One year ago today, we were on the road to our new adventure in Colorado.  I had lost my job with a community college in Missouri, and gotten a job doing the same thing in the state I love.  It was considerably less money, and the job was in no way a guarantee, but I couldn’t not take the chance.

All I remember of this day a year ago was the mad rush to pack the rest of the things into the moving truck, including our beds, the plants, a mountain of dirty laundry, and the last of the food.  Klown was madly trying to finish the cleaning in the house while I was hugging neighbors goodbye and worrying about us getting out of town so late.

Then we were off.  I still marvel that The Perfect Child, less than a week after getting her license, drove a car with no air conditioning, and a lawn mower and Tater’s bicycle strapped to the top, all the way to Colorado.  She was a total trooper.  I marvel that neither of the cats escaped, barfed, or pooped in my car. I marvel that when we got to our new home, the only snafu is that we didn’t have bath towels where we could reach them in the moving truck.

Things were not perfect, but they weren’t bad, either.  The duplex I had rented from afar, sight unseen, wasn’t horrible.  But it wasn’t great, either, and we immediately started to plan for a move, even if we had to wait until the end of our lease.  Drawers and doors in the kitchen did not work, the refrigerator wouldn’t keep anything cold, the basement that contained two “bedrooms” was moldy and the bedrooms were non-conforming, and the tub caulking in the biggest of the two bathrooms was in such poor shape that we couldn’t use it.  There was no air conditioning, there were plenty of leaky windows, and carpet so disgusting I would not walk barefoot on it.  But worst case, we only had to stay a year, and I could live with that.  I hoped.

I already missed my family, my friends, Ted Drewes, White Castle, and three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline.  But I had the mountains, and amazing air, and cool weather, and a job, and my girls and Klown.  It was a new beginning.  A fresh start.  Fifty isn’t too old to try something new, right?

A year later, and I still miss my family, my friends, Ted Drewes, and White Castle.  I still have my girls and Klown, and a mountain view every morning on my way to work, or just whenever I turn out of my street.  I have a new home, as we left the duplex in April to move into an amazing townhouse with air conditioning and a fireplace and new flooring and a garden and no mold and every bedroom is conforming.  All of the drawers and doors in the kitchen work, and the fridge keeps things wonderfully cold.

My job is now permanent, even if I’m not earning what I was earning in Missouri, and we aren’t starving or broke, despite medical setbacks (Klown has had to have two hernia surgeries since early December).  The Perfect Child isn’t quite sure she likes it here, but she’s learning to love it.  Tater adjusts to anything; she has fit into both neighborhoods easily, and had more friends than she knew what to do with at school.  She is thriving.

And so am I.  I lost 25 pounds after we moved here, put some back on, but am taking it off again by walking daily at one of the many green spaces we have here.  Our town is the biggest small town I’ve ever experienced; we have all the big stores (Penney’s, Kohl’s, Target, Best Buy, Ross, Lowe’s, Home Depot, etc.), a movie theater, plenty of small local stores, lots of mechanics and repair shops, and more thrift stores per capita than I thought could be possible.  There are parades all the time, and we have 35 city-maintained parks. I am close enough to the mountains that I can be in them with a five-minute drive. I am far enough from the mountains to be safe from wild-fires and flash floods.  I can get to anything I need to get to within 10 minutes of driving.  We have an incredible public library, and one of the best police forces in the country.

I don’t regret taking the leap.  One of my friends keeps hoping I’ll come back home with my tail between my legs, but that’s mostly because she misses me.  I’ll see her and all my friends and family in August when the girls and I drive back to Missouri for a visit.  In the meantime, I’m looking forward to a visit from a friend and her daughter later this week, and my mother will visit in September from Florida, and we are doing just fine.

It’s been a strange year-long trip.  I still have, and don’t intend to get rid of, anger about how I lost my job in St. Louis.  But the truth is, if that had not happened, I wouldn’t be here, now, in a place I love.

I’m a weather geek.  A meteorology geek.  I may miss most of the other news on a regular basis, but I will never miss the weather on the evening news.  I like to know what’s coming up, so I can plan not only my wardrobe, but my activities.  And even without that, I just like weather.  Moving to Colorado last year gave me new weather, new clouds, new everything to get into.

