Packing and packing and packing

Thought I'd check in to let everyone know we're still alive, packing, packing, packing. We have SO much stuff. So far we have packed about 70 boxes, and in most rooms it looks like we haven't even started yet. Very disheartening. It's now Tuesday night and the movers are coming at 8 am Thursday morning, so tomorrow is IT. I must frantically pack all afternoon. Can't pack in the morning because I have little helpers...

Boos are excited about the new house and want to visit it every day. Yesterday, most unusually, it rained, and in the morning the boos and I went over to the new house to deliver a few things. We sat at a card table in the kitchen eating muffins and watching the rain, and I taught them "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring..." They were entranced and wanted to hear it over and over. (The other thing they want me to sing these days is "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair." I'm not sure why.)

One nice thing about the new house is that it's walking distance from a park. This weekend the boos actually rode to the park on their tricycles. I was a basket case by the time we got back, but they had fun.

Rocket Boy has been madly working on the garage (both our current one and the new one).

Here's the new garage with one wall of shelves about half done:

He's now finished that wall and also put up shelves on the wall across from it. Unfortunately all the shelves are full already. But our current garage is mostly empty, so that's good.

The new house really has a lot less space than this one, and more importantly, far fewer cupboards and cabinets. Our Boulder house has less square footage but it has cupboards and shelves tucked into every available nook. No one has thought to do that in our new Ridgecrest house. I keep telling Rocket Boy "we have to thin" and he keeps telling me "we don't have time" and we're both right.

Today I brought my clothes over to the new house (from my closet) and discovered that I have too many clothes for the new closet. So I did a massive "thinning" and came up with a huge pile to donate. Of course I didn't have time to go donate the huge pile, so now I'm driving around with it. I put the huge pile in the back of the Subaru and covered it with a blanket. I'm hoping it will just vanish. Along with about a third of our other stuff.

This too will pass, but not soon enough for me.

Dismantling

So we have a new house, papers are signed, money has changed hands, and we have a key and a garage door opener. Here's the house we chose:

Nothing too special, and a distinct lack of lawn, but it's pleasant inside and we think we'll be comfortable there. It's smaller than our current house -- smaller lot, smaller driveway, smaller square footage -- but I think we can learn to live in a small house again.

We now have two weeks to organize the move, so I've started packing books. Fortunately we saved all the boxes from our move 3 years ago. Spiders are living among them, so one can't just go out to the garage and grab a box -- one must gingerly grab a corner of a box and take it to the front yard to inspect it, then de-dust it, rubbing it on what's left of our front lawn, and only then bring it inside to be used.

Today I decided that it was time to dismantle the tortoise pens. Our landlord gave us the OK to set up new tortoise pens in our new backyard, which means we have to bring along all our cinder blocks. So I laboriously picked up each extremely heavy cinder block, knocked all the dirt and leaves and dead spiders out of it, and stacked it with the others next to the gate. Here I'm about one third done, with one pen mostly dismantled:

Here are some of the little critters that were living in one of the uncovered cinder blocks:

So THAT'S where cockroaches spend the winter!

And this is hard to see, but if you look at the inside corner in the foreground of this brick, you might be able to see a black shape with lots of legs and a little red hourglass? And it was very much alive. I decided to leave this one alone for now.

And here are two boos, helping me stack bricks.

Ha ha, helping, yeah right. See those two colored disks that Baby B is holding over his eyes? Those are toy "coins" that are supposed to go in his toy cash register. Instead, he dropped them into the stack of bricks, which meant that Mommy had to go get the picker-upper-thingie and manipulate it way down into the dark and grab the little toy coins and then DROP them just as I got them almost out of the cinder blocks...

Their little toy cash register was not my friend today -- earlier, when I was getting ready to go outside, the boos brought it to me and complained that it wasn't working. I inspected it and discovered that the slots where the toy coins are supposed to go were filled with all sorts of other stuff. Cursing, I tried tweezers, pliers, a letter opener, and finally a screwdriver, which I used to take the cash register apart and out popped all the stuff that they'd jammed it with: toy cars, pieces of a plastic toy fence, a marble... Grrrrr. Here they are, the little angels, having snack and making a puzzle, while the toy cash register watches over them serenely:

When we moved out here 3 years ago, boos were 11 months old and we couldn't do any of the packing ourselves -- just impossible. Now boos are 3 years and 10 months old and maybe packing is a little easier. Maybe.

