I feel a little bit like parents must feel if they have raised a particularly difficult child to adulthood and just when they feel the task is about over, the child tells them that everything they have done is wrong, that “you never loved me at all,” and runs away from home without leaving a forwarding address.
Obviously that is an exaggeration, simply because she has not taken as much of my life effort as a child does. But I have spent years understanding that she had young children and not as much time to invest in the relationship, and so naturally most of the effort would be mine. I’m the one who makes phone calls, travels, buys gifts, etc. Then she was a widow with young children, and so of course the effort would be mine, and not hers. During my courtship with my husband, she was the single biggest stress, but I was able to accept that she truly didn’t realize what a brat she was being, and that at least a portion of her bad behavior could be written off as love and concern for me. (At some point, even if you think your 44-year-old sister is making a big mistake, you do accept that it is hers to make. And if you are the only one in her life who thinks she is making a mistake at all, it’s probably best to decide maybe you’re wrong and to desist altogether. But during the whole process I did recognize that marrying a guy I met through the internet, and having a fairly quick–not hasty, but quick–courtship would naturally be potentially alarming to some people, and I made allowances for that.)
But now, just as we are getting to the point where some of her children are grown and the rest are half grown (she only has one pre-teen left, and he will be 12 on his next birthday), that she may be close to having time in her life to reciprocate and occasionally be the initiator, she turns on me and tells me she won’t accept any more phone calls from me until I repent of all my (imagined) sins through the years. It has now been a year since she stopped accepting my phone calls, and the e-mails she has sent in that year have gotten meaner and meaner. In June I sent her a tender, loving, handwritten note about how lovely it is to have a sister, how much we can’t take it for granted since in our male-dominated family we are the only pair of sisters (meaning none of my female cousins or nieces has a sister, nor did my mom), how much I miss her, a lot of things I like about her . . . and she wrote notes in the margin refuting my points and calling me a manipulator so she can mail it back to me. Who “refutes” a love note?
In all of this, my husband keeps saying she has sinned against me greatly, and I keep telling him that clearly she actually believes her accusations, so perhaps she is mentally ill or perhaps this is all because others around her are feeding her garbage about me (what we used to call brainwashing). Don’t get me wrong, I believe her actions are wrong and very harmful, but I’m still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in terms of moral culpability and motive. But I really and truly have done everything I can to love her and her family well through the years (not perfectly, but well), and I have done everything possible to stay engaged now and work through this with her, but that unfruitful effort can no longer be sustained.
But again, I didn’t post any of this for a self-pity party or to cause others to think badly about her. I posted because many on here understand my heart for my sister and her kids, and later my widowed sister and her kids, and would know my grief when for reasons beyond my control she is no longer in my life. I will continue to pray that her heart will be softened toward me–but I suspect that will only happen, if it happens at all, after she has had time to miss me.
The butterflies are common buckeyes. They are a butterfly that comes out in large numbers (a fresh new generation) in the fall, and they overwinter as adults–finding a cozy place to “hibernate” and then coming out in the spring to mate and lay eggs. Butterflies vary in numbers of generations over the course of the year; monarchs have several, and some species have just one. I believe buckeyes have two, meaning that in the spring they will mate and lay eggs, and those offspring will mate and lay eggs in the summer for the second generation of adults.
Winters in Indiana are too cold for this species, though some may survive mild winters or winters here in the southern portion of the state. But mostly they survive winters only further south, but in the summer they travel around looking for food and some of them make it to Indiana. That summer generation then breeds and in fall we have a lot of them–and in fall a lot of other species of butterflies are tattered and worn, so the beautiful new buckeyes are special.
That patch of asters in the header on that particular day had six or eight of these beauties flying around, plus several smaller species of butterflies (sulphurs, several species of skippers, cabbage whites, and pearl crescents) and several bees. In all the patch is twelve or fifteen feet wide and five or six feet deep, and it was a great place to find butterflies.
It seems to me that hurting people will often hurt those who love them most. I suppose they are a safe target. It did not make you stop loving her. That’s important.
That common buckeye has all the right colors for fall. It is gorgeous. God is so masterful in His creations!
Cheryl, I am feeling empathy of a sort for you because of the shock I got from my friend. And I know that ladies of a certain age can seem to go off the deep end if they are already fragile emotionally or mentally. As a former pastor’s wife told me based on her experience, “Menopause and teenagers don’t mix well.”
For that reason, and also from what I am experiencing with my friend, try to “take it with a grain of salt,” and be glad to recognize that you did nothing wrong, and remember since we live in a fallen world where minds and bodies have trouble working properly that this is a short time to suffer and eternity is longer than we can think where you can be with her in her right mind. Thank God that Jesus took all sins, recognized and unrecognized, to the cross.
We’ve passed a pleasant afternoon and evening with that rare commodity electricity.
The kids even got a full day in school, though P,G,& E cut power 45 minutes earlier than announced.
Then the winds blew up and have been building all night.
A fire broke out in the Macayama Mountains, about 20 miles north, northwest of here, at The Geyers— the thermal electrical plant. It’s has been growing, up contained, through relatively open grasslands since about 10 last night.
