Stacey's Blog

It was the continuance of an unusually sunny day here in the high country.  I swear that last year this time our town had already lived with well over 300 inches of snow but not this year. This year Mother Nature really took the bull by the horns and psyched us all out. A few people were so sure that we were going to have a 1,000 inch winter. Even the local weatherman and I yammered back and forth about the snow predictions of some locals but in the end it appears that all the talk about another record breaking winter was wishful thinking. I think I can safely say by now that we are not going to have a deluge of snow in 2012. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.

We are doing all we can to make the white stuff fall. Howard Sheckter is constantly asking me if I’m doing my snow dance. I keep telling him “yes” just to keep the conversation moving but honestly, by the time I get home the last thing I want to do is jump around on our property while chanting some obscure pleadings to the snow Gods.  There are only a few reasons why I’m on our deck these days. One is when I’m pacing back and forth because I’m having a hot flash and I’m trying to catch the breeze that comes through the pass and rustles our trees before heading out to Sierra Meadows. Another reason I would be running around our deck is because I’m chasing a ball with Ameilia or blowing bubbles for Ameilia.

It has been an odd weather year and many of us are trying to make the best out of the sunshine we do have. Gail Lonne and friends have put up two tennis nets at the community courts…unheard of in January. BishopMotoSports is renting out their ATV’s so at least our high country visitors can get out on the dirt roads and explore our snow-free terrain. Even Deb Searles thought about putting her deck furniture back out…including the umbrella.

The mornings have been chilly so the idea of wearing shorts and a t-shirt is out. And let’s be real…this isn’t Palm Springs or Jamaica so instead of pulling my shorts out of the summer closet in the middle of January, I decided instead to compromise and wear sandals.

I got down on my hands and knees and reached under the dresser where I stuffed all my summer shoes for the season. I found the sandals my son and daughter-in-law bought me when they went to Thailand and I slipped them on.

Something was wrong. It didn’t feel right. My feet were the same size and the sandals were comfy but c’mon…sandals in the middle of January? I should be wearing my snow boots and wrapping myself snug in neck gators and down jackets. I should be listening to my husband cursing at the snow-thrower for breaking down and I should be carrying loads of wood up the stairs to stuff into the wood burning stove. There should be warm winter soup cooking in the crockpot and I should be making myself cups of hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream for my after-dinner sweet.

It didn’t seem right to have my toes bare to the elements in the middle of January. My feet have been in winter-mode. My toes are not painted and most of my summer callouses have faded but it was warm – so warm that my feet were sweating inside my UGGS. I could no longer pretend that it was going to snow sometime in January so I clomped out of the house in my summer sandals.

I can only hope that all this faux summer behavior we are all exhibiting will somehow be a signal to the elusive snow G-d that we are ready for a dumping of the white stuff.  It’s just not fair that Alaska is getting more snow than we are this year.

Back in 2002 Carol Kaesuk Yoon wrote an article for the NY Times on why the locust has completely vanished from North America.

“Sweeping across North America, flying hordes of Rocky Mountain locusts were once an awesome and horrifying sight, huge glittering clouds of insects laying waste countless acres of crops. Throughout the 1800′s, the whirring swarms periodically ravaged farm fields from California east to Minnesota and south to Texas.

The locusts were easy to please, eating barley, buckwheat, melons, tobacco, strawberry, spruce, apple trees — even fence posts, laundry hung out to dry and each other.

When women threw blankets over their gardens, the locusts devoured the blankets then feasted on the plants. Farmers lit fires, blasted shotguns into the swarms and scoured their fields with so-called hopperdozers, large metal scoops, smeared with tar or molasses to grab as many of the offenders as possible. But it was all to no avail.”

The little buggers may have disappeared from the plains of North America but I know all too well that a very special locust population is alive and well in our household…for at least part of the year. The only thing we had to do to bring them back was the promise of homemade holiday cooking and to have a pantry and refrigerator full of food. Combine that with the seven twenty-something children that were staying with us for a week and voila! A perfect recipe for the invasion.