House hunting

I'm not keeping up with any of my resolutions, minimalist though they were, but I'm going to cut myself some slack on that. In fact, I think that's going to be my #2 resolution for the month (#1 being a successful move): CUT SELF SOME SLACK. This is all just too stressful for me to also be critical of myself while it's happening.

So anyway, the last few days we've been looking at a lot of houses: eleven, to be exact. I think that makes a total of 17. Or something like that. They all blur together. If I didn't bring the camera along, I wouldn't remember anything about them at all. Actually, I'd remember lots of details, but I wouldn't remember which details belonged to which house. An hour after our jaunt this morning, when we looked at four houses, Rocket Boy was already getting them mixed up: "Wasn't the garage with all the shelves on Sherwood?" (It was on Rawhide.)

Certain aspects of Ridgecrest houses are a lot like houses anywhere in California. Other aspects are different. For instance, here is a fairly typical Ridgecrest backyard:

Isn't that lovely? Doesn't it make you want to move right in? I should note that inside this was a nice house. And it's in a very nice neighborhood.

Here's a backyard we saw yesterday evening, with Baby A running happily across it. It was associated with a very nice house, and a big back patio as you can see. Covered patios are popular in Ridgecrest. You can sit out there in the evenings and admire your dirt.

Another house we saw yesterday actually had a patch of astroturf in the front yard. We were not sure why.

Here's a yard we saw a few weeks ago, especially nice because it has that tree:

But we were iffy about the house, and while we dithered, someone else snapped it up.

The house I think we're going to apply for has absolutely nothing in the backyard, not even a weed. Just dirt. During windstorms, we'll really have to keep our windows shut tight.

It's so hard to keep plants and trees alive out here, and requires so much water, that a lot of people just don't try. Like they say, "Not xeriscaping, ZEROscaping."

We've always thought the backyard of our current house was odd, but man, it is a PARADISE compared to what we've been seeing. We're going to miss it.

Onward into January

Well, Ridgecrest is waking up after its long holiday sleep. I think a lot of people must leave town for the holidays -- if not for Christmas, then for the week after. But school started up again today and most of the boos' little friends seemed to be back at daycare.

The weather is very pleasant, not at all like winter. Highs in the 60s every day. On Sunday we drove out past Trona to Homewood Canyon and wandered through the old buildings associated with the old Ruth Mine, which was interesting. Perfectly beautiful day for it, even though my tummy was still unsettled.

January. Never my favorite month, even in years when I'm not being evicted. Four years ago in January my mother died. But even before that it wasn't my favorite month. It's always so hard to make the transition from colored lights and cookies to the cold clear light of a new year and all those resolutions.

I haven't made mine yet. I did write my list of accomplishments for 2011 and that's always cheering. Biggest success: potty trained the twins! Yeah baby! All else pales by comparison.

Number one on this year's resolution list will of course be a successful move, but once we're done with that I will need other goals. How many books do I want to read this year, what do I want to write, what else do I want to do with myself? Must give it some thought. Maybe I won't finalize the list until after we move.

For the month of January, my goals are to freecycle something every day, pack at least 2 boxes every day, finally get the holiday cards written and sent, and not let myself get too stressed out.

It's very cheering to spend time writing cards, fun to spend a few minutes thinking about each old friend.

Freecycling, on the other hand, is terribly irritating. Yesterday I successfully freecycled our original double stroller -- just about broke my heart to give it up, so many sweet memories of using it, but we don't use it anymore, so might as well pass it on to someone who will. Today, however, I spent several hours attempting to freecycle a dozen old baby sleepers, and I've still got someone coming tomorrow for some of them. It should make me feel good to (a) get rid of things we don't need, and (b) give them to people who do need them, but it's mostly just irritating.

And I didn't manage to pack any boxes today. Tomorrow for sure.

