The View From Hospice w/Update

Roger's 90 year-old mother* is dying. She's been actively dying since last Sunday, October 16th, when she ended up in the emergency room after a fall. We went to the ER, but she no longer recognized us, or Roger's sister and brother. Her mental capacity had been diminishing for several months, but this was a rather precipitous decline into full-blown dementia in a short amount of time. She had a compression fracture, but it was deemed not life threatening. She had bronchitis, also not life threatening. She spent the night in the hospital, and then Roger and I moved her to hospice care on Monday, October 17th. During the ride in the car she was like a child. She said, "Nice car. Pretty day. Nice car. Pretty day." The above photo is the view outside her hospice room. The double doors open and her bed could be taken out there, if she wanted to be in the sunshine. Last Monday, we thought that might be a possibility.

But on that Monday, she ate only four spoonfuls of jello and was deeply agitated. She could see the beautiful outdoors from her bed, but was not lucid enough to know she could go. On Tuesday, she had chocolate pudding and repeated "choo-choo, choo-choo" and "teacher teacher" for several hours. She no longer looked toward the doors or windows. On Wednesday, she had more chocolate pudding and drops of water delivered by a small straw, she said "I like to dress up" for several hours. Since Thursday- NOTHING. No food. No words.

She is on morphine and ativan.

We are waiting for her to die. She is on her own exit plan and timetable. It is an interesting thing to consider-- someone's permanent exit from life. Watching her do this is a lesson for us about utter stress and exhaustion; sadness and anticipation; love and forgiveness. We talk to her quietly everyday. We've read that the ability to hear is the last sense to go. She does stir a bit when people go to her bedside. But so much of her has already been relinquished that her eyes see nothing familiar when they flutter open for a second. She is a heartbeat in a body only, nothing else seems to be left.
And we are waiting for our first grandchild to be born some time in the next two weeks. Reminds us of Bob Dylan's: (s)he not busy being born is busy dying. Ain't that the truth.

*Roger's mother's 91st birthday is Tuesday, October 25th. We're wondering....

Update:
Roger's mom passed away Monday, October 24th at noon.

Distractions

I seem to be drawing a blank when it comes to posting something on the blog. Distracted by this and that, weird things that shouldn't matter, but somehow do. We're okay. Roger's appointment with the oncologist did not answer any questions. The doc is being very cautious and wants to wait another week before deciding if Roger should continue with the Xeloda or move on to the 5FU and Leucovorin. There's really been no change with his rash, so it's hard to tell what's up and why. So, we've been distracting ourselves with work in the garden; keeping our little kale, chard, and onion starts from baking to a crisp in the early autumn heatwave; taking cool morning walks, scaring the band-tailed pigeons from their roosts. I'm also still learning how to use the camera. It's challenging, to say the least. This photo of the quail is taken through our kitchen window. Such elegant birds.
But what's also been bugging me to distraction is my high school class had its 40th reunion this past weekend, and I didn't go. It was in New Jersey, and I am not there and haven't been since graduation in 1970. It probably didn't help that we moved so far away from our roots all those years ago, so that there has never been one moment in 40 years where I ran into a single one of these people... not at a grocery store or the park or out on the trail. Some of my former high school classmates are Facebook friends, so I've been seeing a lot of photos of the reunion parties. Looking at all of those faces again, something happened that I did not expect, they made me sad. They reminded me that I was not close to them all those years ago, and not only that, but that my brother, sister, and I were pretty much outsiders. One day we were regular teenagers and then we "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out." It's true. Who knows why it happens? Why someone hears a different drummer from the rest. But it does happen. (How did Roger find The Realist when he was in high school, when it was very first published; or why was he drawn to San Francisco for jazz and the Beats in the late 1950s?) My twin brother put on bell-bottomed pants in 1968 (which at the time was a statement of outrageous provocation). I was sent home from school for wearing a skirt too short. We let our hair grow; we painted flowers on our bodies; we protested the war in Vietnam; we got high and went to the Fillmore East to hear rock and roll; we made friends with other outcasts and wrote poetry about our plight. When I looked at the high school reunion pictures, my heart sank. I remembered that these kindly old faces did not protest the war. They did not go to Woodstock. They did not hear the drum we heard. They held pep rallies. They went to football games. They went to the prom and to graduation. We might as well have been on different planets. Yes, they were my high school cohort, but they were not my tribe. For a few days, those photos and memories made me feel like a lonely 17 year old girl again. Maybe the 40th reunion of Woodstock last year was the real reunion for me. Sigh.

