Woman in the Middle

Last night the infamous 340 ton rock began its very big move to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from a rock quarry in Jurupa Valley California. I think anyone who saw the number of men conferring in the hour before they set off could assume it was a logistical nightmare! I tried to take a photo of the rock and the men but my flash just lit up all the reflective strips on their vests!

My flash captures the reflective strips on the vests of the men preparing to move the big rock.

All of them were wearing the requisite construction boots on their feet, including the men who got to walk eight miles next to the rock. Hum….I have a feeling that is not going to be good….Hope those boots have arch supports!

The men, without the flash!

Lots of people were there and lots of news reporters were there as well. I had only been there a few minutes when I was snagged by a reporter and camera man for a Korean television station. I have a feeling I won’t be getting to see that interview! I was glad it was cold because I think the red scarf around my neck hid the double chin very nicely! I talked to a gentleman who had been out every day this past week to see the giant trailer and watch the progress of the rock being moved from the quarry out to the road, getting ready for its trip.

This is a closeup of the plastic wrapped rock sitting on its trailer.

The rock will only be moving about eight miles tonight. Rumor has it that Good Morning America was going to be visiting it at its resting spot this morning, just down the road and still in my fair city. While I realize that moving this rock is a bit of an engineering marvel, the thing I get the biggest kick out of is how BIG this story has become.

I told Hubby that we can go see it move again tonight! Come to find out the rock will be making its way near Hubby’s work. We joked about his many, many  opportunities to see that rock!

When we finally dragged back home I thanked Hubby for being my rock viewing buddy. He said he would do it any time. Got to love a guy who will go with you to watch a rock move.

And there it goes! The huge trailer finally began its move at 10:30 p.m. or so.

I know that the post office can have its annoying moments. Based on my past experiences, they don’t deal well with the unexpected or the unusual. However something happened yesterday that just shocked me!

I have friends in Great Britain who went on a short holiday to Dublin, Ireland last week. They popped a postcard in the mail to us on the 22nd and it arrived in my mailbox yesterday, the 27th. While that is not quite the speed of light, it is sure a lot quicker than I would have expected that little piece of cardboard to here.  It had to wing its way from a foreign land, cross a wide ocean, cross an entire continent, and end up in my mailbox in just five days.  I may even forgive the Irish postal service for forcing my friends to put a postage stamp with a close up photo of a Green Huntsman spider on that postcard.  Seriously, of all the things in the world they could use and they pick a green spider?

Note to U.S. Postal Service, stick with the obscure people from history, stay away from the spiders. Oh, and good job on delivering the postcard so quickly!

Some of you are probably wondering right about now “Why is she posting about that rock again?” Well, as shocking as this may be to some of you, this really big rock, about to begin its move from my city to Los Angeles, is really big news to some folks. So, for those of you who do not give a rip, please just ignore this post and get on with your day. I completely understand. For those of you who like the rock, read on!

The rock will begin its journey tomorrow night, February 28th, at 10 p.m. An article appeared today in our local daily newspaper, the Press Enterprise. It can be found here if you would like to see it: http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20120226-jurupa-valley-rock-starts-trip-to-la-tuesday.ece

I guess you know where I will be tomorrow night!

Part of my weekend was spent weeding. I had a small bank in the front yard at my old house and that puppy was a pain. Getting anything to grow on it was nigh on impossible, except for weeds, of course. So I vowed that my next house would have no banks. (Lots of laughter now.) Instead I have even more bank to deal with, in more than one place on our lot, and those banks are steeper and taller and all the things I didn’t want. Life is an ironic thing, isn’t it?

Those banks really needed some attention before the prime weed growing season really kicks into high gear.  I have discovered a couple of things over the last year and a half:

1. Of you ignore tumbleweeds long enough they blow away. One day there is a three and a half foot tall ugly looking ball of a weed just taunting you with its size and prickliness. Then the wind kicks up over night and Voila! Clean weed free area!

2. Some of the things that grow can be termed “native plants” and “drought tolerant landscaping.” As in “we decided to grow native plants on our bank because they are drought tolerant.”

