffee but I was drinking too much of it and it was making me distracted and jangled.  Tea is a delight really, there are lots of types and tastes within types. Not that that doesn't exist with coffee it is just I've had tea around but as a step drink, something I served to my writer's group but didn't really drink outside of having a cold or a cold and rainy day.  But now I think I am ready to get into tea time even.

Warm and sunny day/cool moonlit night

It was a perfect winter southern california day today.  Warmish cool, sunny and very clear. Heading toward Santa Monica on PCH to therapy it so crisp and clear I could see the entire South Bay. And now the more than half full moon provides the light.  Speaking of lights, Fernwood and Grandview house lights are twinkling. 

Tomorrow everything changes. The barometric pressure starts to slip and Friday night, according to the media weather people, we get the downpour.  Low on the mountains there will be snow. And the foothill San Gabriel Mountain folk have to leave their homes again. 

So the weather inside me goes like the barometric swings. High with great days, low with rain and snow.  Yesterday, it was drizzle all day. I was fighting my own feelings of envy----Jen's openness; Annie's money, Michelle's third book.  All of it pulling me out of the moments I was in.  When I am like this, I am an isolated storm. 

Showers

So, the sniffing dogs at the airport make me happy.  I know that they should give one a sense of safety or perhaps even make one anxious. They are there because there is danger in travel and large gatherings of people. Otherwise no large sniffing dog would be at the waiting areas because they can't go on the planes. Of course service dogs---generally seen as angels---are the exception to just about everything.

But even if they are sniffing out bombs around the trash receptables and nosing up the brief cases of business travelers they are a delight, just their presence takes makes the repetitive travel I do less dreary.  And overall the human hustle seem silly. Me, I want to pet them all but they have a job and their handlers are all they have eyes for.  The rest of us are worth a sniff at best. Once a German Shepard sniffed out my poppyseed muffin and I was very amused and pleased to know that he wasn't all about work, food was something he wasn't going to give up following up on.

Windy and cool here/Rain in Oakland

I am yet again in another airport gate area. Gate 2, Terminal 1, not my favorite gate but frequently here for the 8am. Even though it has its own restrooms this gate bugs me because it is, like gate 1, off on its own so you don't get all the traffic and the bomb sniffing dogs.  The sniffing dogs

Cold and windy

Very windy and cool.  Work day for most part.  I cleaned up my studio while on a 5 hour online demo. I did some email on the side and then got to do some work on the Western linked poems.  I doing a bigger revision on them.  Maybe I need to reform my manuscript again and see what happens.  Or just get those poems out and see if this is the time that they will speak to editors now.

I have been having fierce dreams.  Deep dreaming night after night after night. Intrigue and challenges and complications.  It's been going on for a week.  Now Ricardo is reporting the same kind of dreaming.  I'm wondering if it is happening to Olive, snuggled by my side right now.
 

Where is the rain?

Not here.  All the drama of it but not it. 

Blustery day.

Michael just left to go back to South OC and Ricardo is on his way to the Post Office. Olive is over tired and ready to fall asleep but if someone gets up to do anything she's up again because she cannot have anything happening that she isn't a part of.

Oh, I know that one.  Now she's come up on the couch, curled up and is resting her head on my leg. 

Mike and Ric moved the wall along the walk out back, another step in redesigning the yard in back and now we are seeing it will also mean the back side. It was a move of less than three feet back but made such an enormous difference in how it feels coming off the back porch.  Now that we know we have more land at the North end we are going to the max. 

I am envious tonight. Even though what we have is so much, I wish there was enough to hire people to just do this work.  It was hard to hear Annie next door with her designer planning for something in the Eastern section of the yard.  And this and this and this and this and this here and there.

I think for me I am increasingly uncomfortable asking Mike to do things, asking Ric.  Ric is feeling pushed now. He wants to concentrate on his Saw Shop idea and perhaps that is just what he needs to do so he can start to make money.  I feel like my desire to have things finished around here is getting in his way.  He's not liking the work on the house and yard anymore.  I get that. 

We started way too many things all at once. We have been organic in the way we are going about things and having many projects unfinished is the consequence. 

I am tired tonight and this is getting to me. 

Dark clouds coming and going

It rained hard last night but this morning fog hovering and then just dark clouds coming and going. Now it is clear and really cold.  I plugged in the fan on the wood burning stove so the hot air would travel faster.