I had never heard of a lenticular cloud before.  I have seen dozens of them now.  They are unique to my part of the country. I have taken pictures of them, which you can see here and here.

Part of weather predicting here is “red flag warnings” and fire warnings.  We have been getting these daily for several months now.  One would think, “oh, it’s going to be a windy day.”  They would only be partially right.

Colorado is on fire this year.  We have the worst drought conditions we’ve had in decades.  These drought conditions, combined with the vast amount of pine-beetle-killed forests, are a recipe for disaster.  In this kind of weather, with very little rain and high winds and hot, dry days (sometimes the temperature is over 100 degrees), a lightning strike, an unmonitored camp stove, a cigarette tossed out of a window, and yes, arson, all cause horrific fires that destroy homes, take lives, and burn up our view.

And unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that a big chunk of my state is now on fire.  The biggest fire by acreage is north of us about 40 miles, dubbed the High Park fire.  It took 20 days to contain it, it burned up 247 homes and killed one person and ate up almost 90,000 acres of land.  A fire started last week near the college campus I work at burned 300 acres and caused evacuations, but no loss of houses or people.  It is still not under control but is manageable.  I have a picture of that fire here.  Both of these fires started with lightning from our “dry” thunderstorms.  We get wind, clouds, lots of verga, lightning and thunder, but no rain.

But the most devastating fire now is south of us in Colorado Springs, about two hours away.  The volume of the fire is low, only about 18.000 acres, but it has destroyed nearly 400 homes and killed two people.  The difference in this fire is that first of all, it started in a more populated area, meaning more homes would naturally be lost.  Second of all, there is a strong suspicion that this fire was arson.  This means someone, someone with a very sick mind, started this fire.  At the peak of the fire last week, 32,000 people were evacuated.  Hundreds of families don’t have homes to go to, and even the houses that were saved are likely severely damaged by smoke and water.  Many had to leave quickly and left their houses with windows open, and food in the refrigerator, and laundry in the washers.  This particular fire scared an awful lot of people.  Finding out the FBI was already on the scene investigating the apparent arson makes it even worse.

It’s bad enough when Mother Nature conspires against us.  But it’s even worse when some human being set that fire on purpose.

There are other fires throughout the state, all under varying degrees of containment.  We hold our breath every afternoon when the little dry thunderstorms start up, hoping that the lightning stays in the clouds.  This morning on my morning walk, the pattern of clouds and sun on Long’s Peak made me think there was fire on that mountain.  It made my heart sink.  Turns out it was JUST the sunshine, there was no fire.  But I’m highly sensitive now to it all. This is my state, I love it, and I don’t want to see it burned up.

We need rain.  Lots of rain.  And we need cooler temperatures.  We are going through a mad run of extremely high temperatures, breaking records almost daily.  This is my first year in Colorado, but I’m told by natives that this is highly unusual.  I also know we are headed into our monsoon season, when we get showers almost every afternoon.  If those showers can just amount to moisture, instead of dry high-based thunderstorms, that would be great.  It’s just barely July.  We have a whole lot of summer left to go through.  I’d like it to be enjoyable.

And now, we are under fire restrictions.  This means no fireworks at all, and it also means most communities are cancelling their usual large fireworks shows.  We can’t afford to start a fire, not even in town.  It would be crazy of us to think we could do that right now.

Are we safe, me and my family?  Yes.  We live in town, about five miles as the crow flies from the mountains.  Even if there was a fire, it is unlikely to come into town and wipe us out, as the firefighters would get to it before that happened.  Nothing is impossible, of course, but it is unlikely.  I still want to live in the mountains, but seeing the devastation, knowing what could happen, has made me rethink some of that.  I don’t want to be alarmist, but I also don’t want to take unnecessary risks.

If you have time, pray for Colorado.  I am, every day.

This week has brought us a story of a 68 year old bus monitor who was taunted and ridiculed by the 12 and 13 year old children on the bus she was monitoring.  There is a video of the abuse, which I won’t link to here.  If you want to find it, I’m sure you can do a quick Google search.

