The Toes Knows

I just finished reading Born to Run. I really liked it. It's about the Tarahumara people in Mexico's Copper Canyons, and is a good combination of drama, history, physiology, and psychology. And I got to learn alot about a sport I’ll never experience personally – extreme long distance running.

One subject in the book did strike my fancy: shoes. I’ve assailed you with tales of the Kaiser Frankenstein Shoes. Even though the ones I presently have are smaller and easier to deal with, I still feel they’re counterproductive. They’re like encasing my feet in concrete blocks, there’s no sensory stimulus at all. I can’t walk very far in them, I have to constantly think about where I’m putting my feet so I don’t trip over them.

I am most familiar with foot problems in horses. If their feet aren't stimulated by contact with the ground, their hooves will grow wrong. Why would it be different with people?

I had just about decided to go against the footnurse’s advice and spend more time barefoot when I read about Vibram FiveFingers shoes in Born to Run. One of the runners, Barefoot Ted, was using this shoe.

I usually think about a challenge for a long time before I actually DO something about it. This time I was instantly struck by the rightness of the concept.

So I went online and found the shoes. They are sold at a Canoe and Kayak store not too far from where I work. I went right out on my lunch time and bought a pair.

They’re hard to get on, you have to pull them over your toes. My Kaiser Frankenstein, contact-deprived toes are so smooshed together, I have to prop them apart to get the shoes on. And the shoes look ridiculous. A friend said, “All you need is a gorilla suit to match those feet.” Little did he know that I actually have access to a gorilla suit. (Bob’s)


But wow! Do they feel great! I can move! I can walk! In fact, I went right out and walked around the field, a little over a mile on the gravel road. I could feel the rocks, but they didn’t hurt. It's been years since I walked around that field.


So here’s what I’m doing. I wear some Arcopedicos to work and take them off as soon as I get to my desk. I go barefoot (except for socks) all day. When I get home, I put on the Vibrams and walk around the field, then wear them for the rest of the evening. My hammer toes are already starting to straighten out, and I can actually FEEL the bottoms of my feet.

I have an appointment with the footnurse next week. I don't think she'll be amused, the question is, can I make her shriek?

Visiting and Revisiting

Remember when I went to Yerington to visit old friends? Well Carolyn, wife of old friend Jim, emailed and asked if I’d like to come visit their stable in Lincoln. Of course I did.

I hadn’t been to Lincoln, which is north of Sacramento, for quite a while. To get there, I went through Roseville, which I will from now on call “RoseVILE.” What used to be a quaint little city is now a big scab that stretches for miles.

There are several new developments along the way, each one pretty much as ugly as the last and the only way you can tell that one stops and another starts is that the pennants on the poles along the road are different colors.

Many of developments are named after the former cattle ranches they have desecrated. Ferrari Ranch. Stirling Ranch. This is a custom that is being used in Elk Grove as well. What is the point, I wonder, of calling a bunch of smooshed-together houses a “ranch”? Oh, I know, the people there are being bunched together like cattle in a small pen.

OK, if you’re tired of my anti-development tirade you can fast-forward a couple of paragraphs right now, I'm not finished.

The most ridiculous thing I saw was the rodeo grounds south of Lincoln. It has been there as long as I can remember, sitting in a bare field next to the highway. Now, it is totally surrounded by fast food and other suburban necessities. It’s still being used, there were at least 200 trailers parked there with cowboys and horses everywhere. It looked like there was a roping event, so there were probably cows there also. It was hard to tell because it was pretty dusty.

I’d like to see the developer’s EIR for this suburbanization project. I’m sure it claimed that there was nothing incompatible about a rodeo arena being surrounded by burger joints. After all, they both involve cows. I’m sure if a few steers break loose, which is inevitable, and run through the drive through, it won’t be a problem. I don’t know why the cowboys still use the arena, though, it’s no fun towing a trailer in such congested traffic, with other drivers who don't understand you can't slam on your brakes when you pull a trailer. I’m betting next time I drive that way the rodeo arena will have been converted into a soccer field.

I personally don’t like seeing mile after mile of this stuff. It’s like people are being crammed into a reality that I’m just not comfortable in. Have you seen the TV show Sliders? That’s how I feel. I drive along with my guts in knots, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

I finally got back into some familiar countryside on the other side of Lincoln and turned toward the foothills in Sheridan. What a relief. This is the Landers’ Tennessee Walking Horse barn. It has a dozen or so stalls and a nice big outdoor arena as well as a covered arena.


