It's A BEE-U-TEE-FUL Day In Paradise!

The rain has passed through and things are looking up on the water front here in Northern California. It's not back by any stretch of the imagination, but the lake shown below (Lake Folsom up near Sacramento) has risen by 28.5 feet this winter:

www.dailymail.co.uk

That helps a lot, but there's still water table depletion that has to be restored. Smaller lakes and ponds are still leaking out into the aquifers so they still look dry despite the rain we've been getting. If we can get more and more and more through April we'll be in pretty good shape for the summer. Then we'll need at least another winter like this one if we're going to recover much at all.

This morning coming toward work I looked up and it looked as if Mt. St. Helena had a dusting of snow on it. I was far enough away that I thought it might be clouds, but they just stayed there and I wondered. Coming across the hills I hit the ridge above the northern Napa Valley, a perfect view of the mountain and, sure enough! There was snow - a dusting that's probably gone by now, the time I'm writing this hours later, but it was there and it was pretty.

We are looking at more rain over the next few days - into next week if the weather gurus have it right, so more chances of snow and filling up of dried out things.

Aside from that, looking inside the four walls, my billings are caught up for the moment and I've been able to turn attention to other things. Not quite at The Stack, but close. Perhaps by this afternoon, after I get my Gantt chart project done? Hmm.

I do have a lot of quickie things in The Desktop Stack that I can probably get done in a matter of hours. Then I have The Box No. One Stack. That's a box of stuff I inherited a couple of months ago that I haven't done more than glance through. I'll combine it with The Box No. Two Stack that arrived just before Christmas. That Stack is small and has interesting looking keys intermixed. And they're real keys - as in they fit in locks - but they're more interesting than your garden-variety keys and I'm curious as to what they might go with. Uh oh. I hope it's not the equipment we recently auctioned off. Hmm. That is worth a phone call.

From there I can swing into The Box Nos. Three and Four Stacks. Those are things I received almost a year-and-a-half ago. I pretty well know what's in those, I just have to organize it and make sure stuff isn't inter-mixed with other stuff. All part of the job and part of the interest since I do occasionally find interesting things. Like those intriguing keys I have to call about.

We got the carpet laid yesterday and it is gorgeous! I was worried about the color. It's predominately red and gray - kind of like marbled meat if I'm honest - and I was concerned that once it was laid I was going to have a serious case of buyer's remorse. After all, I didn't want the room to look like a crime scene bathed in blood.

The carpet guys talked to me and I talked to them and we agreed on how to lay it out to minimize the bloodbath appearance and it came out beautifully.

See, I worry about this stuff now after my experience thirty years ago. Then I was office manager for a company that occupied the entire floor of a downtown San Francisco office building. Our landlord's representative came in one day because she was updating the elevator lobbies in the building and wanted to change things up from floor to floor to make it more interesting. She showed me a little swatch and I said "that's nice" and she showed me the carpet samples and I said "that's nice". What I did not do was visualize the end result. Two weeks later I got to the building, got onto the elevator. A few floors later the doors opened and... I swear to god it looked like a whorehouse! It was horrible.

The "soft pink" that she had showed me on the little paint swatch? Glaring! The royal purple carpet had a band of pink running through it as a border. In the context of someone's private home (providing it's a brothel) it might work. In the context of a professional office building? NO! A resounding NO.

I immediately got on the phone to her (as soon as I got into the office and to my desk since this was the days before cell phones) and said NO! She came and took a look and agreed. A week went by and I refused, flat-out, to get off the elevator on that floor. Instead, I would go to a different floor and take the stairs because I didn't want to be associated in any way, shape or form with that mess. Finally, the weekend after I nearly had heart failure, they came in and repainted the walls plain white. The pink was so glaring it still showed through, offering a soft, shell-like pink glow, but it was at least tolerable. Not the full fix since the carpet was still there, but at least I didn't want to die of mortification every time I got off the elevator.

After that I know to visualize BIG. Get the big paint swatch or, better still, get a sample you can put on an unobtrusive spot on the wall so you can get a sense of what the finished product will look like.

This time around, when we were selecting the tile, I got squares - full-on two-foot x two-foot squares in a couple of different colors and styles. Then I had my roomies weigh in and we all agreed on the color. Then it was the execution and, as I say, I did not want the executed room to look as if an execution had taken place. And it doesn't. It's very nice and goes well with the floor in the rest of the space which is brick reddish concrete - a bit redder and darker than the terracotta of a Spanish tile floor.