The question my mother and I had (my mother is in her early 70’s) was:  why on earth did the bus monitor put up with any of this?

It was obvious to me that this bullying had been occurring for some time. This was not the first incident; it was simply one in a long line of dreadful days for this woman.  If some kid had not taped it and put it on youtube, we might still not know about what happened.  From what is on the news reports, the woman never said a word, never put the children in their place verbally or physically, and she did not report their behavior to anyone.

That she did not stand up for herself bothers me a great deal.  I am a firm believe in the saying that no one can take advantage of you without your permission.  Bullying is someone taking advantage of you, and this woman was being bullied.  She was an adult, these were children.  Why didn’t she just be a mom, be an adult, and take the appropriate steps to end the bullying?  I know I would not have just sat there.  Those kids, all kids, need to know who’s boss, and when adults cower in front of children, it certainly sends the wrong message.

In talking with some of my other friends about this incident, some of whom are teachers, it turns out that oftentimes, teachers and school staff are told to “not react” and “not punish” when things like this happen.  Schools are afraid of being sued, or of having to deal with an angry parent and the potential for a news camera to be pointed at them.  So, the way to avoid this is to tell the teachers, the bus drivers, the bus monitors, not to react, to just “take it” and let it happen.

Really?  I thought schools were supposed to be taking a hard line on bullying.  I send my daughter to a public school, and believe me, if I thought this was happening at my child’s school, I would be standing in front of the school board during open comments, and I can guarantee I would not be using my inside voice.  In my mind, if we are not going to stand up to bullies, of any age and kind, and in fact are going to, from the top down, decide that the best way to deal with a bully is to condone their behavior through tacit approval and non-action because we are scared of them, we are doing no better than condoning bullying directly.

Bullying is a serious matter.  I was bullied as a teen, and it was no fun.  I have found that ignoring a bully does not work.  Only fighting back strips a bully of their power.  It takes maturity and guts to stand up for yourself.  But you should be doing so.  And our schools should not be condoning bullying by telling teachers and staff that they cannot stand up to a bully.  This just encourages bullying.  And it’s worse because they are encouraging bullying at the administrative level.

I am disgusted to think Tater’s teachers and other school staff may have been told that they cannot take bullies to task, put them in their place, and make the entire classroom a safer place for all children.  I am disgusted to think this happens all over the country.  This is not how an American acts, if I may be so bold and patriotic to say so.  This is not how a human being should act.  All of us should be treated with dignity and respect, at all levels.

I hope some parents at the school where this particular incident took place are asking some hard and pointed questions.  And if they aren’t getting answers, I hope they keep asking, and using their outside voices if necessary, to make the changes that need to be made.

I have been accused of being rich and not understanding what it’s like to be poor.

The first part of that sentence is total nonsense, and the second is somewhat true.  I am not in any way shape or form rich (financially, anyway).  I have never been rich nor have I even been well-to-d0.  In financial terms, I’m lower middle class.  There were times in my adult life when we were, as a family of five, making less than $20,000 a year.  I’m now making not quite double that.  I still have children to raise, and our cars are old (one of our cars is 23 years old).  I don’t buy new things, because I can’t afford them.  I am not rich.  I’m not even close.  I was raised similarly; we had what we needed, some of what we wanted, but we were by no means “rich.”

As for not understanding what it’s like to be poor, no, I probably don’t understand completely.

But I also don’t buy into the idea that success depends on what you got to start out with financially.  First of all, success is relative; success to me is doing something I like that pays well enough to support me and my family.  In simple terms, that’s all there is to it for me.  And that’s exactly how I’m living life.  I make enough to support us, we have a little bit extra to piddle around with, but not a lot extra.  When I’ve had more, all I’ve done is spent more.  I’ve learned that you can live on a whole lot less if you have to.  But back to that whole idea of your start determining your success.  “If you come from money, you’ll be successful.”

There are things much more critical to your success than money.  Heck, sometimes money doesn’t even equal success.  There are some key things I started with, that I was raised with, and these had nothing (directly) to do with money.  When asked what were the things you were taught growing up that made the most difference in your life, I like to say I was taught three pretty important things:

1. Always act with personal integrity.  Be honest, be fair, treat people decently unless they prove themselves to deserve otherwise, and take responsibility for your actions.
2. Work hard for what you want.
3. Don’t live on credit cards and loans.