It’s at 10K acres and 0 % contained. Folks are nervous; we may not get power back this afternoon.
More wind expected Sunday/Monday with temperatures in the 90s.
That fire at The Geyers caused a glitch in the grid. Mr. Energy, who was informed at 10 PM, is watching it and wondering.
After dinner we sat in the backyard for awhile and listened to our neighbor on the other side of the back fence play the guitar and sing until well into the dark.
Lovely. Particularly when the neighbors’ generator was off.
Good morning. Thirty degrees and feels like twenty four according to the weather station. Feels that way inside too. Might be time to let the fire burn through the night.
Michelle, that 9:28 post makes me think about one of my summers in Chicago, in an all-black neighborhood that still had porches. One summer evening, the power went off, and soon the whole neighborhood was outside on porches, chatting back and forth. We actually were in the only house without a porch, but we had front steps, and my housemate and I sat on those and were included in the interaction. It was probably only an hour or two that the power was off, but it seemed like a nice little interlude. As I recall it was still light enough to see, but fans and such wouldn’t be running, and it was cooler outside.
Cheryl, I emailed you yesterday, but have been having some trouble with my computer, so am not sure if it went through. My non-business email account has been persnickety ever since I’ve had it (over 8 1/2 years), and sometimes just refuses to deliver things, I’ve learned.
Now I can’t access my downloads or documents, either, for some reason. Anything I click on gives me the message, “Element not found.”
Anyway, you know you have my prayers regarding your sister’s actions and the pain it is causing. I’m very sorry.
For now, the cat still is being weird about eating — I think I’ll have to hit the pet store and try to find a tasty goody to add to her prescription food (which usually is good enough for her but not now). I still haven’t been able to give her the antibiotic and I need to work out of the office in Long Beach today due to staff shortages (beyond the usual), so I’m out of here shortly.
When our power went out here one night a few years ago, we were all out gathered on the sidewalk with flashlights and cell phones 🙂 The advantage of having an iPad or cell phone that has the internal connection (not reliant on wifi) is you can go to the local power company sites to see the outages, how many homes are affected and what the status of bringing it back up is.
I picked up Karen’s medicine from the pharmacy and picked up packages that delivery people leave near the office at her complex. Now I am at the eye doctor office with Art. Seems like old times.
On the Pigskin Picks, I spent two years at Georgia Southern and now a former Sunday school teacher who I worked with has her daughter in college there while her husband is a professor there. I really liked going to school and living in the dorms there. I hope they win!
I was browsing the New Non-fiction shelves at an area library recently and came across this intriguing title: surrounded by idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life), by Thomas Erikson.
While I don’t believe that life is that neat and tidy that we can categorize people into a small number of “types,” there are certainly interesting observations the author has noted that I find fascinating reading. I’m more than 200 pages into the book, and have found several good practical tips for dealing with certain people who are, at times, quite difficult to understand, or who are very different from me.
Some of you with very challenging people in your lives might enjoy reading this book. I am, even though, like I said, it’s not as simple as saying people are Reds, Yellows, Greens, or Blues (or, for most, a combination).
Still an informative and useful read, though, IMO, despite its limitations in perfectly describing a person. (The author admits that himself, as well.)
I see the author has written other “Surrounded by…” books, too, though they aren’t translated into English yet. Surrounded by Psychopaths; and Surrounded by Bad Bosses.
Here’s some information from his website about the three books:
Interesting that the subtitle of the oldest book is listed differently on the above webpage than it is on the library book that I have. The subtitle must have been changed sometime between the book’s first publishing in Sweden in 2014 and the publishing in the US this year. The subtitle I listed in my first paragraph, which is on the English-version book, is more helpful, IMO, than the other: “The Four Types of Human Behavior (or, How to Understand Those Who Cannot Be Understood).”
Some say global warming, others point to poor forest management – along with our Santa Ana winds, more people, more vegetation to burn, drought conditions …
The Santa Anas are strong this month, it’s 95 degrees where I am today.
_____________________________
NYT:
The Santa Ana winds
Each fall, strong gusts known as the Santa Ana winds bring dry air from the Great Basin area of the West into Southern California, said Fengpeng Sun, an assistant professor in the department of geosciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Dr. Sun is a co-author of a 2015 study that suggests that California has two distinct fire seasons. One, which runs from June through September and is driven by a combination of warmer and drier weather, is the Western fire season that most people think of. Those wildfires tend to be more inland, in higher-elevation forests.
But Dr. Sun and his co-authors also identified a second fire season that runs from October through April and is driven by the Santa Ana winds. Those fires tend to spread three times faster and burn closer to urban areas, and they were responsible for 80 percent of the economic losses over two decades beginning in 1990.
It’s not just that the Santa Ana winds dry out vegetation; they also move embers around, spreading fires.
If the fall rains, which usually begin in October, fail to arrive on time, as they did this year, the winds can make already dry conditions even drier. During an average October, Northern California can get more than two inches of rain, according to Derek Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch at the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year, in some places, less than half that amount fell.
