OK, so new beginnings ...

I have been unemployed for two weeks, this is the beginning of the third. I have moments of concern, but not the panicked, OMG, the sky is falling feeling I have had in the past when I found myself out of a job.  I have come to the conclusion that I have too many skills and talents to not be able to make things work somehow. I am going back to posting on Mondays. and will be doing so on a regular basis from now on. So I will keep this short. 

I'm Back

I just took an unexpected, very long break from the blog. On September 15th I pulled a rug out of the bathtub after washing it and pulled a muscle, it got my attention but it didn't feel that bad.  September 19th I called in sick to work because I could barely walk. My back went from a slightly uncomfortable pulled muscle to full blown "OMG what have I done to my back in five days??!" Between my back, which laid me out flat for a week and a half, trying to reconcile my medical insurance, which is through Sacramento County and included getting paper work signed so I could go back to work, plus a misunderstanding about procedures with the company I work for I was off 3 days short of a month. It is a long and convoluted story of everything that could go wrong did go wrong. All because I called in for three days. I have, never, in my life called out sick for three days. I had no idea. My back is in general fine, but I still can't sit for more than about half an hour without being really stiff.

The day before I went back to work, IADT Sacramento was informed that the campus would be closing, which means we stop signing new students and teach out what we have now. They began by immediately laying off the admissions department. Before anyone at work had a chance to call me I got a message from a friend who is a student. I thought it was a bad rumor. My boss called me immediately when I emailed him. I am scheduled to stay until the last student walks out the door in 2017, but the director of ADmissions left on the 22nd, the campus President is leaving the 31st. most of the lead faculty will be gone by the end of Term 2 which is in July. They are starting with the un-needed, and the highest paid. My job is safe because of one thing I do. I am a certified test administrator for Pearson Vue testing. We open the campus on Fridays for outside testing. Anything and everything from CBest, to Cisco. If it hadn't been for that, this past Friday would have been my last day, if not before.

Tuesday of last week a bad tooth reared its ugly head and I spent the subsequent days and the weekend timing pain medication and food, with an ice pack on my jaw. This morning when they were trying to get the crown off, the entire tooth popped out, apparently followed by a gush of ... well, you know. A nice gold crown with little roots intact and all. It hurts but not like it did. They are sterilizing the whole thing I am going to pick it up tomorrow. Thought I would put it on a chain ... I don't know what I am going to do with it.

Sunday I made the cookies for Church. It was a Halloween theme light food thing. I hope everyone has a blast on Halloween, and that what ever you dress up as, has great impact. I promise more interesting blogs in the future. Please for give me for the absence.

NO blog tonite

Nasturtiums

Underside of a Sunflower

A new and a dying Squash blossom

I have done some damage to my back that makes it impossible to sit for more than 5 minutes.  I don't type well standing up. But here are some pictures I took before the body went on exile.

Until next week!

Time marches on

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln 

I will be 60 in January. ARGH. I remember when I thought I would be dead at 42. It was just this number I had in my head. Obviously I was wrong. Now I have no idea. Except that I have a lot to do, so I hope it is a couple of dozen years in the future. 

Sometimes I am painfully aware of how I got here and where I am. A few weeks back I found out a few things about my health that made me scratch my head. One was a pre-cancerous condition in a very odd place. My family, either side of my family does not get cancer. Really. Everyone dies of a heart attack either in their sleep, or they drop dead. So to come up with something that might turn into cancer was just baffling. So I am on a topical ointment for the long term. Then I found out I had a vitamin D deficiency. Me, the gardener person. They prescribed Vitamin D supplements, and they are readily available, and so far, the sun shines every day so I am not concerned. But this is the second time in a six month period that my blood work showed too much iron. I had to research that one. It is probably one of the most serious health things I have going on. It explains a few things. The symptoms are the same as having too little, but the potential health risks are very scary. One is that cancer loves iron. If you increase iron intake to cancer ridden mice the cancer will grow. Iron is a heavy metal, so it lodges in your organs, and your brain. You can eliminate it from your blood by donating a pint on a regular basis, which makes your body pull it out of your organs. But your brain is another matter. There are chelation therapies that will cross the membrane that protects your brain, but as you can imagine they have side effects. Iron overload can create high blood pressure ( I have that ) and high cholesterol ( huh, I have that too ), and diabetes ( they are warning me about that ) and memory loss. It has been linked to Alzheimers. I just thought I was getting old and forgetful.

