The Activist Me

It's been several weeks of being Farm Woman. Canning, freezing, drying stone fruit. Harvesting peppers and tomatoes and corn and greens. Making my weekly homemade pasta dishes -- I finally got a manual pasta maker! Ravioli are not too bad, tortellinis are a bitch, spaghetti and tagliatelle are a cinch -- on top of my weekly sourdough loaves. Tending all the living and growing things. Trying to avoid dealing with gophers and squirrels. (That's Farm Man's job but there is no Farm Man here. Only Big Dog and he does not think he lives on a farm. "It's a RANCH," he'll correct anyone who might call our place a "farm." When they ask what the difference is, all he says is "A ranch is more macho.")

But somewhere along the way, I got way in over my head on an anti-nuke event.

I was already preparing for another tv program that our local anti-nukers make for public access tv when email traffic brings the issue of a Buddhist monk my way. He's been living in the US for nearly 2 decades but his English is hard for Americans to understand and the other member of my group wanted to help but were not quite sure what is what he wanted to do.

"I'll contact him in Japanese," I volunteer.

Everyone let go. 

Don't let go! Don't trust me to deal with this properly!

As I communicated with him, I began to realize that I was the head and focal point. Oh my god. What am I doing? I hadn't a clue.

The Monk wanted to do a "Peace Walk" from Vandenberg Air Force base to San Luis Obispo, then a 3-day fast and prayer session in front of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

How does this whole thing work? What is the route of The Walk? Where does he stay? Who drives him? Accommodations, food, transportation... There were so many logistical matters.

While I am trying to figure all of this out, a new email comes in. An activist from Fukushima will be on the West Coast around the same time. How about having her and The Monk as speakers for our Hiroshima/Nagasaki Anniversary Event? The logistical details grow both in size and complexity.

I haven't figured anything out and ANOTHER email arrives. The author of Devil's Tango: How I Learned The Fukushima Step by Step also wants to be here around the same time. Cool! Three guest speakers! But now, the planning gets even more complicated.

Hey, this is not the first time I've had to quickly put something together. It's not the first time I've been in charge of a project, I tell myself. But I realize quickly that this is different. In my past life, I've always done things as a JOB. Meaning there was someone with a lot of money and usually it was my job to do it under budget. I had different parameters. I never had to figure out how to organize events with NO MONEY. I never had to go around asking so many people to donate their time, energy, space, etc.

I started freaking out. I started imagining the entire thing unraveling into a huge, un-laughable Spinal Tap sort of nightmare.

I am a terrible planner. I seem to be better at going with the flow. So for tonight, I will just breathe deeply and hope for the best. The Monk arrives tomorrow and the whole Peace Week will begin and then, what happens, happens. If it turns into a disaster, well, I guess I won't ever be doing this again.

UPDATE!

Well, well, well. Haven't I been a terrible blogger. But, you know, I've only been a terrible updater. I've been writing, writing, writing. And taking photos. In fact, I've been so busy doing those things on top of hundreds of other things that I just haven't had time to post anything.

C'est la vie, as the French say. Or shoganai, as the Japanese say. Or mai pen rai, as the Thai say. Or, tough p'toodies, as we used to say in grade school in America.

But seriously. If you would be so kind as to scroll backwards...

The Alamo

"This is the Alamo and we are the Texans!" Big Dog tells everyone who will listen.

We are overrun by ground squirrels and nothing we do makes a bit of a difference.

We didn't used to have these critters. They only started appearing two years ago and we only really began noticing them last year. But like many things on the ranch, left unchecked, they've also gotten completely out of hand. In fact, they are so out of hand, I don't even think about the gophers any more.

Big Dog, like many Americans of Anglo-European backgrounds, believes he OWNS this land. Things encroaching on his land, his work, his ways, are The Enemy. And right now, the ground squirrels are Enemy Number One.

"So far, they only eat the fruit on the ground," I mention.

"Yeah, but they dig giant holes everywhere."

True. Ground squirrels burrow giant tunnels that are big enough for a small dog to fall into. Our squirrels are well nourished and super sized, meaning their burrows are also gigantic.

