Category: Around the neighborhood

When I’m very thankful for the Dog.

Sometimes, he’s an absolute pain in my ass!  Other times, I catch a glimpse of the world through his eyes and see beauty.

This morning was one of those mornings.

I did laundry yesterday. As part of that process I changed the bedsheets from the summer lightweight cotton to the winter flannel. 

It’s been cold enough here at night that I have run the heater a few times. I hate getting up to a house that’s 55°F. 

I was even able to pack the last summer sheet set, into its original package. That was cool.

There’s another chore that I need to do. I’ve got to match up the sheet sets. I think I lost one if not two top sheets back in January. That wouldn’t be bad except that they were from the king size sets, not the queen size sets that I thought they were. It doesn’t matter a lot because when the time comes and I move, I’m getting rid of the king sized bed and going to a queen. At that time I’ll buy new sets for a new life. Hey, I’m trying to put a positive spin on it. But in the mean time… I’ve got mismatched sets of sheets that I need to sort out and dispose of, to minimize confusion and frustration.

Anyhow, flannel sheets in place, I went on with the day doing just usual puttering around. I haven’t been sleeping well and my head has not been “in the game” for much of anything lately. 

Bedtime rolled around and I crawled into a nice warm bed. I’ve recently instituted a moratorium on bedside alarms on Sunday. Meaning, I’ll sleep if possible until something wakes me up or until I wake up naturally. This morning, I woke up completely naturally. The dog was curled up on the foot of the bed and there was silence. I sat up, looked at the phone next to the bed and it was after 8am. Sweet! I slept straight through the night. 

I got up, peed, and by the time I was done the dog was ready to do his morning rounds. I let him out, poured myself a cup of coffee, and pulled on some sweats. After a few minutes enjoying my coffee the dog is at the door. I let him in, he heads for his equivalent of morning coffee.

He’s asking for his morning Greenie. 

I give it to him, he starts to trot toward the back door again. “Fine,” I say, opening the door. He heads out trotting to his usual spot (The spot where Greenies are consumed,)  Then he turns back and sits at the door looking at me. He’s still got the Greenie in his mouth.

Because the behavior is “odd” for him I open the door and step out onto the deck to see if something is wrong. 

The dog starts tossing the Greenie at me then playing keep away. I set my coffee on a nearby outdoor table and engage in the game. He’s wagging his tail and challenging me, we’re having fun.

Then he’s a little too rough picking up the Greenie to toss it at me and bites it in half. Game over! Now it’s time to eat it.

I’m standing out on the deck, the morning chill is being displaced by the sun and I’m struck by how pretty the day is.

In fact it’s a spectacular day. Not too cold, it’s clear and crisp and quiet. That’s one of the things that really strikes me… The silence. 

We’ve been living in a construction zone for most of the Summer. There’s been heavy equipment running from 7am to 4 pm every week day and some weekends. It’s annoying because of the dust.

I haven’t been able to paint the trim or the stairs of the house, and now it’s getting too cold at night to do the painting especially the back stairs and deck because they’re in shadow much of the day.

But the noise is also a factor even when the equipment is at the far end of the wash, the sound reverberates right back up the canyon, and it’s constant. Dumptrucks driving 25 or 30 feet from your front door all day long create a wall of noise that you can’t escape. The dust blowing off their loads, and being kicked up by their passing is quite possibly bad for us.

In the height of Summer we tend to have our windows open, most folks here don’t have air conditioning. So we’ve been living with never ending dust to the point that every morning stepping into the shower I can feel the grit under my feet. I vacuum every day and I simply gave up dusting. What’s the point? I have to rinse every dish or pot before using it, or leave everything in the dish washer. 

But breathing all this dust can’t be good for us. Not to mention the possibility of Valley Fever. The sides of the wash are populated by thousands, if not millions of rodents. Valley Fever comes from rodent poop, it’s usually something a person gets if they’ve been out clearing land and kick up a lot of dust. Folks weed whacking without a mask, or using leaf blowers commonly get it.

It’s not the county workers fault, they’re doing what they’ve been told to do. They get paid by the flood control district and even the supervisors think they’re doing the right thing. Although I contend that had they done what had been done in the 1920’s that lasted 70 to 80 years, everyone would have been better off and the county would have saved a shit ton of money.

Not that the county gives a damn about saving money or using it wisely. I have no reason to believe that the County of San Bernardino will take any more responsibility for health issues they’ve caused in this neighborhood than they will for the private roads they’ve damaged, the environment they’ve destroyed, or the degraded quality of life issues their poorly designed and executed “Flood Control Project” has caused.

As I think about it, enjoying my coffee and the beautiful morning on my back deck. I think that I should probably write a complaint letter to the County describing all of this, I suspect that OSHA would shut this down if the neighborhood was a worksite. But since we’re a neighborhood I doubt there are any regulations. Nonetheless I should get a letter on file so that if I develop some disease caused by breathing granite dust I can point to them as responsible.

In the mean time… I’m going to sit here enjoying my home for the first time in 4 months. I’m glad the dog dragged my ass outside this morning. He’s snoozing in the sun occasionally raising his head to survey the world.

Have a happy Sunday.