So the first thing I did was go out and get bottled water. I am sure drinking well water is not helping. It requires quite a filtering system to take out iron. Reverse osmosis. Expensive, not going there. Then I looked at the diet aspect. NO more red meat, or dairy, or alcohol, or sugar ( no surprise there it feeds cancer too ) but it includes fruit. That just seems wrong! I am careful with those as well. I hardly ever drink any more. Steak is just too expensive. The diet that I stick to most of the time is actually good for me. Beans, rice, whole grains. I stay away from white flour, turns out that all those enriched foods are enriched with IRON. There are supplements that help remove it, and things you can do. 

Anyway it has made me appreciate the days that I have a lot of energy, the days I feel my brain is working well, It explains a few things. I wish the county thought it was as important as the vitamin D, the sleep apnea, or the pre cancerous condition. I am grateful for the temporary part-time Doctor who had the foresight to order the extra test. Too bad she is gone. The guy who replace her was leaving too. He ordered a huge panel. Have your iron checked. They need to check the serum levels and the levels in your body that are not in your blood. It is a silent epidemic. 

So one day at a time has taken on new significance. I hope you are blessed with good health. 

Speedy recovery, old friend

No Quote this time, and a late blog.

Mt Diablo is on Fire. Mt Diablo is not a huge mountain, but it rises up in the middle of Contra Costa County, and is everyone's reference point for where you are. So for it to be on fire is like watching a friend suffer. I lived in Contra Costa County  from the time I was a baby until 2000. Every day of my life that I was home I saw the mountain. The sun rising in the east defines the outline, the sun passing over head defines it contours, the sun setting in the west slowly lighting the side until the top is the the only rosy thing left.

It is the place you take out of state visitors. Not only is it beautiful, it has an amazing view of the county. There is an observation area at the top, and a light house. When the air quality was better you could see to Mt Rainer, and Mt. Shasta. The pay-as-you-go binoculars let you zero in on all sorts of things.  There are picnic areas, special rock outcrops, meadows, and oak forests. For most of us who have grown up in the area it is a friend. So to watch your friend burn, and in pain, is very hard.

It is also home to an abundance of wildlife, all of which are threatened in some way by the fire. Evacuating horses is not easy, but it is doable. The wild life that will flee this fire will be refugees running into areas that are not safe for them, across roads with cars that don't care about them. How far and fast can a little tree frog jump? The quail and other little birds will be going into territories that are not theirs, either looking for shelter and food. Will they know to return when the fire is over? I don't know. Their food will be gone, for some their homes will be gone.

This happened in 1977. It was bad then and from what I am reading, bad this time as well. It is burning on the east side which is very rugged. It is  now 45% contained, which is a relief. Speedy recovery old friend, rest well. 

Life's little surprizes

A lot of my work is a matter of reacting to surprises in life.
Alexander Wang 

A good day is when we get everything we want to get done, accomplished. It is finding a dollar on the ground. It is beating the rain by just enough to get the mower inside shut the door and walk into the house in time to hear the splat of raindrops on the porch. A good day is also having just enough money to pay the rent, getting it from the bank and coming home to find the sheriff parked in your yard, knowing that the alarm has gone off, but for some reason not being at all concerned. 