"And, if we don't keep their population under control, the place will be amok with squirrels," he adds.

The idea of the entire ranch crawling with monster-sized squirrels gave me the willies. I'd already been through a rodent infestation at the House in the Woods a couple of years ago and did not want any similar experience with squirrels.

At the very beginning, we trapped and released them. However, squirrels are not easily removed from their homes. We read blogs that talked about marking and releasing squirrels 5 miles from their property and trapping THE EXACT SAME SQUIRREL a few days later.

We tried different traps. We bought multi-squirrel traps, giant jaws of death, all different sizes of traps. (And caught everything from our resident cat -- boy, was she embarrassed -- to a beautiful little fox and even a skunk.) Big Dog tried shooting them...and filled his tool shed with holes. A worker at the nursery next door told him about warfarin -- the same blood thinner our parents use -- and we spent a bunch of money building PVC bait stations. He's smoke bombed a few nests.

Over the last 2 years, we've sullied our karma with the souls of dozens of squirrels but that was hardly even winning a battle.

So, I am doing what any good Texan would do, faced with a war you cannot win. I am barricading what I don't want to lose. In my case, it is the produce. I've put bird nets and screens over one part of my veggie garden. (The squirrels love the lettuce and tomatoes as much as I do.) I've put up bird net "walls" around my best peach and nectarine trees. (They climb right over chicken wire and hard plastic mesh but bird nets are apparently too wobbly for the squirrels.)

Someone suggested putting giant speakers near their nests and playing hip hop at distortion levels. Maybe. But I think we have Gangsta Squirrels and I can't help but picture them actually enjoying that kind of music. Yo, yo yo!

The Snake is Hibernating

I have not cleaned the house. Nor cooked up any special New Year's foods. No countdown event last night either. January 1, 2013 feels pretty much like December 31, 2012. I'm off to a good start, huh!

But what's wrong with letting The Snake hibernate a little bit longer?

Up and Down

Fall comes to our valley.

The weather is stunning right now on the Central California Coast -- beautiful warm days (and a few days of real heat each week!) -- and lots and lots to harvest. In addition to the normal yumminess from our garden, we have the most divine apples this year. Wow. What a year for pommes!

Aside from the earliest apples, the Gravensteins, I have no idea what kind we are growing -- they were all here when we came to the ranch -- so I have given them nicknames: Two Tone, Big Red, Goldilocks, Emerald Eye (which I suspect might be Granny Smiths), Freckles, Last One and Latecomer. They are all spectacularly, outrageously tasty this year, but we love, love, love Goldilocks. She's crisp and thin-skinned, with a fresh honeyed sweetness. Last One, which is not really the last apple tree to ripen -- that would be Latecomer -- used to give us a whole mess of tiny, baby-sized fruit but this year, her babies are super-sized. And to see little Jackson, the terrier, running around with a grapefruit-sized apple in his mouth is just too comical.

Even the crabapples are huge.

Naturally, I am eating too many apples. At least I think I am when I notice that my pee is smelling like apple juice these days.

But when the ranch makes me this happy, it also makes me terribly sad.

I get angry at mankind's stupidity. Thinking about nukes and fracking and people who don't give a hoot makes my stomach hurt. Now, many locals are vocally protesting PG&E's proposed seismic tests because they will irrevocably disrupt marine life. My heart is with them, but a nuclear accident will wipe us all out, so let's direct our attention to the Real Problem.

The Election Circus is tiring and irritating to someone who has no suffrage in this country.

Even cooking is not the same.

"Why is it taking me so long to make dinner these days?" I'd bitch at myself, knowing full well that it's because I am making nearly everything from scratch. I just don't trust food manufacturers anymore. Eat out? Are you kidding?!

I've fallen back in love with our ranch, our land, and it's tearing me apart to think we will soon leave for our fall-winter stay in Mexico.

It all feels worse than bi-polar disorder. Better eat another apple!

Back Blogging

Weeeeell. Haven't I been a lazy blogger. But not lazy. Just lazy blogging. In fact, I've been very very busy.

