Let's talk about the weather

The Friday Five over at RevGals was about Spring.  I read the entry and navigated away.  It's hard to think about Spring when Winter hasn't happened yet.  I correct that, it's hard to think about Spring when Winter has just begun.

I know that many have had snow and rain and snow and rain and are done!  I can understand that, I just can't join them. See, in my part of the country rainfall has been VERY low the last year.  The month of January, usually a pretty big rainy weather month for us, there was nothing. 

The word "drought" is now heard in most conversations.  We've started to take a closer look at our water usage (aka the "take shorter showers" conversation has begun). The media is focused on the low reservoirs and where the water might come from if it doesn't rain.  January was dry and unseasonably warm...there were far too many convertible days in January.  I was pretty sure it was never going to rain again and was about ready to take on ANYONE who believes climate change is a myth. 

Then the weekend came.  Friday, it started to rain and it's been raining pretty steadily since.  Where usually there are a ton of people moaning and groaning about the rain on social media sites, there have been simple posts such as this:  "It's raining!"  We are glad.  Though, today, there was one whiner...when we have to ration water this summer, and she starts whining about that, we will no longer be "friends".

It's February and it's finally starting to feel like winter.  No, I am nowhere near ready for Spring and I'm not playing the Friday Five this week...catch up with me in a couple of months, I may be ready then.

Wild weather weekend and a wedding

This morning Sam Shepherd on Good Morning America told me that the county in which I live received 13.25 inches of rain over the weekend.  I was first of all impressed that the county in which I live was mentioned on Good Morning America and secondly anything but doubtful to the truth of that claim.  It didn't just rain this weekend, the clouds let loose with all of the water they have been storing up all at once.  There was a lot of water in those clouds.  I hear that more is to come.  I am not worried.  I will, however, be going to Payless to see if they still have those pink polka dot rain boots in my size.  I'm tired of my shoes and socks getting wet.

The rain did not stop the plans for the weekend.  We are mountain people.  We don't let rain or downed trees and power lines or the threat of flooding or mudslides stop us!  No!  We continue on with our plans.  Some of us even drive like there aren't massive lakes of water that spray over the windshield when you drive through the lake or causing you to hydro-plane ever.so.slightly.  Nope.  Don't want to slow down.  We are mountain people!

I digress.  The rain did not stop the plans for the weekend.  It was wedding weekend for Opinionated Friend.  There was much to be done.  Saturday as the rain came down outside, we cleared tables and chairs out of the reception room so that tables and chairs could be brought in.  We decorated, we created a photo "booth", we ran to the store for last minute items.  We went for the traditional bridal party mani-pedi's.  We rehearsed.  We went to the rehearsal dinner.  We laughed, we celebrated.  One stayed up late ironing the layered ruffles on a bridesmaid dress, for fear the steamer would not work.

Sunday the rain poured out of the sky.  That did not stop us!  There were errands to be run.  Candles!  Candles to the church!  Step in gigantic puddle on the way into the door of the church! Coffee!  Hotel for hair and make-up and pictures.  The rain stopped a little before noon.  Hallelujah!  The bridesmaid who stayed up late ironing, showed another bridesmaid how to iron her dress, as the feared thing happened...steamer did not work on the dress.  Laughter, hot flashes, mayhem ensued.  Hair was made beautiful, faces painted, lunch was eaten, freshly ironed dresses were donned, hotel room was cleared out, the first glimpse of the bride was seen by the groom, pictures were taken outside, with the sunset and the families.  The bridal party transported to the church.  Hair and make up retouched.  The church began to fill and soon it was time.  A trip down the aisle and soon a newly married couple emerged.  Clean up bridal "room", transport to reception.  Intros!  Cookies!  Food!  Drinks!  Pictures!  Cake!  Toasts!  Dancing!  Farewells!  Time to clean up.  Take down tables and chairs.  Bring back in original tables and chairs.  Load vehicles.  Home...dang it ANTS invading!  Eventually bed...20 hours after I had woken up but a mere 17 hours after I had actually gotten up.