Photo from 1974, the year I would have graduated from college if I had gone straight from high school. Instead, that's my dad, boyfriend, and me building a cabin on the ten acres of land Michael and I had just bought in southern Oregon. I heard a different drummer...

Life Here and Now

We had over nine inches of rain in April. That's 2 1/2 times the average. It's a lot of rain for one month anywhere, but here it was quite a deluge. No wonder the skies felt cloudy all the time. They were. Then, the storms blew through and the skies cleared. We could see for miles, and it sure is pretty around here. It's as green as I've ever seen anywhere. Verdant and lush, soaked down to the bone, and ready for seeds and starts. So we have obliged with kale, chard, and lettuce starts; and planted lots of carrot and beet seeds. Soon we will do containers filled with tomatoes, peppers, and basil on the sunny deck. Life is good.
Well, unless you read the headlines out of the gulf states. How do we balance the quiet joy of our new life here with the environmental disaster looming a couple of thousand miles away? I find it unbearable to contemplate the habitat destruction for wildlife there. Humans can figure out how to get out of the way or put their broken lives back together, but sea turtles and shorebirds don't have anyplace else to go. I don't even want to think about the absurdity of pumping oil from under the sea. I'd rather bang my head against the wall. No, not really, I'd really rather bang someone else's head against the wall, someone who thinks drilling for oil is the way to go. You guys wreck everything EVERY TIME. Of course the price of oil will rise, and some other fossil fuel-brained business will make a great big fortune. And ain't capitalism grand because someone can get rich...that's what our life and goals are supposed to about. Whoops, I'm banging my head against the wall. I will stop.
Because, really, it's so beautiful here and now. We've seen nuthatches and our first tufted titmouse. The birds are eating like crazy, and the squirrels have become a huge nuisance. We're contemplating how to effectively deal with them, knowing that there really isn't much to do. They've been chasing the mourning doves and quail from under the feeder. There's no place they won't go to find a little seed or nut. Their initial cuteness has completely worn off, and now we just see them as the furry little rodents they are. Although, you've got to admit when they lay their bodies flat like this to rest, they are pretty damned cute.

This is life as we're living it now. Temps in the 70s and skies as blue as robin's eggs. The neighbor's emu (or ostrich, or 10 ft tall goose) has a weird, raucous call that we're beginning to like it. So it goes.

What News, Horatio?

There is news, and so I can write. We have in fact entered escrow. Isn't that an amazing thing? We made a ridiculously generous offer to keep the property from being foreclosed. The bank said "okay" and now we are in escrow. It's kind of like being engaged to a bad person who you don't really love, but whose promises have the potential of being good, and with a kiss could turn into a princely thing. The wariness of present day real estate is a daunting thing. A hall of mirrors, a trickery of wishes, desires that render us vulnerable. Still, we are positive that the outcome of this particular dance with the demons will be safe. If the transaction actually closes, we will emerge unscathed with land to garden and a place to put chickens, sauna, solar generators, pond, and game cam.

Roger, true to his commitment, is still not cutting his hair or beard until escrow closes.
One day we looked up the road. It was foggy. We were socked in and we could not see the future.
One day we looked down the road. The sun poured like fire that lit the western sky and rendered the pavement and trees in a halo of sensual reality. We could see a welcoming promise.

We have a pest inspection Friday; well inspection Monday; house inspection Tuesday. If all goes well, we could conceivably close escrow on the 12th. We are cautiously optimistic. Still, we are realists down to our toes.

We never sleep.

A Glimpse of Our Future

There hasn't been very much consistent in our lives over the past few years. We've lived in four houses in 18 months. That's a tad disruptive, to say the least. But one thing has stayed absolutely consistent and that's our drive to protect wildlife. So, I emailed the local Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release program when we first arrived. We didn't hear from them until late Thursday afternoon. A wonderfully enthusiastic woman called to tell me about their next training. She regaled me with stories about Yellow-billed Magpies and blue-eyed baby Stellar's Jays. Their program sounds incredibly good. We particularly love that they work with mammals as well as birds. I think we're going to be trained to care for injured songbirds. That's a future we are both delighted and ready to leap right into. Bats, small mammals, fawns, songbirds, and raptors... oh my!

Beautiful Words For a Wednesday

We received an email the other day from CCorax, who we've known through blogging for five years now. This is a cherished, ongoing friendship of the heart and mind. She said that she had been reading What The Stones Remember by Patrick Lane, and it made her think of us. Can there be a more beautiful passage about the smallest and most overlooked aspects of life than this one that she sent? To think that these words reminded her of us made us feel utterly grateful and humble.