Things that kept me busy the last 2+ months:

Going crazy about Noda and the restart of nukes
Going to protest in front of his Official Residence along with thousands of others from all walks of life
A pilgrimage to Ise Shrine, which led to:
Thinking about the essence of Being Japanese and
Having visions about the future and
Connecting with departed souls and
Wondering what it all means
Cleansing my home with sacred sand
Cleansing my body with spirulina, chlorella and seaweed
Cleansing my soul with gratitude
Construction/renovation on 4 homes and
Losing the time (or energy) for contemplative thinking
Saying goodbye to J&R and the McC Family
Saying hello to K&P and the H Brothers
Enjoying having horses back on the ranch but
Missing the chickens
Having a Japanese anti-nuke activist come to our area (and home) and
Becoming more connected to the whole anti-nuke community
Fighting squirrels and gophers (and sometimes deer)
Accidentally catching (and quickly releasing) a beautiful fox
Fiercely protecting my beloved plants
Delighting in eating my own produce
Constantly trying new recipes, experiments
Driving at night for the first time
Driving everyone crazy with constant GMO information
Enjoying the incredible taste of our nectarines (super this year!) as well as blackberries, strawberries, plums, peaches and apples
Feeling bummed out at having to leave the ranch to go to LA
Furiously canning, drying, and freezing the harvest
Donating what I can't use to FoodBank
Working on yet another residence
Writing a rather long article for a Japanese publisher, recording a few narrations and basically making some real income
Fighting with Big Dog
Feeling terrible about it
Loving Big Dog
Developing several new friendships
Dealing with my feelings about old friends who are too cynical and unconcerned about nukes
Missing my family and Japan
Loving my new friends and family in the US
Sneaking in a little impromptu dancing when no one is looking
Listening to a little more music than I had in the last 3 years
Enjoying the pleasant temps while the rest of the continent (as well as Asia and Europe) go through a massive heatwave
Cleaning up after everyone
Getting up close and personal with a skunk (pretty eyes! bad smell!)
Bitching about the hard water in our LA condo and immediately apologizing to the water for bitching about it
Squeezing in a few small crafts projects
Never having enough time for everything I need/want to do

I'm sure I left out a lot.

Here's what I managed NOT to do:

Real art
Finish studying up on nuclear matters
Anything about my new video project
Read fiction
Horse riding
Anything very cultural
Anything for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorials
Deal with last year's buckwheat harvest
3-D art projects
Find myself
and...
Update My Blog

Oh, why, oh why do we only have 24 hours a day!!!!!
Hey, Earth! Don't go around the sun so fast! Take your time... Take your time...

Turning Into Carl Spackler

Carl Who? Yeah, I had to look it up in the Internet Movie Database. The name of Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack.

There is one tenacious gopher in my yard.

At least, I think it's just one.

It refuses to eat any of the poisoned bait (yes, I have resorted to that) nor get trapped. Instead, it taunts me with new gopher mounds every day.

Big Dog's friend who does landscaping for wealthy clients visited us last week. When I told him of my plight, he suggested luring it/them with sliced apple.

"They can't resist it," he said. "After you get them used to eating the apple, then put the apple in the trap."

Fortunately, there was still one apple tree filled with apples. Unfortunately, my gophers are a lot smarter than his (or his rich clients.) They recognize bait for what it is.

They are driving me crazy. The whole ordeal is turning me into Carl Spackler. I am ready to blow up the entire yard.

Varmints

The squirrels are the new gophers, wrecking havoc in J&R's summer garden. They've taken out cucumbers, lettuce, squash. Maybe they're going for their corn, too.

They're ground squirrels and although we used to see them in Los Osos Valley, we didn't have them in ours. Until now. There seems to be a giant colony of them under the orange shipping container next to the garden orchard. My garden has escaped their greedy paws since it's beyond J&R's much bigger and more productive garden. Why move beyond the gourmet buffet?

As if the squirrels and gophers weren't trouble enough, we now have a population explosion of mice and rats. They are all over the chicken coops, storage sheds, and now Oak House where the McC Family live. All of this has turned Big Dog into the X-Terminator.

