Rainy Hike

Unless you've been under a rock, you've heard we got some rain. First, I'll show you a pic of Mabel in the creek the day before the rain....

 

And here is the same spot the day after:

Miss Thing was NOT a happy camper. Our hike was just laughable. Mabel usually loves to go out rain or shine... but not that day. Just as we got to our parking spot, the rain picked up. 

I have to tell you a bit about my 16 year old jeep. The locks don't work properly... particularly Mabel's door. And the alarm will lock all the doors but hers but if I open her door to lock it... the alarm kicks in! And... the key fob no longer unlocks the doors or it will unlock but not turn off the alarm. Locking the car is... complicated! 

I ran around to the passenger side, realized Mabel's door was locked. I had to: unlock the front, reach in and unlock the back, lock and close the front, open and lock the back letting her out. Just as I shut her door and the rain starts to pound, I realize I've left the umbrella and leash in the car! Lather, rinse repeat! 

I was struggling with my old and underused umbrella in the rain, outside the locked car when I realized that while my back was turned dealing with the umbrella, Mabel had simply walked around the car once and gotten back in and was now locked inside!  Shortest hike ever!!! 

I gave up and got in the car thinking I would go check on the river flow on the levy and we would call it a day. 

I had to open Mabel's door to get my umbrella and...the girl jumped out and took off!  So off we went down the rainy levy. 

It was raining so hard... and it was raining sideways!  It was so cold, my fingers felt like they were being pierced by thousands of needles!  The wind was so strong! 

Mabel seemed miserable by the time we got to the end. She took a look around and instead of heading down to the water, like we always do... 

The girl took off for the homeless camp! I think she was looking for shelter!
 
 I gave chase and leashed her up.  We snapped that pic above (#2) down by the river and headed back to the car, fighting wind and rain and cold all the way back.


My old umbrella finally bit the dust mud half way back... Ain't nobody gonna write a song about this umbrella...

The next day, we made sure there was no way we'd get caught in the rain... Mabel used to love hiking in it, but I have to be aware that my girl is older. I have to listen to her needs...

Speaking of older... Monday is a big birthday. I hate my birthday.... and I've written about it ad infinitum here. But I bring it up because... it's the BIGGEST sale of the year on my glass beads and jewelry. 39% off! Details and shopping codes in my newsletter.

Just a Few Drops

We were quite surprised to wake up to a little rain Thursday. While it was dark and dreary most of the day, Mabel  and I enjoyed a stroll between the rain drops.

Funny how the dog that doesn't want to step off the porch in the rain, loves to go to the creek in the rain.

While the water was flowing in the creek, by Friday, it was mostly gone. 

Busy Doing Nothing - Mom's Trunk is Full

Mabel Lou here. Curled up in the sun in Mom's flower bed. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to but it's freaking COLD here! And that's the sunniest spot in the yard.

Mom's busy ignoring me cause she's made a bunch of stuffs for a trunk show and for a show in da hood...at my favorite bakery where I go with Ruby for our old lady brunch! And get this Mom says I can't even go to the bakery that day cause she's gotta have her trunk! GRRR!

Anyway, she asked me to tell you guys about it but I can't be bothered to get out of the sun so I'm gonna paste some pics and text from her stupid bead blog!

Mom just saw what I wrote and pointed out that the green papers she  gets from the trunk are used to buy me kibble!!! So please consider buying a holiday gift or 37 from Mom cause I like my foodables!!!

Oh and Mom will turn any bead you fancy into a pendant!!!

This Snow man mini is a 99 cent auction today!!!

Even a hammered silver focal!!!

Sets:

Including lots and lots of Bellflowers:

 

Finished jewelry (I made three necklaces and one bracelet just this morning! 

including several pairs of earrings ready for wearing or gifting! (These are MY fave!)

I have some really elaborate pieces as well as some simple pendants:

I have lots of glass bead gifts...in addition to all the wine stoppers and bottle openers I've shared, I've photographed some of my fusing plates!

 

There will be plenty of focals too: 

This will be one of the 99 cent auctions:

Come on over and do some holiday shopping!

Straight from the Pacific

We were on our way back to the car from the ponds on Monday night and standing in the river bed when I spotted this weather phenomenon:

I was so excited it actually showed up with the zoom on my phone! Having lived here for just shy of 13 years, I had often wondered why I could be in my warm and sunny yard on a weekend morning, decide to take Mabel out to breakfast, only to arrive just over that ridge there to find it cold and and drizzly at my favorite dog-friendly restaurant! I've even wrapped my freezing body in muddy dog blankies to be able to get my breakfast down! For years it was just one of those things that make me go Hmmmmm.

Just over that ridge is the area of Northern Glendale known as Montrose. Years later I would realize that, if you are there on a clear and often breezy day, say sitting on the patio at Coffee Bean on the corner of Ocean View and Honolulu, you can actually see the glistening Pacific! It turns out, there really is an ocean view on Ocean View!! But I never really thought of that in terms of weather...