Trees did fall down, power did go out, the river crested 1.7 feet below flood stage, little mudslides occurred but none of it affected the wedding, Sam Shepherd told me this morning that 13.25 inches of rain fell and Opinionated Friend is now Mrs. Opinionated Friend.  That is all.  :)

Today was...

It's a beautiful February day in Northern California.  There are somethings that should not be said in the same sentence.  "Beautiful", "February" and "day" are some.  We are WAY below our rainfall average this year, as is pretty much the whole state.  Lil Bro is in the ski industry.  He finally got to start work 2 full months after his original start date.  Not good.  But that's not why I posted.

I took advantage of this beautiful February day.  First I had my weekly chiropractic appointment.  Then I stopped into get my toes done.  Yay!  The people at the nail salon asked me to make sure my friends knew that they were the only "F." Nail Salon in town.  Turns out that one of their employees quit after two months and is opening up a shop in town with a similar name at their old shop site!  People amaze me.  So spread the word!  "F." Nail Salon has changed locations!  The people at their old shop are imposter's!

I went from there to coffee with Jeffy and LN.  LN brought me mini-oranges with my name on them. 

LN and Jeffy were Mississippi buddies.  When packing lunches in Mississippi I would always put a banana in the group lunch sack with my name on it.  It reminded me of Mississippi.






Speaking of Mississippi, as we were sitting in the sun Ben sends me this picture and text "I forget, how do you eat these?" 
 
He's been sending me pics all week long as Mardi Gras has been in full swing.  I told him to stop sending me pictures.  I want to be there too!








Then I made Creative Guy take this pic with me as I took him to the office from his after school program.















A beautiful day does deserve the top down on the race car. (And it saved me from the "toxic toots" of Creative Guy.  We had quite the conversation about this bodily function and the need to have the top up on the car so I could smell them.  He is all boy.)  He was much better when I took the picture without him knowing. And before you "yell" at me for using my phone in the car, we were at a complete and total stop and I wasn't talking on the phone.

It was a good day...though the wrong day to forget to put on my SPF 30 moisturizer.  *Sigh*

Hope your day was beautiful too!

This blog interrupted to say...

It's raining.  Real rain is falling from the sky.  It's January 19th and it's officially winter.  Hallelujah!!

And the wind blew...

I'm pretty sure that if I had a Mary Poppins type umbrella I could have flown the last couple of days.  We've had Windstorm 2011 here in Northern California.  Well, actually I hear Southern California has had their fair share as well.  In my neck of the woods that means trees falling.  A lot of trees falling.  Which also means that power lines tend to go down as well.  In my household we had power until noon yesterday and then it went out.  G.G. has been without power since Wednesday night.  There is also a tree blocking her road in one direction.  I'm pretty sure that has something to do with the power being out.

Yesterday I was reminded that when the power goes out and stoplights go out, people forget that they have to STOP their cars at the lights.  EACH light.  Not just the one's they are forced to because everyone else is stopping.  I was also reminded that walking in the dark--like no street lights, no building lights, no nothing dark, it is a good idea to use a FLASHLIGHT, or so I would tell the man who was walking four dogs in the pitch black with dark clothes on.  Not smart.

It was interesting, though, to see the town just kind of shut down as soon as people got home.  Seeing as how we had no power and in the interest of trying to keep as much cold air in the fridge as possible, we went out to eat last night in a neighboring town that had lots of power.  We headed home about 7pm.  I took my normal route home in which I would pass car after car after car...not last night.  I'm pretty sure I passed 20 cars total.  It was a good night to stay home...which I did.  Yo Momma, Papa Bear and I sat by the fire and talked until nearly 10pm.  I heated up some water on the wood burning stove and enjoyed hot chocolate by candlelight.  I can handle this every so often.  I'm just grateful that the power is on at Starbucks and that the wind has stopped for the time being. 

Now, here's hoping the power comes back on at my house soon.  I have a Lego Ninjago cake to bake!  Creative Guy is having a birthday party tomorrow!  It might be time to find a friend with a kitchen and power.

