There is nothing like a major family event to inspire a whole lot of spring cleaning and to revive a neglected house blog. Between now and early August, our house will be transformed from a neglected, unkempt look to wedding beauty. The wedding will be inside and the dinner just outside the house. Inside, outside, and upside down, we have a whole lot of projects. The deadline means that we may actually complete them.
We visited the relatives last week during an Elder Hostel event at the Marston House. First, I should say that I managed to get through the event without anyone asking for proof that I am at least sixty years old. I don’t look a day over forty, at least not when I’ve had some sleep, so last week I probably didn’t look a day over fifty.
It turns out that sometimes rich cousins don’t have the constitutions of their wayward relatives. As I listened to the work done on the Marston House, I just shook my head wondering what in the heck I am worried about with our house. We don’t have two trillion bricks to repoint. In fact, we don’t even have one thousand. We do have some structural issues, but they are not on the same scale. (May those not be famous last words.)
We have dry rot on the outlooker beams, still not taken care of. We also have a beam splice in the great room and there is some disagreement among those who have looked at it as to whether it’s “ingenious and well done” or “a temporary fix that was never complete.” It also has a bit of rot. So that beam may cause some excitement but I don’t expect it to land us upside down on a home loan. Its greatest potential is ending up as one of the many California Hot Springs stories such as the time the large boulder rolled onto the road and everyone brought picnic lunches to see it blasted into bits.
The single greatest expense on this house, I expect, will be the window restoration and that, as grandpa would have said, is “a high class problem.” The windows work. At least most of the windows work most of the time. We even have new-fangled dual-pane vinyl windows to fight the winter cold. My dad put those in the closed porches back in the 90s to replace the aluminum windows installed in the 70s. Now one seems to be convinced by my argument that the vinyl is historically significant and most people think we should do something about them. Again, this is a high class problem -- they are not actually rotting the house, just causing eye strain.
“I’d rather get my foreskin stuck in my zipper than mess with those bees,” he said as we told him of our winter plans.
Most people call an exterminator when bees decide to nest in a bedroom wall.
The good news is that the bees have found the guest house rather than the main house. “The Little House” is a small one-bedroom home of about 800 square feet that was originally built as a servants quarters. Its original footprint was closer to 500 square feet.
The bees have located themselves right behind some of the only original paneling on the property. The hive is approximately three feet square (or round).
“Call an exterminator,” said the County Ag Extension Office.
“But aren’t these insects endangered? They are pollinating our orchard. They also may be rich enough in vitamins and minerals to be depression buster foods. Do we really want to kill them?”
My mom is in charge of this particular project and she tells me that there are ways to lure a hive into a new hive. Apparently you can smoke them out as well. They will fly out of the hive, mad as hell, and scatter to the winds.
We hatched a plan the other night over beer that will likely peak in about January. That is, of course, unless we decide to call an exterminator.
Mom claims that when the honey is low in December we can
hang a hive full of honey on the eaves near where the bees are entering the
house. The Little House Bees will
appreciate the new digs hanging on the eaves and slowly move into the new
location. A few bees, in their
attachment to the Little House hive, will remain in the wall. It’s those bees that we will need to worry
about.
That’s where the smoke comes in.
“Well, the wood stove isn’t drawing well, we could just start
a fire in the stove and smoke up the whole house.”
That was my idea but the likelihood of a house fire is
apparently reason not to take that route.
“A house fire would get rid of the bees.”
We have a Plan B going to create smoke and channel it into
the wall. It’s one of those plans that
probably deserves a few more nights of sleep before making it public.
It was somewhere in recounting the plan that the zipper
comment came in.
Comments, advice, zipper quotes welcome. :)
“I am a rugged mountain woman and rugged mountain women just handle these things,” I declared as I stared at the overflowing washing machine.
I turned off the water to the machine, pulled the front housing off the washer, and used a screwdriver to remove the clamp on the hose. I pulled the hose off the drain and let the water run freely out of the wash house door. Most of the water landed temporarily on my sneakers before flowing down the hillside.
“Rugged mountain women do not work outside in wet sneakers.” I walked inside, removed my shoes, placed them by the fire, and reported to my husband that the washer was drained and in need of repair. I worked by the fire. My shoes dried next to me and were cleaner than they had been in months.
My muscles began to speak to me because I had spent over two hours clearing brush outside. It was the first time I worked that long and hard in a very long time. Rugged mountain women do not usually take such a long hiatus but when they do, they bounce back quickly.
I would work the next day on the brush project as well and wipe away the tears anticipating two funerals the following day with a visit in between to the hospital to say goodbye to a dying friend. It has been a month of funerals.
There does not appear to be an emotional economy of scale in clustering five funerals in a six week period of time.
There really was no better time than now to come out of my long slumber and live the rugged life my body was made to handle. My body is strong and builds muscle very quickly. I can thank my football player father for this quality, a quality I did not appreciate until many years into my life.