When I got there, Carolyn was riding her 2 year old filly. I don’t recall hearing the filly’s real name, they were calling her by a smoochy nickname, something like Sweet Little Girl. The horse was being a prune, in an amiable sort of way. She wasn’t doing anything dangerous, just being stopping when she pleased and not quite following directions. The sort of thing horses love to do when their riders are being watched.


I enjoyed watching the horses and being in the very nice, tidy barn. I enjoyed watching the trainer, Trish, and her son Logan, who is very polite. But when I was asked if I miss the whole horse show routine, I didn’t hesitate to answer “no.”

I’m not entirely sure why, I’ll have to think about that.

Jim wasn’t there, by the way, he was working. It’s a rule of the universe that if you own a horse stable, someone will have to work to pay for it. My two horses out in my pasture don’t cost much to maintain, but a show barn has lots of expenses.

When I left the barn, I took the backroads to Loomis. I found myself wondering how my old college roommate, Peggy, was doing. I visited her once in Loomis, maybe 25 years ago. On a whim I decided to see if I could find her again.

There is another rule of the universe, and that is that even if you don’t find what you seek, you can have fun looking for it.

I drove around for a while and saw interesting things. Loomis was having an Eggplant Festival. (Weird.) This sign was behind some shops on the main street.


In many years of poultry activities, I’ve never heard of a chicken race. I couldn’t find anyone who knew about it. The sign was in the middle of a fenced pen. Our Anconas are pretty fast, I thought, but they’d fly right over the top of that fence. They must race meat birds. But how would you keep a penful of those animals alive out in the sun?

As I was sitting in this parking lot, I was inspired to take out my iPhone and use the Maps App to see if I could find Peggy’s place. I remembered the name of the road she lived on and typed it in. In seconds the GPS on the phone showed me where I was and how to get to that road. Wow! Is that cool or what?

When I got to the road, I recognized it. Thought I’d be able to recall which house was Peggy’s when I saw it. No such luck. If I’d been smart, I would have googled “WhitePages.com” and looked up her phone number and address. That’s what Bob told me when I got home, and sure enough I found the address there. I had driven past that place at least 3 times.

With my Rav4 and my iPhone, when I really learn how to run them, I’m sure I can explore the world.

Happy Birthday Jen, From Your Ancestors

I found this whilst scanning things from my box of stuff the ancestors collected. It must be meant for our family's birthday girl.

Cat Tales

What’s Velcro doing? She’s working at her new job. Doorstop. Sometimes she parks herself in front of the microwave oven door. She doesn’t know the refrigerator and microwave doors stay closed by themselves. I’m just happy to have her off the back porch and part of the family again.

I’ve been reading a book about cat psychology. Ever since George came along, our formerly happy household has been a mess. Hissing, spitting, pissing. I’m tired of it all.

The book I read, Cats vs. Cats, answered many of my questions. Cats are like chickens, in a way. They have a pecking order that is constantly in flux. I thought Charley was the top cat, but evidently George is. The top cat, the author says, is the one who seems to not care what’s going on with the rest of the cats. It doesn’t have to.

So Charley was knocked from his former position and now he takes it out on the other cats and on the house. He has become a little devil.

The author of the book has lots of suggestions for a multi-cat household. Make sure each cat has its own box, in separate rooms if necessary. Play with each cat for 15 minutes each day, twice a day if you can. Make sure each cat has its own territory, and be sure to include vertical territory by putting a cat tree in each room, in front of sunny windows. If peace still cannot be found, buy Feliway spray and/or a diffuser for the rooms the cats share. Feliway is made in France. It contains artificial pheromones that make cats think they’re happy. (No sex here, it’s the same scent cats rub onto things with their faces.)

I went to PetSmart.

I had no intention of putting a cat litter box in every room in this small house. Bob’s room IS a litter box if he doesn’t keep things picked up off the floor, but there are already two big boxes on the back porch and we keep them clean. I’m not turning the house into a cat toilet. Nor am I putting bowls of food all over the house.

