Blog Trek

Preparing for Christmas and the Winter Weather

I awakened this morning to find everything white--frost covering buildings, trees, shrubs and grass while a beautiful white mist blanketed the neighborhood.  It almost looked like snow, and very much reminded me that I'm not in So Cal anymore, Todo (or Taffy, in my case.)

By late morning, the sun was out and I made sure I put on all the vent covers outside, raked Taffy's excavations in the flower beds level and pruned the flowers off some bush growing outside my dining room window that has been attracting flies more than bees--yuk!  I see another project in my future--cutting the whole thing down next spring and replacing it with something that won't make my patio a place I don't want to sit and have lunch on under any circumstances.  By the time I had finished my projects, Taffy had gone behind me and dug another big hole at the side of the house.  I took cinder blocks that were about to be discarded and used them to deter her from returning to the scene of the crime.  What is it with dogs and digging up the flower beds?

My next project involved painting the trim in the spare bedroom.  Things are finally shaping up in there, but everything needs two coats, plus I had to use a sealant on all the trim, which was painted the same baby pink as the walls and still shows through in places this evening.  At this rate, it will take me the better part of 2 months to complete both bedrooms, since I have the same issues in my own bedroom, except it's painted a dingy celery green.

After that, I decided enough time had been devoted to the house and I went out.  Pier One was a welcome sight--all glittery and filled with red, green, silver and gold.  I found a suitable secret santa gift for the office party tomorrow and then headed for the new Sears Outlet, where I managed to do some damage in the exercise equipment and bought my own Christmas gifts--a bicycle and a treadmill at killer prices that made them impossible to pass up.  Since Taffy has become less willing to take long hikes as she ages, I have to find other ways to get my exercise in, particularly with the winter obviously here.

Now I have to complete the Christmas shopping for the family.  The traffic was slow moving and plentiful today, and I know it will only get worse the closer we get to the 25th.  I made a vow to myself that I'm going to start putting gifts away much earlier in 2010, so I don't have to join the mad Christmas shopping rush next year. 

Wildlife and Domesticated Unusuals in Monrovia

Monrovia is a pet-friendly place, which is a good thing.  Walking my dog on Main Street, I join several other "regulars," including at least one woman with a cat.  Whether there are at least 2 women is debatable, but there is one who pushes a cat in a stroller (the cat appears to really like this method of transport and stands tall in the saddle, so to speak, watching everything around it intently,) and another with a cat on a leash or standing on her shoulders, tail lashing.  Then there is the man who takes his pet bird with him when he eats breakfast in a sidewalk cafe on weekends. 

My grandchildren came to visit with my daughter a couple of Saturdays ago.  We returned to find a Macaw sitting on the back of a chair in the courtyard of the apartment complex.  He looked very much at home, no owner in sight.  My daughter decided that he should remain where he was and my grandchildren shouldn't be told where to find him, since neither of us was sure he was a friendly bird or one prone to use his beak for more than giving himself an occasional manicure or cracking nuts.  I since found he has a permanent home on the second floor of the apartments, where he has a cage and a swing.  I guess he decided to broaden his aspects the day we saw him hanging out on the other side of the building.

I really wonder what I'm going to see next around here.  Hopefully not anything more exotic than the Macaw, but if I saw a tiger under a cafe table on Main Street on a weekend, I wouldn't be at all surprised.  Terrified, maybe.  Intrigued, most definitely.  But not surprised.

Getting Cross in the Crosswalk

I always wonder why pedestrian crossings are set to send people walking across streets while cars are trying to turn onto them.  This goes for side streets and major thoroughfares.   Not only does it place the pedestrians in danger, but it also hangs up traffic and makes for frustration, both for the cars waiting to turn and the oncoming vehicles once the light turns and there are still at least 2 cars still stuck in the middle of the intersection.

I've always felt that there's an element of denial in the U.S. versus anywhere else I've lived: people never move as fast as vehicles, and quite frequently the people walking are either elderly, have some sort of disability or are women pushing strollers and/or trying to hurry small kids up.  None of these people moves at more than a snail's pace, resulting in the lights changing before any of the aformentioned pedestrians is anywhere near the other sidewalk.

Olde Towne Pasadena finally smartened up and allowed pedestrians to cross on a diagonal, which does move a mass of humanity in the right direction without having to go through 2 crosswalks.  This method always worked great in Boston.

Not everything on the West Coast is better, folks. 

Canadian Customs and Postal Authorities Make Life Difficult

I believe the Canadian mail service might be the worst in the Western Hemisphere. 

I sent bubble mailers off to my aunt with a pair of pants in each of them, plus another with 2 shirts inside.  The shirts made it, but the pants came back with "moved from this address" checked on them.

This isn't the first time I've sent clothes and they have come back.  It takes 6 weeks for them to get to their destination and 6 weeks to come back.  Minimum.  I had to return an entire fall wardrobe to Macy's because the box came back.  My aunt gets slips that tell her she has to go to the local post office and give them something ridiculous, like $3.50 to pay customs charges.  Since she's in a nursing home and has some dementia, neither my uncle nor I hear about this, or if we do, it's some nonsense that we can't figure out, including supposed letters from the government.  So, back come the packages.