Of course, in our desert area, anything that is native tends to look dead and be a fire hazard for six (or more) months of the year. Everything comes with strings!

When we bought this house we also inherited a whole bunch of something I refer to as “junk trees.” We used to get them at the old house, these trees that popped up out of nowhere. We always tried to get them out before they were three feet tall. Well, that isn’t what happened here. First of all, there are dozens of them. Second, it is obvious that the previous owners just cut them off at the base, over and over again. I tried that. I hired a teen age boy to go through and cut each one off at the base. I figure that, even though I knew they would grow back, it would stunt their growth for a while. (Lots of laughter again) Instead in about a month they were back, just about as tall as they were before. Cutting them off just encouraged them to grow.

Hubby decided to get his pick and shovel out on Saturday and took out six of those crazy things. Yeah!!!! I also planted a pomegranate tree. Here is hoping I can keep it alive! With pomegranates costing $2 each in the store, I thought I would just grow my own. We shall see how that goes! In a couple of years I might be trying to get rid of pomegranates to my friends and neighbors, just like I am trying to get rid of oranges now!

One of the blogs I enjoy following is The Pioneer Woman. Although, really, now she is more like a blogging empire what with her multiple books and her cooking show on the Food Channel. She lives on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma so I enjoy seeing a very different lifestyle than mine through her postings. But, you know, women will be women and yesterday I was looking at the Home and Garden section of her blog where she posted a few photos of some dinner ware she had seen recently and loved, loved loved. She said, and I quote, “If I hadn’t put a moratorium on my buying plates a few years back, I might be tempted…..I love plates way too much.”

I COMPLETELY understand the Pioneer Woman’s overabundant love for plates because I have an overabundant love for drinking glasses! In my ideal world I would have 100 different kinds and every time I wanted something to drink I could have my pick to suit my mood and my drink. Oh, that would be so fun!!! As it is I only have, oh, ten or so different kinds because life is cruel and kitchens are too small! I didn’t count the crystal because I don’t drag that out except on special occasions when Hubby agrees to wash them. That is the deal around here – if Hubby agrees to wash the china and crystal, it gets used. That isn’t to say I don’t participate in the hand washing but I need to be sure someone else in the house is feeling the love of fine dining before I pull it all out.

Oh, I didn’t count the glasses with the Christmas pattern either because they only come out in December. I love glasses way too much! Good thing I too have a moratorium on buying glassware….

I talked my Eldest Daughter into going with me to my favorite thrift store yesterday. We were having truely lovely weather. So lovely, Eldest was in a tank top and shorts! But as usual around here lovely weather means that a car that has been sitting in the sun is a very warm car so, after a few minutes, I rolled up the windows and put the air conditioner on, whimp that I am. I really don’t like being hot. Well, but for the grace of God, if it had been any cooler we would have had the windows down….

As we drove across the bridge into our big city to the south, all of a sudden all these little brown dots filled my front windshield. My first thought was that the car in front of us had kicked up something that had been spilled in the road. I looked farther up the road and there was an immediate problem with that theory. There weren’t any cars in front of us. At that point my nerves got the better of me and I said, out loud, “What the !@&? is THAT?????” I do need to work on appropriate substitute words for situations like that, but we were being bombarded with little brown things that were softly thunking all over my windshield and it was crazy!

Then it dawned on me, we had just driven into a swarm of bees! Dear Lord! Those soft little thumps were the moments of death of who knows how many creatures! AAAHHH…!!!! As I was telling hubby about my fun experience last it dawned on me that it took several seconds for my car driving approximately 40 miles an hour to clear the swarm. That is a lot of bees!

In all my half century of life I have NEVER driven into a swarm of bees before! I hope to never have to do it again!  If our windows had been down in the soft warm springlike air I don’t even want to think about THAT accident waiting to happen. The car being too hot was the only thing that saved my daughter and I from some kind of bad “B” movie version of invasion of the bees!

Please forgive me for the over use of exclamation points in this post. However, I challenge you to drive into a swarm of bees and manage to tell the tale without lots of exclamation points. It is just not possible!