Other than that, things are quiet and happy and calm. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm reveling in the situation now.

Here's wishing you a happy, quiet and calm day, too.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

'Borrowing': And Now For Something Completely Different

I love Monty Python and 'And Now For Something Completely Different' is the silliest of their silly movies, a series of sketches including 'How Not To Be Seen' that involves explosions. Very silly and what I want to do here, for a change.

I don't know if I can rise to the level of 'silly' but I will not stoop to the level of miserable and grouchy. Enough of that for this year!

We've having lots of lovely rain here this morning. We've been fortunate so far because we haven't (yet) had landslides or trees falling or flooding around here. We are expected to get about fifteen inches of rain in the next two weeks so there will no doubt be all of the above. The downspouts are chuckling and I could hear it on the roof outside my bedroom window when I woke up. Lovely, lovely rain! I think I may have been a duck in a past life because while other people complain about the water falling from the sky, I enjoy it.

I've got a pot of berry sauce cooking on the stove. Just frozen berries - raspberries, blackberries, cranberries and blueberries - that can go with my yogurt, into oatmeal, over dessert, or into my mouth with nothing else. I also bought scones to go with it. I promised my roomies at work, all three of them, that I would bring scones one morning.

Good intentions and Hell - I'm on my way down that slippery slope, no doubt. I intended to bake the scones myself but our oven stopped working properly the other night and I'm afraid that if I tried to make them, they would be awful - soupy or doughy or something else. We were in the middle of baking a pizza when we realized that the convection fan wasn't working. The pizza eventually cooked, but it took almost twice as long as usual and it was like eating a giant cracker.

Therefore, I cheat. I bought a package of scones - blueberry - and will take my latest tub of Greek vanilla yogurt and some of the berry sauce. This is in exchange for nice people taking me to lunch and doing other nice things for me, things that I find hard to reciprocate because of my personal situation (a hubby who controls the pocket book and makes Midas look like a spendthrift).

As for the rain, I am grateful that my route takes me north instead of south. Most of the people in these parts drive south, toward San Francisco meaning that I won't have the traffic most people have. Now, however, watching the weather on TV I must confess that I'm getting a tad nervous.

There is a band of heavy rain right across the hills through which I drive - the windy two-lane road bordering a large creek through a narrow canyon for much of the way. That could make for an interesting drive because yesterday there were a few rocks that had come off the hillsides. Not slides or slips, but just a rock or two or three or some gravel that had traveled from up the hillside onto the roadway.The weather guru is also saying there might be snow on the hills above Calistoga or the higher elevations in Lake County where they had fires last year. It should be an interesting day.

I'm listening to the news this morning and I have to smile at the outline of Obie-One's gun control orders (which are un-Constitutional since they circumvent Congress). What's amusing is that everything he has outlined as "new" already exists here in California.

Background check, uh huh, and a two-week waiting period in which the gun seller holds onto your gun until the check clears. Plus we had to go through a (remedial) gun safety test. That should have been mandatory and held in a classroom to drill the safety aspect into the skull, but it wasn't and still isn't required.

Cannot carry a weapon outside of a locked container, uh huh. Unless it's a rifle when it must be kept in a case. In neither case can it be loaded and, if it's a pistol and in its locked case, it must also be kept in the locked trunk of your car. No ammo anywhere around it. That can be kept in the glove box or passenger compartment. I guess that's just in case the cartridges somehow wriggle out of their box, shimmy over to the locked gun case, unlock it, climb inside and crawl into the magazine which then self-loads the gun. Whatever.

In other words, he's giving lip service to laws that are already on the books - just duplicating or triplicating what's already there. Whatever. I would still point out that it's not the law-abiding citizen that's the problem, and this does nothing to solve the real problem - the criminals who buy illegal weapons or steal them and then use them in the execution of a crime.

Well, I'm not going to get wound up about that this morning. Can't change it, can't do anything about it except wait to see what will happen next.

My berries are cooked. The only thing I wish is that the berries had pectin. Cranberries do, so making cranberry sauce (which is a snap and so-o-o-o much better than what comes in a can - 1 bag of cranberries, 1 large can of orange juice concentrate mixed with water to make 2 C of liquid, 2 C sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until the berries pop). Once that's refrigerated, it jells. Unfortunately, there isn't enough pectin in my berry sauce for it to thicken naturally, so my choices are: add a couple of chopped apples for their pectin, add some pectin, add some cornstarch. None of those are appealing or desirable, so I'll leave my sauce thin and runny. It tastes just as good.