"I find myself on my hands and knees crawling around naming the different mosses in my garden. Their colors are an endless variation on yellow and green with a bit of gray or red thrown in here or there, a dark blush of blue or black at the base of their leaves. Under the canopy of cedars and Douglas firs the ground of much of my garden is dark and acidic, perfect for coastal lichens and mosses. I love their names: awned haircap, juniper haircap, cranesbill, tall-clustered thread, Menzies' red-mouthed minim, ribbed bog, lover's, false-polytrichum, Menzies' neckera, golden short-capsuled, Oregon beaked, lanky, step, twisted ulota, hairy screw, bottle, red roof, wet rock, black-tufted rock.

"I might as well search out the lichens too: bull's-eye, cladonia scales, bark barnacle, lungwort, lettuce lung, frog pelt, pimpled kidney, orange pincushion, questionable rock-frog, tattered rag, beaded bone, forking bone, tickertape bone, waxpaper, antlered perfume, devil's matchstick, false pixie cup, blood-spattered beard, and common witch's hair. Nineteen lichens and as many mosses. There are probably others if I search diligently.

"What wonderful names are blood-spattered beard, and common witch's hair. How much more delightful than the tiresome nomenclature of Latin taxonomy, necessary as it is for scientific identification. Ideas of order, yes, but not a feeling among them. Questionable rock-frog is far more interesting to me than /Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia/. These plants live everywhere in the garden, innocuous and largely unnoticed, but everywhere I look, there is another one sharing a bit of rotting wood, a shaded spot beneath a fern. The twenty-year-old shakes on the roof of the old child's playhouse I use for storing kindling and empty planters have seven mosses and five different lichens growing on their gray wood."

The above photo was taken on Monday from the upstairs deck at the house we have been waiting to buy for months. Maybe you can see why we want to live here. There is so much life to be discovered: lichen, mushrooms, and moss; bears, coyotes, and mountain lions. We know; it's why we have persisted.

Snow and The MRI Saga

Let's see, where were we? Ah yes, Roger was scheduled for an MRI and the weather had taken an incredible turn toward deep winter. Wednesday was the stormiest for rain, and by then we were topping out at eight inches for a four-day total. The wind was gusting up to 60 mph, and the temperatures hovered at 36 F most of the day. We kept waiting for the snow to start falling. We thought if it would just snow we could cancel the MRI appointment (our not-so-secret desire). But that didn't happen. What did happen is that we lost our internet, telephone, and cable connection at around 10:00 am. So even if the MRI had to be canceled, we couldn't call to do it. We drove over to the food co-op for their free wi-fi i and good cell phone reception. There was no cancellation, so we drove over to the Diagnostic Lab at Roger's appointed time.
ROGER SEZ: i learned how to relax and ignore the pain of dental work when i was young because i hated fainting, or almost fainting, from the consideration of needles. not the pain. just the thought. i have had root canals without novacain. i could faint now if i imagine having a needle in me. i was quite pleased some 4 years ago when i got through a blood draw with nary a trace of lightheadedness. i even watched the tech switch vials to get more. i was impressed with me.

now i was to get an mri of my shoulder. i ruptured my left proximal biceps tendon, which sounds awful but is not really because the upper biceps tendons have two attachment points and so i still have one left. my arm still works fairly well. no reaching up and back. the diagnosing surgeon suggested an mri to see if my rotator cuff was torn.

the intake nurse tells me that i will need an injection in my shoulder for an mri. actually two, a shot of lidocaine to numb my shoulder so a doctor can, while watching on live fluoroscope, insert a loooong needle into my joint to insert dye. maybe she didn't really draw out that word "long," but i heard it that way.

so i remove my shirts and put on the silliest medical gown i've ever seen. big goofy flaps on the shoulders. then they lead me down the hall to radiology and i sit there ignoring the tray laid out with needles and vials or inspecting the several sorts of hi-tech machinery while the radiologist is called from somewhere else. my breathing is a bit off by now. after some years the doc arrives and explains the whole thing again. maybe i shouldn't have watched the fluoroscope screen while he marked my shoulder where the looong needle would be inserted. the lidocaine injection was sharp but brief. now i'm staring intently at some machine screws just above me, trying to breathe normally. now i'm asking for a cold wet cloth on my head. now i'm sweating profusely. when they ask if i'd like to stop and do the MRI some other time i gladly say yes. my bp is the lowest i've seen, 110/54. the nurse insists that i lay flat for a bit. that sounds good. after a while i'm escorted out to robin. we laugh. ROGER FINIS
When he came into the waiting he still looked ghostly pale. I thought he had completed the tests quickly, so I leapt up saying, "Wow, great job. That was fast." He said, "Nope, didn't get it done. I passed out."

