Today we drove to Chico for a funeral.

The drive was long – longer than it should have been as we later learned on the way home after actually checking a map instead of believing in the almighty power of Mapquest. It was a pretty drive in places. We saw a few clumps of California poppies along the road. It took me by surprise to see them, actually. I remember when you could find those brilliant clusters of orange along every freeway in this area, and now they’re nowhere to be found. Our state flower, practically nonexistent. Back in high school I had a biology teacher who’d come from out of state. He was very tall and thin, and painfully young. We had to do the California memorization thing – where we had to memorize tons of flowers (and birds) – their common and latin names. I recall hours spent with friends, working with flash cards, trying to come up with anything at all, no matter how silly, that would help us to remember those darn latin terms. I’m still not sure why they forced us to do this – most of us promptly forgot all we’d memorized shortly after the test.

But the test itself was a room lined with various plants – samples of them, mostly, since they were all Californian. And in one vase was a pair of flowers – brilliant orange petals (four each), hanging limply down at the sides of the stem. We were stumped – this did not look remotely familiar, although the color should, I suppose, have been a dead giveaway. “Poppies,” the teacher exclaimed when we asked him later, and was mortified when told that it was illegal to pick them. He’d had no idea. But at least now we all know what they look like when they’re picked. They don’t hold their shape. They wilt and turn their pretty, delicate heads inside out.

There were orchards along the roads we drove. The sign for one town proclaimed it the kiwi capital of the United States. I’m not sure if that is necessarily true, but I can only assume that if it was, those squatty, leafless trees we saw were kiwi trees. Do kiwis even grow on trees? I’m a bit ashamed to say that I don’t honestly know, although since they’re a fruit, I’d have to assume they did.

In one section we passed the air was filled with the perfume of thousands of flowers – pale pink blossoms that liberally decorated the otherwise bare tree branches. Between the trees something grew that was dotted bright yellow. At first we thought perhaps it was a deliberate planting, but then, noting clumps of the stuff in random patches in fields and parks we passed, we wondered if it was simply a local weed. Whatever it was, the blanket of yellow pin pricks under a canopy of delicate rose was vibrantly beautiful.

There is not much else out there on the road up to Chico. The route is sprinkled with a handful of small towns, most of which looked to be the sort of place young couples dream wistfully of moving to to raise their children, and from which teenagers dream desperately of escaping.

We found the funeral home with no trouble at all, and went inside. The room was packed, and it was only after finding a place to sit that Richard’s aunt flagged us down and pointed us toward one of his cousins.

I never met his aunt – the one who lay in the coffin at the front of the room (although I’d never met the other one who greeted us before either). I know that funerals are not the place where faults and flaws are often revealed, but still, even with that in mind, the way people spoke of her, she sounded as if she were the type of person I would have liked to know. Service over, they raised the coffin lid and as people milled past, Richard and I met the rest of his family.

This is a side of the family he knows barely, having seen most of them only 15 years prior. His cousin Richard looks just like him – so much that I pointed him out as we sat in the back corner (our first position before his aunt found us) and noted that he had to be related.

Richard (my Richard, not the cousin) commented, looking at his aunt’s body, that she seemed still alive, that somehow one could almost believe that she was about to wake up. She died in her sleep – the best way to go, peaceful, quiet. She had called only a few weeks prior, completely out of the blue after so many years. Others said that she had called them as well, everyone in her family on both sides, trying to touch them all. She made the effort to get Richard’s phone number for that call, and it was that effort which was the sole reason we even knew she died.

It was a bit odd, being at a funeral when I was not emotionally involved. I attended my grandfather’s funeral several years ago and mourned because I would never have the chance to really get to know this man who shared my love of the scientific and practical – the only one in my family who could ever read my published works and comment on the actual topic because he understood what I wrote about. He was laid out in his coffin, and looked like a wax dummy. It did not look real – he was too artificial, lying there. This was not my grandfather as I remembered him, the summer before at the family reunion. He had been just as old and frail then, but he was alive. This body in the coffin did not look as if it had ever been inhabited. He was the only one of my grandparents I ever knew.