I am not rich.  I will likely never be rich.  But I am successful. I don’t blame other people for my problems, or my bills, or my lack of success.  These things are completely on me.  They are my issues, and I take care of them.  I could not do what I do now if I did not take that kind of responsibility.  Are things perfect?  No, of course not.  But they are good.  Good enough.  We always have food in the fridge/pantry, gas in the car, I have enough spare cash to go yard saling and have a nice iced mocha once in a while.  I have an education I paid for myself, and a job that uses that education to the fullest.  I’ve never, knock on wood, truly been unemployed and I’ve worked since I was 14 years old.  I learned a simple truth when I was young – good things and “success” are earned.  They don’t happen by luck, or chance, or fate.  They are earned.  I don’t believe every sob story I hear, nor do I have a hard heart.  I help, when I can, but I don’t enable.  There’s a difference.

And I know the only difference between my current success and bigger success is in how much I want to work for it.  I’ve learned to count my blessings and successes, and to always remember to work for what I want.  It is the only guarantee in life.  Resources and opportunity exist for every single person in my country.  No one said opportunity was going to be easy.  Opportunity is an open door, a paved road, an instructional book.  You have to take it from there.

I am proud of what I’ve done, but also know that I could have (and could still) do more if I wanted to work harder at it.  And I hope I’ve given that same understanding to my children.

Ten rules of household harmony:

1.  If you borrow it, put it back.  Not two days later, not next week.  Borrowing is fine.  Not putting it back is not.  It doesn’t matter whether you think anyone uses it besides you or not.  You’d be surprised.

2.  If you spill it, drop it, spray it, drip it, or splatter it, clean it up immediately.  This means toothpaste in the sink, sugar/creamer in front of the coffee maker, cereal on the floor, pencil eraser dust on the table, laundry detergent on the dryer, crumbs around the toaster, dirt tracked into the house, a spill from/in the refrigerator, the clothes that missed the hamper, etc.

3.  If you use the last of it, please let Mom know.  She can’t put it on the shopping list if she doesn’t know.

4.  Dirty dishes don’t walk themselves to the kitchen or into the dishwasher.  It takes no more effort to put them in the dishwasher or sink than it does to leave them on the counter.

5.  If you empty it, fill it back up.  Mom is not the only one who knows how to refill a soap bottle or sugar canister or put a roll of paper towels or toilet paper on the roller.

6.  If you open it, close it.  Cabinet doors, front doors, side doors, dresser drawers, closet doors…

7.  If you turn it on, turn it off.  TV, radio, exhaust fan, lights.

8.  If it is full, empty it.  Trash, laundry, recycle bin, dish drainer, dishwasher…

9.  If it is clean and folded, put it away.  Mom does all the laundry and folding.  The least you can do is put everything away when it’s done.

10. If you take it out, put it back.  If you’re not sure where it goes, ask.

I have some serious advice for young ladies.  And even older ladies.  This advice is something I had to learn the hard way, and lots of others are having to learn the hard way.  We are raised oftentimes to be trusting, to be deferential to the men in our lives, and to be dependent.  We take these lessons to heart, but this can be to our detriment.  I would hazard to say that most men we encounter in our lives are not quite trustworthy, and a big dose of skepticism and street smarts are going to be required to keep your assets and your heart safe.  Your heart will mend if broken, but ruined finances can keep you down for a VERY long time.  These lessons apply if you are married or just in a long-term relationship.

First of all, don’t ever believe everything your man says.  I don’t care how sweet the promises are, how wonderful it all sounds, do not believe it all.  Keep a bit of skepticism there.  If you don’t over-anticipate, and over-hope, you won’t be so easily disappointed when that promise doesn’t materialize.  This doesn’t mean men are bad or evil.  It means men oftentimes overestimate themselves.  They don’t mean to make a promise they can’t keep.  They just exaggerate their potential.  It’s a man thing.  If they come through on the promise, and more, then you can be thrilled and respond and reward accordingly.  But until then, keep your hopes reasonable, and your “yeah, right” meter handy.