We had another very deep rollicking good laugh about it on the drive home, that is until we turned up the two-lane mountain road to the house. While we were in town, it had snowed about an inch or two at the slightly higher elevation, and the roads were almost too slick to be navigated. There was a snow plow a couple of cars ahead of us, but it wasn't clearing the roads of all the slickness. Several cars were spinning and struggling up the hill, and we became just one in a line of roaring engines and cars moving an inch at a time. Then we were stuck. Roger tried to put the snow chains on the car, but he couldn't get them to work right. A very nice young man stopped to help, but he couldn't get the chains on either. Luckily he did manage to direct traffic around us, as we were blocking the lane heading up the hill. It was disconcerting in so many ways. So, Roger jumped back into the car and decided to give it one more try. We inched and inched our way to the house, which was only about a quarter of a mile further. We made it. Whew.
Since Wednesday, we've gotten nearly ten inches of snow and lost power once more. It's been snowing lightly and steadily nearly everyday. Everyone we meet and tell that we're looking to buy a house at the 3000+ elevation, always responds, "You're going to get a lot of snow up there." We didn't exactly believe them until now. Yup, totally true. The snow is here, and from the looks of it, it's here to stay. So, now we get to see two of our favorite things together, mushrooms and snow, how lucky is that? And finally, Roger decided since he wouldn't have surgery no matter what the tests revealed, he wouldn't reschedule the MRI anyway. All is well in our very snowy white world.

Quoting Voltaire

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

I've been thinking lately how Roger and I tend to make perfection the enemy of the good. That's what the above quote means. I had no idea the quote is from Voltaire, I've only seen it in reference to politics, like the health care bill fiasco. Oh sure the bill's not perfect, but it's good enough... so went the argument.

It's what we're doing now with our home search. Did we tell you we made an offer on a house on ten acres in the mountains? I'm pretty sure we must have, but it's been so long ago that it's hard to remember anymore. Let's see, we made an offer on a house that's a short sale. A short sale is when the house is listed for less than what the owner owes the bank. The mortgage is now what is euphemistically called "underwater." Okay, so we made an offer on a short sale almost two months ago and have not heard a single word from the bank. Not one. They haven't even breathed or nodded in our general direction. We've been getting weekly updates from our real estate agent who has been getting updates from the listing agent. The listing agent calls the bank negotiator who keeps putting off making any decision about whether to let the owner off the hook and sell the house to us at a whopping $150,000 loss. We as buyers are merely incidental to their considerations.
Stupidly, though, the bank has given us all this time to think about that house and let our misgivings mount. The house is located only about a mile up the road from us. We can head up there at any time of the day or night and look around. We've been doing that, especially now that it's vacant. We're finding imperfections. We've discovered that the winter sun doesn't clear the trees until a little after 10:00 in the morning. And, even though we've looked around and found places where we could easily put up solar collectors that would be in the direct sun as soon as it rises, the house will be in the shade until later. So the doubts begin to rumble.

Perfection demands the earliest morning sun, doesn't it?
I wander around the land wondering if there is enough sky for dreaming. This dark forest where we are living now has completely depressed me. We live under a forest canopy where few birds make their home, save the occasional brown creeper and migrating warblers for a day. Enough sky implies open space and meadow where all the creeping crawling critters go to find or become a meal. There is a wonderful two-acre garden spot. It's not range land vista, but it's still some open space.

Perfection demands big sky and prairie land for dreaming, doesn't it?
There is a leaky outside faucet; the fences need mending; the summer ozone comes and sits like invisible heated exhaust spewed from all the cars that trudge between here and San Fransicso. That's over 150 miles away! Yes, it's true for the entire county, but we take it rather personally.

What if we have to live with the pangs of disappointment? What if we make a mistake? Do you love everything about where you live?

Then we remember the good things: two acres of beautiful garden spot where organic biodynamic gardening has been done; feathers on the ground from unknown birds; a daily gathering of beautiful moths; splendid beetles on the screen door; deer poop in the garden (see fence mending). These are good things all, full of promise and life.

