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I asked Jade if she wanted a sip of my iced latte and she crinkled her nose in disgust. "C'mon!" I goaded, "all the cool kids are doing it."
She took a sip and immediately it was clear she was disgusted. "Blechh! It tastes like dirt!"
"It should--it was ground this morning."
I happened to look at the care instructions for a Natori bra of mine, and they read, in relevant part, "For best technical performance wash before wearing."
I never really think of my bras as "performing"--I tend to think of them as "functioning"--and I certainly don't consider their performance on a technical level. When I think "technical performance" I think Olympic gymnastics or perhaps an ice dancing pair's simultaneous triple salkows with a death spiral on top. How this translates to the world of bras, I have no clue.
Do your undergarments perform? Inquiring women of (medium) chestiness want to know.
When I last posted we seemed pretty safe in our little bubble. In fact, I was going to do a post Tuesday morning about how I almost felt guilty for living where I do. To the north, we could see a hazy smoke. To the south, more hazy smoke. To the east--you guessed it--smoke. But here in the west, here on the coast, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, the ocean was glassy, the waves were rockin'. Down at the beach, people surfed and laid out and walked along as if it were just another summer day.
I won't be doing that post now.
Tuesday around noon fire broke out a few miles south of us. One of my friends, an evacuee from the San Diego fires who was staying in town with her parents, called to ask, "Did you see that dark plume of smoke?" I got in my car and drove up to a nearby ridge. Sure enough, black smoke. High winds. This combination createad a sick feeling in my stomach. Ugh. With a new fire breaking out, I thought, there's no way there will be firefighters to attend to it. Resources everywhere were tapped out--San Diego had called in reinforcements from other parts of California, as well as in other states. What were the chances that firefighters could muster the energy to even care about these new fires?
What to do, what to do.
I called Bell who, like so many others, was out in the water. Earlier, as he was leaving, he saw the smoke up north and asked that I get down the fireproof safe, just in case we needed to flee. (Sure, I'll just throw all 80 lbs. right on my back here . . .) Once I saw the smoke just south of us I decided that getting important papers out of the safe wasn't such a bad idea. And to my surprise, I actually did manage to lift that puppy and carry it about ten feet. But then I realized I should simply open it and remove its contents--surely several sheets of paper are much lighter than a fireproof safe.
From there I went into Crisis Management Mode, you know, just in case. I gathered some pillows and blankets, some changes of clothes for each of us, old photos and sentimental papers, my laptop, some food, Kai's and Jade's favorite blankies. I got some spare cash and gassed up the car. When Bell got home he sprayed down the property and removed all the things that would worsen a potential inferno, like the propane tanks and oil and chunks of wood propped up against the house, for example. (Incidentally, he had just had one of the awesomest surf sessions ever.) All the while I was thinking that if we had to evacuate, we wouldn't have to go far. We just needed to get off the canyon because, if sparks from this new fire flew, that would be a dangerous place for them to land.
That evening I had dinner with some evacuee friends, then decided to go back and check on the fire before I turned in for the night. I needed to know whether I should be on alert. To my dismay, I watched in the distance as an orange glow doubled in size. I called My New Friend, thinking that she would be able to see something from the vantage point of her monstrous estate. Sure enough, she saw flames more clearly than I could. I stayed up and checked the news for more on our local situation, but nothing appeared. My best sources turned out to be you, my beloved Internets, and not official government sites (which are great if you are creating a historical document but not so much for current news.)
When I finally got to sleep, the air was pretty still. I found that reassuring. However, the winds of change blew around midnight, so hard that it woke me. Strong winds plus unattended fire several miles away was not good, especially since there is a lot of brush and dry stuff around. I stayed up for a while, doing . . . I don't really know what. I was the equivalent of a toothless old hillbilly man sitting on his front porch with a shotgun, trying to protect the property, only I wasn't talking to myself.
