Change

Well, we didn't go to Colorado because we all got sick, so we're going next weekend instead. I was struck by how devastated I was on Friday when Rocket Boy told me he just couldn't do it and we would have to change our plans. I mean, OK, there was a cost involved, but that's not what I was upset about. I wanted so much to be in Boulder the next day. I was just longing, yearning to be there. I wanted to see our house again. I wanted to go next door and see our neighbor, before he dies (I still can't get my mind around that). I wanted to walk to the park and on to the grocery store, where I wanted to buy some bulk food (which Ridgecrest doesn't have). I wanted to visit my old office and the boos' old daycare. I wanted to go to the library and the Pearl Street Mall and Chautauqua. I wanted to walk up into the mountains.

Instead I had to go to the grocery store in Ridgecrest. It was painful.

I've been thinking about time passing, and change. Earlier this summer, when I spent those 3 weeks in Palo Alto, I was struck by how different things seemed there. I've been visiting a few times a year ever since I left, 21 years ago, so how is it that it changed so much without my noticing? Of course the big change happened when we sold my mother's house and the new owners remodeled it. Now I have no "center" in that town, no home. There are probably still people in town that I used to know, people I went to high school with who have stayed around. But as my sister said, if I ran into them, they wouldn't recognize me and I wouldn't recognize them. It's been too long. We have aged and changed.

When I went back to Ann Arbor a few years ago for a conference, I was amazed by the changes. Even the venerable University of Michigan has put up many new (and ugly) buildings. The apartment complex where I used to live looked the same. My old best friends who we stayed with looked pretty much the same. And I had a wonderful reunion with the old friends who flew in from all over the world for the conference. But some people looked very different. And I expect I will never see most of them again.

I think I am dreading that Boulder will change too much while we are gone. We don't know how long we'll be here -- 2 years? 5 years? 20 years? Will too much time pass and we won't want to go back? We have a number of "older" friends -- will they all die while we're gone? Will there still be a Boulder Bird Club? I want to go back while it's still my Boulder, before it changes the way Palo Alto has changed and I don't feel at home there anymore. Ridgecrest is not home. It is where I live but it is not home.

Late Summer

It's still over 100 almost every day, but you can feel something changing. The days get off to a slower start, it's a little cooler when we first get up. And of course it gets dark earlier, making it easier to put the babies to bed. I believe we will have temperatures in the 100s through September, but interspersed with more and more days in the 90s, maybe even the 80s. Seems impossible. I'll have to go back to wearing shirts with sleeves. Maybe in October.

We have started going on morning walks again, and that feels really good. I thought it would be hard to get motivated, but it isn't. My body likes to walk. Why am I not a long, lean person -- I should be! Anyone who walks as much as I have for all these many years should be slender as a reed. I'm dreaming. Anyway, compared to most of my fellow Ridgecrestians I am skinny.

In late summer I always re-read the poem by Robert Frost called "The Oven Bird."

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

What to make of a diminished thing, I guess this is my question these days, but it has been my question for years now. Life is still very interesting once "the early petal-fall is past" but it is less exciting, with that "highway dust" over all. Of course when one has toddler twins, life is always pretty exciting, mustn't forget that.

Late summer is a melancholy time. Last year in August my family lost our beloved Uncle Bob. This year RB and I are getting ready to lose our best friend and neighbor. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about the good times we had together, how much he meant to us. We're going out to Colorado this weekend to say goodbye, but I'm saying goodbye a hundred times over in my mind.

Home hunting

We've started thinking about buying a place here. The lease on our rental house is up in 6 months and we don't like renting. It might not be so bad if our rental agency actually responded to our requests for repairs, but this is Ridgecrest, so they don't.

It keeps going through my mind: why would I buy a house in a place I don't like? I have no answer.

We don't have a realtor yet, but we did get preapproved for a loan at the credit union, so we know we can buy something. Nothing fancy, but something. Today, as an outing, we decided to go look at some houses in our price range.

The first house was a few blocks away from us, so we pushed the boys over there in the stroller. The house was completely vacant, which I always prefer to "staging." Nice big living room with built-in bookcases and an attractive fireplace, high ceilings. "I just need to get these bugs cleaned up," said the realtor, reaching down with a tissue for some dead cockroaches caught in a spider web. The extra bedrooms were small. The master bedroom was large, with a huge walk-in closet. There was a giant cockroach on its back in the master bath shower.

The realtor offered us treats. Baby B grabbed a big cookie and we convinced Baby A to take half a chocolate-covered pretzel. Armed with this bounty, we ventured out into the big backyard. No lawn, but some very nice trees -- for Ridgecrest. Amazing how our standards have fallen.

The second house was in the north part of town, so we drove. It was on a lot about half the width of its neighbors. A two-car detached garage in the back of the lot, with a long driveway, the kind of thing where you could park about 6 cars, but you'd be constantly moving cars to get to the one you wanted. Small rooms, no space for the piano, but no visible cockroaches. Packing boxes everywhere. The owners were moving to Alabama.

The babies are currently very into rocks, in fact Baby B can even say "Rock!" In the backyard they found a selection and were very excited. The realtor was friendly and when he heard we didn't have a realtor yet, he said he'd like to give us a gift. It turned out to be a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

I can't stop thinking about our old house in Boulder. It's very small compared to our rental house here and even to these houses we're traipsing through. But it has beautiful trees, two driveways, a big front porch, a mailbox. We put in a new back lawn and a new sprinkler system the year before we left, so the babies would have grass to play on. I wonder how it's doing. Next door our neighbor, who Rocket Boy has known his entire life, is dying of cancer, without us.

I think it's going to take us a while to find a home in Ridgecrest.

In Walmart

Rocket Boy and I do NOT like Walmart, its policies and politics, how it destroys small town businesses, doesn't pay health insurance, all that kind of thing. But when you live in Ridgecrest, sometimes you just have to go to Walmart. There's a Kmart too, but it's much farther away from us and it doesn't have nearly the inventory. Many times I've gone to Kmart first, not found what I was looking for, and ended up at stupid Walmart instead. Oh well.

Today I stopped in at Walmart for a few items: some plastic containers for the bathroom, more wooden clothespins, and a new alarm clock. I found everything I was looking for and headed for the checkout lanes. As is usual at Walmart, all around me were hugely fat people, the kind you stop and look at because their fat bulges so peculiarly. I know I should not do that. I have been a Weight Watcher since I was 16, I should have more compassion. I do have compassion, actually. I don't look at these people and think "what fat pigs," I look at them and think, "oh how miserable they must be, they must feel so trapped by their weight." I also fantasize about being a Weight Watchers leader and helping them lose the weight. But I still stare at them. It's like staring at a car accident (which I also do, with great interest).

I got in a short line behind a nicely dressed old lady, who was behind a young, slim, Arab-looking man and his pregnant wife and two young sons. The Arab-looking man was buying tons of stuff in two carts, and the old lady was joking with him about how much time he was taking. One lane over there was a colossally fat white man (in shorts, natch) and he was talking to the old lady too. It appeared that they attended the same church. The man had been watching some sort of video, and he was telling the old lady that the church should buy a copy of it. He was talking about one of the people in the video, and he said "He's a Christian, you know," in that way that people do when what they mean is "Only Christians are worth my time."

At once I began a fantasy which involved not only being this man's Weight Watcher leader, but also helping him understand that people of other faiths such as Jews and Muslims, and even atheists, are also worth his time, and also that Christians can be bad people too, there is nothing about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior that makes you any nicer than anyone else. This fantasy lasted me all the way out of the store and over to Albertson's, where I observed a young female clerk on a cigarette break, which got me started on a fantasy about watching her growing old before her time and having to go on oxygen (my fantasies about smokers are meaner -- I don't have much sympathy for them).

Albertson's was full of fat people too. I didn't buy any ice cream.

Why it's great to live in Ridgecrest

A few weeks ago the LA Times did a front-page story about Ridgecrest and how it's the only place in California that's hiring right now. Rocket Boy and I felt that the article was painfully well-balanced, hardly saying anything at all negative about Ridgecrest. But the rest of the town felt slighted by remarks like "this parched community... has become the land of opportunity... for those who don't mind isolation, searing heat and little entertainment beyond Wednesday night karaoke at the local bar."

Since that article appeared, Letters to the Editor in our two local newspapers have featured a number of outraged responses from residents. These readers try so hard to think of good things to say about Ridgecrest and fail so utterly that their letters are thoroughly amusing. Until this week, my favorite response letter was one that mentioned the "monthly wine walks" as one of Ridgecrest's cultural highlights.

This week there was another great letter. The writer talked about her family's decision to move to Ridgecrest 37 years ago. One of their reasons for moving was "to provide our kids with a safe environment where they could walk anywhere." Yes, except that there is nowhere to walk and it is too hot to go outside. But here's the best part: "We don't have malls in which to spend money we don't have." I had never thought of that. What a wonderful place Ridgecrest is to live! No opportunities to go into debt!

We love it here more every day.

Cleaning

One of my deficiencies as a female is my inability to notice dirt until it is really substantial. I did not get the clean gene. Like my mother, I have no interest in cleaning and can think of 150 things I'd rather do (at least!). However, when you live in a house for 6 months without cleaning the bathrooms.... let's just say that even I can see dirt like that.

I've been thinking about cleaning the bathrooms for a couple of months now. I even bought a book, "Speed Cleaning," after having it out of the library for a while. But I did not see how I could clean a bathroom when the boos were home, and I'm always too tired at night, and while they're at daycare I have too many other things to do, like working.

This week, finally, I had had enough. Yesterday I got the Comet, the Windex, and the all-purpose non-toxic cleaning solution, a roll of paper towels, a scrub brush, an old toothbrush, and the toilet brush, and headed for my bathroom. Of course the boos came too, because they follow me all over the house, and they PARTICULARLY like to follow me to the bathroom because that's where we brush our teeth and also where I rinse out their dirty diapers, which they find fascinating. Sigh.

I decided to clean only the toilet, the sink, and the mirrors. The boos were knocking each other over trying to watch me scrub the toilet with Comet. Following my book's advice, I sprayed the toilet, then the underpart of the seat, then the top of the seat, and then the lid, with the all-purpose non-toxic cleaning solution, and then wiped each thing in reverse order -- with a little help from the boos, who kept trying to put their hands in the goop and eat it. The mirrors were easy, but then I had to take all the stuff off the top of the vanity and put it somewhere, in order to clean the area. I put the cleaning supplies on the top of the toilet during that exercise, and next thing I knew, Baby A had the Windex and Baby B had the all-purpose non-toxic cleaning solution. "Oh, thank you," I said, taking the bottles away from them. Unwinding the paper towels was also a popular activity.

Despite all the bother, the results were so delightful that today I decided to do Rocket Boy's bathroom (he uses the main house bathroom, which is also where the boos take baths -- my bathroom is part of the master suite). Actually all I did was the mirrors and vanity top, but again, the results were stunning.

This gave me the energy to do some vacuuming. First I had to find the vacuum cleaner, which was not in either of the two places I remembered it being. Where could it be? Finally I looked in the garage. There it was, standing next to my car, which means I walk past it every day, sometimes several times in a day, without noticing it. So not only do I not notice dirt, I also do not notice dirt-removal implements. It's like a handicap!

In order to vacuum our bedroom, I first had to remove objects from the floor, like diapers, toys, and my backpack. I piled them on the cedar chest. Baby B immediately began throwing them back on the floor. I worked around him. Boo bears were startled by the sound of the vacuum and laughed. Note to self: MUST do this more often!

Then we did their bedroom, which required picking up their toys first. This was also greeted with great hilarity, and toys were put back on the floor as fast as I removed them. I worked around them.

Finally we did the family room. There is a box in that room for their toys, and I announced that we were going to put all the toys in the box. Wonder of wonders, Baby A actually helped put the toys in the box! Of course he also stood where he could hold onto the cord and jerked it up and down as I vacuumed. But I still got the job done and was pleased with the results.

So there you have it. There is so little to do in Ridgecrest that cleaning has become recreational. Pretty soon I'll be dusting.

One of those days

We didn't sleep well last night. The cats kept going out, and then meowing to come in again, and then running down the hall meowing... I had a headache when I got up and actually took a short nap later, which is not like me.

All this must be the reason I put the peelings from 8 potatoes down the disposal. I was making scalloped potatoes for dinner. I remember feeling this vague sense of unease about all those potato peelings going down the disposal, but did I act on it? No. Did I think: oh that's right, you're not supposed to put massive quantities of potato peelings down the disposal? No. I put them all down and turned it on. It groaned and spun, and a lot of brown water came up into the sink and whirled around and whirled around and didn't go down and didn't go down, and suddenly I realized I had a problem.

It was 4:40 pm and I needed to put the scalloped potatoes in the oven and go pick up the babies from daycare. I quickly called Rocket Boy at work and described the situation. He thought he might be able to fix the clog, so I didn't try to call a plumber. I picked up the babies and continued making dinner, without a kitchen sink. I had to wash the fish in the bathroom sink.

Even though the scalloped potatoes were in the oven for 75 minutes, they didn't really cook (maybe not cut thin enough?), so the babies wouldn't eat them and instead threw them on the ground. RB then put the boos in the family room behind the baby gate so that he could address the two problems: the clogged drain and the potato-covered floor. I opened the door from the family room to the patio so the boos could play outdoors while Daddy performed miracles.

The babies are getting extremely adventurous. Tonight they climbed on a pile of junk in the side yard and picked up some broken garden lights that RB had tossed there. They brought the broken lights onto the patio and promptly dropped them, shattering the glass. I went to investigate and found them picking up pieces of broken glass and examining them (pause for Mom to scream). I got rid of all the glass, swept up the shards. Then RB came out with the kitchen sink pipes and blew the potato peelings out with the garden hose. "Don't let the babies eat the potato peelings," he ordered me, so I picked up all the peelings I could find scattered on our "lawn" (dry dead grasses). Meanwhile the babies had found a large puddle under the leaking hose and were sitting in it and attempting to drink the water. I decided to ignore that.

I keep wondering whether my inertia where our yard is concerned is related to (1) depression (2) the heat (3) some horrible Ridgecrestian ennui or (4) chronic laziness. Or (5) all of the above. Or maybe it's just because it's a rental house. The yard would be totally wonderful if it were ours and we could put in a new sprinkler system, and some grass, and some xeriscaping, and a vegetable garden. But it isn't ours, so we just barely keep it alive, watering everything by hand with the hose. And it's full of all this weird junk that the babies unerringly find. No matter how much we sweep up, there's always more. Baby A likes to dig in the dirt, and he keeps unearthing butts and other treasures. If a baby ate a cigarette butt, would he get addicted to nicotine?

Anniversary

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary. I was thinking 7 wasn't an important year, not like 5 or 10 or 15 (or 50), but honestly, 7 years, that's a long time. We've been married for 7 years. How did that happen?

Anyway, kind of at the last minute we decided to go out to dinner, to celebrate those 7 years. Back in Boulder we would probably have gone to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse http://www.boulderteahouse.com/index.html. I vividly remember our 5th anniversary dinner at the Teahouse. I was 6 or 7 weeks pregnant, and so very nauseated. I made it through the dinner without vomiting, and then we went home and waited for some houseguests to show up. We can't remember what we did last year, but we think we went to the Teahouse with the babies. Sat outside, by the creek. Sipped a glass of sparkling tea. Oh well.

Well, OK, so now we live in Ridgecrest. Our very nice babysitter, from the boos' daycare, agreed to sit for us. Ridgecrest supposedly has a couple of "fine dining" establishments which we might have tried, but today is Monday, so they weren't open. Finally we decided to go to Farris' Italian Gardens, on East Ridgecrest Boulevard. The ads say "It's the perfect place to take the family for a delicious Italian dinner." It's right next to Farris' Diner, which serves breakfast and lunch. The Italian side has low ceilings and pale green cement walls, plus a dark floral carpet. Mismatched tables and chairs. Artificial plants in the corners. Large families enjoying Italian dinners. But since it was our anniversary, we pretended we were in a much fancier establishment. We talked about the babies and our jobs. At one point the waiter came by and apologized for the wait, saying my salmon was taking longer than expected. When it arrived, I could see why -- it was distinctly overcooked. But it was still pretty good, and the roast potatoes that came with it were delicious. Rocket Boy enjoyed his scallops. We each had a glass of Chardonnay and toasted ourselves: "7 more years!"

Afterwards we decided to go to Charlie's for dessert and coffee, just to try out another bit of Ridgecrest nightlife. Charlie's is associated with the Carriage Inn hotel. It has an extremely high ceiling, with flags of various countries filling up the empty space. It's kind of a sports bar, full of television sets. We ordered decaf coffee, one piece of carrot cake, and one piece of Godiva chocolate cheesecake. We split the two pieces of cake and proceeded to make ourselves sick. In retrospect, one piece of cheesecake would have been a better choice. But navigating dessert menus is hard for a Weight Watcher. We toasted ourselves again with the coffee: "14 more years! No, make it 21!"

Afterwards, Rocket Boy said, "Is there anywhere else you'd like to go?" I said, "You mean like Walmart?" We agreed there were no other choices and headed for home.

Randsburg

Our enthusiasm for exploring the area has definitely decreased since it got hot, but the hot weekend days are long, and very dull if we just stay home. Rocket Boy's suggestion today was to visit the museum in Randsburg, a small former mining town maybe 20 miles from Ridgecrest. He called and found out they were open until 4pm. I wasn't overwhelmingly thrilled with the idea, but it didn't involve swim diapers, so I said OK.

We went just a little before noon, with the idea of possibly finding food in the town of Randsburg as well. We didn't really know what we were getting into -- is this a ghost town? do people still live there? We took 395 south to a little road that led west briefly to our destination.

Randsburg does seem to be inhabited, although I'll bet it doesn't cost much to buy a ramshackle old house there. The downtown has been "preserved" so that the dozen or so buildings look something like they must have 100 years ago. We drove past a General Store and a few antique stores to the Desert Museum, where we parked. It looked a bit small to accommodate our twin stroller, so we each carried a baby on in.

We were hoping for something like the Trona Museum, but the Randsburg Museum is much smaller, only 2 rooms. Nice displays, though, including a glass case full of pale purple glassware (the glass has manganese in it, which turns it purple when exposed to the sun), and lots of cases of rocks. The babies were not, as Rocket Boy put it, on their best museum behavior. There was a lot of running around, banging on glass cases, and yelling. Baby A liked the case of purple glass, because it included a set of glass bookends in the shape of dogs. He kept running over to that section of the case and pointing, and I would say "Yes, those are dogs! What does the dog say? Woof woof!" and then he'd go look at something else, and then he'd come back and point at the dogs again and we'd go through the whole thing again.

Eventually Baby A ran out the front door of the museum, and I thought "Fine, go outside where you can't cause trouble." So immediately he discovered a receptacle for people's cigarette butts, selected a long white one, and put it in his mouth. God! Since my worst nightmare is that the babies will someday smoke, this was very upsetting. I grabbed it out of his mouth, threw it away, and carried him back into the museum.

Very soon we decided it was time to go, and we walked down the street a little ways, each of us holding on to a baby by his shirt collar. The man running the museum had recommended the General Store as a place to get food, so we went in there, but it didn't look baby friendly, no highchairs, etc. We'll come back sometime when the boos are older. We don't have to do EVERYTHING now.

We packed ourselves back into our car and drove to a Mexican restaurant in Inyokern where we had a nice lunch, and then we came home and did laundry. And thus another day in Ridgecrest passed by.

Swimming

We went swimming today, the whole family. I didn't want to. Rocket Boy suggested it, and I tried for about 2 seconds to be nice about it, and then I said "No. I don't want to." I should say that before we had kids, we used to go swimming together quite often and I liked it pretty well. Not my FAVORITE activity, especially not lap swimming in a rec center pool. I like to swim in lakes, backyard pools, anything but a formal lap pool. But I got used to it and eventually did enjoy it, especially after I took an adult refresher class and improved my strokes.

That was then, this is now. Now "swimming" involves getting two little ones out of their clothes and into swim diapers, usually with no help, because I'm in the women's locker room and RB is in the men's locker room. Then a few minutes in a pool, with both of them screaming their heads off. And then afterwards getting them out of their wet swim diapers and back into their regular diapers and clothes, and somehow also getting myself changed, and keeping track of two little ones, and IT'S AWFUL. No fun at all. Someday it will be fun again and that someday is not now.

But what the heck. The day went on, we had nothing special planned, we got various tasks done, it got later, and finally I said, "OK, let's go swimming." Sometimes I'm a nice person.

We decided it would be easiest to go to the base, because it would be less crowded than the Ridgecrest public pool. We also considered the Trona public pool but that seemed too scary. So we drove to the base and went to the "Community Pool" which is an outdoor pool. It cost $5 for RB and me (the boos were free). We could take their stroller in, which helped. I parked the stroller outside the women's locker room and took one baby in at a time to get him changed. By the time we were all ready, RB was too.

At that point we discovered a wading pool! A very small, very shallow concrete pool, off to the side of the big pool, for ages 6 and under. It was about the size of a hot tub and as shallow as a bathtub. Just perfect. Baby B is a little afraid of water right now, but he was willing to sit in my lap in the water and chew on Daddy's (waterproof) watch. Baby A was a little braver -- he stood up in the water and splashed the rest of us.

We spent about an hour in the water, accompanied by a number of other children. What finally drove us out was that one of the older children (he was 3) pooped in the pool! I was so glad it wasn't my two, as it so easily could have been. We got out (they closed down the little pool), RB watched the boys while I ran into my dressing room, and then I changed them over on the grass while he went to his dressing room. The mom of the boy who pooped had brought some cheese crackers, which the boos helped themselves to, and we chatted a bit. Then RB reappeared and we left.

I suppose it'll be a long time before I think of swimming as exercise again...

Passion

Gosh, we had nice weather today. A high around 92 degrees, sunny, a gentle breeze, it was delightful. (Tomorrow it heads back up near 100.) Rocket Boy and I had lunch at the Espresso Cafe, after dropping the boys off at daycare. Just an all around pleasant day. It goes without saying that I wish we had more days like this in Ridgecrest.

On our way home after lunch we stopped at Ridgecrest's one bookstore. Red Rock Books is not a Barnes & Noble, it's not a Boulder Bookstore, it's not a Kepler's. But for Ridgecrest it's OK. Some new books, lots of used books, some gift stuff, space for browsing.

On this visit I was looking for a book by a local author, a category which Red Rock is very good about carrying. I've been attending the monthly meetings of the Ridge Writers, the local branch of the California Writers Club. During each meeting there is a chance for attendees to brag about their writing achievements. At this week's meeting I heard a young woman announce that a publisher was interested in a book she's writing. She mentioned that she had already self-published a fantasy/sci fi novel for young adults that was available at Red Rock Books. This impressed me so much that I wanted to see it for myself. So there I stood in Red Rock looking at the book -- quite a sizable volume, with a full color, illustrated cover. See http://www.twinfang.com/. I thumbed through it, a bit dubiously. Fantasy/sci fi is not my thing at all. But I was so impressed that the young woman in the meeting had written this book and self-published it, that I did indeed buy it. I don't know if I'll read it, but hey, maybe I'll find someone to give it to.

I've also been thinking, this week, about a cousin of mine who is an artist and a writer. See http://yeddamorrison.com/
Again, I am more impressed by her having written than by her actual writing, which I find hard to relate to. I am entranced by some of her artwork, though. I don't know anything about art but I find her "floral arrangements" just fascinating. Do other people do this sort of work? Is it a known category -- sculpture, watercolors, etchings, floral arrangements?

I'm getting interested in this whole self-publishing thing, where once I would have disdained it. It seems to me to be evidence of passion. If you love your work and want to share it, who cares if you can't penetrate the formal publishing world?

I am impressed, finally, by the evidence of passion in people's lives. It would be good, I suppose, if everyone's passion resulted in wonderful works of art, but that's a bit much to ask. There are good writers with no passion, and there are passionate writers with no talent. At one time in my life I preferred the former; now I seem to prefer the latter. It's not that I want to read a lot of bad writing. It's that as I get older, and duller, and all around me I see people retreating into their quiet little lives, I'm so amazed that some people don't do this.

It has crossed my mind that Ridgecrest is not the worst place for someone to follow his/her passion. Lots of empty space, lots of nothing to do, lots of time to fill. Not everyone has to spend that time watching television.

Summer is not over

Just a quick post before bedtime. We are gradually adjusting to being home, vacation being over, and summer not being over. Rocket Boy is being especially nice to me because I am depressed about it all. It occurred to me that living in Ridgecrest is like living in Australia, someplace where summer has the horrid weather and you look forward to winter because then you'll be able to do fun stuff. We keep talking about all the things we're going to do when it gets cooler, maybe round about November or so. We'll go to Death Valley, we'll ... go to Death Valley again, we'll ... go to other places in the desert. The Salton Sea, maybe. I have a poster of a bit of the Salton Sea, I've had it since college. It hangs on the wall in our family room here. I wonder if we really will do all those things. When will the work get done? When will we buckle down, as one is supposed to in the winter? Do people in Australia buckle down in the summer? Should I be buckling down now, staying inside and working, not worrying about the things I can't do?

Today, thinking about it being 10 degrees cooler, predicted high of 102 not 112, I decided the boo bears and I could go for a morning walk. This was a mistake. It was very warm. The boo bears were excited at the prospect of a walk, presumably remembering all our lovely walks in the Bay Area, but they lost heart quickly. I cut the walk short, turned back halfway, hurried home for sippy cups of lukewarm water. The best part of the walk happened before it began: we were on the patio, getting the stroller organized, and a hawk flew through the backyard! I think it was a Cooper's Hawk, but I am not an accipiter expert, so could be wrong. The hawk landed on a nearby high wire, scaring away all the usual birds, then left.

This afternoon I gave up trying to be Good Mom, and just lay on my bed reading. The boos played fairly peacefully nearby for a while. Then they came over and dismantled my nightstand. Baby B looked at each book he removed, finally coming across a little coffee table book about the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. He seemed to think this was a children's book (probably because of all the photos) and handed it to me with that desperate look that says "Please read this to me several times." I wonder whether this fascination with books will last. Having a board book read to one seems very different from reading a novel to oneself. I hope it transfers over. Reading is quite possibly my favorite thing in the entire world (walking is a little further down the list) and it would be nice to be able to share that with my children.

Something that I hope will NOT last is the boos' fascination with a certain gift bag that I was given on my birthday (I think it had an embroidered dishtowel in it). If you press a button on the bag, it plays "Happy Birthday" twice. The babies adore it and bring it to me to push the button many times every day.

Thinking, gloomily, about how we seldom get exactly what we want, I'm imagining a future where the (all grown-up) babies purchase singing gift bags for every holiday occasion but never crack open a book.

And home yet again

OK, now we are really home. After my wonderful three weeks in the Bay Area, I was in Ridgecrest for five days, just long enough for me and the babies to get stomach flu and be horribly sick. Then on Friday we all drove up to June Lake, in the eastern Sierra very close to the eastern entrance to Yosemite, for a long weekend with some of my cousins.

And now that's over and we are home. It feels a bit more like home this time. It was actually less than 100 degrees when we drove into Ridgecrest around 2:30 pm today, 97 degrees to be exact. By the time we reached our house, it had gone up to 101, but still, that's better than 111. There was an ant invasion in the kitchen, but that's California. There were only a few dead cockroaches on the floor (or maybe I haven't looked closely enough).

It's supposed to be "cool" all week -- highs around 100, even less than 100 some days. I can hardly believe it. I wonder how long it will last. I've been wondering how we were going to survive August. Maybe it will be possible.

I wanted to write about my earlier vacation. The babies and I spent a lovely three weeks in the Bay Area in July, while Rocket Boy stayed in Ridgecrest and worked. We rented a two-bedroom condo in Palo Alto right across the street from a little shopping center with a nice grocery store called Piazza's, a Peet's coffeehouse, and a heavenly ice cream shop. The condo was small, but the perfect size for us. One of my sisters gave me a one-month subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle and the other gave me a gift card for Peet's.

Each foggy morning I was awakened by the babies' cries around 6:30 or 7:00. I would give them each a bottle, step outside the condo in my nightgown and pick up my newspaper, then go back inside to brew a pot of tea and scan the headlines. After getting dressed myself, I'd get the babies changed and dressed, and then sit them in their highchairs for breakfast. While they ate and/or threw their food around, I'd eat my cereal and continue reading the paper, always finishing up with the Sudoku and the Jumble and the Cryptoquip (though sometimes I'd have to wait until night to do them all). The Chronicle is a shadow of its former self, but it is better than the Ridgecrest Daily Independent. Then I'd get the babies down and do a little cleanup (though I usually saved the dishes for evening -- the condo didn't have a dishwasher), and then I would announce "Let's brush teeth and get shoes and socks!" The babies would follow me to the bathroom to "brush" their teeth -- it mostly consists of sucking on the toothbrush at this point, but they let me brush their teeth a little and they watch me brushing mine. Then we would all put on our shoes and socks and go out for a stroller ride. We were about a 15-minute walk from Mitchell Park, which has a great little kids area, not too much changed from when I was a little kid. The babies loved playing there. On other days we would go to Piazza's and buy some fruit or milk, or maybe stop at Peet's for a latte, or just walk through the neighborhood, getting our exercise (me) or our nap (the boos).

We would be back at the condo by 9:30 or 10:00 for our snack, a scone from Peet's or a cut-up peach from Piazza's. One of my sisters would often show up around then, and we would get ready to go to a library for story time. We managed to hit story time at five different libraries (in Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Menlo Park). After story time we usually went to my sister's house in Los Altos for lunch. In the afternoon we might visit another park. I think we went to 10 different local parks while we were there, plus we went on excursions to some bigger parks further afield -- Rancho San Antonio County Park, which includes a small farm with animals, and Oak Meadow Park in Los Gatos, which has a train and a carousel.

Most nights we stayed for dinner at my sister's, but once or twice a week we would go back to the condo and have something simple like scrambled eggs or ravioli, and sometimes my other sister would bring takeout. I'm not sure I ever put a baby to bed by myself -- a sister always came to help. Then I would stand at the kitchen window doing the day's dishes, watching the sky get darker, watching the last shoppers at Piazza's hurrying to and from the store with their cloth bags, watching the workers shut the store down.

Going on vacation with two little ones is never going to be easy, but this was about as restful as it could have been.

It already seems like a long long time ago.