Second, do not ever pin your financial or personal goals onto your man.  Remember you are your own human unit, and your ultimate happiness and success depends completely on you.  Independence and some selfishness are not negative personality traits.  They are survival traits.  When you pin your success on the success of your man, you are giving up your rights and your responsibilities.  Work towards your own goals and your own ability to be independent.  Men are flaky and unreliable (see point 1 above) and you don’t want to be standing there in 20 years wondering what happened and why you aren’t where you wanted to be. Work hard, get an education, set your goals and make them happen.  A good man will be proud of you and love you all the more for being true to your goals and being able to take care of yourself.

Third, do not ever give a man access to your money.  Not for any reason should you do this.  Do not put him on your bank account, don’t give him a credit card or debit card for your account or that is in your name.  This does not mean there should not be a joint paying of bills or a responsibility for joint obligations like rent or insurance etc.  There should be joint responsibility for this. But divide what needs to be paid, and pay your part out of your own account that is in your own name.  If you want to have someone on your account as a backup, use a trusted family member or friend.  Do not give this access to your man.  If the relationship goes south, he can clean you out in a heartbeat, and you will have nothing left because you trusted him with access to your money.  Do not make this mistake; it will take years to recover.

There is more advice, but these, for me, are the three biggies.  You have to protect yourself.  You are the only one who can do that.

Yesterday Klown, Tater and I hit some yard sales.  They are pretty hit or miss here; sometimes we find great things, and other times, we should have just stuck with the thrift stores.  You just never know.  And as usual, some of the least promising neighborhoods yield the most interesting and wonderful things.  Kind of like the best Chinese restaurants are always these terrible looking dumps.

So we drove aimlessly around this trailer park (a nice one, but still a trailer park) on the south end of our town.  We were driving aimlessly because the garage sale we were looking for had few signs.  There’d been a sign right at the front, but then no more directions, and this particular park is a huge grid of streets with no names, and every trailer is marked by a “number” but no real information other than that.  There are at least 300 trailers in this park, most of them double-wides with garages and carports and covered porches.  An older park, in decent condition.

We finally found the sale.  The ladies had some nice things, but nothing was priced, and I didn’t really find much that I was interested in.  Except for a baby doll, dressed in a worn and tattered batiste dress with pink ribbons.  This baby doll was old.  Very old.  Cloth body, and composite legs, arms, and head.  The composite was not plastic.  The doll was cracked, there were huge hunks missing from her legs under the dress, and she wouldn’t sit upright without help, her body was so deflated.  I don’t know why the baby doll appealed to me so much, but she did.  I debated asking about a price, but instead put her back, and we moved on to other sales.

The rest of the day, and all night, I swear I heard that baby calling my name.  I woke up this morning regretting that I had not bought that baby doll.  Or at least asked about her price.  I thought about driving back to the trailer park and knocking on the door, but that seemed a bit creepy.  And probably scary for the ladies having the sale, too.  So, I looked for the original ad for the sale on craigslist, where I’d seen it.  The ad was still there, so I clicked the contact email and wrote a quick note.  I said that I’d been at the sale and that there had been a baby doll there and that I had regretted not buying it, and asking if it was still available and for how much.

Within a few hours I got an email back.  The ad had been placed by a neighbor, Pat.  The ladies at the sale were sisters, had lived together for many years, and Pat had gone next door and asked them about the doll and if it would be okay for me to contact them.  She included one of the sister’s names and phone number in the email.  I placed a call, arranged a time, and went and picked up the baby doll. Martha, the owner of the baby doll, had carefully wrapped her in tissue paper and put her in a box, and handed me the box with gentle hands. That baby doll was well loved.  Very well loved.

Now she’s home with me.  As my guest room continues to evolve, it is taking on a country cottage theme, and the baby doll will be happy here.  I will be looking for a doll bonnet for her head, which is severely cracked.  And I’ll also find a little doll rocking chair or a pretty basket to put her in.  Her name, I think, should be Martha.