I always pay my rent in cash, so I was off to the bank today. I stopped at MIchael's to get some of those little rubber ends for sunglass holders, and then proceeded to the 99 cent store for a couple of pairs of cheaters ( eyes ) and indulged myself in a bag of tortilla chips. A word of warning to those who do not know me well, your chips are not safe with me. I will eat them all. I had just put a chip into my mouth when I turned off the levee road and saw a nice, shiny, black Sheriff's patrol cruiser sitting at the bottom of my drive way. OK. What happened?

 "Do you live here?" 
"Yes, I do" 
"I am responding to an alarm going off" 
"I figured" 
"How long were you gone?"
"Hour and a half at the most"
He told me he was waiting for his partner before he went inside. I didn't see smoke so I was fine as long as the animals were OK. Chalupa only barks if he recognizes the car, or someone comes up to the front door. There is a door to the garage at the bottom of the front stairs, it was open. Shit. Once we got to the question "Is there a way to get into the house from the garage?" and I said "No," he was moving, pulling a very large gun out of the holster and heading into the garage announcing "Coming in, if anyone is in here, show yourself. I have a gun and I will fire it." Gulp.

He finally determined the garage was secure, He believes the wind blew the door open, I am not so sure. The alarm is a siren, and it is REALLY LOUD and it goes to a alarm center and they will send a car if no one picks up the phone.  My landlords were in Lincoln one Christmas when their alarm went off. Someone had come in through a downstairs window that was not armed, into a back room, but when they opened the door to the garage they tripped the alarm. I know they took off like a shot. That time I never saw a patrol car. The alarm finally went off. It happened in the middle of the day so I called Fred and Clara and they came home. 

I checked the front door and it was still locked, we walked around the back. I am, very cautious about the back door because Amy, who had lived here before had been burglarized and that is when my landlord put in the security system. That time they came in through the back. The back door was locked and I saw nothing out of the ordinary. 

Nice guy, was going up in the helicopter later that day, I told him to fly over. I can hear him telling the pilot "That is 2485, we get all sorts of odd calls from her." I am sure they have a little file on me. Date, called about mail box break ins. Date, called about noise. Date, called about hunters to close to the Hwy on the Yolo side. Date, called about screeching metal and breaking glass, concerned about accident, Officers arrived to find garbage in driveway. Now this. Crazy single woman. I know I shut the door. 

The other part of today was getting all the lawns mowed just before the rain so with the new mown grass and the rain the air smells amazing. And there was that rainbow. If you didn't see it, then you missed out. Here it was a huge, double, semi circle. Brief and beautiful. I saw it from inside and when I got to the porch it had faded by half; in another 30 seconds it was gone. The rain was wonderful and now everything is all rinsed off. The crickets are singing, I am probably not going to sleep. No pictures, I need batteries for the camera.

Happy Labor Day, holiday over, back to work. 

The approaching end of summer

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.
Henry Rollins 


I don't know what the world looks like where you are. Here the change of season is ahead of where it should be, somewhat like I observed in the spring when I heard a knock at the door one day and  there stood Summer. who announced it was here a month early, and marched right in. Fall is not being as bold, but has sent me a note written in the leaves on the trees.

Usually I smell fall in the air and begin my routine of fall clean-up, planting onions for the next year, turning and combining compost piles ( I have three in different parts of the yard ), cutting back this and that. This year I can see that we are going to have an early fall by the color of the trees. Even my landlord noticed it. And lots of leaves. I have even seen a grape leaf or two raging red. In September. What are they thinking. Some of the vegetables are telling me they are thinking about the long snooze. 

I have not yet seen the long migrations of Geese, so winter is still out there some where waiting for the right time to announce his arrival. The fig tree usually waits until just after Thanksgiving to drop its yellow leaves. I appreciate that, it makes such a gorgeous backdrop for the holiday. That is when I pull the last of the bamboo stakes supporting the tomatoes and store them in the rafters of the garage. Thank is when I begin in earnest rearranging the living room for fires, and stacks of wood. 

But this year everthing is early. The river has stayed high, there has only been one week of high temperatures. I think for my own sanity I am going to wait until I smell fall in the air. 