“None of these are like, record-breaking, historically dry for October,” Dr. Arndt said. “But they’re all on the dry side of history.”
From the city: “Staff submitted photos to wildlife experts at LA County Agriculture Commissioner Weights and Measures and the Department of Fish & Wildlife. Based upon their expert review, it is believed the feline pictured is a domestic cat”
Also, Chas, expansion of population into the areas wild fires used to run without being such a big deal. When a thousand people now live on what was once a ranch for five people, it is more noticeable when some of their homes burn.
And another thing, homeless sometimes live in brush covered areas. Are those homeless mentally ill, druggies or illegals? Homeless encampments sometimes catch fire.
that makes me think about the first newspaper I ever put out as a 7(?) year old. I hand printed it with made up stories, fake news. I personally delivered several copies (my hand gave out eventually but it was a small paper) to our closest neighbors. My lead story was that a forest fire had broken out. I was thrilled when I saw on the news that night that a fire had, indeed, started in the mountains.
Like a broken clock that’s right twice a day, I managed to nail it.
I think YA may be trying to goad me into an argument about capitalism. On Facebook, I had shared a humorous meme referring to the preemptive power outages in California. She commented that capitalism is “hot garbage”. I ignored that, but – thinking that maybe she didn’t know why PG&E was shutting off the power – gave a brief explanation.
It turns out that she is well aware of what is going on after all, and replied with a longer comment saying that PG&E had neglected the upgrades that could have prevented the sparking, even while reaping huge profits. She also pointed out how the poor and disabled are being hurt by these outages. Those are good points, and I expressed agreement that this has been poorly handled, and that the upgrades should have been made well before now. I stayed away from mentioning capitalism at all.
She came back with a reply that not caring about people who may be in danger from certain decisions is a “major component of capitalism”, and thus is indeed “hot garbage”. To that I briefly replied that greed is a part of human nature, whatever the economic system may be.
YA then replied that capitalism rewards and celebrates greed, and thus to her dying day she will maintain that it is “hot garbage”. It is her thrice flinging that term “not garbage” in there that makes me think she is trying to goad me into arguing with her.
I so want to reply something along the lines of “The millions of people in the world who have been pulled out of poverty would disagree with you.” But I know that that would merely elicit one of her long, rambling screeds about how and why I am wrong.
(I recognize that there are abuses in capitalism, and a lot of greed that can – and does – hurt people. But socialism – which she espouses – is not the answer to that.)
TOP DEFINITION
Hot Garbage
In its most basic definition, labeling something as “hot garbage” is used when just calling it garbage (trash, rubbish, crap, xxxx, something of low quality) is too good for it.
It can be used to describe anything: movies, shows, music, politics, you name it. That’s it.
The governor lit in to the companies — including PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He suggested large corporate owned utilities were incapable of meeting the challenge of an increasingly hot and dry state, where a spark from electric equipment could lead to death and destruction on a massive scale.
“It’s more than just climate change. It’s about the failure of capitalism to address climate change,” Newsom said. “It’s about decades of mismanagement. It’s a story about greed.”
The governor and other state officials on Thursday detailed weeks of back-and-forth talks with the three utilities to set standards for how future power shutoffs should work. …
___________________
No choir rehearsal to accompany today, as the director was at a convention, so I used the extra time to finish the book I mentioned above, and to practice piano a bit longer than usual.
And pieces to practice, I’ve got aplenty! The choir I’m accompanying is performing 14 choruses from Handel’s Messiah in December, so there’s lots to practice there to be on top of my game at rehearsals.
I’m also playing in our traditional Christmas at the Piano show in December, which gives me three more pieces to prepare. (Two of them are not too difficult, though, so I’ve got those pretty close to mastered. The third arrangement I’d picked out I decided I didn’t really care for after I’d been practicing it for a couple of weeks, so I changed that out for a lovely but fairly challenging arrangement of “Still, Still, Still.”)
I thought I would have to miss the piano show, because it was to be the same night as a choir performance for which I am scheduled to play. But it turned out that the original date for the piano show posed a conflict for a lot of the usual players, so it got moved to December 14, which is a night I’m free. Yay! I love being a part of that annual tradition.
And . . . our string quartet will be playing at the Christmas Eve services, so I will have some viola music to practice, too, including some arrangements that I might write. (The worship director asked me about sometime composing string quartet arrangements for some hymns that might not already have such arrangements, and I said I could do that with enough advance notice.) We’re blessed to have those able young violinists and cellist in our congregation, but one of the violinists is a senior in high school who has plans to attend college, so if she moves away, this might be our last year as a complete string quartet.
Actually, as I was typing that, I just remembered that her younger sister, a 7th grader this year, plays violin, and pretty well for a relative beginner. So we do have an up-and-coming musician for our group if her sister does leave. 🙂
All of that is the long-winded way of sending a warm, temporary adios your way, fellow Wanderers. Between extra music and family events (East Coast sister and fam are coming for Thanksgiving, and we may be traveling to babysit Dear Grandbaby some Saturdays after 2nd Arrow returns to work next week), there will be a lot more to do outside of the internet world.
