artykins

Afternoon, kids! Well, I have a slight reprieve from my duties around the house at the moment and I thought it'd be nice to blog again. I've been decorating the dining room for the better part of the last hour. Jeremy's birthday was this week. He turned fourteen on Tuesday, but because of various plans already in place, we weren't able to have the family celebration that always takes place on birthdays. So, we're doing it today instead, just two days after the fact, which isn't too bad.

The rule in my house when it comes to birthdays is this:

Whoever has a birthday gets to pick what they want to eat for dinner the day of their birthday. It's quite a nice little set up. It's great, but it becomes even greater in July. Why, you may ask? Well, my uncles were born in July. And their twins. As such, it inevitably ends well for the rest of us in July because we get two special dinners within a week of one another. Now that's even greater.

Jeremy has chosen for his dinner, rolled enchiladas, Spanish rice and frijoles. All of us are thrilled with his choice. Especially Matt, who's taken quite the shine to Mexican food. I honestly don't know what he would do if he lived here and didn't like Mexican food. It would be like going to visit or live in India and not like Indian food.

But I digress.

For dessert Jeremy chose creme brulee, an odd choice to go with enchies, I know, but still. Last night, he decided taht due to the hot weather, he wouldn't make us slave in the kitchen to make it, which was jolly good of him, I thought...

Until he said he wanted chocolate cake.

Well, we had to use the ovens anyway, so there wasn't much difference there. What surprised me, though, is the weather. California has been experiencing an unprecidented heat wave. For those of you unfamiliar with the typical weather patterns here in California, let me clue you in.

It's not that we don't have heat during the summers. We do. We just don't have heat for prolonged periods of time. Usually the weather up and down the state is generally mild and pleasant. When heat waves DO happen, it's only for about four days (at the max!!) before mild weather returns. This current heat wave has been perpetual for nearly two weeks now. Honestly, we don't know what to do with ourselves.

The Los Angeles basin has been have triple digit, record-breaking heat (those of you who don't know, Los Angeles sits in a crater-like basin surrounded by mountains, thus the terrible and famous smog...no air comes in to blow all the pollution out, so it just sits there). The rest of California hasn't fared any better. The Central Valley is like the gateway to hell and the Bay Area has been suffering from tempuratures that range from the mid 80s at the coast to triple digit heat in the inland valleys.

As such, several wildfires have been torturing us throughout the area from as far away as Plumas County. A whole bunch of smoke from that raging fire was blown directly over the Bay Area yesterday by a northeasterly wind. Of course, there's another fire much closer to home, in Henry Coe State Park (the south bay), that's been burning for days and has destroyed 19,000 acres of land.

Today, however, the weather has decided to surprise us all and make those of us who are native to the state a little apprehensive and wary. It's relatively cool outside. Don't get me wrong, I've still run all my errands in shorts and a tank top, but it's been overcast all day and there's been a cool breeze. It's hard to explain, but trust me when I tell you that it's earthquake weather. There's always a certain feel in the air.

Yes, I know...earthquake weather sounds like a flimsy excuse for anything. Well, scientists have been arguing that there's no scientific research to back up the claim that there can be 'earthquake weather' anywhere. Still, how does science explain that all those animals disappeared right before the tsunami that happened at Christmas time a couple years ago? They can't. Yet all the animals disappeared to higher ground and were spared the devastation that people couldn't detect.

I'm not trying to disprove science here, kids. I quite like science and I'm quite good at some of it (the organic sciences), but I'm just saying that science can't prove lots of things. It doesn't stop something from being true. So when I say it feels like earthquake weather I don't want someone to launch into a long-winded, fact-based rant against it. I know there's nothing solid to prove it, but I would much rather trust the gut feeling of a local, who's lived somewhere all their lives, in something.

I mean, come on. You're reading the words of a girl whose grandmother survived many a hurricane while growing up in Puerto Rico. It's fresh in my blood.

But again, I shall digress.

The title of my blog today might confuse some of you. Any guesses where it comes from? No? Pity. Read up on some of your classic literature, kids.

The title of my blog comes from the character of Billy Bones in Treasure Island, penned, of course, by Robert Louis Stevenson. When I was a child I read this book and fell in love with it. I've had a thing for pirates my whole life, so it shouldn't really come as a surprise that I like this particular book so much. If it didn't take Daniel Defoe so flipping long to get to the pirates in Robinson Crusoe, I might like that book more, but that's really a side note.

When I was a kid, Jim Henson did a film called Muppet Treasure Island in conjunction with Disney. I was struck by one of the lines that Billy Bones says in the film today for what would seem like no apparent reason. He says, and I quote:

"Beware running with scissors or any other pointed objects. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."

And then, at that point in the film, he dies from a fear-induced heart attack due to receiving the Black Spot from Blind Pierre. It's quite comical, really, the way it's done.

You might be wondering why I was recalling that line from my childhood. Well, truth be told, it came to me because last night while I was at the apartment with Matt, I was cutting some bread with a serated knife and I sliced clean into my left index finger. There was lots of blood, so much so that I was unable to see at first how badly I had cut myself. In order to assess my wound, I had to apply pressure. Of course, my mother having been a nurse was my first phone call. Matt drove me home as a result of my wound.

I did everything I was supposed to, though. I wrapped my finger in a paper towel, applied pressure, kept my hand above my heart (it slows bleeding down) and lastly, I had Matt put some ice into a plastic bag and wrap that in a kitchen tea towel (ice also slows the flow of blood). All that done, Matt piled me into the car and drove me home where I was able to assess my wound much better with the aid of my mother. The blood had stopped by the time we got home.

It isn't a large cut, but it's fairly deep, thus the amount of blood last night. It doesn't require stitched of any kind either, just a butterfly bandage. My mother made me clean the cut out with hydrogen peroxide, which I wasn't thrilled about, but I did it anyway. After cleaning, it was antibiotic ointment and a butterfly bandage to hold the skin together, followed lastly by a regular bandaid to cover the butterfly.

I can now report, without question, that our knives at the apartment are superior products. Meh.

Of course, having the wound requires that I keep it dry, which makes general bathroom duties like showering very interesting. I resorted to having a bath instead of a shower this morning all the while keeping my left arm elevated. Washing my hair was a trial with just one hand, but the good news from all of this is that it's all very do-able. It'll just take some adaptation.

So now, as I sit here blogging, feeling very little sensation in my left index finger due to the heft of the badages, I think of all of this while listening to some Glenn Miller. I think I'll go watch an old movie with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. I'm in that kind of mood this afternoon.

So until next time, kids, beware running with scissors or any other pointy object. I think I'll go one step further than dear Mr. Bones and add that you should all invest in some armor-plated gloves before attempting to cut anything, especially bread.

Oh, and I still want a cookie.

That is all.

Later Days,
Arty