When I send them, I complete customs forms and pay the postage all the way to my aunt's address.  I now send one item of clothing at a time, and mark all the packages as gifts, which they are.  I can't get up there to buy her clothes, so they have to be sent from here.  They are going individually, so nothing I send is worth more than $10 to $30.  And yet, they get stopped and a charge is levied.

You would think I'm trying to defraud the Canadian government.

Many years ago, when we lived in Iowa, I bought a fall weight coat.  It was leatherette, because I couldn't afford the price of leather, but liked the look.  It had a lining and a belt.  I took it up to Canada on a trip.  It wasn't new, but it wasn't well-worn, either.  I believe the month was October.

When I came home, the customs officer stopped me.  He asked me to take off my coat.  Low and behold, it had a "Made In Canada" label.  He wanted me to produce a receipt.  Of course, I didn't have one.  I had to argue with him and tell him what it cost in the Des Moines, Iowa store and how long I'd had it.  I had to open my suitcase and show him the picture book I had purchased for my daughter while visiting my relatives in Mississauga.  He took everything out of my suitcase and checked all my other clothing to see if I was exporting Canadian goods, evidently. 

I was 25 years old.  I had nothing but jeans and cheap shirts in my suitcase, well worn tennis shoes on my feet and a well-used suitcase.  He was making me late for my flight, and I had already gone to the wrong terminal, because the travel agent booked me out on one air carrier and sent me home on another, for some unknown reason, and I hadn't noticed until I was in line.  Therefore, I was out of breath and almost running by the time I had finished at the airline desk and hit customs.  He wanted to know why I was nervous, and I told him because he was making me miss my flight.  He then seemed to come down from whatever throne he was inhabiting and he allowed me to jam everything back in my case and take off, with my coat, at a dead run for the gate.  I was the last person on the plane and the flight attendant closed the door while I was making my way to my seat.  I've never forgotten that horrible experience.  I even almost took the wrong plane, because no airline employees were at the gate, and there were 2 choices that weren't clearly marked--Buffalo, NY and Des Moines, IA.  I had to ask the flight attendant if I was on the correct plane!

It seems some things still haven't changed in regard to Our Neighbor To The North's Customs Agents.  They still look for punishable offenses in all the wrong places, such as a pair of $20 pants going to a 92 year old woman in a nursing home. 

Is Canada really that hard up for revenue? 

Much Ado About Nothing Much

We're having a mid-August heatwave.  100 degrees or more of So Cal sunshine for the last couple of days and supposedly into the weekend.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is summer, after all.  When it gets this hot, though, I wish I lived closer to the beach again.  The temperatures in Fountain Valley were a lot lower and I could always go to Huntington Beach and cool off with my feet in the Pacific.  I like living close to the Foothills a lot when I get to drive around and see them towering over the area, and I like the hilly terrain, but it certainly gets a lot hotter up here, too.

On days like this, I have to run the noisy window a/cs and deal with all the temperatures as I run in and out of homes and my car.  By the time I get home, I'm usually like a wet dishrag, but because my morning patients cancelled, I was able to walk the dog early and get some other pressing things taken care of that were nagging at me.  Now I have the evening to do some blogging and hit those revisions again.

Next month I'll be in Boston and Maine for 4 full days.  Travel will take a big bite out of the other 2 days, but I plan to catch up on some reading.  I still have 2 mysteries I bought in the spring and haven't been able to finish.  Maine will be a research trip for the 3rd book of "Rose Tattoo's" series.  Although I'm pretty familiar with the state, I need to see what has changed over the last few years since I was able to go up there.  I'm looking forward to the calm and serenity, as well as the much cooler temperatures.

Mixing vacations and research has always worked very well for me, and I don't doubt it will again this time.  I can almost see the leaves turning as I'm writing this, and a cool snap to the air won't hurt anything, either.  I'll be ready to come back and write the partial, which has been cooking on a back burner for the last couple of months.

Thoughts on Many Subjects

I've recovered from my less-than-graceful swan dive onto the concrete.  Last Saturday I felt like I had been in a car wreck, but Sunday I started to turn the corner in the right direction.

The plumber never called and never turned up.  What is it with tradespeople that they can't pick up a phone and say "Sorry, I overbooked myself?"  Yesterday my landlord sent someone else.  He tried to trample my succulent garden, but after that faux pas, he removed and capped the source of flooding in my kitchen and showed me how to turn the water off at the meter beside the street.  I have to develop the strength of an Amazon to do it, but then, what are pliers for?