Our new townhouse is awesome.  I love it for a thousand reasons.  There is nothing that bothers me that I can’t adjust to.  We have space to move, space to get away from each other, and everything we need.  I do mountains of laundry, cook and bake happily in a well-appointed kitchen, have family meals in our dining room with all my pretty things in the china cabinet next to me, and there’s a fireplace.  Our back yard opens onto common space with trees and a pond and automatic sprinklers and I never have to cut the grass.  I love it here.

As with most developments like this (and this one was built in the mid-1980’s), there are rules.  When I signed the lease, my landlord gave me a link to the HOA rules and regulations.  There was really nothing unusual in them, I thought.  Keep your part of the grass watered.  Weed your gardens and gravel spaces.  Stay out of the pond.  Keep your back porch/balcony lights off at night so as not to disturb your neighbors.  No permanent clotheslines can be installed, and temporary ones cannot be left out once the clothes are off of them, and for the love of God, you canNOT have a chicken coop or chickens.

Apparently I missed some parts, because the “May newsletter” just came out and I’m sure I’m in violation of some of the “reminders.”

1. Stop talking on your patio.  Okay, the actual newsletters said “voices carry” and we should not have discussions on our patios that might disturb the neighbors.  Since my patio is the size of a postage stamp and mostly covered with my barbecue pit, this is not an issue for me.  If I sit outside at all, it is on my balcony, and then I’m reading a book or watching the rain.

2. Close your garage door, no one wants to see that mess inside. Actually, it said “open garage doors seem to be an invitation for thieves to help themselves to your bicycles, tools, and other items.”  My garage door is open any time I’m out working in the yard.  And unlike my neighbors’ garages, mine is pretty much neat and clean, so I can park a car in it, something my neighbors don’t seem to know how to do, since they take up most of the street parking because they can’t park in their garages.

3.  Your grass is dead.  Maybe you should water it.  Actually, it said that we are supposed to water our lawns in a “timely manner.”  I have no idea what that means.  I have been watering, and have the water bill to prove it, but my grass looks sad.  I’m not going to go crazy with the water, that’s obviously not helping at this point.  And if they want me to water more often, then they are going to have to pay my water bill.  Twice a week is plenty.

4.  No children should be playing outside.  Actually, it said that children cannot play outside in the common area without an adult out with them.  Considering there’s about a half-dozen kids that play together (including our Tater) on our side of the pond, this seems unnecessary.  I can see them playing from my living room, just as all the other parents can, and if the kids are misbehaving (like playing in the pond, or throwing rocks at the ducks) we see it and correct it.  If these were tiny children, there would be a reason for an adult to be out there.  But these are 4th-6th graders, and they are fine playing outside by themselves in protected space, without us hovering over them like mother hens.

I know the rules are there for the good of all, and I follow them when they make sense.  But there are just some things that are too dumb to even consider.

I did get to meet the vice president of the HOA board.  She was all sweet and pleasant, but obviously one of those that has way too much time on their hands and not enough to do.  She had her little doggie with her (“Miss Peaches”) and I was standing in my open garage with a piece of paper and a pencil writing down things I needed to pick up to fix the grass and to repot some plants.  She walked right on up the driveway (after reading the bumper stickers on my car) and asked if I was the new tenant.  I talked to her, showed her my gardens, fussed over my sad-looking grass, showed her how loaded the trees were with apples, and did my best to play her game.  And that was even before I found out the landlord can’t stand her. We’ll see if there are any problems in the future.  I will do my best to be a good citizen of “The Meadows Townhouse Community.”

Today, I want everyone to thank their mother for putting up with them.  Whether you thought you were the “good” kid, or knew for sure you were the trouble-maker, you owe your mom a lot of thanks.

You might ask what brought this on.  Well, there’s a story behind that, as you’ve probably figured out.

This morning the girls and I woke up to Klown hollaring about his car.  He was supposed to be at work at 7, and apparently something was wrong.  So much for sleeping in.  So I got up, and he’s in the Perfect Child’s room yelling at her to call the teenage boys she knows to find out who “covered my car in silly string”, and T.P.’d her car.  She’s trying to wake up, cell phone in hand, texting two teenage boys who are probably still asleep at that hour of the morning.