Handshakes and ‘glad to meet you’s’ were murmured. What do you say to someone who has lost their sister / mother / best friend, when you have never met anyone in that room before – either living or dead, except “I’m sorry about your loss.” We left with addresses exchanged, hugs and promises to remain in touch.

On the way home, sun setting so the flowers in the trees weren’t nearly so brilliant in color, we saw the egret by the side of the road. He stood, poised, thin and white, sharp against the uneven grass of the shoulder, pretending that the cars whizzing by didn’t exist.

I pass a house every day on the way to work. Most days I don’t even turn my head to look – it’s merely something alongside the road, and I’m too tired to care about the scenery that early in the morning.

But lately I’ve been looking more, sometimes even slowing down a bit just to get a closer view. It’s the same sort of square box of a house as the rest of the homes on the farms that line the back roads to the freeway, except that no one lives in this one anymore. It’s falling apart, slowly. The wall that faces the road has completely fallen away, and the roof sags deep in the middle, while what remains above the front room hangs down slightly, a paltry attempt at covering the room that is now exposed. The foundation is worn open and the house itself tilts slightly. It may once have been painted a different color, but time and weather have taken their toll and the exterior is now a defeated white, streaked with dirt and age.

The house draws me because it is slowly falling apart, at the same time that I am in the process of putting my own house together. While we watch the walls rise in the house we’re building, this one’s walls crumble and succumb to the weather, deteriorating bit by visible bit each day. Another heavy rain storm may do in the rest of what remains of its roof.

It draws me because when I’m tired my mind wanders, and I’m often tired passing that house. I wonder if someone, years and years ago, stood where that house now huddles and watched it grow from a pile of bricks and boards into the home it once was. I wonder if it was someone’s dream, if this was where they imagined they’d live, watch their children grow, grow old in this place. I wonder if that someone worried as much about the details as I worry, if they were unable to make up their mind, or simply built it matter-of-factly. I wonder if the curtains in the windows were lace, or covered in pastel flowers and tied back with lengths of fabric; if family pictures adorned the walls on uneven lengths of wire looped around nails. I wonder if someone planted flowers in pots on the porch, or if they hung clothes on a line stretched between trees to dry. I wonder if someone stood in the kitchen and looked out on the farm and knew that she was *home*.

It’s sad, in a way, to watch the death of what was once someone’s home. I’ll never know why it fell into the shape it’s in – if someone died and no one wanted it; if it was simply rented out and then never taken care of. Or there may not have been any one reason why it became so neglected. Perhaps it just grew too old and tired.

I know that someday, years and years from now, there is the possibility that the house we are building – this shiny new home full of unimaginable possibilities, this place that I cannot wait to live in – may someday look something like this tattered remnant. It’s not a pretty thought, and I hope that I’m long gone by the time it happens. I’d like to think that our house will last, carefully tended by all of its owners, loved just as much by all those who come after us as we will love it.

The reality, however, is that the day will come when even our beautiful home will begin to fall into disrepair, the roof buckling, beams worn away, and sometime in the future, someone will pass by and wonder too.

If Collab – March: If given the challenge, could you live without a mirror for one week? How much emphasis do you place on the outward appearance you show the world?

One week. No mirror. What’s the big deal with that?

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it, and of course if you say ‘no’, then that makes you completely shallow – obsessed by how you look and how others view you.

But my answer is ‘no’ anyway.

Am I obsessed with my appearance? Of course not. I can do my hair without benefit of a mirror – give me a comb and a barrette and I’m all set. My beauty regime is minimal – five minutes, most of that spent in applying moisturizer and lotion, since my skin and the Sahara desert share a few things in common. I never got the hang of most forms of makeup – every time I apply eye shadow I look as if I’ve been punched, and blush only makes me look artificially sunburnt. Mascara doesn’t require a mirror to apply, and I can even do eyeliner by touch if need be.