And with that, it's time for me to get moving. I think it would be wise to allow a little extra time out the door this morning, just in case. Particularly since I have the carpet people coming today.

Have a lovely day in whatever weather you most prefer.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

A Whirlwind In My Brain

It's a bit like having an E4 twister in my head. Since waking up this morning, I have had a parade of thoughts of things all over the landscape. No one thing has stood tall, front and center. Just random things like the weather, the cat, work, home, future, general stuff, The Stack, The Project, the weather, food (recipes, what I'm going to make for next week's lunches), etc.

Thinking about the home front and the work front and the carpet and all sorts of other things are keeping me busy. That's a good thing, except that the thoughts keep bumping hips, falling over and crumbling to dust when they hit the bottom of the brain pan. Then they coalesce, rebuild into something new and take another turn.

I had to stop and fill the tank this morning and, baby, it was cold outside. I had been listening to the news while I got dressed, for the traffic and weather more than anything else. At 0-dark-thirty it was 32d in the surrounding area. Getting gas was made semi-demi comfortable because I bundled up and wore gloves.

Coming over the hill a little later, it was misting and cold enough that I thought I might get to see some snow. I didn't and was/am a little disappointed.  Just a little snow would have been nice, like a dusting of powdered sugar over the top of a cookie or cake. But it just misted through the cold.

Normally the phrase "what are you wearing" is laden with all sorts of meaning. Most often that question touches on the suggestive. This morning I might as well have said "I'm wearing a wool union suit".

What I was / am wearing are: My heavy pair of jeans, a polyester short-sleeved tee under a synthetic blend sweater under a silk scarf under a plush-lined jacket under a synthetic fleece vest, under a synthetic knit scarf. Upon arrival I did take off the synthetic knit scarf and gloves before trying to type. And, despite the polar bear look of the fleece / jacket / scarf / sweater I was still chilled. Not cold, per se, but decidedly chilled with vaguely tingling fingers. It took a fair amount of hand rubbing to get the blood to flow and warm up the digits, but they're working now, so it's good.

The one thing that really made my morning was, believe it or not, a hot flash. Don't let anyone kid you. Menopause during the winter isn't all bad because there are times when the timing is perfect. Like this morning or, my favorite, when it's two o'clock in the morning, the house is freezing, and you wake up because you have to use the bathroom and... hot flash! Your very own portable heater that makes the freezing room comfy while you take care of what needs taking care of. By the time you get back to bed the worst of it has passed and you're ready to settle in and go back to sleep. Those are the good times for a private power surge.

Of course there are the other times, the summer times when it's 100d outside and you're spiking into the internal ionosphere. That's no fun. Then it's all you can do not to strip off completely, no matter whether you're on the sidewalk, in a restaurant or meeting, or someplace private. And in the someplace private I will confess to having done that until the requirement passes. Cool cloths only do so much, after all.

Front and center, on the work side of things, The Project I worked on came back to me again, for the third time. I hate when that happens. I feel as if I've failed when, more than anything, it's probably just a miss-in-communication. My understanding of what's needed isn't as clear as it should be, and I don't know enough about what I'm doing to ask cogent questions. That's one of the problems with stepping into another person's responsibilities with someone you haven't worked with before and are expected to hit the ground running while wearing a blindfold. Zero training. Zero real explanation. Just here's this and this and this and... it's all yours.

I've been around the block enough that this isn't unusual. It's still difficult and uncomfortable, but not unusual so I've done what I thought needed to be done. Nope. Came back and I took another swat. Then, with clearer understanding, I asked a couple of questions, parroted back what I thought I'd heard and got the green light.

So, now that it's clear and I do understand that further analysis is required, I'll get started. I even have a plan (yay, me!). First, I'm going to analyze the hell out of it. How many which ways to Sunday? That's step one. Step two is doing it, checking it, and then I'll toss this fish back across the fence. Once that's done, I'll dust my hands and head to the sink to wash the scales away.