And me?  I laughed.  This did not go over well.  I walked outside with him to see this “covered in silly string” car only to find a few strands of it, most of it having ended up in the bushes and on the ground.  As we all know, teenage boys have great aim. Very great aim.  I laughed again. Klown was not amused.  “Not very mature.”  Really.  These ARE teenage boys we’re talking about here, right?  So maturity is not part of the equation, no more than spectacular aim with a spraying device is.

I think Klown needs a new name:  Kurmudgeon.  Really.  This, to me, was just a silly prank.  No one sprays your car with silly string and unrolls an entire roll of toilet paper around it because they want to do you harm.  Harm would have been a rock through the window or flattened tires.  This means that someone likes our teenage daughter.  I never had the wonderfulness of having my car TP’d.  I wasn’t the popular girl.  My daughter, on the other hand, is, and that’s okay by me.  There are way worse things in this world.

Of course, the Perfect Child is taking her cue from Klown, and she’s angry too.  I explained to her that getting mad was not going to help, that there was no harm done at all to her car, or to Klown’s, and that this is just a teenage thing.  Then I had to tell her that I had TP’d my fair share of cars in my time.  It was done as a sign of respect and a way to say “I like you, even if you don’t know who I am, and I am never going to admit that I did this to your car.”  Yeah.  I was 19, away at college, had a couple girlfriends who were more than happy to help as long as I helped them with their pranks too.

By the way, I was the “good girl.”  I was the one my mother never worried about.  I didn’t drive to fast, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t stay up late at night or stay out until all hours of the morning.  That was my brother. That wasn’t me.  I didn’t TP a car until I was away at college.  How would I have explained my behavior to my mother, sneaking in the house after midnight, giggles and snorts and all. And looking back, I’m not even sure my mother would have been as upset as my father.  I love my dad, he’s an awesome guy in a lot of ways, but you would think he’d never learned how to have fun as a kid.  Oh, I know he did, I’ve heard some of those stories, but in the way of most parents, those stories are not going to be shared all that openly with children.  You know, in case they take a cue from your earlier bad behavior and try it themselves.

If the worst I ever did was TP the car of the guy I had a crush on (who didn’t even know I existed, of course), then I’m okay.  And this teenage boy (the one who silly-stringed Klown’s car and TP’d the Perfect Child’s car (yes, we know which teenage boy it was) caused absolutely no harm with the prank, and if this is the worst he ever does?  He’s fine.

And so are we.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We had rain here.  I know, that’s not news a whole lot of places.  In fact, when I was still in Missouri, I complained an awful lot about our wet springs and summers, especially those that closed the road I took to work, forcing me to stay on the highway the whole trip.

I’m not a great commuter, that’s pretty much well-known about me.

Anyway, we had a decent rainfall here, which made me a bit nostalgic.  Being from a wetter climate, I was used to regular rain, the sound of it on the roof and pavement, the smell of it as the dirt soaked up those first drops.  The intense green of the trees and grass within minutes after the rain would start, and finally, the bright sunshine that would come out and sparkle off the wet landscape.

Here, rain is rare.  We see rain fall from clouds fairly often, especially in spring and summer.  But the rain never reaches the ground, evaporating into the dry air.  If it does rain, it is a few drops, and done.  This rainfall started on Sunday night and went through most of the day on Monday.  It was a slow, steady, moderate rain that never let up.  After days of too-warm weather and weeks of no moisture at all, it was a blessing.  I watched it come down, making my world soft around the edges, muffling the sounds of cars and airplanes and neighborhood.  I could stand on my balcony, my feet in shallow puddles, and watch the raindrops disturb the water on the pond.  The ducks floated around resolutely, not any more used to the rain than the rest of my neighbors.

You would think, since it is so dry here, that everything would be brown and yellow.  But it isn’t.  Our trees are green and lush, and lawns do just fine with a twice-a-week watering.  But as we all know, rain is much better than a sprinkler.  The nourishment from rainfall isn’t just about the moisture.

May is apparently the rainy season here, and we expect more of these kinds of rainfalls in the next few weeks.  I’m going to enjoy each and every one of them.