So why do I need the mirror? Not for any grandiose illusions of beauty, no. I need it for a far more basic reason. Because of the trichotillomania, I live in constant worry about my eyes – how they look. In times when the trich has gotten really bad – times like now when stress overwhelms me and I give up on the struggle to leave my eyes alone – it becomes crucial that I do the eyeliner and the mascara very carefully every morning; that I color in the brows; that I do whatever is in my power so that noone will know about my ugly little secret. In times like these, I glance into any mirror I pass, checking to see how pale I look – if the eyeliner is even, if anyone can see that there’s huge bald patches in my brows. It is always in the back of my mind, this disorder.

In less stressful times, when the disorder is mostly under control and I am reasonably certain that, even makeup-free, I look ‘normal’, I might answer this question differently. Filled with confidence, sure that this time I’ve finally got it licked, I might declare ‘I don’t need a mirror! Ha!’

It’s far better to be realistic. I have a dream that someday I really will be able to answer this question with a resounding ‘Yes, yes yes!’ But for now, I will keep my mirror close, if only for my own peace of mind.

There’s been this little part of my brain that has insisted that this isn’t going to work – that she will sew this dress and it will be horrid – not what I wanted, but exactly what I picked, and I’ll be stuck with it. And I’ve never been good at visualizing things on me from pictures.

Last night, the seamstress came over, with all the pieces of my dress, and proceeded to put them together, with pins, *on* me. When she’d gotten it mostly constructed, she ushered me off to the mirror.

I stood there in that beginning of a wedding dress – skirts gathered carefully in both hands so I didn’t trip on the hem, only one sleeve finished and the other one a diaphanous wing of too much material, my hair a mess – and all of my doubts were completely gone. It’s gorgeous. It’s incredible. It’s exactly what I pictured, and more so. And it makes me *feel* beautiful. I can see it now – the final result – and it doesn’t matter if I never lose any of this weight. This is the perfect dress for me.

********

The house is really looking more like a house inside now. The sheet rock is mostly done, they’ve constructed the linen closet (huge!), the shelves in the master bedroom closet (I love that idea!), etc. The contractor said they’ll do the decks next – kinda funny when he was mentioning his difficulty in figuring out what to use. I said I’d heard of this stuff that looked like wood but was made of recycled material. He grinned and took me over to show us what he’d got us – the stuff made of recycled material. I know it makes him quite happy when he comes up with an idea and we’ve already thought of it. Heck, I know it makes us thrilled when he does the same, and this guy is amazing at coming up with marvelous ideas (after twenty years of building custom homes, he’s got all sorts of handy do’s and don’t’s).

One of the things we were supposed to look at Thursday night (when we went out armed only with a flashlight), was the fireplaces. We looked, dutifully, but aside from saying ‘yeah, it’s a fireplace’, and noting that we’d like a broader mantel, we weren’t really sure what we were supposed to be seeing. Luckily, when we headed out yesterday for our what has now become weekly ‘meet with the contractor’ session, one of the builders explained to me exactly what it was we were supposed to see. The downstairs fireplace is going to be absolutely stunning. They’re building ‘columns’ into the walls above and below, and the mantel piece itself is detailed beautifully. He noted that a broader mantel would work just fine – all we have to do is add it to the top. It’s going to be a truly magnificent centerpiece for the room – the first thing to draw the eye when you walk in.

Sebastian is losing weight and I am starting to come to terms with the fact that he is getting older. He tends to do more sitting and staring into space than running and being active. I’m not sure I’m ready for him to be old, but I’ve had him for nearly ten years now. Has it really been that long? Somewhere I have pictures of him as a kitten – a tiny little white rat curled into my college roommate’s lap – all white fur and pink toes. It doesn’t seem that so long has passed and yet it has. Rebecca hasn’t aged – or at least visibly. She’s always been the grouchy old lady – ever since she became an adult she’s been this way so there’ve been no behavior changes to signal the onset of age. Or perhaps it’s simply been more gradual – who knows. In a strange way, I am more prepared for Rebecca to die than for Sebastian. It’s not that I’ll miss her any less – it’s just that I can somehow separate it – and it’s a shock to see the visibility of age in the one who always seemed somehow not quite in this plane of reality.