Olive and I walked at Paramount.  I was able to let her go on the first meadow and then at the second and then again on the first as we were coming back. It was good that I ended it before the ranger came down the road.  I am not sure he would have made any trouble for me because O and I were the only domestic creations there.  Well, there were a couple of love birds off in the distance.

It was beautiful because of the dramatic clouds and the bare oaks.  A couple of times the scene under the oaks looked familiar and later I remembered the Georgia O'Keeffe painting from under the canopy of an Oak.  Or at least in my memory it was Oak.

The Oak is my tree.  Or it is the tree that I am, according to the "What tree are you" email.

Dark clouds earlier, rain now

Ric sleeping by the fire. Olive next to me stretch out and sleeping on the couch. Ice dancing at the Olympics. Dishwasher on and the downstairs cleaned.  Michael will be here late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Needs to get away from Michelle's family onslought. I scrambled to clean the guest room which was sandy and cluttered and acting as an alternative closet with all the laundry I've been doing.

It was a frustrating and expensive day.  The Element had the 30,000 service and it ended up costing 550.00. Yuck.  I got my Fed tax return today and grateful for that. Now I can pay the house taxes and get that off my mind. I started the day early and with a headache. Barometric pressure headache. And from there the car, then KP to pick up the new computer and, two meetings while in the Element going one way or the other. The computer home and IT didn't set everything up and didn't send instructions. I cobbled it all together with the help of Rita and Charity.  Small nits that should have rolled off me but the headache made every one of them trying.  Once home and connected online I was able to not take it all seriously and so I just got up and cleaned up so that I can feel better about Mike having a nice place to stay for the weekend.

Just so I remember, it's my particularness and not something Mike would expect or notice.  But then I think it always gets noticed on some level. On some emotional level I think. Some level of the body.

Okay so I am noticing that I really drive myself mad unnecessarily. And now I see that I create the stress that is taking a toll on me.  So, this is the awareness phase. And my goal is to listen to the my body. Get to understand what it is wanting. The mediation will work to give my mind a rest so that I can notice the body. What a gift this time is. How I can walk away from the patterns I've placed in my way. It is about slow and conscious living.  Knowing what I am doing to myself, knowing what I want, want to do, want to be doing.

I am happier and Olive does have something to do with it.

Clear below, fog above

Coming back into the canyon tonight it was crisp and clear but 3/4 of the way of our hill the fog was sitting in wait. Now there is nothing but dense dark out the glass doors and beyond the deck.  The storm is coming. Rain likely tomorrow night and perhaps lasting until Monday. Much snow in the mountains.

Ric is falling asleep on the couch. Olive is playing with her orange ball that squeaks no more. The Olympics persist in all their glory and defeat. The

Fog and clouds like dragons

That was yesterday. That was the post title from last night that never made it.  Last night after the flight was delayed in Oakland and I got home later than the late landing that was planned.  That was my attempt at a title that just didn't have a post.

So there was fog, literally and figuratively. I felt asleep when they dimmed the lights.  Then woke up to see the dragon shaped cloud bank that hugged the Los Padres tipped with snow. It was as beautiful as the wanning moon, a sliver of it as seen from Lincoln Boulevard on my way home.

Today, back again after leaving Olive at the Ranch.  Nothing remarkable in the air to Oakland but something could have been there.  I was reading When the body says no.  Fascinating and the Kindle iPhone book that caught my attention.  The effect of stress in disease and all the evidence that just gets ignored or not taught to doctors or not acknowledged in health care. If acknowledged then mental health coverage and therapy would be seen as preventive medicine.  Cheaper in the long run than MS and ALS etc.

Absent from our bodies we no longer know what normal is.  We are headed for the crash. It is in line with what we are doing to the planet. If we can't read our own emotions we can't see nature. We just run over ourselves and the planet.

So here's the rub against me, I am probably better about the planet now than I am about myself.  I am seeing so much in my behavior. I have inadvertly saved myself by getting to and staying with therapy.

Warmer

Olive and I set out for Solstice Canyon this morning and the walk was wonderful and not hot and I remembered my hat.  She was in a big sniffing mood at the beginning and I had to be patient or else we were in a struggle which I wasn't in to since the creek was running high and the frogs were in song.

We headed to to the stone cabin where I let her run her energy out. Then off again up toward the house but not all the way since I was aiming for an hour and to push my knee too far.  It worked we crossed the creek and then crossed the creek again.  On the way out other hikers were coming in, some with dogs and some with walking poles.