Wednesday morning upon waking I learned that the major north-south freeway, the I-5, had been shut down because the fire had jumped the freeway overnight. For those in San Diego trying to evacuate north, this created a class of people I like to refer to as "Screwed." Also, since the fire had jumped to the grounds of the nuclear power plant, it also created a class of those Potentially Screwed in a Major Way, of which I and my family and my townspeople are all now members. Awesome! To my great frustration, the news is reporting very little on this fire, no doubt because of potential security concerns (it's on a military base) and public catastrophe concerns (see previous sentence).
Oh well. At least the skies look really pretty. And the moon looks like a big ole pumpkin.
This is from Tuesday from our upstairs deck. Check out that reflection on the water.
Here's what our backyard view usually looks like.
Here's what it looked like when I woke up Wednesday morning.
Should I be worried?
Nah.
I've never experienced Santa Ana winds quite like this. Loud, fierce, unrelenting.
In case you haven't heard, Southern California is burning. Again. Admittedly, I didn't even know this because I don't really watch TV. It was only when I woke up to a sooty bathroom sink that I realized something odd was afoot. It wasn't until I got to the gym that I learned about the Silverado/Santiago Canyon fire about twenty miles north of us. Back in aught four, while Ventura, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties were aflame, somehow the OC was spared. Not so this time. One or more arsonists saw to that.
Further south poor San Diego, so devastated a few years ago, has been hit in what my money says will again be the worst of all the fires. They have already evacuated over a quarter of a million people (some of them friends of ours). One of my best friends just called to say they got a "reverse 911" call putting them on notice that they may need to evacuate, and she had been set to house evacuees from other areas. I invited her family up here, but the freeway--the only available thoroughfare from there--is at a standstill. As it is, they are close to the coast, so if worse comes to worst they will go down to the beach. At least fire can't burn salt water. My friend's husband will probably throw at least one surfboard into their evacuation vehicle. He always knows how to make the best of a bad situation (plus there's a really good swell right now).
Thankfully, we are under no immediate threat, although you never know. We're at the top of a relatively small canyon, things are very dry, winds are fierce, and it only takes one ember. Wisely, Bell cleared the back slope of dead vegetation during the summer and has planted fire-resistant native stuff because we are on a canyon and are no strangers to drought. Some of our neighbors weren't so forward thinking or cautious. (I rather like to think they were a-holes about not clearing stuff.) Still, I'm sure I'd sleep better tonight if we could wrap our house in a giant diaper--I hear there's something in diapers that serves as a fire retardant.
While we are in no immediate danger of fire, there is the problem of smoke inhalation. And yet, there's a woman who runs by my gym almost every morning at an impressive clip. I can't really describe why, but she's got a beautiful stride that is most mesmerizing to behold. Until today I totally respected her, but when I saw her run past breathing in smoky, dirty air on her morning run, I couldn't help but think, "What a total bonehead." Even I was cool with skipping my run today.
***
It's a longshot, but can y'all do a rain dance?
Last weekend we took a quick trip to the midwest to see Bell's relations. The purpose of the trip was to finally attend the annual Apple Butter Cookoff, a long-held family tradition on Bell's mom's side. We stayed with family outside of Kansas City, and the Apple Butter Cookoff was somewhere way the hell out in the country. (It was so far out, in fact, that on our way back we stopped at an old chapel/graveyard to see the outhouse my nephew had built, when out of nowhere appeared a gigantic stealth bomber overhead. It looked like a big piece of black origami sailing through the sky. They sure don't have stealth bombers in our metropolitan region.)
At one point there was speculation about whether this family tradition would have to be called off for the first time in thirty years. A massive thunderstorm began dumping itself on the area sometime in the middle of the night, and there were no signs of it letting up. Our fine hosts formulated a plan to put up tarps over the copper kettles and barbeque (despite the fact that it was raining sideways). Thus, the show went on.
Upon arrival at our destination way out in there in countryside, I was struck by this profound thought (after my first thoughts, which were "Oh crap. Why didn't I bring rainboots?" and "At least my mascara is waterproof."):
How is it that children in rural America are not dying every day from gruesome accidental deaths?
