Almost Blown Away and Totally Blown Away�

2003-01-07

I'm way too tired. I spent most of last night waiting for the window beside our bed to blow out. Or the roof to blow off. Or a house to fall on me and then have my feet in their red and white striped sock curl up and pull themselves under the fallen house. I finally got to sleep around 5 am, when the wind died down. I have never, in my way too many years, seen this kind of wind in California.

Today the on the way to work the fallen trees had been removed and then replaced with other fallen trees. Or not removed and had more trees added to the list of the fallen. It was an obstacle course to even pull into the driveway at work. There's only a mild wind now and I'm hoping it stays that way long enough for me to get some actual sleep tonight. My garden is full of leaves and the surfaces of all of the ponds are covered with a nasty muck consisting of dust, dried leaves and eucalyptus bark. I think pond maintenance is on the agenda for the weekend.

I still haven't had a chance to photograph a sunset with the new camera. I have an optical zoom as well as a digital and I'm dying to try it out, but I'm not home at sunset any more. That's the only thing I don't like about my new job so far. I really used to enjoy that time outside, between when I got home and when the sun set. Now the sun is long gone before I get home. I need my outside time. Late starts are great for people with kids. Get the kids up, get them fed and off to school and still get to work on time. For me, the time is wasted in sleep (except for this morning, when it meant two hours of sleep instead of none), or spent hurriedly watering and worrying about being late.

I do have to say that everyone who knows these people say what a good place it is to be. And I believe it. I believe the boss is as accommodating as she can afford to be and as tough as she needs to be. And she needs to be tough. She's running a small business in America. In California. And she has kids. And takes damn good care of them. I already admire her greatly. And don't want to disappoint her. There's steel underneath the kind exterior. I saw her take the employee of another company to task for her faults, and they were faults, and she still didn't ruin the relationship. She said what she needed and gave the person a chance to do it. Nuff said.

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