Take care of yourselves, friends, and I’ll “see you” after the big musical season winds down.
Well we all survived our snow storm…this morning we awakened to about 8 inches of the heavy wet stuff on the ground. I drove into town on ice and came home on dry pavement. It is so incredibly beautiful in this forest right now.
DJ, I did wonder what good an edible flashlight would do. Around coyotes, for instance. It looks like a mountain lion to me, too, but truth is cats are a lot alike, there isn’t much detail there, and I can’t tell size at all.
😀 Must be big fish to be able to eat a flashlight. Maybe they turn into those fish that glow?
My husband and I were recently in a parking lot facing a golf course. I asked him if what looked like a coyote was one. I took my phone to try to see it a little closer. I thought I might take a picture, but it was too far away. Then I noticed it was not moving at all. We observed for a bit longer and saw it move. Turned out it was a flag of some kind and the wind had picked up. We got a good laugh out of that. Sometimes things are not what they seem; whether cats on roofs or coyotes on a golf course. 😀
I once, in college, called “kitty-kitty-kitty” to what turned out to be a mop lying on someone’s front porch — a boyfriend and I were walking by at night and you really couldn’t tell. I guess I would have really worried if the mop responded.
Tess ate a Snickers bar tonight. I’d bought it in a very weak moment today at work but I never ate it and brought it home in a bag. Tess managed to find the bag and dragged it off — all while I was feeding my flashlight to the fish next door. Sigh.
Dogs can be allergic to chocolate, but she’ll probably be fine, not a lot of chocolate in those bars — but it could give her some gastro bouts. I think she also ate the wrapper as I’ve only found little bits of that on the floor.
It was the long, heavy tail and overall body shape that made me think it was a mountain lion. But it’s true, there’s not a lot of scale to that picture so it’s hard to compare its size to anything. It looks very big.
Power came on at 5; we left for choir dinner at 5:15.
Insider information suggests the entire town may be shit down at 6 on Saturday. My husband advised me to spend Saturday night near the airport since we have a 7 am flight.
I’m feeling pretty uneasy, have gotten little done— I’m distracted and frazzled— and am looking forward to escaping to Indiana.
While shooting the airplane fire suppression video, I did meet a neighbor and discovered he graduated from UCLA 4 years before I did.
If I’m feeling this way, I can’t imagine how others less prepared are doing, particularly with the doom and gloom promised for Saturday.
The blame can be divided equally: governor/legislature, P, G & E, Public Utility Commission that signed off on everything, and the insurance companies who threatened they would leave the state if P, G & E we’re not found liable for the fires.
Travesty.
The losers are the rate payers and the citizens of California.
It really does feel like chaos and you know who thrives in chaos— particularly deliberate chaos.
DJ, I suspect all that sugar and gooey stuff will be worse for Tess than the chocolate. There isn’t that much of it on a Snickers, and from what I hear it’s really only dark chocolate (particularly baking chocolate) that causes problems for dogs, the littler the dog the worse. If a chihuahua were to eat a whole square of baking chocolate, or a big dog several pounds of chocolate chips, it could be a problem, but not a quarter ounce of milk chocolate.
In fact, I have a book of dog care that was published in England, and in talking about treats that dogs like, it mentions chocolate–with no warning “only in moderation,” “no dark chocolate”–just that it’s a treat they enjoy.
Wandering Views 
Good morning!
Praying for you, Cheryl. What heartache!
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Morning nurse kessler. Welcome to my day.
Good night
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How are this fine morning/evening, Jo?
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Thanks, RKessler.
I feel a little bit like parents must feel if they have raised a particularly difficult child to adulthood and just when they feel the task is about over, the child tells them that everything they have done is wrong, that “you never loved me at all,” and runs away from home without leaving a forwarding address.
Obviously that is an exaggeration, simply because she has not taken as much of my life effort as a child does. But I have spent years understanding that she had young children and not as much time to invest in the relationship, and so naturally most of the effort would be mine. I’m the one who makes phone calls, travels, buys gifts, etc. Then she was a widow with young children, and so of course the effort would be mine, and not hers. During my courtship with my husband, she was the single biggest stress, but I was able to accept that she truly didn’t realize what a brat she was being, and that at least a portion of her bad behavior could be written off as love and concern for me. (At some point, even if you think your 44-year-old sister is making a big mistake, you do accept that it is hers to make. And if you are the only one in her life who thinks she is making a mistake at all, it’s probably best to decide maybe you’re wrong and to desist altogether. But during the whole process I did recognize that marrying a guy I met through the internet, and having a fairly quick–not hasty, but quick–courtship would naturally be potentially alarming to some people, and I made allowances for that.)