Each afternoon, he goes around setting traps, baiting the mouse traps with peanut butter (it doesn't fall off the traps) and the live animal traps with whatever fruit or vegetable we have available. Each morning, he goes back around, dealing with the dead (and sometimes headless!) rodents in the traps, as well as the live animal traps (we release the live animals on the other side of the valley.) We might have trapped one squirrel but they seem to be smarter than we think. Most of the animals caught in the traps have been birds, tiny ping-pong ball sized field mice, big eared deer mice (they hop like kangaroos!) and one time, a too-curious-for-her-own-good Ellie (J&R's cat who let out plaintive yowls until I came and got her out. She seemed a little embarrassed as she slunk away.)

At first, we used our own organic peanut butter as bait -- it was surprisingly effective -- but Big Dog, thinking it was a waste of decent peanut butter, went and bought a jar of the cheapest peanut butter he could find. We have not caught a single rodent since then! Now, what does that tell you about store-bought factory-made peanut butter?! It's not even good enough for the rats!

"I think there's something dead in our laundry room," Mama McC told us a few days ago. "I can hardly stand to go in there because of the smell."

Why doesn't she do something about it, I wondered, but I had to go to Oak House to see if I could plug up any rodent entry points anyway, so I decided to have a look.

After plugging up some holes in the kitchen and hallway closets, I had to go into the laundry room -- it seemed that there were entry points in that room as well. The minute I opened the door -- OH MY GOD! There was definitely a dead thing somewhere and it was putrefying the air with that fetid smell of death and decay. At first, I couldn't tell where it was coming from -- the laundry room was a mess of lint and dust and piled up junk -- but the moment I opened the closet to the hot water heater, there was no doubt the Dead Thing was in there. I wanted to just run out of there and never come back. Instead, I held my breath and started sucking up the rodent feces with their shop vac. And that's when I found it. Dead and decomposing and, worst of all, writhing with maggots! It was the most disgusting thing I had ever had to deal with.

"Oh, I can deal with it later," I heard Mama McC saying from the bedroom, but she hadn't dealt with it in all these days and I had no confidence that she would do so any time soon, so I manned up and managed to pick up and discard the Dead Thing, dump bleach on the maggots to make them stop writhing, suck up everything from the water heater closet that wasn't supposed to be there, plug up entry points and run home. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And once home, I immediately ran into the shower where I stayed for at least the next half hour. I couldn't scrub enough, gargle enough, wash out my nostrils enough. I finally allowed myself to scream hysterically for a while, too. A scream worthy of the best horror films. A scream worthy of the famous shower scene from Psycho. A scream worthy of a young Jamie Lee Curtis. A scream worthy of "Scream."

Who needs Halloween after an experience like that!

Wrapping Up the Season

Guess summer finally made it to the ranch while I was in Tokyo. I came back to severely heat-stressed plants.

"You let them all die!" I wailed to Big Dog.

That comment pissed him off completely.

"I was slaving all day, every day in the 90 degree heat!"

He claimed he needed to cut back the trees from the edge of our pasture and the oaks around our house. I suspect he couldn't leave his new pole saw alone. Either way, he managed to ignore the plants. ("You're always so protective of them and don't want me to do anything. Now you're upset because I didn't. Weren't they on auto-water?" "Yeah, auto-water for the kind of temps we'd had all summer. NOT for a heatwave!" We bickered for days.)

So my much-anticipated tomato season was pitiful indeed, but the few that actually made it were fantastic. If only I didn't have to wait another year for great tomatoes! But wait! Maybe I don't. Because......

We now have a greenhouse!

"If only we'd opened the kit and read the assembly instructions earlier," Big Dog laughed, explaining our project to the DogFather. "We got the road guys to come and build a level pad for the thing, and THEN we opened the box only to find that we were supposed to EXCAVATE an area for the base of the house."

Yes, always read instruction first. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble.

We weren't about to excavate anything out of the pad. All we could do was shored up the base with the sandbags from last winter and hope the entire house doesn't blow away.

The house plants and other cold-sensitive guys have been moved into the greenhouse, I've set up auto-watering there, and we are getting ready to fly south. It's wrap-up time here at the ranch.