There were so very many dangers to behold. Everywhere. It began with the barn of sharp implements, with dirty rusty things strewn about willy nilly. (Hello, tetanus!) The barn contained a huge loft furnished with loose boards and rusty wires. It had big openings akin to windows on the second story with no railing or obstacles to prevent one (particularly the adorable three year old girl running around up there) from falling out. I didn't actually see any snakes* but they must have been present because the place had a very snakey feel to it. I'm guessing there were also rodent droppings harboring Hanta virus and poisonous spiders that wished not to be disturbed.
Is it any surprise then that I was a bit freaked out when a little 7 year old girl came flying out of the loft onto the concrete below--the hayless concrete--while from a distance I watched her little body flop down like a discarded ragdoll? This image was still with me when I walked over to see that the children who had just been playing in the loft when my little friend spilled out had decided to take their fun outside. To the rusty-springed trampoline set up in the (hard) dirt. In the pouring rain, with lightning in the background. A trampoline without a net!
All at once, seven kids bounced around on a 12' circumference. Kai, of course, had to be one of them, because all the cool kids were doing it. This made me very nervous. I had just last week run into a friend whose 4 year old had broken her arm jumping on the trampoline (a netted one) with her friend. Put six wild country kids of varying sizes and weights on that one piece of bouncy mesh, add my overenthusiastic and fearless son, and someone's bound to get hurt. I was sure that by the end of the day someone would end up with his neck strapped to a board, riding in an ambulance. I thought that if I stood around watching, it would somehow be my fault. On the one hand, I didn't want to throw a wet blanket on their fun--and they did appear to be having a great time. On the other, I just could not stand to witness the carnage. So I walked away. (Also, one kid had all day been giving me the stinkeye for being a killjoy because I suggested that a 3-year-old stay away from the edge of the barn window, for example, or that the boy should not hurl drying potatoes and garlic at the heads of adults entering the barn. Obviously, I was an outsider who did not understand rough-and-tumble ways.) I could see I was not wanted. I left Bell to stand by watching as spectator and monitor. And also the first adult to be on the scene in case of emergency.
At the end of the day, the tally was injuries: one, deaths:zero. The little girl who had fallen out of the loft walked with a limp, but since it was inconsistent (sometimes she favored the right leg, sometimes the left), it appeared to be more a plea for sympathy than for medical assistance.
How, I repeat how, can that be?
Sort of relatedly, our flight home departed at 6:30 a.m., with the first leg from Kansas City to Chicago. We got to see the sun rise over some thick, fluffy clouds, which completely mesmerized me. Poor Jade, who had the window, tried her best to ignore the fact that I was practically sitting in her lap staring at the scene. I tried to explain to her that I will never see this particular combination of clouds and sunrise again, but she was unmoved. She wanted me out of her face.
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*Sure, everyone in America mocked "Snakes on a Plane" when it came out, but for some reason on my flight home I began to imagine how very terrifying it would be to be trapped on a plane...with snakes! Maybe director David Ellis was on to something, after all.
Sometimes Bell picks Kai up from school, sometimes I do. Whenever it's my turn, I get this slight sense of dread because I know how difficult it is to tear him away from his friends for a whole 18 hours. In the beginning of the school year, every time I came to pick him up and he saw me he would run. Like the wind. No, he wouldn't run toward me; he would run away. I'd call him and he'd look up but as soon as I got close enough he would run away. All the while he'd be laughing at this little game. When his friend SeaBass (real name: Sebastien) was with him they would both run, yelling back at me, "Catch me! Chase me and catch me!" The first few times I found this amusing, albeit slightly annoying. Unfortunately (for purposes of catching him), the playground area is expansive so whenever I chased him I got all hot and sweaty. If I picked him up after work I'd still be in my work clothes, and my heels would get stuck in the soft dirt. This inhibited my running around, plus my skirt kept hiking up. In all, not a pretty scene. At one point it took me 35 minutes to get Kai out of school. Meanwhile, we had places to see, things to go, people to do.