The bush daisies were blooming and I saw one, and only one, shooting star. Should be a blooming feast this year.  My two weeks off in March will be a flower feast I think.  I love having days off like today and must make sure that every month there are two of these.  Monday's or Fridays are good days off.  

Warm

Olive and I set out for Paramount Ranch this morning. It was warm, very sunny and I was out of practice for sun. I forgot my hat and then couldn't remember if I still had the Columbia one. But it was in the back of the Element.

Today, Olive went in to PetCo, her first entry into thegood dog world. She was good, sniffing around and fascinated by all the stuff and the automatic front doors. It was sweet to have her walk through with me.

That and a nap she and I took in the early afternoon were the height of my day! Now R. and Olive are sleeping together on the couch in front of the TV with the Olympics on. All of it passing by them. Perhaps it is entering their dreams.  I can see Olive doing mogels and speed skating. R's more of a summer Olympics kind of guy, snow is not a familar element to him.  Olive has a bit of the reindeer in her.

Warm and windy

We set off in the morning for Los Padres National Forest and more wood harvesting.  Stopped at the Market, got some tuna sandwiches and vitamin water---snickers for Ricky.  Then on past Lockwood Valley where just about all the snow was melted. We went down to Dry Wash in search of the "blow downs," specifically the tree that Olive and I discovered the last time we went to harvest.  But someone else got to it and all that was left were wood noodles, twisted little branches and stripped bark.

So, back in the truck and down the road, over a couple of runoff streams and in to the camping area where we found one off the road in the wash.  It was a giant.  A couple of hours later the truck was stuffed with large rounds and we headed to wash to have some lunch. 

Olive and I walked while R. chainsawed a substantial part of that tree. We would come back and I would strip off the bark and ask him if he needed anything.  We'd take off again and explore up the road, down the road and toward the big wash.  The wash was running again, not as crazy as the end of January but still good strong stream of snowmelt mixed with the sandy soil of the wash bottom.

It was good to be outside all day, good to walk with Olive, go to just be in the day. I listen to my thoughts and I'm planning all the time. I cast nets into the future and make lists. This I
"should do" that I should do as well.  Pushing and pushing myself to be productive when I no doubt just need to walk and keep walking with Olive.

Long period of ocean swell

Waves could get to 18 feet but at the beach it is moving to the mid-seventies an 80s in the valleys.  Today it snowed in 49 or the 50 states of the United States of America. But it rained at Whistler not boding well for the Olympic nation.

Today I was in Pasadena.  Ricardo was teaching 4 graders about the Redwoods. Olive was at the Ranch. Jetson escaped to the outside. Frank had the house to his self.

Now, I am keeping the keys moving here. Ricardo is struggling to stay awake for the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. Olive is knocked out. The cats are in the loft. And finally the fire has taken off in the wood burning stove.

So the big winter drama starts. The daily ups and downs and the sadness arrived today with the death of the Georgian. 

Cloudy cold and then colder

Okay, I swear I lost two posts. I see they get saved but where do the drafts go?

I don't know that what I said was any great shakes.  I was talking about walking with Olive in Beverly Hills again and about how my day moved so quickly.  Stuffed with stuff. And now it is 9:17 pm and Ricardo is sleeping on one couch and Olive sleeping on the other which is the one I am on.  Neither of them do well when they are tired. They had a fight.  And that always takes the form of him whipped her up and her running around and "misbehaving." Then he has to go into how out of control she is. And meantime she comes over to my couch and spreads out long and falls asleep.  I guess she proves her point about her behavior.

Anything that doesn't go Ricky's way goes under the heading "out of control." And it is out of his control or outside the bounds of what he can possibly control.  So, that means he's experiencing that feeling a great deal.

Well, tomorrow Miss Olive goes to Canyon View Ranch and I go off to Pasadena for a day that should be good and a not too crazy.  And a day that is the gateway to a long weekend!!

Chasing rain

The rain evaded me all day. Got to Oakland and it was wet but over. Got back to LAX and it was wet but over. I didn't need to use my raincoat, so I froze all day because I really should have been wearing my red pea jacket.