Apres le deluge...

When the rains stop, we are blinded.

I had never thought of green as a "blinding" or "firey" color until I came to the Central Coast. The winter green of this area is a hot, neon green. After an afternoon of working outside, your eyes hurt and you beat yourself up for not having worn shades. You close your eyes and everything is red and still hurts. Seeing green, seeing red. Only there is no envy or anger. Only the flashy diva dance of nature.

The hills are ablaze in this blinding green light and raindrops glitter, jewels on the wire mesh of fences, dried grasses, leaves, last season's wild fennel. Into this fairy feast, a new bobcat appears, rambling up the hill to our house, and sniffs around. At first, you think it's Ellie, our resident huntress, until you see its flared cheek fur, a bit of Bozo facial hair.

Today, you miss Mick (as you have started calling the newcomer) and Toni and all the others terribly. You miss walking outside with your morning coffee and chuckling at yet another new mound of bobcat poo on your makeshift weedblock. You miss the blinding green and sparkle of the ranch, here in grey, wet West Los Angeles.

Dispatches from the 20th Century

Life on The Ranch is often an 18th century experience, but regarding communication and information, we are definitely 20th century. We get radio, some cell phone connectivity and dial-up internet -- at the amazing speed of 28800 baud! Kids today probably don't know what a baud is. Or maybe even dial-up. We have 2 barely watchable terrestrial tv channels, but they'll soon disappear, too.

It's too easy to make my lack of a real internet environment an excuse for not blogging, but in reality, I just didn't feel like writing much the last month. After a couple of sleepless nights, though, I am feeling like updating this thing. Finally.

Afterthought

After posting my last entry, I started wondering why I never even considered a one-piece bathing suit. It's not like I have anything against them and I have owned several in my life.

Partly it's my love of sunshine and having grown up in an age when sunshine was GOOD. (Funny how what was GOOD when we were kids is now bad, while many of the things that were considered BAD are now GOOD. When bad things become good, it's easy to rush towards them, but when good things become bad, we aren't as quick to run away.) Also I believe that exposure is not necessarily exhibitionism (though I must be more of an exhibitionist than your average person or I wouldn't have spent most of my adult life in media.)

Or maybe I'm just afraid that one day a one-piece is all I'll be able to wear in public. And once that line is crossed, there will be no un-crossing.

Shopping Stress

Shopping is one of those thing I do everything to avoid. I find excuses not to go and get things we need, try to figure out ways to make whatever it is we need so I don't have to go shop for it, put off grocery shopping til the last minute. It's right up there, just below "making phone calls," on my list of Most Dreaded Chores. I would almost rather have a root canal job than go shopping. Almost.

I know. It's weird. Especially for a chick. Other women invite me to go shopping with them and I tag along sometimes, mostly not to look like such a weirdo. But when I need to shop, I have to go alone because I am already so cranky at having to shop in the first place.

"Yeah, you know how bad I am at shopping when there's something I 'have to' buy," I joked with my mom just before leaving LA for Honolulu. I was referring to our "having to" find a replacement property for the one that Big Dog sold recently in California. My mom understood perfectly. She had to put up with my panic/anger many times as a teenager. I'd need to get a jacket, or a book bag, or a present for a friend, or whatever. I'd invariably put it off until the very last minute, then go out huffing and puffing with great resentment and anger at having to go shopping, then I'd go crazy during the shopping process, buy something just to be done with the whole ordeal and then be pissed off at myself (and the entire experience) because it wasn't perfect. And then, I'd take it out on the nearest person (usually my mother, but sometimes my brother.)

Now, I realize that part of my shopping stress comes from wanting, needing, demanding perfection. I want perfection but I don't have the patience to obtain it. Big Dog seems to have that kind of patience, so he will go to a dozen different stores to compare, read up on everything there is to read, then go online to find the best price. All of that stresses me out as much as coming home with something less than perfect, so I tend to go and get the first thing that I find and be done with it.