But now, just as we are getting to the point where some of her children are grown and the rest are half grown (she only has one pre-teen left, and he will be 12 on his next birthday), that she may be close to having time in her life to reciprocate and occasionally be the initiator, she turns on me and tells me she won’t accept any more phone calls from me until I repent of all my (imagined) sins through the years. It has now been a year since she stopped accepting my phone calls, and the e-mails she has sent in that year have gotten meaner and meaner. In June I sent her a tender, loving, handwritten note about how lovely it is to have a sister, how much we can’t take it for granted since in our male-dominated family we are the only pair of sisters (meaning none of my female cousins or nieces has a sister, nor did my mom), how much I miss her, a lot of things I like about her . . . and she wrote notes in the margin refuting my points and calling me a manipulator so she can mail it back to me. Who “refutes” a love note?
In all of this, my husband keeps saying she has sinned against me greatly, and I keep telling him that clearly she actually believes her accusations, so perhaps she is mentally ill or perhaps this is all because others around her are feeding her garbage about me (what we used to call brainwashing). Don’t get me wrong, I believe her actions are wrong and very harmful, but I’m still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in terms of moral culpability and motive. But I really and truly have done everything I can to love her and her family well through the years (not perfectly, but well), and I have done everything possible to stay engaged now and work through this with her, but that unfruitful effort can no longer be sustained.
But again, I didn’t post any of this for a self-pity party or to cause others to think badly about her. I posted because many on here understand my heart for my sister and her kids, and later my widowed sister and her kids, and would know my grief when for reasons beyond my control she is no longer in my life. I will continue to pray that her heart will be softened toward me–but I suspect that will only happen, if it happens at all, after she has had time to miss me.
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The butterflies are common buckeyes. They are a butterfly that comes out in large numbers (a fresh new generation) in the fall, and they overwinter as adults–finding a cozy place to “hibernate” and then coming out in the spring to mate and lay eggs. Butterflies vary in numbers of generations over the course of the year; monarchs have several, and some species have just one. I believe buckeyes have two, meaning that in the spring they will mate and lay eggs, and those offspring will mate and lay eggs in the summer for the second generation of adults.
Winters in Indiana are too cold for this species, though some may survive mild winters or winters here in the southern portion of the state. But mostly they survive winters only further south, but in the summer they travel around looking for food and some of them make it to Indiana. That summer generation then breeds and in fall we have a lot of them–and in fall a lot of other species of butterflies are tattered and worn, so the beautiful new buckeyes are special.
That patch of asters in the header on that particular day had six or eight of these beauties flying around, plus several smaller species of butterflies (sulphurs, several species of skippers, cabbage whites, and pearl crescents) and several bees. In all the patch is twelve or fifteen feet wide and five or six feet deep, and it was a great place to find butterflies.
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It seems to me that hurting people will often hurt those who love them most. I suppose they are a safe target. It did not make you stop loving her. That’s important.
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That common buckeye has all the right colors for fall. It is gorgeous. God is so masterful in His creations!
Cheryl, I am feeling empathy of a sort for you because of the shock I got from my friend. And I know that ladies of a certain age can seem to go off the deep end if they are already fragile emotionally or mentally. As a former pastor’s wife told me based on her experience, “Menopause and teenagers don’t mix well.”
For that reason, and also from what I am experiencing with my friend, try to “take it with a grain of salt,” and be glad to recognize that you did nothing wrong, and remember since we live in a fallen world where minds and bodies have trouble working properly that this is a short time to suffer and eternity is longer than we can think where you can be with her in her right mind. Thank God that Jesus took all sins, recognized and unrecognized, to the cross.
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We’ve passed a pleasant afternoon and evening with that rare commodity electricity.
The kids even got a full day in school, though P,G,& E cut power 45 minutes earlier than announced.
Then the winds blew up and have been building all night.
A fire broke out in the Macayama Mountains, about 20 miles north, northwest of here, at The Geyers— the thermal electrical plant. It’s has been growing, up contained, through relatively open grasslands since about 10 last night.
It’s at 10K acres and 0 % contained. Folks are nervous; we may not get power back this afternoon.
More wind expected Sunday/Monday with temperatures in the 90s.
That fire at The Geyers caused a glitch in the grid. Mr. Energy, who was informed at 10 PM, is watching it and wondering.
Interesting times.
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Without electricity!
After dinner we sat in the backyard for awhile and listened to our neighbor on the other side of the back fence play the guitar and sing until well into the dark.
Lovely. Particularly when the neighbors’ generator was off.
It was a beautiful night.
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Good morning. Thirty degrees and feels like twenty four according to the weather station. Feels that way inside too. Might be time to let the fire burn through the night.
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Michelle, that 9:28 post makes me think about one of my summers in Chicago, in an all-black neighborhood that still had porches. One summer evening, the power went off, and soon the whole neighborhood was outside on porches, chatting back and forth. We actually were in the only house without a porch, but we had front steps, and my housemate and I sat on those and were included in the interaction. It was probably only an hour or two that the power was off, but it seemed like a nice little interlude. As I recall it was still light enough to see, but fans and such wouldn’t be running, and it was cooler outside.
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Sadly, it’s well established that hurt people, hurt people. 😦
And we rarely realize it when we do it.
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That’s it Michelle!