I turned on the TV recently in time to hear John Edwards telling everyone he was more able to answer women's needs than Hillary Clinton, who is...dare I say it...a woman?!  Sorry, but although John E can have empathy with women, and indeed can get input from Elizabeth, his wife, I absolutely cannot agree that he would be more able to be a woman than a woman would be.  And that goes along with "...if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

And finally, in this stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness, I am having more trouble concocting a blurb for "All That Glitters" than I had in writing the entire book and its synopsis combined.  Trying to get the correct level of tongue in cheek humor for the paragraph or two is proving to be a mind-bender.  I've written 3 versions already, but while they're all tantalizing to mystery enthusiasts and romance readers, they just don't hit the proverbial nail on the head.

However, I did get a great idea for "Rose Tattoo's" blurb.  Don't need it right now, but since my muse is currently being defective, I wrote down what I was given--quick.

Mulling Things Over in The Modern World

I thought I was really mellowing out until someone dropped a bombshell behind me during the last week, and without notice.  Then I found just how fragile I still was, after getting overloaded with responsibility last year, and with the frustrations of life dealing with my extended family.  I reacted like a bottle rocket, and I'm still not sure whether I regret that or not.  I felt like The Dixie Chicks singing about feelings of not wanting to say "sorry."

As the week progressed, I couldn't say my feelings became any more muted--no, I was still pretty much riled up, and I also still don't know what I'm going to do to resolve the issue.  Perhaps saying and doing nothing will be the answer, or perhaps I am going to have to make a stand, even when I don't feel that's justified.  Sometimes, people just paint you into a corner and you have to get out of it, whether you want to or not.  If I refuse to speak up about these issues, then I may find myself muzzled by my silence, which may be misinterpreted as agreement. 

In this particular case, the overreaction of a couple of people seems to have stirred up a hornets' nest I wasn't even aware existed.  And perhaps it's just a lot of buzz from only a few--it sounds loud, but that's merely the echoing that will go away if left alone. 

Just when did life get so complicated?

Foot Update

I had the pin removed from my toe yesterday.  How anticlimactic--absolutely no pain (thankfully, I might add.)  I had expected the thing to be as painful coming out as it was if I inadvertently knocked it on something, and after seeing it sticking about an inch out of the end of my toe, I was definitely apprehensive about the whole "Let's get that out of your foot" thing. 

I still have to wear my orthopedic fashion-shoe, and I'm still under restrictions, which include not using my toes in any manner whatsoever, but I can now place weight on the ball of my foot as well as my heel.  This will make life easier over the next couple of weeks, although my pending trip to Houston is still going to probably exhaust me--try walking without putting your toes down and with a "peg leg" as my podiatrist aptly calls it.

After I pulled off the suture holding both sides of the wedge together from the removal of bone, I'm thankful things are progressing, however slowly.  Hopefully my other foot will heal faster.  Sometimes just knowing what to expect is half the battle.

The Subtle Art of Staging

I've been neglecting Blog Trek again.  Too many projects; too little time.  And a busy day job on top of the things I really like to do.  I know, I should stop whining and be glad I even have a job, projects, eyesight to actually blog, etc., etc.

Along with the miscellaneous other time-consuming, time-draining or time-wasting projects (depending on personal viewpoints,)  I have been checking out properties on the Internet.  One of these days, I plan to become a homeowner once again, only not in this area.  The prices here are so ridiculous, I'm not even going to give them more than a passing glare. 

What I have noticed from looking at the photos, are that people don't look through the lens any more when taking shots.  I saw a really pretty nice kitchen and dining area, but on the floor were 2 pair of shoes that weren't even placed side by side.  They had been kicked off by someone and just left there.  Another shot (different condo) showed a large cat box right under the breakfast bar.  And bedrooms--don't get me started--old quilts in somber colors that wouldn't make me want to go to bed even if I was the owner, much less a prospective buyer trying to picture him or herself in that room.  More nicknacks on shelves than any person should even think about owning.  Huge bigscreen TVs in tiny living rooms.  Kitchen counters filled with appliances, bottles and jars, plates, etc., etc., etc.  Even cleaned out kitchens with half empty plastic soap bottles, rags and sponges decorating the sinks.  Dreadful curtains that no one would even buy from the Salvation Army.

What are people thinking?  It doesn't take much to stage a property.  Clean it.  Hide the clutter in cupboards, under the sink or box it and take it to storage.  Set out some attractive plants, preferably flowering, in pots.  Buy some new curtains or at least take down the offensive ones before the agent appears with the camera.  Walk through the rooms with a dispassionate eye and think of yourself as a potential buyer.

One illusion is that people will imagine their own furniture in the home.  Not so.  Very few people have the vivid imaginations of people in the Arts.  They can't envision anything but what's already in the rooms, and when the furniture looks like it came from a thrift store, when shoes are thrown all over the floor, when a bed is dragged together and is the focal point of the room, well, no wonder some of these places have their prices reduced.

Another of my useless information nuggets

I learned a couple of things today that could be totally useless information for 90% of the population, but really good for the other 10%:

The easiest way to stop a nosebleed is to give the person an ice cube to suck.

Anyone on more than 2 litres of oxygen should have a humidifier attached to the concentrator to avoid drying out the mucous membranes.

I just know that somewhere, someone is waiting for these nuggets of information.