This, that and the other thing

This July has not been like last July.  Last July it was just downright pleasant all month.  This July has had more warm days.  Next week is VBS week.  I expect heat, heat and more heat.  Ugh.  At least we have moved VBS to the morning and we aren't trying giving ourselves heat exhaustion anymore.  One can only hope the fog will roll in every night and cool off the sanctuary.

I forgot to update y'all on things that have been going on.  A few weeks ago I got to officiate at a wedding!  Nope, I haven't been ordained.  There are counties in California that deputize people to perform a single wedding ceremony.  The couple who got married asked if I would be willing to go that route and I jumped at the chance!  The one reason that I would choose to be ordained right now would be to be a part of weddings.  Thanks to the County of San Diego for making it happen!  It was very special, especially because I've known the young man who got married since he was 6 years old and hiding under the table during Sunday School.  :)  I did, however, learn a couple of things.  Number 1:  If the couple says "outdoor wedding on a cliff" it's probably a good idea to sew rocks into the hem of my skirt and put my hair all the way up.  Number 2:  invest in a nice looking three ring binder.  Saves a lot of panic over whether or not you'll lose pages.  And yes, I will need to know all this again because in September I get to officiate at my cousin's wedding.  Very, very cool.

In sad news, Hop-a-long hops no more.  I'm pretty sure he helped some other animal get full one night before I went to San Diego.  In more happier news (for me anyway), the de-con on is working.  One more rat gone.  We do now have a chipmunk that scampers across the driveway and up trees and around corners and is basically making himself at home.  Papa Bear came back and the birds are happy.  So happy that they can't seem to stop in time on their way to the bird food and keep slamming into the floor to ceiling windows.  Seriously, there were 3 birds in less than 5 minutes that hit the windows the other day.  I think one hit pretty hard too...it kept trying to fly in the window.  It was just fluttering it's wings and pressing it's face against the glass.  I think keeping the blinds closed, at least part way, would help, but Papa Bear likes them wide open.  Oh well, he's the one who has to clean the windows.

Sunday I preached at FPC for the last time as an employee of the church.  It was on the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.  The sermon went well at both services but I have to say I'm pretty glad to be done with being the worship leader and preaching on the same day.  Even though it only happened a few times a year, it's just too much to do in the service.  Before I gave the sermon at the 2nd service, my friend Beth, her husband and a friend of theirs the song below.  Beth started in singing the first line and I found myself in tears.  As the song continued and the harmonies came in I had to close my eyes and just pray that I would be able to stand up and preach.  It was just so good...and it sounded even better than the group who sings it below...but I am biased.  :)

Let's talk about the weather

It's been a blustery, windy, rainy day here.  The rain poured out of the sky in abundance.  It's been raining pretty steadily all whole week and doesn't look to be stopping until sometime on Saturday...just in time to cancel the Golf Tournament, again.  Sigh.

Anyway, this week the ground has given way in a few places leaving some friends standing on one side of a mudslide with their house on the other side.  Usually, these slides are removed quickly but this one keeps shifting and moving and the rain keeps coming down so there's been little process in clearing the mud away.  The families on this particular road are adapting.

Today's storm caused our local emergency dispatch workers to earn their pay.  There's a couple of websites that someone just as curious as me (ahem**Meg**) pointed me to and I kept their feeds open on my browser pretty much all morning.  I listened to call after call come in of wires down, roadways flooded and watched outside my office window as the rain poured on.  I counted 11 different "wire's down" incidents in one sitting.  Trees were falling all over the place.  At one point a call went out for the local fire station, to which they responded, "we have no one to send out, everyone's busy, get someone else."  Kinda made me laugh.  (It was a false alarm, literally, BTW.)  A friend came by for about a half hour, just to talk, and while he was there a tree cracked and groaned outside...our eyes immediately swung to the window, watching and waiting for a tree to fall...nothing.  The power kept flickering and I knew that today was not going to be the day to get much done.  So I went to coffee with K and watched the rain come down from the warmth of the coffee shop and enjoyed an hour or so of conversation with a friend.  It was good.

