My fault
Living on the San Andreas fault line adds a piquant spice to life.
Look at the upper left quadrant of this NASA infra-something photo and you'll see the San Francisco Bay area. The main fault line passes directly under our house.
Mostly, I live more in the state of denial than of California. But sometimes we take our fault into consideration.
For one thing, we really have read the emergency preparation guidelines at www.72hours.org, The City's quake prep site. Between all of my camping and hiking equipment, and the Italian Stallion's natural sequestering of water, wine and pasta, hell, we're good for 144 hours!
For another, we're always aware of ground movements. Seismic activity goes on all the time, every day. The little needles are constantly quivering, reflecting the shifting plates beneath us. This is a good thing, because the little quakes we barely or never feel release pressure.
Another thing is the way you hang pictures or stack bookcases. A bookcase unanchored to the wall can release hundreds of flying hazards during a big quake.
I lived through a number of hurricanes, some of them passing over my house and doing bad things. Richard has lived through several quakes and he says quakes are much easier on the nerves, because you never know when they're coming. With hurricanes, weather people are discussing the possible paths and destructive forces for days before they ever hit. With an earthquake, boom! it just happens, and then you deal with it.
I don't have any desire to be here when The Big One strikes, but I do get his point.
Want another glass of red wine? We have pasta, too.
Puppy porn
I have led a pornography-free life for more than 40 years, even during the height of Real Estate Porn in San Francisco, until we began looking for a pet.
Now I surf the internet at odd hours, poring over the differences between a Shepherd-Lab mix and a Lab-Shepherd mix, and staring into the soulful eyes of hundreds of willing, eager puppies. I am on first-name terms with the managers of local dog shelters, and have visited with a number of the caged dogs. And Beloved, I know why the caged dog howls...
When my husband and I married, my roommate's dogs - Jake and Happy - went to live with their grandparents in Arkansas. They felt like my dogs too, and I miss them - particularly Jake, with whom I formed a lasting friendship.
Richard and I are going to adopt a dog from a local shelter, saving the one life our lease agreement allows us, and we're going through the process of meeting the candidates.
One of the challenges we're facing is that I've never met a dog I couldn't like. Particularly those medium sized mutts who have been rescued from Hurricane Katrina and need some extra love. I want them all. And we're just going to have one. Argh.
Another challenge is the fractured bone (5th metatarsal) in my foot. Richard (wisely) doesn't want us to adopt anyone until I'm well enough to run around on the beach with him/her. Right now, I'm still limping in low gear. Argh.
So really, all of my late-night surfing for puppy love is in vain. It will be another month or two before I'm back up to speed, and shelters don't hold dogs for you. First come, first serve, and if the medium brown dog with the tender eyes is gone when you get there, he's gone.
Ants Ants Ants!
The rains came with localized street flooding. The cold wind blew, the fog descended, and the ants invaded our house.
It's nature's rich pageant, said the man.
I went to Defcon One, because "nature's rich pageant" is a marital code phrase for something very unpleasant. When Richard speaks of NRP, it's in sentences such as: "Global warming, ahh, nature's rich pageant." "Hurricane Katrina's devastation, ahh, nature's rich pageant."
The only other phrase from Richard that equals it for sheer fear is: "So I was shopping online today..."
Unceasing columns of ants marched from the surrounding sand dunes into our house. I waged war with every weapon at my command, while Richard provided the color commentary.
- "They're just coming in because it's raining," he said. "They don't like the rain."
- "Killing them doesn't stop them."
- "They're not food ants, just those outdoor sand ants, part of nature's rich pageant."
- "They're just looking for a dry place -- as soon as it stops raining they'll leave."
- "They know you don't like them. It's the blond one, they murmur to themselves, she's the one we need to get."
Richard was unfailingly and infuriatingly calm about them, as they took over our house.
It was like Sherman's march through Georgia, like having the 41st Infantry show up uninvited at your doorstep. The ants were performing army
maneuvers in our kitchen, hoisting apples and oranges while grunting "hoo-wah!" to each other.
I don't know but I've been told
(I don't know but I've been told)
These damned ants don't like the cold.
(These damned ants don't like the cold.)
Thousands upon thousands of them poured into our house, marching up and down and back and forth. As I plotted antacide, Richard counseled patience. "When the soil dries out, and their little tunnels are safe again, they'll go back. They don't like the cold floods, and their tunnels collapse," he said, "so they're just harmless ants looking for shelter."
Mame was a harmless aunt looking for shelter.
These buggers are going down.
I'm all for nature's rich pageant, really.
I took science classes.
I know that the ants turn the soil so the birds fly and the cows moo and we have lovely Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. All because the ants are toiling ceaselessly. I get their value OUTSIDE IN THE SOIL.