After that there are other things. Like The Stack which, because it reached the point of ANNOYING, I spent an hour working on this morning. Things are better. ==> That side of my desk is clear, except for the coffee cup rings I didn't know were there are now showing. Obligatory wash down and at least the plastic surface will be both clear and clean. <== That side of my desk is piled a touch higher, but it's all good because it's now all in one place.

There are other little things swirling, but the big ones have stopped popping for the moment. So now I'll head off to do my analysis of The Project and then I'm going to get started on The Stack. Maybe I'll even dig down to China (or Japan or Korea or whatever characters those things on those documents are).

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Rainy Sunday and Promise of More

It's Sunday afternoon, I'm feeling lazy and a bit sleepy, not sure what to write but doing it anyway because it's good exercise.

Except for my blog I haven't been doing any other writing these days. Instead, I'm sulking because of information I came across that will affect my future. I haven't decided what to do about it, how I'm going to deal with it, but neither of the obvious choices is palatable. Not being palatable means I'm standing still for the time being. Nothing is pressing me to make a move, so I'll stand still and consider until the time comes when I have to make a decision.

Outside it's cold (<50d) and raining. We got rain Friday and a tiny bit yesterday. Today is the first day in the promised week of rain where we've had decent quantities falling from the sky.

That's both good and bad. I want the rain to come and keep coming because I want the drought to be over. I also want it to come in moderation, a bit every day or two so we don't end up with flooding or landslides. Particularly in the areas up in Lake County that were devastated by fires this past summer.

That would be a heckuva thing. Avoid getting burned out and then have a hill slide onto your house because the fire ravaged all the vegetation holding the soil on the slope above. It's happened in Southern California often enough and there's no reason it couldn't / won't happen here. I hope it doesn't, which is why I'm torn between wanting it to rain and rain and rain and not. Ideally, we would get enough to get the vegetation started, the weeds growing and give them a chance to take root and get the brush, the manzanita and other scrub growing again. Too much to ask, I guess, because the weather dudes were saying last week that the rain will continue off and on through Christmas. A case of you can't have it both ways. Then, next month is when El Nino is supposed to take off and really get going.

Given the rain and the wind I'm seeing through the window, I am glad I got my errands done yesterday. At least I don't have to go out in it today. I even filled my tank, so I won't have to stop for gas again until next weekend.

Yesterday, while I was out, I stopped at the supermarket and picked up a tub of yogurt. I thought it was plain but it's not. It's Greek vanilla and, OMG, where has it been all my life?!? I had a tiny bit this morning and thought I had died and gone to Heaven so I had more, with some of the berry syrup I made even though it was still hot.

See, I want to have grab-and-go stuff for breakfast and lunch. When I'm running around in the morning, getting ready for work and trying to get out the door, I don't want to have to think too hard about what I'm going to eat. I almost always cook on the weekends - a big pot of something or other, or a roast or something that I can work into a week's worth of lunches.

Last weekend I made a big pot of rotini pasta, sauteed a bunch of veggies - bell peppers, onion, celery and mushrooms - seasoned them with sage and tossed it together. Really delicious and grab-and-go once I fixed up containers of it. I also baked some chicken thighs and kept them on-hand. That made it through the week although I finished the chicken today for lunch. Still, I have two more containers of the pasta for tomorrow and Tuesday.

Given the rant about my bodily feelings the other day, I've decided to add yogurt and berries to my diet. The yogurt is good in a lot of ways and so are the berries. This morning I separated most of yogurt into containers - about 1 C in each - and I boiled the bag of frozen berries into a syrup. Once the berries finish cooling, I'll add a bit of the syrup to each of the yogurt containers - just over the top. Then I'll be ready to go for the week. I'll also know how much I need to freeze because I know the syrup won't keep. I made a LOT of it, but that's good. I'll have enough for future use.

I think that with a dollop of sweet wine, a Gewurztraminer or a fruity schnapps, some after-dinner liqueur added in, it would be heavenly over ice cream. I also think it would be delicious over baked salmon or chicken breast. I'll have to get creative and find ways to use it. It shouldn't be hard. If I can figure out how to make myself feel better and lose some of that excess weight I also ranted about, I'll be a happy girl.

Even though it's raining today, I did get exercise yesterday. I went out early and got the shopping done before most anyone arrived at the stores then, because it was so nice, I did some yard work. I clipped back the neighbor's roses that lean over our fence and took a goodly swipe at the gigantic jasmine that's taken over half our yard.