********

The house is so close now. I realized that now that it’s March, there’s only about six weeks left. We were tasked to go out and look at some things this evening, so we did, dutifully, wandering around by flashlight. Half the time we’re out there it’s by flashlight, parking a car so the headlights shine into the house and then stumbling through the dark. It was easier to illuminate the house from outside when the walls weren’t covered, but now that the sheetrock and insulation are in place we can’t simply pass through the walls. We must go through doors, as it will eventually be. It’s an odd feeling, to be suddenly ‘confined’ to what is normal as opposed to the open framework that’s been there for so many weeks now, and even odder to realize that sooner than we know it, we’ll be living there.

We’ve both agreed we’d rather pay the extra price (although the amount does make me wince) for the Corian countertops in the kitchen. It’s better this way – we won’t regret it. The only question that remains is, of course, how much more will come – little bits here and there, little extras to pay, more decisions to make, and more hindsight revelations to uncover.

I’m sitting here, my hair all gooey because I finally got enough energy to do the coloring it has needed for weeks. When I can’t wear my hair anything but barretted back, it’s way past overdue for color.

I don’t lie about coloring my hair – I never have. When people compliment me on the color, I smile and say thank you, and if they ask if it’s my natural color, I reply “as close as I could get”. I’m not going to volunteer the information, mind you, but if someone comes right out and asks, what’s the point in lying? I’m not ashamed of it. I’m a Miss Clairol girl. In a way, it’s kind of fun.

I color to cover the gray. It’s the only reason I would go through this hassle on a regular basis. For years during college I had this yen to go red. I tried semi-permanents but they never stuck. I tried permanent color but it, too, didn’t stay. I even got my hair professionally colored, and she did it while perming to try to get the color to stay. My hair was gloriously auburn for a few short weeks, and then it all faded, leaving me with my permed and extra-dry coif. I gave up on it after a while, figuring that my hair just wanted to be difficult. After all, it wasn’t much after that that my hair decided it didn’t like perms anymore either and those started to wash away. When your hair won’t hold a permanent color or a permanent curl, that’s a sure time to accept defeat.

Flash forward to a few years ago, when I began to realize that those ‘few strands of gray’ were becoming a lot more than just a few. My whole family grays early – I can’t help my genes, and as much as I respect my mom for deciding to go with the gray, I am just not ready to be silver-headed at my age. Darn it all, I don’t look my age – no reason why my own hair should betray me.

So the white hair on my head drove me to the supermarket where I stood in front of a boggling array of boxes, holding them up to a lock of my own hair to match the color. I had learned my lesson about trying to be something I wasn’t – all I was aiming for was to just get back to the pre-gray me.

So it’s been a bit ironic that when I wasn’t trying, is when I finally get the red. Oh, it’s not as much as I’d wanted in those younger years, but there’s a gold tint to it when the light hits and hey, you know what, I like it better this way anyway. And except for that bare hint of red highlighting, I really did manage to get it pretty darn close to natural. If it weren’t for this pesky grey, you’d have to look really hard to figure out my roots might not be quite the same as the rest of my head.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my hair most of my life. It’s poker straight, and to make it even worse, it nearly always refuses to hold a curl. I’ve always envied the girls who had long lush hair with just the right amount of wave – hair that could be left uncombed for days, attacked with a wind tunnel, and steeped in all manner of chemicals and still look absolutely stunning. Oh, they tend to complain about how heavy their hair is, but I have no pity. None whatsoever. Walk a mile in my tresses and trust me, sweetie, you’ll be clinging to your perfect hair the instant you get it back.

In high school I started perming, if only to try to add some body and life to my limp locks. Since I was also involved in synchronized swimming, the combination of the chlorine and the perm solution tended to give me blond streaks that looked as if I’d been given a highlighting job by a color-blind stylist. It also had the lovely side effect of sucking all the remaining moisture out of hair that was already dry to begin with. When I stopped swimming, and eventually gave up on perms, it still took years for my poor hair to finally recover.