I just received word that the planned move of the 340 ton rock from the quarry in Jurupa Valley to the Los Angeles Museum of Art has been postponed from tonight  (February 22nd) until February 29th.  When ever that monster starts moving I plan to be there and will report on it at that time.

Eldest Daughter was leaving the apartment of a friend last night near the campus of her university. The friend was walking Eldest out when Eldest spotted a dog only 10 feet away, maybe less. The dog looked just like her own dog Honey so Eldest started making lovey noises and calling the dog over to be petted. The dog didn’t come over but didn’t seem all that disturbed that these humans had appeared and kept trotting down the sidewalk. Just then the pooch trotted into a pool of light and Eldest and her friend got a good look at it. “Oh my gosh!” Eldest exclaimed. “Its a coyote!” At which point her friend said (with great alarm), “You are trying to pet a coyote!!!!!”

Honey showing off her Dingo profile.

When Eldest Daughter got home she informed me that our dog had ruined her, or at least ruined her ability to tell the difference between a wild dog and a domesticated one! We have long ago noticed that our dog closely resembles the wild dogs of our neighborhood so we always make sure she is fixed up with a collar and a tag.   This is why one of her nicknames is “Dingy Dingo.”

One of the nice things about being married is that both Hubby and I have buckets lists, but I get to tag along when he checks something off his list, and visa versa. Yesterday was one of those day when I got to enjoy something on his list.

For Presidents day Hubby, Eldest Daughter, and I were off to see the Harlem Globetrotters live and in person. It was very fun and full of such nostalgia for Hubby and I.  Those of you who are of a certain age will remember when Meadowlark Lemon and the rest of the Globetrotters were on television once a year. Try explaining that to the kids. In the days before VCRs (and now TiVo) it was so exciting when you got to see something that wasn’t part of the regular line up. Parents all over America now know that kids will watch the same video 1000 times. Again, back in the day, the only way to see something more than once was when the TV station decided to play it again. So it made it even more special when the Harlem Globetrotters would roll around for their once a year special.

The show we saw yesterday was definitely family friendly and there were lots of kids in the audience (including the little screamer and kicker sitting behind us). I got a big kick out of people watching and I can tell you it was definitely a diverse audience there to see the Globetrotters do their shtick. The age range was amazing with lots of middle age and older adults who, like us, seemed to be there without small children.

The show started long before the time on out ticket and included audience members  who were pulled out on the court for contest or just as straight men. Eldest Daughter called it a “basketball circus” and I think that just about summed it up. I can officially say a good time was had by all and Hubby got to scratch that one off of his list.

San Timoteo Canyon Schoolhouse

Saturday before last (my, doesn’t time fly!) Hubby and I headed east to see a real one room schoolhouse. Known now as the San Timoteo Canyon School house, it is a nationally registered historic site. The little school was built in picturesque San Timoteo Canyon in 1882-83. It was constructed of Douglas fir, probably from the San Bernardino mountains. It was also a community meeting place for the settlers in the San Timoteo Canyon area. The desks were attached to runners so they could be moved aside for dances and other events. In 1937 the San Timoteo Canyon school district merged with the Beaumont school district and the little one room school was closed. It continued to be used for community meetings and as a Sunday school. It was sold by the school district to the Riverside County Regional Park and Open Space District in 1993 and was throughly renovated in 2002.

The schoolhouse is open the first and third Saturdays of the month 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. There is always a park attendant available to answer your questions. Most of the time the “school marm” is also at the school, ready to tell you about school life in San Timoteo Canyon.  Amenities include a modern restroom building and picnic tables. The address of the schoolhouse is 31985 San Timoteo Canyon Road, Redlands Ca 92373.

By the way, just driving through San Timoteo Canyon is a treat in itself as the scenery through that area is lovely.  You might spot some large birds of prey so you may want to bring some binoculars. We saw an osprey at the top of a telephone pole, enjoying a meal it had just caught.

This is the inside of the San Timoteo Canyon Schoolhouse. The school marm is sitting up front at her desk.