I hope it is still summer where you are, and that you are not welcoming Summer's Ghost a little too early.

A product of my environment

     

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back?   

- W. Clement Stone  

I live in a beautiful place. I have my cultivated garden with lawn, 100 feet from the house is the Sacramento River, and to the north of my cultivated space is an open area, with oaks and maples and cottonwoods. I have my vegetable garden back there as well. The property is a magnet for birds. I used to hear a pair of horned owls, but the people to the north of me are clearing the property for development and they could very well have cut down their home. I haven't heard them in a while. Butterflies, mantis, lady bugs, every now and then I see something I have never seen before. Yesterday I saw a small flat beetle that was red with a black edge that I need to look up.  There are the usual wild mammals like raccoons (four legged bandits with hands), possum, skunk (smelled, but never seen except dead on the road) and an occasional coyote. The Canadian Geese sometimes fly over the house just above the tree tops, honking. One of these days I will get a decent picture.  This past week or so it has been the Crow Convention because the figs are ripe. They fly from tree to tree in the neighborhood. They are loud and boisterous. A couple of hundred at a time, it is impressive.  Hummingbirds, chickadees, blue jays and magpies. Bats at dusk. They are sooooo cool. When it is very hot and not very breezy, the dragonflies appear -- a few hundred at a time, swooping and darting from about three feet off the ground to a hundred feet above the house. I have tried to get pictures, it doesn't do the numbers or the dance they do any justice. To stand in the middle of my lawn with these 4 inch creatures flying around me is magical. 

This is Swainson Hawk territory. The Hawk saved the banks of the levee system from being denuded. The Army Corp wanted to strip the trees and foliage so that the levee would be easier to inspect. The tree roots, and bushes help stabilize the levee, but it took the Friends of the Swainson Hawk to convinced them that the habitat loss would be too great if they did. Not just for the hawk, but for all the small creatures that form the ecosystem and are part of the food chain, and bio diversity of the river.  

My house is an older home built in the late 40's. I live on the second floor above a "garage space." You cannot store anything important down there, because occasionally the river overflows the banks and comes into the yard. My first flood was in the spring of 2011. Three feet of water in the yard for a couple of weeks. It was not fun. The dog hated every minute. WE survived and so now every winter I start pulling stuff up, some of it comes upstairs. But I am honestly getting too old to schlep stuff up and down the stairs and rearrange my house for 4 months. 

I believe that the events that happen are reflective of energy you want to pull into your life. I love it here. I have a studio space that I use mostly in the winter. My true passion and love is gardening, my artwork has always been reflective of that.  So I put in a vegetable garden, and I usually have something out there all year.  Summertime,  I am outside. And that vegetable garden feeds me. Serious business. I take pictures of my flowers and plants. The other morning I woke up to the image of a tall drawing of grass, with the emphasis at the base. It was an inspirational dream image. So I am photographing the bases of plants right now, putting together some reference material for this winter when the cold and rain will keep me inside. I have not lived in a place that felt more like home since I left Walnut Creek. 

So my objectives as I go forward are to do the two things I do very well: First to create a beautiful outdoor space, and do things with plants. Second, to do artwork and crafts inspired by nature. This environment supports my goals and objectives. 

The base of the Naked Ladies

Good Vibrations

Pretty Girl

The long, leaning process

Upright

“It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,”    ― Amit Ray

Now I really believe this quote. I think it is at the root of what we are doing here, everything that goes on. I have days when I approach a marginally OK version of good vibration ( Wait, I hear the Beach Boys ) And other days when I am surprised plants don't wilt as I approach.

I think it applies to everything on the planet, The plants, the animals, all of the minerals, And especially the made made objects. They are after all an extension of us, and we are creating reality as we go.

Creating a good vibration in your environment means that people come into your space and feel better. That creative energy is somehow transmitted to them. With the arts you extend your vibration to your work. With food, it is in what you cook. Music speaks straight to the soul. I am reconsidering a number of things of late. I have a lot of creative energy, but am not using it. That just seems wrong.