I was so busy cooking and enjoying the family that I didn’t really notice we had been swarmed by a family of two-legged locusts until they had already left the area. It was a day or two after the tribe had gone on to their various after-holiday adventures.  I woke up to a disturbingly quiet house and thought that since I didn’t have to go out for bagels and cream cheese or make my signature breakfast potatoes I could sit and enjoy a bowl of my favorite cereal combination with a cup of tea. I took down the bowl, got what was left of the rice milk out of the fridge and when I looked up to pull my favorite Trader Joe’s cereal off the shelf, it was gone. Not only was the box of Frosted Mini Wheat’s from TJ’s gone, the container of my homemade granola was empty. Just like the day fades in to night, the craving I had for my mixed-cereal dish also faded into oblivion. I had to regroup the taste buds.

I usually have some sort of egg thing for breakfast anyway and since my desire to eat a bowl of cereal was not an option, I went for the eggs.  Gone.  All the organic eggs that I had just purchased a few days earlier were no longer in their little, plastic, half-moon shaped holders in the door of the fridge. Just for the hell-of-it I looked at the shelf where I keep my tea. Ginger tea, gone. Pomegranate-white tea, gone. Buckwheat honey for the tea, also gone.  Blueberries, strawberries, leftover turkey…it was the same story…all of it gone, gone, gone.

The family swarm that invaded our house did not have wings and did not make an irritating chirping sound as they devoured everything in their path but they came, they ate, they left.

And I wouldn’t change anything about the swarm that filled our house for a week during the holidays except for maybe hiding my Trader Joe’s sparkling pomegranate juice next time the DNA swarm makes their way home. Some things aren’t so easy to replace here in the Eastern Sierra.

Granddaughter Ameilia just experienced her first Christmas Holiday with a rather large family crowd. She was loved all over by her aunts and uncles but the one person she could not tear herself away from was her Great Grandmother Harriette.

Harriette, or “mom” as I have called her for the past 50-plus years, spent many days and nights with Ameilia the first two years of her life because while my son and his wife were going to scholl to become certified massage therapists, my mother would watch Ameilia.  Unfortunately, my mother doesn’t get to spend too much time with Ameilia anymore but this past Christmas they were glued at the hip. More to the point, Ameilia shadowed my mother for the entire 48 hours that she came to visit for the holiday. The only exception was during the evening because my mother slept in a local hotel and since Ameilia is 14 years away from driving, she couldn’t get to the hotel where my mother was spending her nights here in Mammoth Lakes.

However, when my mother was at our house Ameilia was always hugging on her by either grabbing on to her legs or curling up as close to her as possible.  As a matter of fact, the only time that Ameilia wasn’t right next to my mother was when she was helping our Santa hand out the gifts Christmas morning.

After several hours of Ameilia not letting my mom out of her sight, my mother was wondering if she was actually being stalked by a two-year old. If my mother walked into the kitchen, Ameilia was right behind her.  If my mother went into the bathroom, Ameilia had to be in the bathroom too. When my mom went to sit on our south-facing deck to get a little Vitamin D Christmas day, Ameilia had a near meltdown when she couldn’t find my mom in the house.

My husband and I see Ameilia often but she isn’t clingy with us. Of course there are times when she wants me more than grandpa and then the next day she wants grandpa and not me but she doesn’t have a meltdown if we leave the room. She just finds us, grabs one of our fingers and pulls us into the room where she has something she wants to show us.  She might drag us into the pantry and point to various dried goods like crackers, pancake mix or veggie chips.  Or she will open the fridge so we can make her a plate of fruit and cheese. Then again she can put both of her arms up in the air, her sign that she wants to be picked up so she can point to the bottle of bubbles that are on top of the refrigerator. Once we’ve fed her or made the living room look like a bubble emporium, she is content and goes off to do something else.

The connection between my mother and Ameilia is so strong that we began to wonder if there was some past-life connection in the works. My mom doesn’t think that Ameilia would be my Grandma Toby reincarnated because my mother and her mother didn’t always see eye-to-eye.  In fact, they rarely saw eye-to-eye.  My mother’s brother could be a possibility.  Norman died at a very young age and my mother and her brother were very close.  Then again it all depends on where the belief system lies so maybe it’s safe to say that there really is something special between the two of them that has no concrete explanation.

It doesn’t really matter why Ameilia is so connected with my mother. What matters is that the bond between a two-year old and her great grandmother is something to be honored and cherished…even if Ameilia does sort of stalk my mother.