Make the best of it. It’s all you can do. 🙂
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Good morning.
Cheryl, I emailed you yesterday, but have been having some trouble with my computer, so am not sure if it went through. My non-business email account has been persnickety ever since I’ve had it (over 8 1/2 years), and sometimes just refuses to deliver things, I’ve learned.
Now I can’t access my downloads or documents, either, for some reason. Anything I click on gives me the message, “Element not found.”
Anyway, you know you have my prayers regarding your sister’s actions and the pain it is causing. I’m very sorry.
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Michelle, 9:28, that reminds me of one of my favorite picture books. Get some for your Adorables — I think they’ll love it. (Or you will, anyway.) 🙂
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Cheryl, email coming.
For now, the cat still is being weird about eating — I think I’ll have to hit the pet store and try to find a tasty goody to add to her prescription food (which usually is good enough for her but not now). I still haven’t been able to give her the antibiotic and I need to work out of the office in Long Beach today due to staff shortages (beyond the usual), so I’m out of here shortly.
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When our power went out here one night a few years ago, we were all out gathered on the sidewalk with flashlights and cell phones 🙂 The advantage of having an iPad or cell phone that has the internal connection (not reliant on wifi) is you can go to the local power company sites to see the outages, how many homes are affected and what the status of bringing it back up is.
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I used to count on my neighbor’s with the police radio, but they moved. Now I am just in the dark.
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I picked up Karen’s medicine from the pharmacy and picked up packages that delivery people leave near the office at her complex. Now I am at the eye doctor office with Art. Seems like old times.
On the Pigskin Picks, I spent two years at Georgia Southern and now a former Sunday school teacher who I worked with has her daughter in college there while her husband is a professor there. I really liked going to school and living in the dorms there. I hope they win!
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I was browsing the New Non-fiction shelves at an area library recently and came across this intriguing title: surrounded by idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life), by Thomas Erikson.
While I don’t believe that life is that neat and tidy that we can categorize people into a small number of “types,” there are certainly interesting observations the author has noted that I find fascinating reading. I’m more than 200 pages into the book, and have found several good practical tips for dealing with certain people who are, at times, quite difficult to understand, or who are very different from me.
Some of you with very challenging people in your lives might enjoy reading this book. I am, even though, like I said, it’s not as simple as saying people are Reds, Yellows, Greens, or Blues (or, for most, a combination).
Still an informative and useful read, though, IMO, despite its limitations in perfectly describing a person. (The author admits that himself, as well.)
I see the author has written other “Surrounded by…” books, too, though they aren’t translated into English yet. Surrounded by Psychopaths; and Surrounded by Bad Bosses.
Here’s some information from his website about the three books:
https://thomaserikson.com/en/books/
Interesting that the subtitle of the oldest book is listed differently on the above webpage than it is on the library book that I have. The subtitle must have been changed sometime between the book’s first publishing in Sweden in 2014 and the publishing in the US this year. The subtitle I listed in my first paragraph, which is on the English-version book, is more helpful, IMO, than the other: “The Four Types of Human Behavior (or, How to Understand Those Who Cannot Be Understood).”
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I was just trying to remember.
And I can’t remember California having fires and power outages a few ears ago.
This is a new phenomenon?
Why?
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Some say global warming, others point to poor forest management – along with our Santa Ana winds, more people, more vegetation to burn, drought conditions …
The Santa Anas are strong this month, it’s 95 degrees where I am today.
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NYT:
The Santa Ana winds
Each fall, strong gusts known as the Santa Ana winds bring dry air from the Great Basin area of the West into Southern California, said Fengpeng Sun, an assistant professor in the department of geosciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Dr. Sun is a co-author of a 2015 study that suggests that California has two distinct fire seasons. One, which runs from June through September and is driven by a combination of warmer and drier weather, is the Western fire season that most people think of. Those wildfires tend to be more inland, in higher-elevation forests.
But Dr. Sun and his co-authors also identified a second fire season that runs from October through April and is driven by the Santa Ana winds. Those fires tend to spread three times faster and burn closer to urban areas, and they were responsible for 80 percent of the economic losses over two decades beginning in 1990.
It’s not just that the Santa Ana winds dry out vegetation; they also move embers around, spreading fires.
If the fall rains, which usually begin in October, fail to arrive on time, as they did this year, the winds can make already dry conditions even drier. During an average October, Northern California can get more than two inches of rain, according to Derek Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch at the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year, in some places, less than half that amount fell.
“None of these are like, record-breaking, historically dry for October,” Dr. Arndt said. “But they’re all on the dry side of history.”
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The Cornwall Alliance has another take:
https://cornwallalliance.org/2018/08/are-western-wildfires-driven-by-global-warming-manmade-or-otherwise/
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Preemptive power outages are a different story. Michelle knows about that.
Well, our Mountain Lion on top of the shopping center turned out to be a domestic cat. Ha.
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From the city: “Staff submitted photos to wildlife experts at LA County Agriculture Commissioner Weights and Measures and the Department of Fish & Wildlife. Based upon their expert review, it is believed the feline pictured is a domestic cat”
We were all ready with our cans of pennies.