I read something, a few times by different people that boiled down to there are two emotions: Love and Fear. I would venture to say that positive vibration is really how much love you have put into everything you do. Now when I find myself getting angry, or upset, or feeling a "negative" emotion I have to stop and ask myself what I am afraid of. It sounds pretty easy until I am furious with the dog for having peed on the corner of the bed again. That one always stops me in my tracks. What am I afraid of then? Fear of Dog piss and all the work it represents, and how my time will be side tracked while I clean it up? In truth, why does it matter if I can do it with a good feeling in my heart. Uh-huh.

On another note. I have had a colossal failure in my garden, this time of my own doing. The corn has ripened without my knowledge, and I have now more than a few ears of too ripe, firm and somewhat tasteless corn. I am going to boil the ears and save it for chowder. But this is like the most embarrassing thing I have done in a while, and I can definitely relate this to not providing them with enough love, attention and water. I just didn't see the ears, and didn't know they would do this. ARGH. A week ago the sunflowers toppled at about four feet taking some of the corn with them. For those not aware of what I did, I tried Three Sisters, and included sunflowers, But when we had that really hot weather the corn and sunflowers took off, shading the beans and squash. I spent this afternoon cutting down all the corn to three feet. Whacking back the sunflowers to where they had bent over. The beans are in there, and I saw some squash. We will see. I hated to see the sunflowers go. They brought such joy into my life. Positive Vibration. I believe each photo will enlarge if clicked on, the leaning photo is difficult to see.

Fall is right around the corner. I don't smell it, but the leaves have a slight yellow cast. Time to think about a second crop of onions.

How I spent my summer vacation

I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want. 

-- Muhammad Ali

I don't take a lot of time off. I am serious about showing up and doing my job. I am responsible and dependable. I haven't actually taken a "vacation" in a year, however before that it was more like 20 years. Uh huh, you are reading that right: Twenty Years.  But as I was heading into spring this year,  I heard my self saying "I need a vacation." Then I heard my self saying "I really need a vacation." So I decided when, and I took it. I didn't want to go anywhere, or do anything. Well, no, that's not quite right: I didn't want to go anywhere ( couldn't afford it ) but I had tons of stuff to do at home. I did not want to see anyone or deal with visiting. I just wanted to work on projects. Last weeks' post mentioned how I had too many unfinished projects,  and that is some of what I did this past weekend when I had five days off in a row. I would work, and wander, and work, and wander. I could take the time to finish some little thing. I could afford the luxury of going back and forth between 5 projects. 

I could clean the garage, reorganize the garage, finally park my car in the garage. I could go back upstairs to put something from the garage in a more suitable place and spend time reorganizing and cleaning my studio for as long as it took to assemble a box of trash then go back downstairs, dump the box of trash and work on the garage again. I took the time to unwrap a bunch of old frames stored in the garage,  in the process finding one really gorgeous, ornate gold one that I put above the fireplace. Then I got a brain storm and put a framed Egyptian painting on papyrus inside the gold frame. I really like the effect.  Then I did a whole wall of  empty frames with other empty frames, and some with artwork. I actually looks cool. The frames are all warped or funky from being down in the garage through a couple of floods. Up high, but moisture damaged non-the-less. I did laundry. I mopped the floor. I did this, and that, and the other thing.  

What's the point? I let myself do what ever. One thing lead to another, and back to the original, then down a side path, and that was just the most relaxing and satisfying thing ever. I let my self work until I was tired. I slept until I woke up. NO Alarms-!! I feel great! It has been so long since I could just not care. No schedule, no interruptions, no worries, no homework. ( I had some to do, I just chose not to do it ) I didn't care about where I was supposed to be, or what anyone thought about what I was doing or how I was using my time and I got a LOT done. I played a lot of Ball with the dog. I saw two people - my landlords. I talked to one friend on the phone. This was just bliss!  Best vacation ever.