The fence in the back is in such bad shape that we put lipstick on it to hold it up through the winter. Actually, it's not really lipstick. They're metal posts that hubby pounded into the ground in strategic places. Next spring we are going to have to replace the fence, so the jasmine will come all the way out. As it was, it was growing over and through the railing on our side deck - threatening to take over the pile of Hillbilly furniture that we still haven't got rid of.

Hubby's still talking about doing that, so I haven't given up hope. I think he's waiting until the new tax year so we can pick through it again and decide what can be donated and what's garbage so we can get a bit of return on our taxes at the end of 2016. Whatever. At some point none of this will matter. It will all be in the past and something new will have taken its place.

And, with that happy tone, I'm done. I am sleepy so I'm going to indulge in a nap.

I hope you have a wonderful day - lazy or not, just as you choose.

Best~
Philippa.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Head Down & Closer to Home

I'm going to put the various hobby horses aside for the moment. Enough is enough, don't you agree?

On the home / work / immediately-before-me front, we've had a couple of days of glorious rain. The creeks are filling up, the air is cool and soft, the perennially blue sky of Northern California is covered in clouds. It makes a nice change from normal.

Two days ago Porter Creek was, to all appearances from the road, dry. None of the runnels and waterfalls I pass on my way to work were runneling or falling. This morning, Porter Creek is living up to its name. It's got a good head of water flowing through it. Not full, not the bottom being covered, but respectable. The runnels are charging down the hills and the waterfalls are filling up.

The fluff of sycamore leaves that I scuffed through last week have "melted". They're limp and lying flat on the pavement. No satisfying rustle as I walk through them anymore. Just "squish squish squish" but there's next year.

The rain and the damp make a wonderful change. I'm even getting accustomed to walking around in it - something I used to dislike. But it feels so good!

As I always do whenever possible, I left my window open last night. I went to sleep listening to the rain and woke up to the same. I love it and hope we get enough more that the drought will be alleviated (solved is too much to hope for in one winter) without landslides and flooding and the rest of it.

At work I feel like a one-armed paper hanger working on three rooms simultaneously. People coming into town for an extended period need rooms at a local hotel. I want to see if I can get a deeper discount than the corporate discount we already have for this junket so I need to speak to The Person In Charge at the local hotel.  But the person with whom I normally speak at this particular hotel is on vacation until next week, so I need to speak to the owner. The owner wasn't available yesterday afternoon. I don't have absolute confirmation this is happening, so I'm stuck and...

Next week I have our monthly management meeting that requires catering. We've been doing a lot of Italian in the past few months. Last time I did Mexican (simple stuff - burritos, rice, beans, chips and salsa) but it didn't seem to go down all that well. The first time I served that, I got rave reviews. Last time, not so much so I need to find another option.

The local Chinese restaurant has mixed reviews and I'm leaning in that direction but am not sure because not everyone likes Chinese. I have to make a decision today or tomorrow at the latest so I can place the order in time for them to order in what they need. No, it's not rocket science, but it is to serve the CEO and senior staff, so I want it to be "right".

We're working on carpeting a part of our office and want to get that done by the end of the year. That's going to be "interesting" since I only got approval to do it late in the afternoon on Tuesday of this week. I need to get a purchase order cut and all the rest of it. Time consuming but, again, not rocket science. I'm just waiting on a couple of last details from the vendor. Unfortunately, I can't finish the purchase order without the information and we can't place the order without the purchase order and...

On top of that the major project for which I was originally hired two years ago is going to pick up steam after the first of the year and I need to get that information gathered together and on track again, schedule regular team meetings, etc. Just time consuming and fiddly - nothing too difficult except the balance between what one senior staff member asked me to add to our schedule and the direction given to me by the person in charge of the project. On that I know who "wins" - I just have to implement it.

Also, after working with our Project schedule for two years, I'm seeing places where we can rearrange and streamline. I need to get that done before tomorrow so I can distribute the information. Then I need to schedule meetings with groups prior to our team meetings and refine what I come up with.

Just another day in Paradise, right? :)

But it is fun and as the dominoes fall I'll get that rush of satisfaction, so it's all good. Another case of life continuing while other things take place.

It does feel good to be paying attention to the home front instead of the world front today. I've had enough of the world front so I'll let other people worry about it for a time. Until something nasty enough to grab my attention and ire pops up again. Probably next week, knowing me.