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I knew it was Annie!
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Also, Chas, expansion of population into the areas wild fires used to run without being such a big deal. When a thousand people now live on what was once a ranch for five people, it is more noticeable when some of their homes burn.
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And another thing, homeless sometimes live in brush covered areas. Are those homeless mentally ill, druggies or illegals? Homeless encampments sometimes catch fire.
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that makes me think about the first newspaper I ever put out as a 7(?) year old. I hand printed it with made up stories, fake news. I personally delivered several copies (my hand gave out eventually but it was a small paper) to our closest neighbors. My lead story was that a forest fire had broken out. I was thrilled when I saw on the news that night that a fire had, indeed, started in the mountains.
Like a broken clock that’s right twice a day, I managed to nail it.
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Bob, actually that is a growing concern with the encampments. A couple fires have started because of that.
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@ 4:46
California has two distinctive fire seasons”
June through September:
October through April.
So? May is the only month without wildfires.
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That was me. I just clicked too soon.
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I think YA may be trying to goad me into an argument about capitalism. On Facebook, I had shared a humorous meme referring to the preemptive power outages in California. She commented that capitalism is “hot garbage”. I ignored that, but – thinking that maybe she didn’t know why PG&E was shutting off the power – gave a brief explanation.
It turns out that she is well aware of what is going on after all, and replied with a longer comment saying that PG&E had neglected the upgrades that could have prevented the sparking, even while reaping huge profits. She also pointed out how the poor and disabled are being hurt by these outages. Those are good points, and I expressed agreement that this has been poorly handled, and that the upgrades should have been made well before now. I stayed away from mentioning capitalism at all.
She came back with a reply that not caring about people who may be in danger from certain decisions is a “major component of capitalism”, and thus is indeed “hot garbage”. To that I briefly replied that greed is a part of human nature, whatever the economic system may be.
YA then replied that capitalism rewards and celebrates greed, and thus to her dying day she will maintain that it is “hot garbage”. It is her thrice flinging that term “not garbage” in there that makes me think she is trying to goad me into arguing with her.
I so want to reply something along the lines of “The millions of people in the world who have been pulled out of poverty would disagree with you.” But I know that that would merely elicit one of her long, rambling screeds about how and why I am wrong.
(I recognize that there are abuses in capitalism, and a lot of greed that can – and does – hurt people. But socialism – which she espouses – is not the answer to that.)
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I saw that Kizzie.
Here’s our latest, in northeast LA County:
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hot garbage was a new term to me.
From the urban dictionary:
TOP DEFINITION
Hot Garbage
In its most basic definition, labeling something as “hot garbage” is used when just calling it garbage (trash, rubbish, crap, xxxx, something of low quality) is too good for it.
It can be used to describe anything: movies, shows, music, politics, you name it. That’s it.
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_________________________
… “It is infuriating,” Newsom said.
The governor lit in to the companies — including PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He suggested large corporate owned utilities were incapable of meeting the challenge of an increasingly hot and dry state, where a spark from electric equipment could lead to death and destruction on a massive scale.
“It’s more than just climate change. It’s about the failure of capitalism to address climate change,” Newsom said. “It’s about decades of mismanagement. It’s a story about greed.”
The governor and other state officials on Thursday detailed weeks of back-and-forth talks with the three utilities to set standards for how future power shutoffs should work. …
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I thought you Californians all had solar panels so did not need the grid. Maybe you should all have little nuclear reactors in your homes.
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DJ, was it a huge Maine Coon cat atop the shopping center?
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No choir rehearsal to accompany today, as the director was at a convention, so I used the extra time to finish the book I mentioned above, and to practice piano a bit longer than usual.
And pieces to practice, I’ve got aplenty! The choir I’m accompanying is performing 14 choruses from Handel’s Messiah in December, so there’s lots to practice there to be on top of my game at rehearsals.
I’m also playing in our traditional Christmas at the Piano show in December, which gives me three more pieces to prepare. (Two of them are not too difficult, though, so I’ve got those pretty close to mastered. The third arrangement I’d picked out I decided I didn’t really care for after I’d been practicing it for a couple of weeks, so I changed that out for a lovely but fairly challenging arrangement of “Still, Still, Still.”)
I thought I would have to miss the piano show, because it was to be the same night as a choir performance for which I am scheduled to play. But it turned out that the original date for the piano show posed a conflict for a lot of the usual players, so it got moved to December 14, which is a night I’m free. Yay! I love being a part of that annual tradition.
And . . . our string quartet will be playing at the Christmas Eve services, so I will have some viola music to practice, too, including some arrangements that I might write. (The worship director asked me about sometime composing string quartet arrangements for some hymns that might not already have such arrangements, and I said I could do that with enough advance notice.) We’re blessed to have those able young violinists and cellist in our congregation, but one of the violinists is a senior in high school who has plans to attend college, so if she moves away, this might be our last year as a complete string quartet.