Hello 2012

Just a quick post to welcome in the new year. It isn't starting very auspiciously. Last night we had takeout Chinese food, and as we were sitting down to eat I thought, what the heck, let's open the bubbly now. Silly to wait until midnight. So Rocket Boy opened the bottle of sweet rose sparkling wine that I'd bought, I poured each of us a champagne flute full, and we settled down to our food and wine.

The wine was great -- not too sweet, just very very drinkable. I drank my whole glass and felt marvelous. The food wasn't bad either. The kids even ate it. As we were putting them to bed, though, I started to feel not so good, and after we said nighty-night and closed their door, I decided I needed to lie down for a bit. I spent most of the rest of the evening lying on my bed reading.

Around 11:45 I thought I felt better, so I got up and joined Rocket Boy in the family room. I refilled our glasses and sat down at my computer. I took a sip of wine and suddenly I didn't feel so good anymore. I raced to the bathroom, and at the stroke of midnight I was vomiting. Copiously.

I felt a little better today, but tonight the stomach cramps hit, and I had all that to deal with. Either sweet rose sparkling wine is not my friend, or I have some sort of bug.

Well, after this beginning, maybe the rest of 2012 will be fabulous. Fingers crossed.

As the year draws to a close

And here we are at the end of the year -- how did that happen? I was sure I had a few more days to work with. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, time to write my resolutions, fill out my new calendars, help drink the bottle of Korbel Sweet Rose that's in the fridge... yes, I know, that sounds awful, but listen to this review: "Even if you don’t like sweet sparkling wine, it will be hard to turn down another glass of this beauty. It’s so clean and delicious, with a raspberry sorbet and vanilla richness." Since I do like sweet sparkling wine, I'm planning to enjoy it thoroughly. Maybe we'll get Chinese takeout to go with it. Boos will probably want to drink some too, since it's pink, but we will say NO.

All that sounds lovely. But then the next day it will be January. January 29th we have to be out of this house. Four weeks and change. And there is NOTHING out there (in Ridgecrest) worth renting. A month ago, even two weeks ago, there were all sorts of houses available, but now they are all gone. Maybe on January 13th the perfect house will be listed, but right now I'm feeling very gloomy.

Then there's the other problem, which is that Rocket Boy is suddenly getting interviews with organizations in Colorado. One yesterday and another next week. What if the interview on January 6th goes well? What if they offer him the job on January 19th? Do I wait until then to do anything about a new house? What if they call on January 23rd and say sorry, we decided to go with another candidate, and suddenly I have to find a house in Ridgecrest to move into in 6 days? What if they call on January 23rd and offer him the job, and suddenly I have to find a house in Colorado Springs to move into in 6 days? What if we sign a 1-year lease for a new house in Ridgecrest at $1500/month and two weeks later Rocket Boy gets an offer for a great job in Colorado?

OK, that is quite enough of that for one night. Time to return to happy thoughts about new beginnings and sweet sparkling wine.

I should have bought a case.

December

It just started raining, finally, after threatening all day (it's about 4 pm). Nice to get the moisture, but gosh it's gloomy out there. Our outside thermometer says 44 degrees. I think I'm going to wear my winter coat to pick up the twins!

I didn't get much done today, just housework -- which I don't think of as work, just as stuff that gets in my way. Perhaps that is the wrong attitude. Three loads of laundry, grocery shopping, made a big pot of soup, clipped coupons, and cleaned up the kitchen. No writing.

Christmas is rolling right along here in Ridgecrest, and we are participating. Even though we are facing eviction, we put up our tree. Here's Rocket Boy assembling it.

The tree is about 40 years old, I think, and we have to be very careful with it because the branches break easily. I wish we could have a "real" tree, but RB doesn't like to kill things, so having an old family heirloom fake tree seems like the next best thing.

We attended the annual Ridgecrest Christmas parade on Saturday. The parade started at 10 am, so at 9:50 we left our house and drove 2 miles to the corner of Ridgecrest Blvd and Norma St, where we found parking in a big vacant lot. Walked across the street and found a nice place to stand in front of the water building. A few minutes later we saw the first parade entry turn the corner onto Norma, and maybe 10 minutes later the parade was in front of us. Can't beat small town parades, that's for sure.

Many of the people in the parade hand out candy to the spectators, and the boos really cleaned up. They sat themselves down on the curb and munched. Rocket Boy said, "We should have brought a garbage bag!" as I stuffed wrapper after wrapper into my pocket.

The holiday parties are happening -- one last week and two this week, plus we have a special treat coming up next weekend. Then there's one more week at home and we're off to the Bay Area for our usual Christmas trip. I finally ordered our cards last night, so those will arrive in a few days and we'll need to start writing them. But yeah, it'll all get done.

Gosh, I just can't seem to get in the spirit, though. The holidays don't feel stressful in and of themselves this year -- I'm marching along, getting done what needs to be done, and enjoying the activities and (sigh) seasonal goodies. The stress I feel is all about wondering where we're going to live a month or two from now, what decision should we make. Should we stay longer in Ridgecrest? sign a new lease? Move somewhere else no matter where? Is it best to go back to Colorado or should we try to stay near family? So hard to know. I wish things could be just a little more settled.

Fun with Facebook

No, I haven't joined Facebook, don't get excited. I'm still holding fast to my refusal to get involved. I just think it's so dumb! I realize that Facebook and Twitter have been used to bring the world together, helped facilitate the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street and all that, and that's wonderful, but Facebook is still really really dumb and I don't want to do it. Someday if I ever publish anything for real I'm going to HAVE to go on Facebook, because that's what authors do these days, and that's reason enough just to keep all my manuscripts locked in a drawer forevermore.

Rocket Boy feels the same way I do about FB, with one exception: he's on it. He almost never checks in, maybe every 3 months or so, so when he does, it's a marathon session, all that catching up to do. He puzzles over the "friend" requests -- "Who is so-and-so?" -- but accepts them all dutifully. Since he never posts anything on FB, no one gets anything out of being his friend.

Rocket Boy has a second cousin in Germany with whom he's very close, Andreas, and Andreas has two children, now young adults really -- I think they're 21 and 15. And of course they're both on Facebook. So Rocket Boy likes to check in on them, since he's sort of their uncle. (They're the twins' 3rd cousins -- isn't that an odd thought?)

Tonight he found a posting from Julia, the 15-year-old (who was a flower girl at our wedding, when she was 6), and after laboriously translating her slangy, abbreviated German, decided that she was getting something pierced! And whatever it was, her mother was not allowing her to "stretch" it, and Julia was angry about that. We worried for a while about what body part she might be putting a hole in (remember, this is our FLOWER GIRL we're talking about), but then RB found a response post from a friend of hers asking "Wie ist das Ohr?" so fortunately it was her ear. Rocket Boy posted a message in response, something brilliant like "Are you getting something pierced?" (in German, so who knows whether that's what it really says) and we had a good laugh over how that's going to go over with Julia, not to mention her friends. Like a lead balloon.

Then RB checked in with Julia's older brother Sebastian, with whom he has more of a relationship (i.e., they email each other twice a year). On Sebastian's Wall (am I using the terms right? I'm so out of it), he had posted that he had visited, mm, something called a Kinky Discotheque? We were quite shocked -- I know, he's an adult, but the last time we saw him he was 12 or 13. And then, here's the kicker, it said "3 people Like this." Oh stupid Facebook. Then something popped up, some young woman had just become Sebastian's friend and the box seemed to be indicating that Rocket Boy might want to be her friend too, because they had a mutual friend in Sebastian. "Should I click on it?" Rocket Boy asked me. "Ha ha ha," I replied politely.

Rocket Boy said to me, didn't you do things like that when you were their age? And I said, of course I did, but I didn't POST vivid descriptions of what I did in places where my UNCLES could read them! Keep in mind that both Julia and Sebastian ASKED Rocket Boy to be their friend. Or should that be Friend?

We figure after that dumb message to Julia, she's going to unFriend him.

I'm still not signing up.

I've been reading lately

That's the title of a blog I follow, actually my favorite blog that I follow, though I'd be the first to admit that I don't follow a LOT of blogs. Mostly just a few friends' blogs and a couple of others. But this one I love: http://ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.com/ I think of Levi, the blogger, as sort of like me, except much smarter and much more literate, and with NO TODDLER TWINS. He even refers to his significant other as "rocketlass." I agree with practically everything Levi says about books I've read, and thus I use him for recommendations, confident that much of what he likes, I'll like too.

Anyway, for the past few days I've been reading something that Levi didn't recommend, Stephen King's On Writing (though Levi does enjoy Stephen King's novels). I've been wanting to read this for a while, but didn't want to pay full price for it -- I figure Stephen King has PLENTY of money and doesn't need mine too. Finally last week I found it at Red Rock Books, so I've been dipping into it ever since.

It has some good stuff, some not so good. I get so tired of people telling other people that they shouldn't use the passive voice. As one of my grad school professors used to say, English NEEDS the passive. It has a purpose, otherwise it wouldn't be part of the language. You use the passive when the patient is more important than the agent. In the sentence, "Mary was bitten by a black widow spider," Mary is more important to us than the spider, whose name we don't know, who probably didn't even HAVE a name. Just a dumb spider. The sentence is NOT any better when written "A black widow spider, who shall remain nameless, bit Mary." It's just not. OK, anyway...

I was more taken with his recommendations on work schedules. King says, "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." By "a lot" he means four to six hours a day, every day. He goes on to describe his own schedule: writing in the morning, naps and letters in the afternoon, reading and family in the evening.

No mention of when you're supposed to do the laundry. Or make dinner. Or wipe bottoms and clean potties. His kids are grown, of course, but I kind of wonder whether maybe Tabitha didn't do most of the work when they were little.

I've been doing pretty well with my own schedule recently, spending 2 hours 4 days a week on my writing, and maybe an hour in the evenings on my reading. More than that, and we'd have to eat out every night.

Someday when I'm a millionaire we can hire a cook and a laundress. (The kids'll be grown by then, so no need for a nanny.) Until then, I think I'm doing OK.

Shopping in Ridgecrest

Last Saturday we decided to go shoe-shopping. Baby B owns two pairs of shoes that he can fit into (not counting sandals, for which it has grown too cold), but one pair is getting AWFULLY small and the other pair (purchased at Target a few months ago) already has a hole in the sole of one shoe, so he won't wear them. So I said, we MUST buy him shoes, which means we need to go to Palmdale.

Rocket Boy said, how about if we buy them in Ridgcrest? Where in Ridgecrest, I said, I won't buy shoes at Wal-Mart or K-Mart. Rocket Boy suggested Corny's Shoes, which has been here since the beginning of time. I've heard many people say their parents always bought them shoes at Corny's.

Significantly, I've never heard anyone say they bought their OWN kids shoes at Corny's. When we four walked into the store, on China Lake Boulevard, the first thing I noticed was that there were no small shoes on display. We walked all around the small store -- no small shoes. Rocket Boy asked the man at the counter whether he carried kids' shoes and without looking up the man said no, he did a long time ago, but not now.

So we all got back in the car and headed in the direction of Palmdale. But as we were driving, I said, what about that sporting goods store, Big 5? Maybe they would have kids' shoes, and Rocket Boy agreed that that was a good idea. So I turned the car around and we drove there.

We all got out of the car and went into Big 5. We walked to the back wall, where the shoes are, and we walked all along the wall, looking at all the shoes: women's shoes, men's shoes... and no kids' shoes. Rocket Boy asked a salesperson and she said no, sorry, no kids' shoes. Rocket Boy asked her whether there were any stores in town that carry kids' shoes and she said Wal-Mart and K-Mart.

I felt a rage bubbling up in me, and I said, I won't buy my kids shoes at Wal-Mart or K-Mart. I don't know why I was so angry. Ridgecrest is a small town in the middle of nowhere. It has limitations. But I think actually I was angry at all the people who live here and buy their children shoes at Wal-Mart and K-Mart, as if there were nothing wrong with it.

The salesperson looked unhappy, but then she said that there was another place in town that sold kids' shoes: Kool Threadz. You're kidding, I said. I thought that was a skateboard store. No, she said, they have nice shoes. Kind of pricey, but nice.

So we went to Kool Threadz, which IS a skateboard store, on Balsam Street in downtown Ridgecrest, but oddly enough they had some kids' shoes. Little baby Vans, which are of course skateboard shoes. Fussy Baby B tried on a pair and didn't like them. He tried on another pair and didn't like them. That should have been our signal to go.

But I couldn't. I couldn't walk out of the only store in Ridgecrest that sells kids' shoes other than Wal-Mart and K-Mart without buying any shoes. So I bought Baby B a pair of cute black and white Vans for about $25. Which he won't even try on again.

Today I offered them to Baby A instead, but he won't try them on because they belong to Baby B.

Eventually I'll give them to the Salvation Army.

In the afternoon we went to a salon on Ridgecrest Boulevard and all got haircuts (except Rocket Boy, who got his hair cut there a few weeks ago). Very nice haircuts, I might add.

And maybe next weekend we'll drive 90 miles to Palmdale and buy shoes.

The other shoe

So, as many of you know, the other shoe did drop, earlier this week. On Halloween, to be exact. I wonder how many people had eviction notices taped to their front doors on Halloween this year. With the help of my wonderful attorney niece, we are attempting to fight the eviction (by convincing the bank's attorneys that we are legal renters of this house, in which case we get 90 more days). Sometimes I think this will work, sometimes I think it won't.

I keep reminding myself that we're really not in bad shape here, it's not like losing a house you own (sort of) to foreclosure. But I'm still pretty stressed.

This is what happens when you leave pomegranates on the tree for one day too long: they POP, and then these odd, slow-moving bugs climb into them. This is what happens in Ridgecrest in the fall.

We also lost a tortoise this week -- she seems to have wandered away. I feel that this is almost entirely the fault of DEUTSCHE BANK, because if we could have left her in her pen to hibernate normally this wouldn't have happened. Of course, I suppose it's really the fault of our former landlord, for not paying the mortgage, or maybe it's even our fault for not moving out as soon as we knew we were going to have to. Hmm.

Anyway, she's gone. We've put "Lost Tortoise" signs up around the neighborhood, but no one in the tortoise club seems too concerned -- apparently this happens a lot with desert tortoises. It happened with both of my family's desert tortoises when I was growing up. They just wander away -- into someone else's yard or maybe back into the wild. The wild is just about a block away from our house, so maybe that's where she is.

I think we're going to let the other tortoise go to someone else's house where she can burrow down for the winter, rather than risk losing her too.

Also there was an earthquake this week, about half a mile from Rocket Boy's office.

Despite the eviction notice, Halloween was nice. Here's a photo of the boos trick-or-treating:

At each house I would say to them "Remember to say trick-or-treat" and they would say, obediently, "Trick-or-treat!" -- except that the door wasn't open yet. When the door opened, they would stand there staring at the person holding a bag of candy. After they got their candy, I would hiss at them, "Say thank you! Say thank you! Say thank you!" but mostly they didn't. It was very sweet.

And now it is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I'm trying to find the oomph to write another novel. Not so easy -- I'm a little lacking in oomph.

Someday this will all be over.

Waiting for the other shoe

So it's happened, our house is sold. Our poor foreclosed-upon rental house was sold at auction on Monday (postponed from Friday) -- to the bank that held the loan, which is what my attorney-niece told me would probably happen.

So now we wait for the other shoe to drop, that shoe being our eviction notice. It is possible that the shoe will be some other form of contact, such as a letter from the bank demanding that we start paying it rent. We'd love that shoe! We'd love to go back to paying rent! But it probably won't be that shoe. It will probably be the eviction notice shoe, at which point we will have 90 days until we have to move out. The bank may argue that the 90 days began on the day of sale, which would mean we'd have to be out in mid-January. I don't know. We'll just have to see.

The immediate issue is what to do about the tortoises, who are just about ready to hibernate. We don't want them to go deep down in their burrows and go to sleep, since they will not want to come up again in mid-January when we might move.

Instead, we have banished them from their pens and are letting them roam around the yard all day. This is OK because it's not too hot during the day and not too cold at night. During the day they find shady spots to rest in. At night they burrow down in a pile of pine needles, under a tumbleweed, in a corner of the yard. When it gets really cold at night, we will put them in boxes, probably in the garage.

OUR ALTERNATIVES

As I see it, we have five alternatives, not all of which are under our control. I suppose that means they aren't true alternatives.

1. Move to wherever Rocket Boy gets a new job (not under our control, since as yet Rocket Boy does not have a new job).

2. Move back to Boulder and live off the income from our rental houses while we search for work. It would be vastly cheaper for us to live in our own house than to rent a house anywhere else. There's the health insurance problem though.

3. Stay in this house (not under our control, depends on what the bank and any future owners want to do).

4. Rent another house in Ridgecrest. Desperately annoying to have to sign a new 12-month lease, especially if Rocket Boy suddenly got a job offer elsewhere.

5. Buy a house in Ridgecrest. Prices are so low right now that we could end up with a mortgage payment lower than our rent. Then, whenever Rocket Boy got another job somewhere else, we could rent out the house for more than the mortgage payment. But it would mean yet another house to pay insurance and property taxes on. Plus we'd probably need to sell a house to get enough money for a good down payment, and it would take a while to sell a house, especially since they have tenants living in them.

Waiting, waiting.... waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Busy October

We are deep into October, and the number of local activities available to enjoy is mounting. This past week was quite overwhelming for us, for personal reasons -- maybe I'll blog about that later and maybe I won't. But when the weekend comes, we are always ready to go out and about, partly because it's so difficult to stay home with the boys.

Isn't that sad? Not at all how I had envisioned parenthood. Here they are three and a half, still running roughshod over us. This morning they got into mischief before we dragged ourselves out of bed. When Rocket Boy got up (I have a cold, so was allowed to sleep in a little), he discovered that they had spilled yogurt all over the family room -- on the tinker toys, on the carpet. Why? Why? Why? They really do know better than that.

They just have so much energy, and when you put them together, that energy grows exponentially and they do crazy stupid things.

Anyway, so on the weekends we go out and about.

This weekend we had several activities to choose from. Saturday we decided to go to the Centennial of Naval Aviation Festival at Armitage Airfield at China Lake. This free event would have been a lot of fun, except that it was held in Ridgecrest on a very hot day. No, it wasn't 116, but it was 96. Fortunately, many of the displays and stuff for kids were in or near the gigantic airplane hangar:

But unfortunately, some of the best stuff was outside:

I don't think this picture conveys how hot it was. There was a plane that you could climb into and sit in the cockpit, and Baby A wanted to do that. So we waited in line for, oh, an HOUR, in the sun. I know, it's a dry heat, and there was even a bit of cloud cover (but not over the sun). But after a few hours we were all just a wreck. People were not meant to live in places like this. Yet we do, we do.

Today Rocket Boy and I were both longing for something different, so we went to Tehachapi, which is in the mountains (20 degrees cooler) and has apple orchards. Here we are at Pulford's Appletree Orchard, where we bought a peck of apples (all different varieties), and the little bottle of apple cider that Baby A is holding. It's not Michigan -- I have VERY fond memories of going to apple orchards near Ann Arbor -- but it was still fun.

I'm kind of on an apple kick right now. Fruit is free on Weight Watchers, remember, and an apple a day helps keep the digestive tract healthy. Last night I found a blog all about apples: http://adamapples.blogspot.com. Though he's in Massachusetts and they seem to have somewhat different apples there. Today we bought an apple that he hasn't reviewed yet -- Gold Blush. Looking forward to trying it!

After the apple orchard, we headed home, but since it was only about 3 pm, we decided to stop in California City, where they were having a Renaissance Festival.

I don't know, I guess I've never been a big fan of this kind of thing. Dressing up in Renaissance costumes, going around saying "Prithee" and "Sirrah" -- it just kind of leaves me cold. Except in California City, where it was in the 90s. Ha ha.

Honestly, I was expecting it to be a really pathetic fair, and it wasn't. It looked very nice. Lots of vendor booths, nonstop "entertainment," food and drink. We arrived about 90 minutes before it ended -- it had started Saturday morning -- so there weren't many spectators left and the whole thing was kind of winding down. But it looked as though it had been a very successful fair, or should I say faire.

I don't know, a Renaissance Festival in the middle of the Mojave Desert -- it just seemed weird to me.