Twice this past year, when I was driving with the bestie (a witness!!!), just as we dropped down the mountain into the Crescenta Valley, there was that smokey look in the air. We slowed, peered all around, rolled down the windows to smell, turned down the radio to listen. But there was no flames to see, no smokey smell, and no helicopters.  This was NOT a fire... and then we smelled it... Ocean!

Suddenly, it all made sense... when the fog rolls in from the ocean, it takes the path of least resistance. While it can make it over our mountains, more often, we see it come from due west in our little valley. But the foggy fingers have a straight shot to Glendale from the ocean via that corridor, even though it's some 20 miles away. That's why the climate is so different just a few miles away! Plants that grow there, don't grow here. And it's the source of those drizzly mornings over there. And it sometimes helps cool our little valley down as it did Monday night: high of 98, low of 55!

Ice in the Fountain Photo Essay

It's been bone chilling cold here in LA LA Land. Considering I live in a mountain adjacent micro-climate... it's even colder! For the past few days I've been leaving for the craft show down in Anaheim before the sun has risen and kicking myself because I can't get decent shots of the water fountain in the darkness.

I'm finally done with the show and was up early enough to shoot a few beauty shots. Ice always fascinates me!

RIP Bear

 Sunset in the creek - 01-12 -12

My heart is heavy as I think of my extended California family who lost a beloved pup last night.  Bear was 12 and had spent his entire life with one family including his birth mom Foxy.

Bear was terrified of thunder and literally was scared to death (I always thought of that phrase as an exaggeration until now...) as a violent storm passed their home.

He was such a sweet boy and I loved petting and scritching him when we went to visit! I'm going to miss him so.

This is a video the bestie shot of him on one of our visits last year:

If It's Not One Thing

...it's 87 others! I'm wide awake at one a.m. - not that I don't want to sleep. We're having one of those infamous California wind storms.

I'm  cowering in my house listening to my inner fence (the tall one that makes me feel so safe) come apart banging against the outer fence  and wondering if I will have a roof (house?) coming daylight.

These winds are so violent. At 85 m.p.h, they are reminiscent of a Louisiana hurricane without the rain. I miss the rain...it drowns out the other sounds of a wind storm! I can hear dirt and debris sand blasting my windows. The limbs of my date palm are crashing to the ground with great thuds. What looks like a bed sheet is caught in the power lines up on the corner and snapping. My padlocked garage door lifts up an inch or so and thunks back. Mabel, stress breathing in the hallway, is happy to have an extra set of walls between her and the storm. Every plastic bucket in my yard is blowing...somewhere. And the ever present wood on concrete banging of my fences.

I wonder how on earth I will feel secure leaving my pup at home alone with much shorter fences in a mere two weeks?

Right now, it just feels like the problems keep banging up against my head like the wind in my fences. It's been a really stressful  five days.

::A fun trip the bestie and I planned the day after Thanksgiving went to you-know-where in a hand-basket when someone need to hang at her house until they could arrange a ride. My bestie, being the kind, generous soul she is, changed our long planned trip. I took the casserole I had made for the trip over to stash in her extra fridge... and barely made the 3/4 mile trip home!

::My beloved jeep - 13 years old would not shift out of first gear all the way up the hill home. I just kept going, running stop signs, further up the mountain to my mechanic. As suspected, the transmission is out.

::Since I had prayed and put out into the universe all year that both the bestie and I needed newer cars, (and the bestie just got one!), maybe it was time... I spent days on the phone, wheeling and dealing. I'm not a car person. My needs are simple: electric windows (in case Mabel sees a cat), air conditioning (middle aged femalehood is bear on fire!), and a plug for my ipod (I hate commercials!). And it should run... that's it! After days of negotiating, even consulting a professional broker, I just couldn't deal with the added debt. I'm dumbstruck that I could buy a new car (with very little interest) for about the same price as an used one! That's just wrong!

::I'm still in shock that a new tranny is coming just as Los Angeles' exorbitant property taxes are due. I just love how these damn things are due in early December, pretty much guaranteeing I never have a good Christmas. At least I can put the car on a credit card and deal with it in a few months... guaranteeing I won't have a good birthday either!

::There goes another palm limb! I heard a woman was actually hit by a falling tree walking to get groceries tonight!

::Who WALKS to get groceries in an 80 mph wind storm? Housebound carless people, that's who! It's so hard to live in LA without a car! I'm amazed at the things I normally have plenty of that have run out this week!

• I'm down to 7 rolls of toilet paper. I usually have a case. The logical side of me knows that's 3 1/2 weeks. The not so logical side is freaked!
• Every fire alarm in my house started beeping and I only had one 9 volt battery in the house!
• I managed to run out of my favorite acid reducer during the most stressful week in ages.
• OJ, bread... 
• And the creek... I've managed to swing a ride here and there but Mabel has seemed grateful for neighborhood walkies.