It took me thirty years of perming, cutting, and dying before I started to like my hair. Oh, if someone with the perfect hair I’ve always envied were to offer to trade, I’d still do it in a heartbeat. But I’ve grown used to my locks now. We have an understanding – my hair and I, and so far that seems to work well for both of us.

Of course, if we go by history, it’s only a matter of time before the gray in my hair refuses to be washed away, but for now, I’ll take what I can get. Who knows – maybe by then the bald look will be in.

After several months where the only thing wedding related we did was talk sporatically to a seamstress while my mom searched – without success – for reception entertainment, this weekend was rather overflowing with the stuff. She emailed me, elated. She’d finally gotten in touch with the guy from the Folsom Renaissance Faire.

But first, off to get the invitations. Seems a bit early, I suppose, but my mom wanted to get them soon enough so that we’d have time to send them back if there were any errors. She and I drove down to the little store and huddled on the floor, crouched over three huge folders overflowing with wedding invitations.

There are some really ugly, tacky, cutesy invitations out there. Did I mention they were ugly, tacky, cutesy, or sometimes all three together – a rather scary combination. I flipped hastily through the stacks of flowery vellum, shuddered at the ones decorated with Precious Moments couples and touching seaside engravings, and giggled with my mom over the ones dripping with saccharin poetry. The good news is that, despite the abundance of ugh, I did find something I really liked.

Then we had the fun of confusing the poor salesgirl by reading her what the invitation should say. Toss in a few ‘thy’s’ and ‘thou’s’, add a dash of English (not American) spelling, and by the time we were done, we had her completely bewildered, but admitting at least that this was a wedding that was sure to be…erm…different.

Later in the weekend, Mom and I huddled around the phone to talk with the guy from the Renaissance guild. Success at last! We managed to score the rental of some gorgeous banners for the reception hall, and a whole list of names of people who were willing to help. A few short phone calls later and we’d tracked down a recorder and drum group, and a dance troupe who are also willing to teach the guests a few of the simpler steps. We ended this weekend with a sigh of relief – after such a dry spell, it was nice to know we’re finally at least a little ahead of the game again.

Tiny speckles. Larger pebbly chunks of speckles. Speckles interspersed with randomly strewn threads.

This is the selection that awaits you should you be so inclined to go picking out kitchen countertops. For whatever reason, the entire counter top industry seems besotted with speckles, in any shape or size.

The only problem with this is that neither Richard nor myself is a speckle-lover. In fact, we prefer almost anything except speckles, especially those lovely selections that had not just speckles, but random bits of thread intermingled within.

I can only assume that someone, somewhere, is very proud of their speckle-dynasty. Someone out there – or even a group of someones – in each counter top-covering company, is responsible for coming up with new designs, and based on the sheer volume of speckled varieties, I’d hazard a guess that those people get extra credit for coming up with yet another way they can incorporate speckles into their work.

Our big task for the house this week, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now, was to pick out the kitchen countertops. The contract called for tile, but as neither of us is really all that enamored of tile either, we were shepherded off to a countertop store, there to peruse the selection. And of course, while we were there, we just happened to come upon the (boxes and drawers and cabinets of!) little squares of Corian.

This is the stuff that forms a solid block on top of your kitchen counter. This is the stuff on which you can set your hot pans, fresh from the oven, without fear of cracking or burning. This is the stuff that cleans easily, that rarely stains, that looks marvelous over the years.

This is the stuff that costs an arm and a leg. Therefore, this is, of course, where we found the sample we liked best.

On the plus side, since we skillfully avoided all speckles by choosing a solid color (pale green that looks wonderful with deep golden wood stains), it at least came from the cheaper side of the spectrum. But then they started talking about how they could mold a sink out of the stuff for us if we were so inclined, and add lovely trims and embedded designs, and stripes of alternating color.

Hey, I was happy we were able to find a single color we both liked. I’m not artistic enough (or motivated, for that matter) to try to coordinate something fancy into the countertops.

We left with the promise that they would price our selection and let us know how many arms and legs we would have to trade for our beautiful green counter. They also tossed in the mention that we might be able to get a coordinating stripe on the front trim for free.