But I was tired. We played on the jungle gym for an hour, watched some belly dancing performed by women whose bellies I would rather not have seen, but oh well, and then left before "Whack a Knight" began, because Baby A said he did not want to see any whacking.

I'm so glad tomorrow is Monday.

RIP Steve Jobs

I've been thinking about Steve Jobs all week, ever since his death was announced. The media coverage has been amazing -- even the Ridgecrest paper printed a big article about him. A day or two after he died I was reading articles and blogs (assembled courtesy of Google News), and people kept theorizing about WHY everyone was so upset about his death, as if it were surprising and puzzling.

At first this annoyed me. If I want to feel sad about someone's, anyone's, death, surely I have that right.

But finally I conceded that it is an interesting question. There probably isn't another CEO on the face of the earth who so many people would be so sad to lose. Most celebrity deaths cause me only a moment's pang. And I don't feel sad about Steve Jobs because he created my favorite toys. I don't own an iPod (though someday I'll break down and buy one), an iPhone, or an iPad (though I'd like to). I did once have a Mac, but no longer.

It is scary, though, to have lost one of the leaders of modern technology. I sometimes worry about where we're going with "all these computers" (I'm quoting the former director of my former workplace) and apparently somewhere in the back of my mind I was counting on Steve Jobs to help lead us safely through these woods. Now it's up to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the guys who run Google. I'm not reassured.

I have more personal reasons for feeling sad too. I've been able to identify a couple of them.

First reason: Steve Jobs lived in a house in Palo Alto that was walking distance from my mother's house (though in a much nicer neighborhood). His house was important to my family because before he bought it, it was owned by the family who owned the Golden Retriever who -- I think this is right -- sired our Golden Retriever's puppies back in 1971 or so. I hope I've got that right. The dog's name was Jorn, and I *think* he was the father of Penny's puppies. Either that or he was Penny's father. Gad, I hate my sieve-like memory! Anyway, he was a nice male Golden Retriever and he lived in Steve Jobs' house with his family before it was Steve Jobs' house. And for years, every time I walked or drove by that house with my mother or a sister, one of us would comment that it was Jorn's house. Then Steve Jobs bought the house -- when, I don't know, in the 1980s? 1990s? -- and after that, every time I walked or drove by it with my mother or a sister, one of us would comment that it was Steve Jobs' house, but it used to be Jorn's house.

I remember that Steve Jobs bought the house next door to his, tore it down, and planted the lot with fruit trees and cosmos. Ah, the things you can do when you're rich. One article I read referred to his "modest" home in Palo Alto, obviously COMPLETELY missing the point about what it means to live in Palo Alto. Why would you want a colossal brand-new mansion in a fabulously exclusive gated community if you could live in a delightful old house in Palo Alto, enjoy the walkable streets and the excellent schools and libraries -- and knock down the house next door to make your yard bigger?

So anyway, remembering Steve Jobs' house is all about remembering my mother, and all the walks we took together in Palo Alto. Losing him, I somehow lose her just a little bit more.

Second reason: From 1983 to 1988, after graduating from college, I worked as a typesetter in Palo Alto for a young woman (10 years my senior) named Lauren Langford. One story that keeps being told is the one about how Steve Jobs studied calligraphy at Reed and that's why the Macintosh had such beautiful fonts, at a time when other computers were basically doing dot matrix. Well, I remember when the Mac came out and graphic designers started doing type with it. We at Langford Typesetting were HORRIFIED by how ugly Macintosh type was. We had an enormous typesetting machine that printed out gorgeous type. We were snobs and proud of it.

Lauren died young too -- she was 50. She fought her cancer (first breast, then ovarian) almost till the end, but in the end she went peacefully, dying at home surrounded by friends and loved ones. When I read about Steve Jobs dying peacefully at home, I remembered Lauren. That's what it all comes down to, doesn't it? You fight and fight, but at the end you finally just let go.

There are more connections I could make. All the people I know who went to Reed College. All the people I knew who worked at Apple in the old days. Heck, anyone who lived in the Bay Area at any time over the past 35 years can probably connect their lives with Steve Jobs' life.

And at the end of the day, the fact is, he was so young, with a young family. I'm sad for them all. Also very thankful that I get to go on, live another day in Ridgecrest.