I'd been needing a new swimsuit or two since my decent ones got stolen (with everything else) in Costa Rica a little over a year ago. Without investing too much time, I'd casually looked around Mexico and California, but I was shocked to see how pricey everything was. (It's been a long time. I am still wearing the little bikini I bought in Hawaii nearly THIRTY YEARS AGO.) And wintertime is not the time to be looking for swimwear in California anyway, so I was determined to find something here, but there are too many choices and the whole process of selecting, trying on, etc. is sooo tiring.

Now, on top of my shopping stress, I have the swimwear stress. Shopping for swimwear can't be fun for anyone who doesn't have a centerfold's body. I have spent a lot of time in bathing suits -- A LOT -- so it's not as traumatic as someone who's buying her first swimsuit in 2 decades, but..... I must admit being painfully self-conscious prowling around these stores with customers and clerks half my age or younger. I approach it like boot camp training for self-esteem. "No, I am NOT ridiculous in that skimpy Brazilian bottom. It does NOT matter that the pretty young things behind the counter are (probably) rolling their eyes at me. Yes, women over 40 CAN wear bikinis." Ad nauseam.

Sheesh. I didn't think I was the kind of woman who had to have a pep rally just to TRY ON something! But there I was, in various dressing stalls, with my handful of bikinis that might work, needing to check myself out but, at the same time, not wanting to see even a glimpse of myself. Was it awkward for the salesgirls, too? Did it take great will power to act "normal" with me? Were they also going through similar extremes -- wanting to catch a peek (we all love train wrecks, right?) and desperately hoping they wouldn't?

Stress leads to bad choices. In the end, I spent way too much on swimwear. But on the up-side, I won't be going through this again anytime soon. In fact, I may never. One day I might actually reminisce about "the very last time I ever shopped for swimwear."

Bad Blogger Dog

Yes, I've been a Very Bad Blogger indeed. So, first, big apologies to those of you who've kept checking this blog all these weeks. Do you want to hear my excuses for being so negligent?
1) I was going through a bizarre period of darkness: reexamining my earlier life choices, bouncing from self-pity to self-loathing... It culminated in a barf-a-thon one night. All the psychological toxins spewed out and that was that. However...
2) A few days later, my laptop died. Maybe it was all the darkness I was pouring into it. My old Titanium PowerBook that I had forever never had problems but the MacBook I bought as a replacement after the old one was stolen is not nearly as hardy. Fortunately, since the disaster last year, I've been pretty good about backing up, so while it was a bummer to have to lose my entire hard drive, in fact, I only lost about a week's worth of data. Thank you, Time Machine! (And thank you, Gary and team at the Mac Superstore in San Luis Obispo!) But...
3) Right after getting my laptop back, Big Dog and I left the ranch and spent 5 lovely days in Humboldt County. I see there's a MOVIE about the place now. "Ugh," grimaced Big Dog. "It'll just perpetuate everyone's stereotype of Humboldt." "...and attract all the wrong kinds of people," I added. We cat sat for some friends (see previous entry) who had marvelous high speed internet, but because we were working our butts off doing yard work at Big Dog's Victorian (now occupied by three students) we didn't have the time or energy to take advantage of it. And...
4) I've been more than a little distracted by U.S. politics and economy (which are pretty much the same thing these days!)

Now, we are back at the ranch and in countdown mode. Our Season of Eden is ending in about ten days. Lots to tidy up, lots to do before we fly south. I think, though, that I will take it slow today and enjoy the stunning land around me. Some of the leaves are changing colors, the valley is dotted orange with pumpkins, the sky is the kind of blue you only get in autumn, the air is sweet and the water is delicious. Ahhhhh.

Tangled Up In Blue

If this is Eden, why is Eve disgruntled?

I need to stop mucking around with the Garden so much. Even with the dry grasses and dead flowers and weeds that make my skin blister on contact, it's perfect, anyway. Sometimes I think it's an affront to the Creator to try to change anything.

Instead, I should read a good novel, make something cool and arty and completely impractical. I should sing at the top of my lungs and scare the birds away with my off-key yowl. I should leap in the air and make Tanzer, the silly boy horse, dance. (He does, too! It makes me laugh, and then he'll dance some more.) Better yet, I should just strip off my dusty work clothes and dance. Right now.

Pharmaceuticals have their place, but I think I'll try the naked jungle boogie before I reach for the Prozac.

Do The Limbo

One day in Hell was enough. We had to flee for the coast today. But El Lay ain't no Paradise. Far from it. Coming here from the Antelope Valley was like going from Hell to Purgatory. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my best friend and a mutual friend from our teen years about how Limbo is worse than Purgatory. You see, I have a lot of Catholic friends from having gone to a Catholic high school, and these two friends were Catholic, too.

"I remember how the nuns used to scare me about Limbo," said S.
"Me, too!" shouted G.
"Why? Why would Limbo be so bad? It certainly isn't Hell. It isn't even Purgatory," I commented.
"Exactly. It was this dark world of NOTHING!" the two friends both shrieked in memory of the horror.
The only thing I could think of that was bad about Limbo was that if Catholic doctrine proved correct, Limbo would be the most densely populated Afterworld of all since all non-Catholics were bound for Limbo.
"Was limbo dancing banned at your school?" I wondered.

LA is not Limbo. It can be a hell of its own. The drivers here are possessed by something, for sure. Some dude gave Big Dog the evil eye when we pulled into a spot at a gas station. He threw his hands up, as if to say "What!? You wanna run me over?" Then, before we were able to pull out, another car come into the space in front of us. Someone else was waiting patiently BEHIND us and the car that pulled in front of us wasn't supposed to be driving up the EXIT ONLY lane in the first place, but when Big Dog mentioned that to him, he got completely defensive and, of all things, angrily grabbed his crotch.

"How weird was THAT?" Big Dog exclaimed. "Did he think he was Michael Jackson?"
"Maybe he had crabs," I laughed
"'Do you have itch AND odor?'" he imitated the announcer in a Vagisil commercial.

"People don't behave like this when they're in line at the supermarket or ticket window or whatever. What makes them turn into such assholes when they're in a car?!" I was amazed.
"Tons of steel make them feel invulnerable."
"Tons of steel make them stupider. But it's like you say: too many people, too many drivers. Stuff like this makes me want to get out of LA as soon as I can. It's giving me a headache."
"It's making me want to get out of the U.S.," Big Dog winced.

Too bad. This week we take a little trip back into our old lives: video production work, a little purgatory of its own. Being so unemployed makes us insecure, so we take the odd jobs that come our way. But like my Catholic friends always said, there IS an end to Purgatory, which is only a mini-hell (or maybe a series of mini-hells) to get you to heaven. And in that sense, it beats the hell out Limbo every time.

No Happiness in PVC

Today was plumbing day.
PVC pipes do not make me happy.

But I know that no leaks anywhere at the end of the day makes Big Dog very, very, very happy.

Up & Down

Things that make me proud:

We are getting to be veteran road warriors.
Packing up our lives is easier all the time. We know what the essentials are, and that life will continue even if we don't have that potato masher (but I do!) or that rolling pin (I opted not to pack it.) Packing up for 2 months is cake.

I'm getting used to our minimalist lives.
We had dinner last night at Horse Girl and her mother's new place just a ways into the valley from us. They have real furniture and appliances, place settings and pets. In other words, everything that makes a house a home. When we returned to the ranch after they had moved out of our house, we both thought, wow, this place is barren. But you know, it's not bad. I actually LIKE not having my life cluttered with all the little things that everyone seems to have. I actually LIKE living in a zen monastery! I look outside and it is crazy with variety and color and species and I think, why do I need to fill my life with more man-made things?

I am further on the road to Satori.
Grasping onto the ephemeral is Bad.

Things that make me sad:

Not having continuity.
Nature is all about continuity. There's something ridiculous about planting anything when you aren't going to be there for its life cycle.

Living without much of a social base.
When your work is media-related, your social base is huge. I've turned around 180 degrees. My work now is completely solitary and I have no one but myself to talk to. (OK, Big Dog is usually around, but he's not very interested in what I have to say anyway, preferring the announcers on public radio.)