There are other things perking in the background, as usual. Big things and little things - so it's all feeling a bit much right now. Time will pass, things will go by and the pressure will ease, but right now, confronted by it, it all seems to be too much. All I have to do though is remember to breathe, to take that next step and keep moving forward since standing still is not an option.

In a month, maybe two, the answers will be clearer and things will be calmer (I hope!). I just have to get from here to there, and I will.

In the meantime, I'll look at the clouds and listen to the rain and look up instead of down. I hope you do the same because the view ahead is so much better than the view at our feet.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Fall Is Here - At Last!

Golly gee whiz - we've had RAIN here the past couple of days. It's been so sporadic for so long (years) I had become cynical. Every time I heard some weather person say 'we're going to get rain' I would shrug, look away and mutter, 'yeah, and pigs will fly among a squadron of lead balloons soaring across interstellar space' or words to that effect. But we did and we have and it is SOOO nice!

On top of that, it's cold outside (for these parts, anyway). Frost on the roofs and a decided nip in the air again this morning. That, too, is wonderful. An exclamation mark on my very favorite time of the year, weather-wise. The time of year for sweaters and gloves and scarves, for looking forward to settling in someplace warm after being chilled.

The trees are glowing gold and yellow (we don't get a lot of red or scarlet around here, some, but not swathes of it like back East in New England). Leaves are carpeting the sidewalks. And roads. And the leaves on the road aren't so good because they're slippery (traction), but they'll go away soon.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the cool weather, fall-blue skies (which are a different color entirely from any other time of year), and the bite in the air when I step outside. Just walking down the street is a pure pleasure. The chill in the shade offset by the warmth when you step into the sun - it's a marvelous dichotomy.

This morning I woke up before my alarm - a nice thing to do since it gives me a chance to just lie there and think, 'ahhh, I'm comfy' before Reality jabs me in the ribs with its sharp elbow. Because the window was open the room was cold, but the extra blankets made up the difference. It was lovely to be snuggled down under the covers and begin to plan my day.

We, I and several colleagues, are in the throes of planning our company's holiday party.

I should know better by now. I'm certainly old enough to know better by now. Never volunteer for anything. But I did and now, for better or worse, I'm on the committee.

Which is fine. I do enjoy doing stuff like this. It's organizational in nature, so it's right up my street and I know it's going to help make the party a success if it's planned and laid out for everyone. It's just that I'm on the fence about going to it myself.

I am NOT a social butterfly. Mingling in large groups is, for me, less pleasurable than a root canal performed by a quack without benefit of lidocaine or novocaine or any painkillers whatsoever.

Inevitably, I feel so awkward and out of place that I end up standing by the wall or in an inconspicuous corner wondering 'what the hell am I doing here?' Followed immediately by a glance at the wristwatch and internal query, 'I wonder if anyone will notice if I leave? Damn! I've only been here two minutes.'

If I do try to mingle (it's called 'force of will'), I'll sidle up to a group and stand there, feeling as if they're itching to close ranks and block me out, except they know it would be rude. Then, if I do interject something into the conversation, I inevitably feel as if I'm:

a) intruding
b) irritating everyone who was already there
c) making an observation that was already made thirty seconds before I joined and, thereby, looking stupid, or
d) all of the above.

Pretty much about as welcome as a turkey vulture at a picnic.

Can you tell I don't like parties and socializing? Small groups, intimate groups of people I know well and with whom I'm comfortable conversing, are fine - but since hubby is even more insular than I am, it's rare to find myself in an intimate setting among people with whom I feel completely at ease.

Now, with all of that said, one of the first things I want to do in my next stage of life is to have a celebration for my changed state. A manner of 'coming out party' where I can shed the vestiges of what has been and step out among a select group of close acquaintance and friends into a new place in my life.

Today, however, I shall look forward to taking a lovely drive along country roads on a beautiful autumn day through stands of trees changing their colors. That's the upside, the happy take-away from this situation. That and a free lunch since we're going to be sampling our options for dinner. Which I hope will be buffet style. There's no good way to serve a plated dinner for that many since the first people served will have cold meals by the time the last table is served, or the first table served will be sitting on their hands, looking around for dessert by the time the last plate is served.

Yeah. I'm sure it'll be a buffet. Which does have a certain appeal. Maybe I should go after all? Mm. I'll think about it.