::The last time Bessie the Jeep got a new tranny, she was away from home for seven days! It will be more this time thanks to the days lost trying to get a new Bessie. When I brought her home last time - 51,000 miles ago, Mabel raced into the drive way and kissed the bumper repeatedly! Since Mabel has spent the last several days wandering into the drive and loudly crying her displeasure, I wonder if Bessie will get a similar greeting???

::In the end, some part of me fears I will never make real money again...that it will always be a hard row to hoe. But, I am somewhat happy about keeping my old beast. It's Mabel's car. She loves that Jeep! They don't make them where the back seat flips up and creates a Mabel Lou seat any more. So many of the vehicles I have looked at have hard plastic and are slanted... my girl would slide all over and not be happy at all. Mabel and the Jeep were made for each other. I just get to visit in their world. It's much nicer there!

Am I the Only One???

Am I the only person who takes pictures for their blog, sizes the pictures and... does NOTHING with them? And then time passes and I assume that because I took a picture of it and even sized the pictures... I surely  must have written the post, right? I'm seriously considering filing a missing persons report for my BRAIN!

I wanted to share photos of our JANUARY wind storm! Here the are... in April!

The morning of January 14th, I found all my patio furniture in ONE corner of the patio. I found one of the chairs from the lower patio at the far end of the deck... 30 feet away with  the pool in between.  I was thinking the others must have gone over the fence and I was thinking I would have to go to my neighbors to get access to the canal but then I looked in the pool:

As you can see, we still get ash from the fires when the wind blows. These two chairs were hooked together and were most difficult to get out of the pool.

This is the object I worry most about losing to wind. I keep an extra long mailbox on the banister of the upper patio. It's filled with my favorite gardening tool: a right handed weeder, my hand clippers, poop bags, and the pool tester kit. It's all handy dandy for yard work and keeps my tools handy, close to the task and dry. This is the first time the mailbox made it some distance into the yard. It was quite a wind storm.

Now, if I can just post those pictures I took of the flowers in the creek LAST spring, I should be up to date!

I Knew It Was Coming; I Just Didn't Know When

I found myself exclaiming that phrase, out loud, in frustration, as I raced through the pouring rain Friday night. I knew the storm was coming; just not the details. I went from a dead sleep to sitting bolt upright in bed at 1:30 a.m. to dashing into the storm to secure stuff that should not be outside in the rain: the food color for the shop, the new tools, the new shipping boxes from the post office.

California is typically very dry, even at night when some places are moist. I often stage items going into the studio or the house until there is room. And this rain caught me off guard. As I tossed the last of the shipping boxes into the safety of the shop and really heard myself utter that phrase, I froze in my tracks.

Unaware of the cold rain, I started thinking about how so often we are caught off guard by the obvious and inevitable. We live our lives, knowing that the cheeseburger doesn't help the cholesterol and seem offended when the heart attack knocks on the door. We know our bad diets and lack of exercise aren't good for us and still we are shocked when illness finds us.

Do we live our lives in denial? Maybe. But more likely, I think we know that all that effort and hard work will never stave off the inevitable. Life is only temporary.

My sister is facing a tremendous battle - again. It will be her third. She told me years ago that she knew that cancer would take her life. I shuddered upon hearing her words. Is it a gift or a burden to know the thing that will kill you?

I don't know much...no questions were asked upon this diagnosis. It's hard to plan for battle when you don't know much about your enemy. I just know that my little family... it's been the four of us for my whole life... is in for another fight. We have our jobs: to feed her and love her, provide for her comfort, get her to appointments, provide her with laughs. But, we are simply willing Lieutenants to her General. It is her battle to win.

I knew this storm was coming. I just wish it were a few more decades down the road.

Wordy Wednesday - Recent Snow

It seems funny posting these on a day where the windows are thrown open and a gentle breeze is blowing but these are from our recent snows. This winter has yielded the most snowfall I've seen since Spring 2001.

The creek looked and felt downright icy.

Mt. Lukens kept splashes of snow on it my first winter here. It was nice to see some white up there again.

This mountain, deep in the Angeles National Forest - but visible from my driveway, always seems to get the most. I found myself dashing into my front yard about to confront someone I thought was photographing my house, when I remembered this mountain. (Go ahead, say it with me: "Dork!")

And finally, the southern face of our valley's northern mountains NEVER have snow... but they did this year.

+++++++++++++++++++++
Regarding Mabel's most recent post: I know some of you realized what a Diva Dog I have (and see how well trained I am!) and understand the guilt I feel at leaving her for my crazy commercial job.  I did get a few emails from people who thought I was giving Mabel away!!!! As if! The point of the joke was... she's getting rid of ME. But then if you have the explain the joke...it's not really funny, now is it?

My job is over and today, I'm home recouping from the long hours of work and commuting and doing lots of cuddling to ingratiate myself with the princess. Still worried about my next source of income but happy to have a few days where nothing matters but me and the dog!