They knew exactly what they were doing. We didn’t even bother to choose a back up – we just went with our little square of Beach Grass green and a pamphlet detailing all the nifty trims and extras we could add. Only problem is, now this has got me thinking about coordinating colors (something I was really trying to avoid with the whole countertop issue in the first place). Whatever we decide, I’m sure it will be lovely.

Just as long as it doesn’t have any speckles.

It turns out that the dryer isn’t really broken. Near as I can figure, it simply decided it needed a break, or else it was just annoyed with me – who knows. It’s not explaining, but I’m not going to push it. It dries perfectly fine now, so I’m happy.

Well, as happy as I could be considering the fact that now the garbage disposal is broken. I was finally inspired enough to clean out the refrigerator, and after filling a garbage bag with the scary odds and ends that seem to accumulate in the darkest corners as time progresses, I pulled out the remnants of a casserole I’d made weeks ago. It hadn’t quite made it to the fuzzy stage of moldering, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I scooped the dish out, stuffed a fair bit of it down the drain, and then flipped the switch for the garbage disposal.

Unfortunately, the disposal did not immediately start grinding. Instead, it made a pathetic hum and then there was silence. Not even climbing under the sink to press the reset button worked. That puppy is dead, dead, dead.

I then had the true joy of scooping out all of that moldering casserole from the sink drain…with my bare hands. I had hopes that if I simply emptied the drain, I could feel around inside and perhaps figure out what had jammed it. I’ve done this before and usually after I rescue the mangled remains of what was once one of my (sadly diminishing) supply of measuring spoons, the disposal perks up and grinds merrily away.

The garbage disposal is just one more thing in the long string of problems that have popped up in the past few months. The shower faucet leaks unless you turn it to the exact perfect place on the knob. Half of the window screens would fall off if I were to look sternly at them. The garage door opener remote died months ago, and the opener itself has been retreating slowly, often taking several presses of the button on the wall before it will – grudgingly – agree to open more than a few inches at a time.

I think the house has simply discovered that we’re going to leave it soon, and has decided to offer as much encouragement as necessary, by slowly falling apart around us. I wish there was some way I could convince it that we really don’t need any more encouragement – that we will miss almost nothing from this house, this town when we leave.

But somehow I’m not so sure it will listen.

The dryer is broken. I have discovered this because I did laundry Monday night and put it to dry, and then this morning went to pull out a pair of jeans and found they were still soggy. They’ve been drying now for probably over an hour and everything is still damp.

It’s getting hot – that’s for sure. And there’s hot air coming out when I went out to check the outside vent. And it’s actually spinning the clothes because I stood there and listened to them clump around inside. So I’m not exactly sure what the problem could be – just that it has apparently decided it doesn’t feel like its optimum best.

I have a few choices. I can call and get it fixed. I could let it sit and stew about it. I could decide that when we move we get a new dryer because gas dryers are more energy efficient and cheaper to run (well, supposedly they are, assuming natural gas prices ever drop back to ‘normal’ again), and heck, we set up the laundry room for just such a thing, so why not use it?

Any of these choices, however, leave us in the unenviable position of having to do laundromat runs, possibly through the next several months til we move. It’s not exactly something one anticipates having to do when one finally graduates to a house where one can have one’s own washer and dryer.

Sigh. I hate things like this. Another fix-it project. Gee.

********

Things I learned today.
• When you put a pan of rice on to boil, and you are supposed to turn it down to simmer, but you accidentally turn the other burner to simmer and leave the heat under the rice on high, and then you run over to feed your friend’s cats for only a few minutes, when you return, the house is full of wispy clouds of smoke, there’s the chemically smell of metal in the air, and you discover that not only has the water boiled out of the pan and the rice adhered themselves permanently to the bottom, but the pan itself will actually begin to melt and weld itself to the burner.
• When your house is full of wispy clouds of smoke and the smoke alarm is *not* blaring its little heart out when you walk in, this means it’s probably a good idea to change the battery.