I hope you have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Rain

I like rain. I like rain a lot. I guess it’s because I grew up in California which is more than anything a desert. Even up here, in the north. The south is definitely a desert, or would be if people didn’t get creative with terraforming – making the Earth do what people want it to do.

Because it's been terraformed it's a desert well hid by irrigated fields, but it's still a desert under the green patina.

Here, in Sonoma County, yesterday was a treat because it rained. It never rains here in the summer!

In the past few months we’ve had promises of rain several times but, because I’ve lived around here my entire fifty-five plus years I have a pretty good handle on what’s likely and what’s not. Since, in my years of experience summer rain is more rare than hen's teeth, I took the promises with a knowing nod of ‘uh huh’. Every other time I was right. Yesterday, I was happy to be wrong.

It was cloudy when I drove to work. Nothing unusual since we live near the coast where fog is common. When I heard the radio announcer say ‘rain’ I did my knowing nod. A few hours later I was proved wrong. Not a lot, because it didn’t rain hard or for more than a couple of hours, but welcome hours they were.

Showers on and off and I even got to drive home in a spit. It wasn’t really a rain. There was water falling from the sky, but it was neither organized nor determined. It was an anarchy of droplets that didn’t seem to have a whole lot of collective will. But still, I got to drive home in it and, because it wasn’t collective or willful, I had my windows down. I didn’t fear the rain would come in and make everything wet. I took advantage and breathed in the smells of trees and wild grass.

Fennel and eucalyptus were the two strongest scents. The fennel is beginning to flower and its scent was strong among the wet asphalt and thirsty ground. The eucalyptus reminds me of being little.

Stuffy nose? A few drops of eucalyptus oil on the pillow case. No Mentholatum or Vaporub. It was always eucalyptus oil unless it was a chest cold. Wet eucalyptus brings those days back and I breathe deeply, eyes closed to savor the scent.

It’s still gray and hopeful here this morning, but I think the rain is gone again. The ground is wet so the air is moist, but I don’t think we’ll see rain. It does look a lot like this, though:

This does tell me, though, that the ocean is different. I spoke with my daughter who lives out by the coast. She told me that she hasn’t been seeing fog this year, not like in years past. That does make me wonder, but climates change, it’s what they do and it’s how we got to where we are now.

Years ago the climate was doing one thing. Places that are deserts now, were lush forests. Places that are valleys now were under the sea then – like the Central Valley in California. Look at a map. The ocean was, at some point, higher enough to fill and form that valley. Then the water receded and… here we are. Then the climate stopped doing that and morphed into something else, and something else until we got to where we are now.

Her comment on the fog makes me wonder.

I read an article about concerns in eastern Australia about drought. The ocean temperature in the Pacific basin is warming, a sign of a coming El Nino, and that could affect rainfall totals in Australia. It might well bring rain here, though, so it's a trade off.

Then again, this week there were twin typhoons heading for Southeast Asia.

Here, we’ve gotten rain in the summer – almost unheard of in my paltry experience.

Yes, the climate is observably changing but, as I’ve said before, it’s what climates do.

In the meantime, I’m appreciative of every drop we got, thankful for the wet pavement (no matter how short-lived), and hope we get more because I like rain.

I like the sound of on the roof at night, when it taps against my windows when I’m snug in bed. I like the smell of it after the ‘people’ smell has been washed away. Nothing is better than being in the rain in a field away from the road. The wind plays around you, picking up the scents of Earth and plants. Unless it’s being in a forest and hearing the platter and splatter of drops on leaves, the quiet plashing of water falling onto wet soil.

People complain about the weather all the time. ‘It’s too hot.’ ‘It’s too cold.’ ‘Oh, damn, it’s raining.’ I don’t. I might comment that it’s cold, but then I go pull another sweater out of the drawer, or pull the extra blanket up. If it’s hot I’ll shake my head and submit, go about my business knowing there’s really not a lot to do about it. Complaining isn’t going to make the weather gods sit up and say, ‘Oh! Gosh, I’m sorry. My feet were cold and I got carried away at the thermostat.’

Nope. The weather is going to do what the weather will do. I’ll just enjoy the times it does what I like. Like give us some rain after a long dry spell. Even a little is satisfying, and I’m happy to enjoy it while it lasts.

Have a lovely day with whatever weather you're granted!

Best~

Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories