Spring is here, and summer too

OK! I haven't been posting here for quite a while, so it feels very weird to be back. But here I am, back.

While I've been gone (from the blog, that is), spring has really sprung here, and now along comes summer. I was driving down China Lake Boulevard today and the electronic sign said it was 90 degrees! On March 31st! I was not happy about that. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 91. It's going to be cooler on the weekend and next week, but really, 90 degrees in March. Not necessary.

We had some fabulous storms this month too, including one about ten days ago that resulted in this gorgeous snow on the mountains west of town (that's the southernmost tip of the Sierra Nevada range).

Pretty cool, no? Our little valley is entirely surrounded by mountains, and after this storm the mountains to the north were also snow covered, but I didn't get any photos of them.

But now it is spring again, or rather summer, and there are wildflowers everywhere. Last spring we were so good about learning the names of all the flowers, and now I find that I have forgotten almost all those names. But there is no time like the present for learning them all over again, and in any case the boos don't know the names and might like to learn them, so we are starting to work on that. Baby B recognizes one flower, the desert dandelion, and as we walk along he points them out, except he just calls them dandelions. I say "Yes!" and then add, pedantically, "DESERT dandelions." I'll try to post some wildflower photos soon.

We have also been seeing quail almost every day, rabbits, and today I saw a lizard. The first lizard of spring, or rather summer.

With all this warm weather, one of our tortoises has decided to come up out of her burrow and rejoin the living. She came up a couple of weeks ago, but then went back down again when it got cold. Last weekend she came up again, so we gave her a bath in order to rehydrate her. Here she is having a bath.

Isn't she sweet? The other tortoise, however, has not made an appearance, and this is unfortunate, since there are folks out there eagerly waiting to adopt her. Tonight we shone a flashlight down in the burrow, and there she is -- she didn't somehow vanish into the earth or anything like that. But she's not coming out. So tomorrow we are going to try to get her out.

How does one get a tortoise out of a burrow, you may ask. Well, the first thing we have been told to do is to poke her with something, like a stick. She is six feet down in the ground, but I am thinking a broomstick might work, or maybe the non-sharp end of a hoe. Rocket Boy is home tomorrow, it being Flex Friday, so we will work on this together. One of us will hold a flashlight while the other one pokes. If the tortoise moves her legs, we will know she is alive. If she does not move her legs, we will know that she is either dead or sick. If she moves her legs, there is a chance that she will then walk out of the burrow. If not, or if she doesn't move her legs, we will probably have to dig her out. Stay tuned for further developments, which I will try to report on tomorrow.

Wind

I believe I mentioned, a few posts back, that it hasn't been so windy this year. That was true, a few posts back. No, it's still true -- overall, it's been less windy. But Sunday and Monday we had a wind storm, so now I'm all jacked up again about Ridgecrest being windy. And since spring is really just getting started, we could have just as much wind this year as last.

Bad winds out here are called "termination winds," because in the early days bad wind storms would cause people to terminate their employment with the Navy at China Lake.

Apparently yesterday it was so bad that they actually closed Highway 14 to big rigs and campers/RVs. A big rig blew over and that was the end of that. The Daily Independent even wrote an editorial about how to drive in the wind, the gist of which was "Don't."

I drove to the grocery store in the wind yesterday, taking care to open my car door slowly and carefully so that all my shopping bags wouldn't blow away, as happened once last year. When I was leaving the store, I found that the automatic doors weren't working -- they were just sort of waving gently in the wind -- so I had to shove one of them open in order to get out. Then, in the parking lot, I heard a scream, and watched as a cart went zooming across the lot toward a car. A man bravely grabbed it before it hit and returned it to a young woman with a baby. I was careful to return my cart to the cart-return place, but the wind actually almost blew it away anyway.

The twins and I tried to take a walk that morning, but the wind got much worse after we'd gone half a block, and we had to cut it short. The boys sat in their stroller and pulled their sun shades down to block the wind, while I valiantly pushed against the wind to get us home.

In the afternoon, after my shopping trip, I sat at my computer and tried to concentrate, but the howling wind got under my skin.

Boulder actually has worse winds than Ridgecrest, but they're not as frequent. And they don't involve dust clouds.

I suppose I should make some comment about the metaphorical wind blowing in change, but it just wasn't a metaphorical wind. That said, change would be welcome.

Another busy Saturday

Another busy Saturday spent anywhere but Ridgecrest.

The liberal salon meeting this month was not on the first Friday night at someone's house in Ridgecrest or Inyokern, it was on the first Saturday afternoon (i.e., today) at someone's house in Weldon. Weldon is 55 miles west of us, in the bucolic Kern River Valley on Highway 178. We couldn't really go to the salon proper, since we'd have the twins with us (though NEARLY three years old, the twins aren't quite ready for long discussions of political issues), but we thought we'd drop by and say hi, in case no other Ridgecrest liberals felt up to making the drive.

It turned out that many people felt up to it -- the place was packed. So we wandered around the gorgeous property for an hour, walked down to the river, ate a few snacks, talked to a few people about health care and how evil Republicans are, and then took our leave before the twins either fell over a cliff or broke a precious art object (both of which appeared likely to happen at any moment).

We then continued west on 178, and then north on 155, because we were hoping to do a little sledding. Now, it was warm today, in the 70s in Ridgecrest. At the salon party we mentioned to a few people that we were going to look for some snow and everyone kind of shook their heads and said "hmm." As we drove up Highway 155 northwest of Wofford Heights, it was very warm in the car and we saw not a trace of snow on any of the mountains around us. Oh well, we thought, might as well drive all the way to Greenhorn Mountain County Park (where we went sledding last year) and then turn around.

But as we approached the park, we were pleasantly surprised.

Even though there was no snow anywhere else, there was a lot of snow on that mountain. So we got out our double sled and Rocket Boy pulled the boys around a bit. The only problem was that Baby A got upset and didn't want to go any further, so then RB just pulled Baby B. Baby A and I walked back to the car -- where I guess he felt safe -- and then spent our time throwing snowballs. Or rather, I threw snowballs. He claimed not to be able to make a snowball while wearing his big mittens. So I made snowball after snowball after snowball, and attempted, at his direction, to throw them at various trees and signs.

After a while Rocket Boy and Baby B returned.

We changed out of our wet things and piled back into the car, feeling pleased with ourselves. Then, since we were all the way up there already anyway, we went over to Kernville and played in the park for a while. And then we drove to Lake Isabella for a quick dinner before heading home.

Here's a restaurant that will be glad never to see us again. Honestly, is it possible that the Threes are going to be worse than the Twos??? Baby B spent the entire dinner standing up on his seat in our booth, smearing up the glass on the window, while Baby A spent the entire dinner UNDER the booth table, occasionally rolling out into the aisle for the waitress to trip on him. When we tried to make them sit in their seats, they screamed.

But the worst thing happened before our food came. Rocket Boy took Baby A out a side door to the smokers' patio just to keep him occupied for a little while. Baby B, who had refused to go with them, suddenly got out of his seat (ignoring me), and walked quickly across the restaurant to the front door. Before my astonished eyes he opened the front door and left the restaurant. I jumped out of my seat and ran after him, but when I got to the front door and looked out, he had vanished. Finally I found him -- he had gone to the patio via a different route. I was so mad at him I was nearly speechless, but eventually I found the words to tell him what a bad boy he'd been. I'm sure it made no impression at all.

All the long dark way home over Walker Pass, as Baby A snoozed, Baby B kept saying to me: "Mommy?"
Me: "Yes, honey?"
Baby B: "Mommy, I got a idea."
Me: "What's your idea, honey?"
Baby B: "Birthday!"

So you can see what was on his mind -- not his behavior, anyway. We're thinking maybe we can't go to any more restaurants for a while, maybe not until they're four. I'll let you know how that goes.

Hello March

The photo above is of a yard on our street in Ridgecrest. We love to walk past this tortoise any day, but especially now, in early March, when he has daffodils and hyacinths in his circle, not just cactus.

When I lived in Michigan I really didn't like the month of March -- drab, gray, cold, muddy, ugly -- and when I lived in Colorado I was too busy digging out from all the enormous snowstorms that occur during March to have an opinion about it. But in California, March is a pretty month. Can be cool, can be rainy, but it's usually beautifully green (even in Ridgecrest) and flowers start to bloom. The desert wildflowers are more toward April, but they're starting. I saw a desert dandelion in our front yard (the side with just dirt) this morning.

So here we are in March, here we are in Year 3 in Ridgecrest. Coming up in a couple of days is my daddy's birthday (he's been gone nearly 22 years now), and then a few days after that, the twins will turn three. We have been talking about birthdays a lot and they seem to be getting the idea. Tonight as I was saying goodnight to them, Baby B said to me, "I got a idea, Mommy." I leaned down and asked him what his idea was, and he said "Birthday!" I agreed that yes, his birthday was coming, next week in fact. I need to go to the little toy store in town and buy some more Thomas trains or something. We'll just give them a couple of gifts on their actual birthday and I think I'll let them open the presents from the San Luis Obispo cousins then too.

Then on the weekend we're going to Los Angeles to celebrate with the rest of the family. Should be quite the social event of the season.

We (i.e., they) are getting so big. Here we are in the field behind our subdivision, in an area we call the "White Rocks" because someone dumped some extra white rocks there once. So many of the white rocks have been removed since then (some by us -- we used them to fill in a hole on our patio) that it hardly still deserves the name. We like to go there and run around on all the little hills. This is the only time all year that it's so green.

The (real) tortoises aren't up yet. Still hibernating, deep down in their burrow (we're almost positive they're both in the same one). I'm quite interested in when they will make an appearance. Both of them are spoken for -- there's a long list of people in Ridgecrest who want to adopt tortoises. We'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe I won't tell the club IMMEDIATELY when they do come up -- maybe we'll enjoy them ourselves for a week or two before bidding them farewell.

I can tell they're not up yet because their pen is full of green stuff (if they were up, they'd be chowing it all down). Come up tortoises, I want to tell them. Come up and eat. Spring is (nearly) here!