There are many who are done with the rain, who want it to stop, who are ready for Spring and so on and so forth.  Not me.  I missed winter this year.  Granted, I live on the coast in CA, we don't get winter like the East Coast or Mid West but I missed our winter.  The two or three dry, balmy weeks in January were wrong, wrong, wrong.  The weather we are having right now, that's January winter.  The last couple of years our weather patterns have been all off.  Summer was cooler than fall, winter warmer than spring, something has shifted and it makes me wonder...what's next?  Is it going to be blazing hot summer?  Time will tell...

Running through my brain

• It's Sunday and I'm preparing for a Safe Church Training in just a half hour. In other words, in a half hour I will be leading a group of people in a discussion on Child Abuse awareness and how we can keep kids safe at our church. Doesn't matter how many times I watch the videos, I still get a little sick to my stomach every time.
• In about a month I am heading to Galveston, Texas with some folks from the church and another church group to do Hurricane Ike relief work there. A part of me feels like I'm cheating on Pearlington.
• Two weeks from today I get to give the morning message aka sermon at the church. For some reason this clip keeps running through my head. It may work it's way into my sermon...at least one part of the line..."but I can't help it!" :)
  
• We had a smattering of snow Saturday morning. I woke in time to see some flakes fall from the sky to the ground. It's a big deal here. Last time I remember snow at our house, I was in the 6th grade. That was a while ago folks!
• This weekend is Quilt Fair Weekend for Yo Momma. We went out yesterday and spent a few hours wandering around the displays. Yo Momma has a quilt on display. I am amazed at how much time and thought is put into the quilts...some are amazingly beautiful. I decided, though, that I'm not much for the 'artistic' quilts. Give me something pretty traditional and I will be just fine...though none of those yo-yo quilts!!

That's all for now!

The wind

The wind has been stirring the last few days. At some moments it whips around, making the chimes outside my bedroom window ring, churning the clothesline line around in it's holder, adding it's own creak and groan to the chimes, rustling the leaves on the ground and whistling through the trees. The wind has been busy.

Saturday the wind was warm. Too warm for a Saturday in February. At 8:45am it felt like the warm wind that blows during July and August. Sunday's wind was much the same. Not good.

The wind is stirring up the pollens, the things that make my eyes itchy and throat scratchy. It blows the smell of the acacia trees through my car windows and the blossoms of the tree around, leaving a yellow film over everything. I don't really like acacia trees. The tree branches outside my office window groan and creak with the wind, as well. Every so often there is a crick-creak-crack as a branch gives way. It's interesting that I never see the crashing branch but I can hear it through the wind.

As the leaves scatter, as the pollens spread, as the chimes ring out, the wind reminds me of cleansing, a rearranging of things, of moving. There is symbolism in the wind, a reminder that all things change, one moment softly and gently, another with such force that it takes my breath away. The wind can bring destruction, it can bring cleansing...it can also bring Mary Poppins. :)

Weather

The temperature gauge outside reads 69 degrees. If this were April or early May, I would be happy. It's the end of January.

Our Snow Trip last weekend almost wasn't a snow trip. There was no snow around the cabin that we stayed in, as opposed to last year when we had to shovel our way in. There was snow at the ski area and at the tubing area, but you could see patches of brown beginning to peak through on the tubing runs. People were wearing shorts at the ski area. It was too warm.

Now, I'm not meaning this to be a post on global warming, all I'm saying is that I want rain. I want snow. I want to be dressed in layers and blasting the heater in my car. I want to wake up to the sound of the rain gutters working over time. I watched the news this morning and was actually jealous of the east coast and the snow they have been getting...though I know that most are ready for the snow to stop, I get that too.

All I'm saying is that I'm ready for it to be winter. A real northern CA winter with lots of rain, flood warnings, power outages and all. Yep, I'm ready for the rain.

Weather Report

Cloudy with intermittent showers...which really means watch out cuz one minute the sun is shining and it's beautiful, the next minute buckets of water will fall on your head.

Glad I'm indoors at the moment.

That is all.