Actually, as I was typing that, I just remembered that her younger sister, a 7th grader this year, plays violin, and pretty well for a relative beginner. So we do have an up-and-coming musician for our group if her sister does leave. 🙂
All of that is the long-winded way of sending a warm, temporary adios your way, fellow Wanderers. Between extra music and family events (East Coast sister and fam are coming for Thanksgiving, and we may be traveling to babysit Dear Grandbaby some Saturdays after 2nd Arrow returns to work next week), there will be a lot more to do outside of the internet world.
Take care of yourselves, friends, and I’ll “see you” after the big musical season winds down.
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Well we all survived our snow storm…this morning we awakened to about 8 inches of the heavy wet stuff on the ground. I drove into town on ice and came home on dry pavement. It is so incredibly beautiful in this forest right now.
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I got home late, after dark, so had to feed the fish next door with my flashlight — they do have a motion light back there but not near the pond.
I also collected their mail. In all of that, I seem to have walked through a spider web that I’m still pulling off of myself. No spider yet.
I’ve opened all the windows and have the fans going. Tomorrow will be another hot day.
And I still think it looks like a mountain lion.
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OK, that’s a weird sentence – “I had to feed the fish with my flashlight.”
But you know what I mean. I’m tired.
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DJ, I did wonder what good an edible flashlight would do. Around coyotes, for instance. It looks like a mountain lion to me, too, but truth is cats are a lot alike, there isn’t much detail there, and I can’t tell size at all.
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😀 Must be big fish to be able to eat a flashlight. Maybe they turn into those fish that glow?
My husband and I were recently in a parking lot facing a golf course. I asked him if what looked like a coyote was one. I took my phone to try to see it a little closer. I thought I might take a picture, but it was too far away. Then I noticed it was not moving at all. We observed for a bit longer and saw it move. Turned out it was a flag of some kind and the wind had picked up. We got a good laugh out of that. Sometimes things are not what they seem; whether cats on roofs or coyotes on a golf course. 😀
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I am enjoying the butterfly pictures. The artistry of their wings is amazing.
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Yes, the cat seems huge in those pictures.
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I once, in college, called “kitty-kitty-kitty” to what turned out to be a mop lying on someone’s front porch — a boyfriend and I were walking by at night and you really couldn’t tell. I guess I would have really worried if the mop responded.
But coyotes do love golf courses.
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Tess ate a Snickers bar tonight. I’d bought it in a very weak moment today at work but I never ate it and brought it home in a bag. Tess managed to find the bag and dragged it off — all while I was feeding my flashlight to the fish next door. Sigh.
Dogs can be allergic to chocolate, but she’ll probably be fine, not a lot of chocolate in those bars — but it could give her some gastro bouts. I think she also ate the wrapper as I’ve only found little bits of that on the floor.
It really has been just “one of those” days.
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It was the long, heavy tail and overall body shape that made me think it was a mountain lion. But it’s true, there’s not a lot of scale to that picture so it’s hard to compare its size to anything. It looks very big.
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Yeah, the tail is also what said mountain lion to me. Maybe someone just wanted not to scare locals? Ah, just a kitty cat. Keep shopping there!!
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Power came on at 5; we left for choir dinner at 5:15.
Insider information suggests the entire town may be shit down at 6 on Saturday. My husband advised me to spend Saturday night near the airport since we have a 7 am flight.
I’m feeling pretty uneasy, have gotten little done— I’m distracted and frazzled— and am looking forward to escaping to Indiana.
While shooting the airplane fire suppression video, I did meet a neighbor and discovered he graduated from UCLA 4 years before I did.
If I’m feeling this way, I can’t imagine how others less prepared are doing, particularly with the doom and gloom promised for Saturday.
The blame can be divided equally: governor/legislature, P, G & E, Public Utility Commission that signed off on everything, and the insurance companies who threatened they would leave the state if P, G & E we’re not found liable for the fires.
Travesty.
The losers are the rate payers and the citizens of California.
It really does feel like chaos and you know who thrives in chaos— particularly deliberate chaos.
Now, I need to do some laundry.
All the ice cream is gone. 😦
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Shut down. I hate the spell rearrangement.
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Michelle gets to go visit America. Send us a post card.
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We have ice cream in Indiana, Michelle. In fact. we’re in walking distance from DQ.
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DJ, I suspect all that sugar and gooey stuff will be worse for Tess than the chocolate. There isn’t that much of it on a Snickers, and from what I hear it’s really only dark chocolate (particularly baking chocolate) that causes problems for dogs, the littler the dog the worse. If a chihuahua were to eat a whole square of baking chocolate, or a big dog several pounds of chocolate chips, it could be a problem, but not a quarter ounce of milk chocolate.
In fact, I have a book of dog care that was published in England, and in talking about treats that dogs like, it mentions chocolate–with no warning “only in moderation,” “no dark chocolate”–just that it’s a treat they enjoy.
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I read that also, that it’s the dark chocolate in sufficient amounts that would be a worry.
She seemed to enjoy it — a lot.
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Speaking of mountain lions, which you were, I think they have a more pronounced shoulder than the cat in the pics.
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