Ah, Voltaire.* We wait with the good and struggle with our desires for the best. We don't know whether to say, damn you, Bank of America, or thank you. But if that bank gives any more time to think about it, it'll be f*ck you for sure.

*Whenever I write "ah, someone" I am reminded of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. "Ah Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe. And now you really are in the total animal soup of time."

For The Thousandth Time...

You'd think with something as momentous as the one thousandth post, we'd have something lined up to dazzle you. Hah! Slackers like us? You must know us better than that by now. Although it's certainly not for lack of trying that a dazzling post didn't materialize here. Not even looking back at our humble beginning and our forays into politics or our first encounters with:bald eagles in Port Townsend;

or the neighborhood bobcat;or this luscious tidal estuary; or amazing sunrises;or sunsets that set the sky ablaze;

could spark something to set this post on fire.

Suffice to say, we have seen things that confirmed our wildest dreams, and

our deepest fears.

We've tossed our lives so high in the air, we have yet to securely touch down. Who knew that our private lives would intersect with a global economic crisis that would have a direct impact on the very thing we need to settle down? Not us. Still we keep looking around with our aging eyes and challenged spirits, seeking out the things that invoke awe and inspiration.
Luckily, there's always something. Like this young orphaned doe that comes to our yard to sniff out the apples (that we furtively put out for her) and nibble away at them. She reminds us that the instinct for survival is intrinsic to life from the beginning.

Roger sez:

our one thousandth post, a kilo-gram if you will. a time to look back over the past year's posts and consider blogging. we humans do like numbers with zeroes. how fun it is to look back at our life through the lens of blogger. yes, my own contributions have dribbled off to almost nonexistent, and i was not prolific in the best of times. without a blog though i would probably have written zilch.

while i do enjoy looking back, i realize that what i value most about blogging is the people we have met online, and in a few cases, in person. such a wide range of opinions, ages, interests, and locations. i've gotten an at-least-college-intro-class level education in botany, marine science, medicine, evolution, politics of all sorts, and economics. i know quite a bit about many places i will never visit. all of this reading the posts of interesting and vital people speaking for the most part in conversational language.

So, will there be a second thousand? It may take us ten years instead of this speed-by five, but hey, who's counting when it's been so much fun? Hah!

Where The Sun Don't Shine

I have finally come to the conclusion that Roger and I are hopelessly and irrevocably insane. Why else would we consider making an offer on a house that we have rejected at least six times in the past five months? On the other hand, we've gone back to look at this place six times in five months, so something keeps calling us back. Oh right, isn't that some twisted definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome?
We have this thing about light and southern exposure. We especially think about it now, in our rental in the dark woods (see above photo ). We think a house should be built with an architectural consideration of the four directions and the four seasons. We have driven our real estate agents crazy with this obsession. We say, "The house really doesn't matter. It's all about the land." They show us houses that really don't matter, but we still reject them one by one. Oh, we tell them, orientation does matter. It may not in sexual preferences, but it sure as heck does when the winter light is only something to be seen in the sun-drenched meadows across the canyon or street. We don't want to be staring longingly out some window at mesmerizing golden light, while shivering in a moody dark room. We talked to an architect the other day. He agreed that most houses are simply not built with any notion of the sun. The underlying assumption is that it's oriented correctly if the front door faces the street. What ever direction that might be.

So, why do we keep going back to this house? Because the 10 acres of land it's on provide a great buffer to the rest of the crazy world. It's completely livable with plenty of space and big windows. There is a fantastic and huge garden space that has already been used to do organic biodynamic gardening. It has two 1500 gallon cement holding tanks underground for water. But there are issues: The main part of the house is an older manufactured home. The stick built addition cuts out all sunlight to that part of the house. The trees that block much of the morning winter sunlight are on the neighbor's property.
I added a compass to the roof of the house to give you an idea of where things are happening, and labeled each section. But we keep coming back here to check the light. We go in the morning. We go later in the day. We've gone in summer. We've gone back in fall. We've walked around and listened to the birds in the trees. We've had toast there (oh yes, we brought tea and toast one morning) while sitting on the back steps. It is utterly serene and peaceful.

So we finally finally finally decided to make an offer. Guess what? Someone else had the same idea, a day before we did. We'll keep you posted.


Roger sez:

we have looked at a lot of houses and properties. some with our agent, many more just doing a drive-by on our own. nothing on the market now intrigues us anything like this place does. it is in an area of high end houses, not that that is important to us in itself, but in the real world it means that roads are plowed in the winter, and electricity and phone are fixed rapidly if interrupted. it is fairly close to town. it is ten acres, mostly of forest, to insulate us from (ugh) other people. we like neighbors and count ourselves to be good neighbors. we don't want fences to be the separation that works, we want trees and distance.

New Trails; Old Fears

I've noticed something whenever we set out on new hiking trails: I experience a sense of dread and fear. It's an interesting sensation. It could have something to do with the trailhead signage. We know that there really are plenty of mountain lions and rattlers in this neck of the woods, but that's not what sets my heart thumping. It more likely has something to do with my own personal history. My fear is almost always about other humans, and getting lost.
The trails along the south fork of the Yuba River are really quite beautiful. There is a wild, quintessential western ruggedness about this terrain. Although, this land has yielded itself to the greatest assaults in search of gold, it still demands careful attention for almost every footstep along its ore-rich paths. Every now and then when I do chance a glance upward at a towering granite boulder, the perfect launch for a hunting mountain lion, the dizzying drop off to the river below can literally spin my head around.

But the thing that keeps me most alert are the fellow hikers. The few we've encountered have all been as cheerful and friendly as any other place we've ever wandered. But, some nagging part of me conflates the unknown trail with an unknown entity that I am sure is there only to hurt us. Is that not sad? I think it's very sad. I haven't told this to Roger yet, but half the time when I'm hiking along, I'm wishing he'd carry a giant walking stick, big enough to club some mountain stranger who lurks behind every tree like a storybook ogre, that old boogeyman.
Yet, despite this fear, and my ongoing rant about trails not being properly marked (and signs that show up in the middle of nowhere with no worthwhile information, or signs that announce we are leaving the park boundary without any indication of what the obvious continuing trail actually becomes or where it goes...) I still have enough free attention to spot the wildlife flying, sauntering, and crawling by. Even this pretty well-camouflaged gopher snake (doing a good imitation of a rattler) sunning itself on a south-facing rock catches my eye. I almost always have a great time out on the trails, but most especially when we're hiking back, and I've exhaled a crazy sigh of relief.

An Old Friend

We finally had some time to take a walk in our new neighborhood, and were lucky enough to run into this old friend:We immediately recognized the shine on its wings, while walking on the shadow side of the road...
...and its familiar brilliance in the full sun, under cloudless mountain skies.

dragonflies will be gone
there will be snow
by the time we learn these roads

We're acclimating. You can't believe the time it takes.

Here and Now

I haven't downloaded any photos in over a week (except for this one of Bonsai checking out the young buck in the yard). There's been no time to take long looks at anything. Life moves quickly, drawing everything in blurred lines like an impressionist painting of life, and not life itself. Two 17 ft U-Haul truck moves, and everything we have ever collected and didn't finally discard in a fit of moving fatigue is now with us. All under one roof. We have our big cushy couch and wide recliner. We even have cable TV. My heart broke a little when I saw The O'Reilly Factor on our TV listings. We haven't had cable or satellite for over year, I had forgotten such crap is really broadcast over the wires. We haven't been paying any attention to the online news sites for weeks. We have even given up on our favorite political bloggers. The emails keep coming, though. Call Congress for the Public Option. Don't give up on Health Care. The battle is not yet over.

I think we have come to the mountains because we suspect the biggest battles really are over. We have come to where there is enough sunlight to generate solar power, where there is enough collectible rainfall in winter to grow a life-sustaining garden in summer, and where there is enough of a community to maintain a social structure while the larger society falls apart.

It's hot here for many months of the year. We're going to learn to live where it's relatively inhospitable (for a wuss like me). It's something we're all going to have to face in the future, whether you accept the climate is changing, or not. We're just taking it on now.

Life is serious at the moment.

(Don't forget to click on the pic of Bonsai. He's definitely in his kitty cat element.)

Between Here and There

There are 225 miles between Santa Cruz and Nevada City, a three-thousand foot climb in elevation the last few miles. We rented this 17-ft U-Haul, towed our car, and drove those miles on Friday. Roger did almost all of the unloading while I set up some kind of home base in the kitchen and master bedroom. We discovered upon arrival that the house we rented does not come with a refrigerator. A disappointing realization because the only large appliance we sold before we left Humboldt County last September was our refrigerator. We have never bought or rented a place that didn't have a fridge. So life there is like camping out, no matter how modern the house, when we're left with just our Coleman cooler.
This backyard also reminds us of camping. It looks like most of the campsites we've ever happily pitched a tent. This is our yard for the next six months while we search for a home and land. The squirrels and deer seem to like it here very much. Some animal I've never heard before sang a tune here in the dead darkness of night on Saturday. I listened to it as it crossed the yard, and I only knew it was moving as its call became fainter and fainter. Maybe in the coming rains and snow we'll find some tracks to give us a clue. The neighbors tell us that there are coyotes. We can't wait to hear them. This creature was definitely not a coyote, but a delightful mystery.
On the road covering those miles between here and there, we stop at this vista point with an overlook at the Carquinez Strait. It's a good place to rest half way between the sea and the Sierras. We always pack a lunch and take a look around. Lately the temps have been in the high 90s, but the dragonflies are still out and about, watching the traffic, or something.

We're tired. Another, final trip looms later this week.

Almost Gone, Except For Still Being Here

We waited all day Tuesday for a property manager to call us, to fax us a six-month lease on a house we are renting in Nevada City. This property manager has been a disappointment from the moment we met her last week. She has never come through in any way, always enthusiastically making promises that we happily accept, but always with suspicion. It's not that we won't get the place, we will, but she will take forever to let us know. It will throw off the schedule for picking up the U-Haul; ordering the high-speed internet; setting up basic phone service; putting the utilities in our name. We always have high expectations for simple levels of competence, and we are often let down. I can't understand how someone can be so sucky at their job and still keep it. How does that happen? Do people just not care anymore?

Still if all goes well with this particular transaction, we will be renting a large modern house in the hills outside of Nevada city on 1.73 acres. It will be a fine place to winter while we house hunt in earnest.
It's just too hard and absurd to shop online for a house. Things that are spectacular in photos often prove to be less stellar in the stark light of day. Take this house, for instance. Cute, isn't it? It has very little southern exposure and would take a whole lot of tree cutting to bring any sunlight for gardening. The trees closest to the house on the west, which should be cut down to mitigate fire danger, are not even on this property. "Hello, new neighbor, mind if we chop down your trees?" Or, take that gorgeous house with a million dollar view of the lakes and the coveted Sutter Buttes (west) or Sierra Buttes (east), it will be so hot there in the summer that even the snakes and lizards will slink off looking for respite. That lovely rambling house with its 'pottery barn" colors is really a triple wide mobile home (photo below) with a permitted two-story addition that is not being used for what it is actually permitted for. That beautiful cabin sided with the rich dark wood milled from its own land has no back steps, and drops off into a steep canyon. Real estate is very tricky business, and short sales (where banks have to agree to take less than what is actually owed on the house) can literally take six months to close and will drive you insane in the process.
We have been living in the upstairs two rooms of the old, uncared for family beach house for over a year now. It's amazing how small a space Roger and I can comfortably occupy together. Transitioning to a bigger space is not always easy. We don't really know how to spread out. It's not our nature. Most houses these days are absurdly big, and all boast the same currently popular features. We look at photographs online and find something almost weirdly voyeuristic about it. We are privy to the privy (double stall shower, big sunken tub with soothing jets), invited into the boudoir (always a strip of contrasting wallpaper where the wall meets the ceiling), given a place at the dining table in modern stainless kitchens (double door side-by-side refrigerator), and then slowly tour the great room with requisite cedar tongue and groove ceilings. All in homes anxiously waiting for someone to buy and love them.

When we finally walk through these places in real life, some people maintain the stage and prep the house for our audience. Others don't even make the beds or wash the breakfast dishes. We've seen bowls of cereal left on the table, cheerios floating soggily in warm milk; blow-dryers left on the bathroom counter with the cord draped across the sink; private notes on the refrigerator; personal paperwork strewn across desks; printed computer pages of dream searches for downsized houses and lower mortgages.

We're not even sure which is worse-- the beautiful antiseptic people-less staging, or the house in the throes of the utter mundanity of private lives. I always carry a camera on these outings, but mostly I look away and never take a single photo. I know some shoppers look through cupboards and drawers, I swear I can't imagine why.

The property manager never did call us. We finally called her again and found her in at her desk dealing with some personal issue that she went on about at length with Roger. The house is ours. The high speed internet will be connected on Saturday. If that's really true, you'll know about it. Wish us luck.

Oh America

I don't know why this scene jumped out at me, while we were at a stoplight at the corner of Pleasant Valley Road and Highway 20, it just did. I had to grab the camera and shoot through the window. What does it say, this dog with its lavender bow perched on the driver's lap. Is it giving me a condescending look, or is that my imagination?

Here We Are Giants

Okay, so where have we been? And where the heck are we now? This could be a long, sordid story. The kind that you would only tell to wicked children to scare them before bedtime about witches and MILs who are purposefully cruel, who say and do things they know will hurt for a lifetime. But why write of such things? Witches don't really exist, and MILs eventually wither and die, turning to dust to be scattered as far and wide as necessary, rendered powerless at last.
We are in the Sierra foothills, in Grass Valley, looking around at houses and land. We've been here since last Wednesday, when we packed our stuff, brought our kitty cat to my brother's, and rushed out of town to find our future. With our trusty computers, maps, and a dream, we are exploring the west side of the sierras, in what feels to be an inch by inch journey. Winding mountain roads and towering pines are the essence of the county before it gently rolls off to the parched lower river valley and into the heart of the state.
We are housesitting at Roger's sister's in a gated community on a man-made lake. The geese here honk early most mornings rivaling any rooster I've ever heard. A red-shouldered hawk also whistles at dawn. Unseen little mammals scatter, and dried leaves rustle in their wake. The other day, while I was making the bed I looked out the window and saw a fine and realistic statue of a buck in the backyard. It fit with the ambiance of the faux well and real bench. It was just that I hadn't remembered seeing it before. I laughed at my non-observant state, and chalked it up to the complete numbing stress we've been experiencing, when that buck bent its head and nibbled on some leaves. Yay! I was so relieved. I can still see this beautiful world.

Later we walked after dinner and marveled at the giant shadows we cast. It felt good to be that big, almost big enough so that nothing could hurt us again. Here we are giants.

Almost Famous

I posted this link on Facebook Monday. It went to a page about a new book that was advertised with these words:

They came from the city, they came from the country, they drove hundreds of miles and hitch-hiked across the state to be there for day one of a three-day music festival built on a platform of peace. Learn about the experiences, the adventures and the lasting memories from the people who spent three days in a farm field, in the mud and rain and witnessed the transformation of three ordinary days into an extraordinary event known as Woodstock.

"Everyone looked just like us," remembers Robin Chanin, then a 17-year-old from suburban New Jersey who was among the nearly 500,000 attendees. "It was a great equalizer. No one stood out. There was a moving river of blue jeans and flowing hair, lots of beads, embroidery and flowers. We parked our car in a field with others, and not knowing where to go, we joined the throng and the movement simply took us there."

That's me they're quoting. I really am almost famous!

But I have to admit I wondered if I should post this here after posting it two days ago on Facebook.

I just don't know how to manage two online presences. It's weird, because I barely have enough of a persona to maintain one. And let's not even talk about Roger. He's obsessed with politics and finding us a place to live, and has to be cajoled into posting something here. I don't really like posting on the blog and then putting a link to it on Facebook. Readers have to decide whether to comment here? There? Both? Neither?

The simple story is just that my siblings and I went to Woodstock 40 years ago. The anniversary fast approaches. The other day, after my mom saw the webpage advertising the book, I said, "Now aren't you glad you let us go?"

Yes and no, robin, yes and no.

On the Way Down; On the Way Back

We went to Ian's memorial gathering on Sunday. In our own wacky preparation for such things, we stopped on the way down to watch the sea otters and shorebirds, to delight in the vibrant and essentially basic things of life. It's the only balance we know. Luckily, there were several sea otters lounging about (don't they always lounge? what a life!) quite close to the bluff that overlooks Moss Landing harbor. They were so relaxed, we watched them engaging in their own sea otter playfulness. I just had to shoot a short video of it:

The memorial service was incredibly touching. Ian's friends spoke of a young man full of integrity and honesty, of deep decency and political insight, and an ardent consumer of very good highs! He was a wild man DJ who was respected and dearly loved. What a good thing it was to hear such constancy of integrity in a young man's life. Ian's brother said how relieved he was to know that Ian had found his tribe. And yes, this tribe had gathered to say their farewells.
On the way home I kept my eye out for the golden eagle we had seen on one of our earlier trips down to see Ian. I remembered the cow pasture and the far fencing where it had landed. Sure enough, that magnificent creature was there again perched on a fence post. Roger pulled over and stopped so we could take a better look. Oh it was far away, but that didn't stop me from trying.
The cows were rather intrigued and kept their inquisitive eyes on us. Shortly before we drove off, they came down to the fence to see if maybe we might have something delicious for them. We had to apologize and move on. Such is life.