Back from the hiatus
In the long nights of winter here in California Hot Springs, without television service and without central heat, we have been sitting around the fire waxing philosophical. The topic of late is the movie “The Secret” and the general philosophy of “The Law of Attraction.” My mom studies scripture as is evident from her website Pray the Scriptures. In fact, one soon to be launched CD is “Prayer Affirmations for the Journey,” a collection of scripture-based affirmations. Sander and I quiz her about the Christian interpretation of this-or-that as we watch the movie.
After about the third time through the movie, I paused the movie and said “for well over a year I have been focused on trying to lose weight. I obsess over fat.” The premise of The Secret is that we attract what we are focused on. So as I obsess over fat, I attract fat.
Sander said “just picture yourself thin.”
“It won’t work. When my mind is picturing myself thin, my obsessive side will remember the fat. I can’t think thin without thinking fat.”
“Oh come on, just picture yourself thin. You can do it.”
A few curse words formed in my brain even if they did not make it past my tonsils. I am sure my looks, if not words, conveyed my disgust at a man who could be a garbage disposal and maintain his weight.
“I have to focus on the good part of what I am and what I know to be true. Otherwise, my mind will drift to unwanted territories.”
I thought for a moment and I announced “I am a rugged mountain woman.”
Rugged Mountain Women
Rugged mountain women do not weigh themselves. They do not worry about their weight.
In my first day in full cognition of my rugged nature, I decided that it was time to clear the north side of the hill of brush. The hill is steep and hard to work, but a fire on that side of the house is the biggest natural disaster threat to the property. Rugged mountain women take these matters into their own hands.
Before heading out to work, I decided I should eat a quick lunch before starting the work and wondered what rugged mountain women eat. “They probably do not worry as much about carbs as you have worried in the past. Go see what’s in the kitchen.”
I could not imagine what I would eat for lunch since I had nothing prepared and do not keep convenience food around. As I opened the kitchen door, Sander was helping himself to a hot pizza. “I have manifested a pizza!” I proclaimed, using the vocabulary of The Law of Attraction.
I sat in the sun eating my pizza and used the pizza’s energy to prune a lot of bushes and move a whole lot of brush.
Better than therapy?
The last funeral in this current funeral blast is this coming Saturday, two weeks after the funeral marathon day. I was able to say goodbye to Felix, in between those two funerals. He was cognizant and could speak. And he would have known we were there anyway, somewhere inside.
With the stress of the funeral marathon and the goodbyes, I got sick. A few days later, Frederick got an ear infection. We spent an entire week being sick and many days before being unable to focus. I have wondered what is wrong with me. I usually get more work done.
As I struggled to work today, I sat at my computer and looked out the window. It was a warm, sunny winter day. I put on my work clothes and moved some more brush. “Rugged mountain women get plenty of sunshine and fresh air when they have been sick.” I pruned brush and moved firewood.
“Mom, this fresh air and sunshine are really helping me from sliding into the abyss.”
“Mandy, why do you think I spent years cutting the terraces and road all by myself, with only a small shovel?”
Thank you dad for the muscles. Thank you mom for the rugged.
Whenever I read a blog with an apologetic entry "sorry I haven't posted for so long," I would think "don't be apologetic, just start posting again."
But take my case: I had to ask Typepad for my password, I discovered that houseblogs.net has grown to over 500 blogs (and I remember when it was in the double digits), I haven't posted in nine months, and I've posted about three times in the past 18 months.
I've been busy writing, just not here.
I've written a book Rebuild from Depression and have started a new blog on that site.
The book is on the connection between diet and depression. I review the top seven nutrients and fats most associated with depression if we are deficient in them, including how to identify the deficiencies and how to fix them. I am a data analyst by trade so I have also used a USDA food database to identify what I call "depression buster foods" -- foods that help us fight depression. The website and book have quite a bit of food science included as a result.
So I've been too busy to keep up with the house blog and, frankly, I've been too busy to keep up with the house. But we've got some projects starting up again and I have been working my tail off (fingers crossed ;) ) working on the property. I'll update on some of that. But first let me figure out if I can even get this feed to work again.
by Amanda Rose
(to appear in the April 27, 2006 Delano Record)
I met Uncle Mike for the first time thirty-seven years, two months, and about one week ago, back on my birthday in 1969. My Dad tells me that 1969 was one of the rainiest years he remembered at the time. Uncle Mike was in his third year of teaching at
Uncle Mike is not actually my uncle by blood, but that’s just what you call someone who was best friends with your Dad from the time they met in junior college. From the College of the Sequoias they went on to Fresno State and then both took jobs teaching at Delano High School.
When I was a sophomore in high school, Uncle Mike was my Botany teacher. Like the parade of Delano High School students before and after me in Uncle Mike’s 33 years of teaching, we all learned how to identify California wildflowers using a manual first published in 1925 by a botanist named Willis Linn Jepson.
“Stamens homogeneous, more than one.”