That was September. We have since agreed on the following terms: once I arrive to pick him up he gets to transition from play with Sea Bass or do a few rounds on the blacktop, but when I say it's time to go, it's time to go. I won't chase him around anymore.* The last few times when I arrived he immediately went into chase mode and I spent some time reminding him of our deal. His arms dropped to his sides, he slunked his shoulders and said, "Oh yeah. I fuh-got."
SeaBass appeared on the scene and said, "Kai, it's your mom! Runnnnnnn!," thus riling my boy up again. Again I called him back. He told SeaBass he wasn't allowed to play the chasing game with his mom, so the two stood around talking about monsters and Halloween costumes. Then they hugged, each tightening his grip until the hug turned into something akin to a wrestling move. Pretty soon they were trying to throw each other to the ground. I was about to tell them to stop when I thought "maybe this is what boys do," so I just sat there watching. They rolled around in the dirt yelling "OWWWWWWW!", all the while laughing. More strength moves ensued, legs flew, then arms.
"Hmm," I thought. "I wonder if I should call them off..." Then SeaBass threw Kai a kidney punch, and Kai returned with a belly slap. "They're just having fun," I told myself. I considered whether somewhere off in the distance the teacher was watching these two clowns rassling in the dirt and socking each other in the guts. Maybe she thought, "Why is Kai's mom just sitting next to them letting them beat up on each other?"
At one point I reflected on how it was when Jade was four and I picked her up from school. It never went down quite like this. There were no chasing games or flying dirt. Instead, she would run up to me and tell me what she did and who she played with, she'd show me the books she had stashed under her pillow when she was supposed to be napping. Other little girls would gather 'round and tell me about their owies or their dresses. Most of the time Jade would hug her friends and exit willingly (except for the time that little girl she loved broke her heart). Even now, she still hugs her friends and teacher "goodbye."
I was pondering this when my thoughts were interrupted by a loud, "Heyyyyyyy! OWWWWWWWW! Cut. It. Owwwwwwwt!" SeaBass was on top of Kai, who was pushing his hand into SeaBass's face such that it appeared he was about to snap the poor child's neck. I figured that was as good a time as any to break it up, so I just said, "Okay boys, time's up. Kai has to go." They hugged on the ground and laughed, did another roll and got up so Kai could leave. But not before one last shove.
I guess that's just how some little boys say "goodbye."
"I love you, man."
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*Actually, I don't mind doing it occasionally, but Kai can't seem to distinguish when I will or won't and he always has enough of a lead to keep running even when I'm trying to get him to leave. One time I just left hiim there because I had to pick up Jade and take her to piano. When I came back for him two hours later he ran up to me and said, "Mom! You're late!" So I've cut out school chasings entirely, but I will chase him at home if the circumstances call for it.
I only alluded to it in my previous post, so perhaps you did not know that Bell is the "nation's foremost scholar on the Third Amendment."(1), (2) That's how preeminent constitutional scholar David Currie once introduced him to an adoring crowd. Now, never you mind that at the time, Bell was probably the only legal scholar to have written on the subject. Don't nitpick.
And speaking of the Third Amendment, I see that The Onion has jumped on the bandwagon with this piece. (Hat tip: Orin Kerr, Volokh Conspiracy). I find the idea of a Third Amendment Rights Group hilarious. I'm a dork that way.
Come on! I know you love constitutional humour as much as the next guy.
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1 I'll wait while you look it up.
2 Oh, never mind. Here: "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Yesterday at Peet's as I was waiting for my iced latte, a guy came up and asked, in his East Coast accent, whether I was from Philly (or "Philthy" as I like to call it for no other reason than that I like saying the word "filthy," but not for reasons having to do with any disdain I have for Philadelphia or Philadelphians, although you may recall how I greatly detest the song "Philadelphia Freedom" because "whipoorwhill of freedom" zapping Elton John right between the eyes? What the hell is that? Is it a good thing?) I get this question a lot, the one about me being from Philthy, especially from people from Jersey or Philthy. I think it has to do with my Liberty Bell tattoo.
"No, not from Philly," I replied.