This is a cold storm, snow likely down to 2,000 feet. We have the wood burning stove filled with logs burning at top heat. Olive and I are comfortable on the couch at the opposite end of the room watching a Planet Green special on Siberia.  That vast mysterious wilderness. The greatest expanse of wilderness on the planet. We may all need to move to Siberia some day. this is one show Olive is watching. She is fascinated by the wolves so now that the movie is concentrating on these ancient breed of horse and musk deers she is resting her head on my foot. The picks it up again at the sound of Ravens. That's a sound she knows from her own land.

It is Valentine season so the commercials are about finding that someone. The one someone. Is there only one, I don't think so. But the notion is alive and growing with online perfect person for you finder sites.

Sunny and cool

Day two of sunny and cool.  This morning  the bathroom downstairs had mysterious water on the floor, soaked the rug and then there was still some.  Great, even seeped into the hall.  Something wrong with the shower head I'm thinking.  Think there is a leak and when it isn't completely turned off is just leaks, runs down and then weeps out through the trim at the bottom.  Weeping is what I felt like doing. Investigating is what I'll need to do when R. gets home so it can be fixed.  Hopefully without it costing money. Money, I'm sick of thinking about it.

I have to change my ways in so many ways. Too much food, too much spending, too much stress, too little time spent just spending time.

And then there is Olive who took a run and of course, it was bound to happen at some point, she ran over to the southern neighbor's yard which is a meadow of high grass, Ric went after her which meant he went with anger and frustration and she didn't want to come to him.  I got her to come to me at the fence and then caught her by the collar for him.  He carried her back.  There's the drama.  Now my talking about a second dog, that's a dead subject for right now.  I can handle it. He can't. He doesn't want anything to get in the way of his latest desire and longest running desire, chainsaws.  

And here it is.  I am going to be sixty and really just want to live the way I want to live and have what I want.  Now I don't know all that I want or exactly how I want to live but having Olive has given me the greatest joy.  The relationship with her has been filled with experiences and connections.  And I know what Edean is saying is true, with another dog the pressure on us to keep her active will actually be less. 

Low clouds and rain

Where have I been this week. I haven't written here since Tuesday and it's Friday. I keep thinking I am writing every day but I'm not.  I'm thinking of writing every day. Perhaps I should stop thinking.

This blog isn't really about weather. But weather is what I am the most consistent about. Meaning it is what I remark on, notice, follow, listen to everyday.  AKA it does not fall into the brief start nor the great lapses category.

Above the clouds, sun Below the clouds, gloom

Post not posted from February 3:

Over the State of California where the shapes of the bodies of water are irregular, organic. If you get out of the clutches of the Bay Area or Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County or Sacramento, there is a lot of sacred nothing. There are pockets of life less planned and resourced and I imagine less problems and regrets.

The variation in terrain in California makes it its own country. The salad bowl to the world mixed with the entertainment capital of the world with the technological hot spot. There's wine here and aplles. Desert, sweat shops, surf boards sit next to snow boards, mountains all the way to the beach, paved roads and dirt roads, the impassible and the impossible crime. We have private space flight, big hair, smooth dos, the richest around the corner from the "ordinary" and the poor, it makes for interesting car accidents and lines at the movies.

Mostly overcast and getting cold

My studio is a workspace of extremes. Either freezing, like now, or roasting, like it is in summer.  The semi insulation is part of the problem I am sure. Right now the fact that I have the door wide open isn't actually helping matters.

My brain and emotions were overcast today. Overcast with the

Overcast

I have a few minutes before my next serious of meetings. It's overcast both in reality and emotionally today. I can't get a start on this day and it is already 3:04 pm. I actually missed my first meeting because I slept in.  Didn't even remember I had a 7am. Usually I am awake but I just couldn't go to sleep early last night because I worked so hard all day on taxes and then going out and resupplying our world. Target, Trader Joes, Whole Foods but not Staples for office supplies or Cost Plus for spices. And even then I forgot milk and darjeeling tea.

Darjeeling tea is something I have a craving for today. I'm drinking organic Black Tea Whole Foods, 365 brand and it is fine but doesn't have that something that darjeeling tea has. So I started out my disconnected day researching darjeeling team online.  Organic, loose. Oh, what a world there is out there and I know so little.  There's like first flush second flush and autumn flush and I have no idea what any of it means and there's lots to read. So, I make a mental note to go back because, clearly, there's a lot to learn but it's clear that it is cheaper by far to go bagless.

I'll need tea because we are headed for a week of rain again. Or so it seems.