That’s all I really remember about the wildflower classification terminology, but I do remember that the process required us to be analytical and to narrow down the differences across flowers until we were able to identify the precise genus and species. The project must have piqued my interest because I remember spending many weekends collecting flowers, counting their stamens, examining their other characteristics, and drying them according to Uncle Mike’s instructions.
Some twenty years later I happened to mention my high school Botany class to a biologist friend of mine. My friend Kent worked for a few years teaching Advanced Placement Biology at a private school in Pasadena. The students were bright and had every educational opportunity. They classified plants in their classes too.
Somewhere in the conversation I said “I have fond memories of learning how to use The Jepson Manual.”
His jaw dropped. “You used Jepson?”
“Well, sure, that’s what we used.”
“Jepson is an exceedingly difficult manual for classification. I use a much easier one with my students. Was this an Advanced Placement class?”
“No, actually all students in Honors, College Prep, and General Biology took Botany with Uncle Mike and used The Jepson Manual.”
Kent was shocked and, at the same time, impressed that Uncle Mike could pull that off.
Uncle Mike’s secret, of course, was that he never told any of us that The Jepson Manual was an upper-level college manual, if not graduate level.
I had planned on having Uncle Mike teach my own son how to classify wildflowers and thought that we might be able to get started when my son was ten to twelve years old. Uncle Mike was ready to mentor my son, but he suggested we start at five years old, not ten. So what if the Kindergarten Science standards in California say that children should know the difference between a stem and leaf? We’ll start working on Jepson anyway.
It’s all about expectations. With his high school students, Uncle Mike expected us to learn the classification process and we did. I am sure my son would have learned as well under his mentorship. Uncle Mike could teach complex material to us because he had mastered it himself, he could communicate it to us, and he expected us to perform. Only a master would consider teaching Botany in such a fashion to a bunch of high school sophomores, much less to a five year old. I sure would have loved to see Uncle Mike in action teaching a five year old, but alas, my son turns four this week.
Uncle Mike had a dry sense of humor, not often shared in the classroom or even recognized by students, but brilliant and unique nonetheless. In my sophomore year in Biology, I was in Lee Lowry’s class in the room that adjoined Uncle Mike’s. Uncle Mike had to miss school one day and had scheduled a test for his Biology students. To keep the semester on track, Uncle Mike videotaped the test for his students for the substitute teacher to play.
Back in the mid-1980s before video cameras were the rage, Uncle Mike nailed a fetal pig to the wall of his classroom in an odd spread-eagle fashion and pointed to various parts of its anatomy. “Question 1: Identify this organ and its function” (as he points to the pig’s heart). As he pointed to various pig parts, a fly joined the film and buzzed around as a supporting actor. You don’t often get to see a fetal pig nailed to a wall. The addition of the fly was almost more than Lee Lowry could handle. I found him howling uncontrollably in Uncle Mike’s classroom. As the substitute teacher that period, he had difficulty administering the test.
Uncle Mike was also instrumental in a prank I played on Bill Martin in my senior year. Mr. Martin “got me” one day with a canister of compressed air – he was squatting just inside the classroom door waiting for me to walk through. As I passed through the doorway, air shot out of that canister and I screamed. I visited Uncle Mike after school.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Bill has his own alarm system in his classroom and now and then he sets it off by accident. It scares the crud out of him. I’ll show you how to set it.”
He gave me instructions: “You must wait until some day when Bill is out of the classroom and all of the students have arrived. Close all of the doors and flip this switch. When he walks in, the alarm will go off.”
Some weeks later payback day for Bill Martin came and Uncle Mike reportedly smiled knowingly as he heard that alarm go off down the hall.
Uncle Mike had open heart surgery on Friday, April 21st in Bakersfield. It was a routine surgery with un-routine complications. The surgery appeared to go well except that his blood kept forming clots for no apparent reason. When my Dad’s phone calls to us finally convinced me that Uncle Mike would not live through the night, I jumped in the car and drove through the dark and in the rain hoping to be able to say goodbye to him.
As I drove from California Hot Springs, I thought about all of those wildflowers I was passing and tried to remember their Latin names. The night struck me because through the rain and the lightning clashing, I could see the lights in the valley below. The sky was clear of smog, much like it must have been in those early days when Uncle Mike first moved to Delano, when I first met him. And there I was witnessing all of this beauty and weather in one of the rainiest years in my memory, much like that winter of 1969.
Late winter rains in a season with little rainfall establishes the perfect conditions for wildflowers. Winter grasses are low and do not shade out the spring flowers. The spring rains bring flowers that have lain dormant for years waiting for a rainy season. As I write this story, the blankets of flowers are beginning to form in the Sierras and I expect they will be more brilliant than they have been in years. I will certainly notice the flowers more than I usually do.
Last Friday night I got as far as Ducor on my drive to see Uncle Mike. I write this story now because sometimes the road is just too long and you can’t drive fast enough when you should have left hours or days before. Because of poor planning and because life is just so unpredictable, sometimes you are not able to say goodbye in the way you wish you could. I will miss you, Uncle Mike. Say hi to Grandpa for me.