"So what then; you just love liberty? Ha ha!"
That's when I explained that yes, actually I do love liberty (quite a bit) and that I got it back in the day when I litigated constitutional cases. And that my husband's last name is Bell, and if he ever leaves me I can still keep the tattoo because I'll always love liberty. You see, it works on so many levels. It's the Thinking Man's tattoo.
"You used to litigate constitutional cases? Hunh. What's the Sixth Amendment?"
I drew a complete blank, which is odd since I know my amendments, Baby, especially the Bill of Rights. I just stared at him feeling stoopid.
"Uhhhhhhh..." I said quite articulately, then I tilted my head and squinted because that always helps me think. Still, nothing came to me.
After an awkward silence he said, "It's okay, I was just kidding. I don't even know it."
"No, wait! I know this! I should know this. I can't believe I'm drawing a blank."
At this point let me say that I began to panic because just this past weekend I watched "Away from Her," a tearjerker about a woman who gets Alzheimers, the first sign of which became apparent when she put the frying pan in the freezer.(1) After watching it, I took pains to put all the cookware in its rightful place, and the flatware too. Yet here I could not recall the Sixth Amendment.
"Wait! I know it, I swear. I can't believe I'm blanking on it. The Fifth is self-incrimination and eminent domain,(2) the Seventh is a fair trial, Eighth is cruel & unusual punishment, Ninth is powers retained by the people, Tenth goes to the states, Eleventh is sovereign . . ." I could see he was uninterested.
"Don't worry, I don't even know my amendments. I was just picking one," he said, trying to escape me.
"But I do know! I should know! It's gotta be one of the criminal ones," I told him. "The fourth is search and seizure . . ."
"Is it the one about a woman's right to vote?"(3) he offered unenthusiastically.
"Well that's not really 'criminal.' [And yes, I used finger quotes] It was passed much later than the first ten amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, which were ratified all together." At least I still remembered something.
"Yea, but aren't they always coming up with a lot of new amendments?"
"Um, no. It's actually not that easy to get one of those puppies ratified," I replied.
Then my drink order came up. I wanted to hang around until I thought of the Sixth Amendment, but honestly, I think the guy regretted starting a conversation in the first place. I went out to my car, where I sat for a bit trying to recall what the Sixth Amendment was. I tried to envision opening one of the sixty dozen copies of The Pocket Constitution that the Cato Institute has sent me, unsolicited and at random over the last ten years, but it wasn't working. Nothing was working.
It was only after I pulled out of the parking lot and sat at a stoplight that it hit me: Fair Trial. Right to Counsel. Gah!(4)
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(1) Several months ago Tyler Cowan of Marginal Revolution called this "one of the best movies I've seen, ever..." I decided to rent it on a night when Bell wasn't home because I knew he would never agree to sit through such stuff. I found it...meh. One (that is, I) can't help but compare it to "The Notebook," which was in some ways more watchable (Ryan Goslingggggghhhhhhhh) although it was burdened with images of James Garner's man-boobs. Incidentally, you know who has never steered me wrong on TV or movies? Bell's co-blogger, Glen Whitman. In the future, before I add things to my Netflix queue I need to ask myself, What Would Glen Do?
(2) I've always thought it quite peculiar that a right against self-incrimination and a right to be justly compensated when the government steals your property made for an odd pairing, much like headphones and extreme razors.
(3) I have a large framed photo in my home office which used to hang in my work office at IJ. It has a picture of a woman in front of an old car with the phrase "Repeal 18th Amendment" on the spare tire cover. Whenever someone looked at it and asked, "The Eighteenth Amendment . . . Which one is that?" I would reply, totally straight-faced, "Women's suffrage." This is the way I have fun with people.
(4) I consoled myself by remembering that waaaaay back when Bell had applied for a federal clerkship, the judge reviewing Bell's resume noted that he had published a paper on the Third Amendment, a rarely used, mostly forgotten little amendment (except in our house). The judge said to his clerk, "The Third Amendment . . . now which one is that?" At least I'm not that judge.
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