You see, ants are crucial contributors to the World As We Know It when they're living OUTSIDE IN THE SOIL. They're not doing much for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field if they're in my house, marching ceaselessly and starting to invade the pantry.
"Tolerance," counseled Richard, "tolerance, my pet. Live and let live, they'll go back outside."
My antolerance turned into intolerance when I looked in the mirror and saw an ant marching across my forehead, while another played in my hair.
Can you envision my antsy little dance, while I ensured there were no ants in my pants?
All out war was declared.
I called The Presidio, where we live.
"Our apartment is inundated with ants," I said.
"Yes," the woman said, "they're just looking for a dry place."
I stared at the phone for a minute.
"Thousands of ants are marching through my kitchen," I said.
"Yes, I'm sure they are," she agreed. "It's the rainy season, and they don't like the cold and rain."
Don't like the cold and rain?
They're ants!
If they don't like the cold and rain they don't get to be part of nature's rich pageant.
Harboring these ants is wrong.
Our civilization depends on hard-working ants, doing whatever they're doing so the bees and the birds can do their things.
Charles Darwin would not have approved of these wimpy ants. Natural selection dictates that only those who adapt and survive should thrive. These ants aren't adapting, they're HIDING. Real ants, true ants, would be making tunnels that can withstand the cold and rain of San Francisco. Hello? Calling all San Francisco ants -- guess what? It rains here. It's cold. Adapt or perish, and stay the hell out of my kitchen.
My ant-idote?
I went to Houston on a business trip.
I never imagined, in my wildest dreams, that I would think, "I'll go to Houston and escape the bugs."
Richard says the house is ant-free now, that they're all back outside in their little tunnels.
I'd like to believe they're gone, but I c'ant.
The 244 step program
Take your normal or garden variety 12-step program and what do you have? 12 measly steps.
I've found 244 serious steps on Baker Beach, down the hill from our house.
There are several ways to reach the beach, the most common being the National Park road to the parking lot. But go a little further north along the beach, towards the lovely bridge, and off to your right up the cliffs is a climbing path made of logs, rope and the ubiquitous volcanic sand.
244 logs roped together mostly in groups of 16 lead you up the hill to a trail running alongside a major Park road (Lincoln) and throughout some of the loveliest views in the Presidio. Going up those 244 logs is a tough pull for me right now, made worse by the Jesuit high school boys who practice for their track team by lapping me.
It's my new challenge, and a physical high, to go up and down those logs at least once a day. My short-term goal is to pace these kids in a three-time jogging loop, up and down, up and down, up and down. May never happen - at 41 I'm almost thrice their age - but it's good to have goals.
The mid-term goal is the 2006 Bay to Breakers, a San Francisco foot race up and down the hills of the city, starting at the Bay side of the Peninsula, and running up and over to the Pacific Ocean. It's in May, basically six months away, and I'm going to do it.
Long-term goal is re-capturing some of my former physical fitness. Over the last several years I put other peoples' needs ahead of my needs, including my need to exercise. Serving others become a black hole, meaning that a sudden opening in my schedule became a time to listen to someone else, not a time to go run around Rice University with the dogs.
I'm trying to learn from this mistake, a process which grows both easier and more difficult with age. Whereas the 244 steps simply grow more difficult with age.
It’s good to be king
And in San Francisco, that means being a pedestrian.
In a victory for human rights and really slow-moving people, the San Francisco traffic codes favor the pedestrian every time.
Step out into the street and you own it. Vehicles are required to stop and yield for pedestrians any time, any place. Power to the litte people!
This is quite a change from Texas, where we received bonus points for hitting pedestrians. For a complete guide to the score-keeping, visit www.dps.tx.gov.
- As an eager pedestrian, I love the (false) sense of safety.
- As a bike rider, I love the bike lanes and the signs that say "yield to pedestrians and bicyclists." On some streets, bicyclists get the whole right lane.
- As a driver, I yield, bless and curse.
In all three guises, I try to remember how it feels to be the other person.
I don't always do that in life -- remember how it feels to be the other person. Sometimes, I'm so stuck in my own head, focused on my own goals, that the "other" becomes very separate from me -- even worse, an obstacle.
This bothers me on several counts, mostly because Jesus made two things really clear:
- we're to treat our neighbor with actions of lovingkindness and courtesy, and
- everyone is our neighbor.
He also adjoured us to "clothe the naked."
I wonder what the group of naked people down on our beach would do if I brought them some of Richard's grey slacks and said, "Jesus told me to clothe the naked."
Jesus suffers a lot of grief on account of people like me.