I looked at cat trees. The ones big enough to count as “vertical space” are $150 and they’re big and ugly. I only have 2 sunny windows in the house and they’re both in one room. Hmm. I didn’t get the old crap cleared out of this house just to fill it up with cat furniture, either. It seems like the cats need to learn to live in MY house, not the other way around.

I found Feliway at PetSmart. Egad! It costs $35 for a teeny little spray bottle that looks like it might spray one chair and last for 15 minutes.

I did find something at PetSmart, though, that I couldn’t resist. They had Halloween costumes for pets. So I bought devil ears for Charley.

Bob put them on him. The cat was not happy. Somehow that cheered us all.


George felt sorry for Charley, though, and stopped licking his own butt long enough to try to help get the ears off.


See that big container behind George? It’s Nature’s Remedy, the biggest bottle of it you can buy. I also got that at PetSmart. If addressing the cause doesn't work, I can address the effect.

Finally Charley jumped off the table and ran under a bed. It took a while to fish him out, and when we got the ears off him, he was soooo stressed he just laid on the kitchen floor for a long time and let George lick his face. Velcro thinks they’re both silly.


I went online and found Feliway cheaper. I ordered a teeny bottle of spray and a teeny diffuser. In the meantime, I keep the broom handy to swat the devil cat if he looks like he’s ready to spray something. That's something the author of the book very much opposes. NEVER punish a cat, she says, it makes the whole household stressed.

No it doesn’t. We all feel very good when Charley gets what’s coming to him.

They Call This Living?

I read blogs written by people who live in lots of places. Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, England. Maybe I like these, in particular, because I love the pictures of green scenery. Would I enjoy a blog from Saudi Arabia or some other desert nearly as well? Probably not, but I did enjoy traveling in Nevada earlier in the year.

Maybe it’s just my perception of what’s necessary for a person to live. I prefer open space and trees and plants. In lieu of trees and greenery, open space will do. I understand that in cities like San Francisco many living spaces do not provide these things. It’s a trade-off for the other things a big city can offer - social and cultural things.

But I don’t see why anyone would want to live in suburban Sacramento crammed into a place like this.


These condos appear to be 16 feet wide. I know when folks are just starting out their lives aren’t centered around yards, they have other things to do, or they work all day and just need a place to crash at night.

But this is what we see more of in Sacramento, in “master planned” “communities” that are meant for families. Huge houses surrounded by other huge houses so close together the sun will never shine between them. This is Anatolia (which I have fondly renamed Assholia, not because of the residents but in honor of the developers and the idiots who let them do this). It has taken 1200 acres of formerly dry pasture land. I think it exists for no reason other than to add property tax dollars to the new city of Rancho Cordova.


See the teeny tiny front lawn? No chance these will ever be tree-lined streets. No room here for even a decent-sized lilac bush.


There are now 1000 acres of rooftops. Rooftops that would have been an ideal place for solar electricity, rooftops that will NEVER be shaded by trees. But no, this wasn’t required because it would be “unfair” to require one developer to add that extra expense to the price of what they call a “home.”

This is a home in a small development in Rancho Cordova, an example of better planning. These homes have built-in solar panels on the roof, and they work well.


Imagine how much electricity could have been generated in Anatolia. Instead we have 1000 acres of big boxes that will always require air conditioning. You can’t even open windows to catch the delta breeze in the evening, because there are no windows on 2 sides of the house, and even if there were, nothing short of a tornado could find its way into those tiny spaces. These people will never have a garden. Heaven help them if they need to provide their own food. Hydroponics in the spare bedroom? They were growing pot that way in Elk Grove’s wonderful new developments.

In a city like San Francisco, you can leave your little rattrap apartment and go out for entertainment and culture. In Anatolia, you’re pretty much going to exist entirely within your own 4 walls. The development is on the far nether side of Rancho Cordova, not the social hot spot of the county. Hopefully the walls are soundproof enough that you won’t hear your neighbor's entertainment center while you’re sitting in front of your own.

There are some benefits to “living” like this. When houses are foreclosed, there isn’t much lawn to dry up, so it doesn’t make the whole area look rundown. I don’t think a lot of these houses ever sold in the first place, judging by the number of windows with no curtains. And of course you’d need curtains living here because people walking by on the sidewalk are only a few feet away.

Living like this could be a benefit if we’re preparing people for life on a spaceship. In that case, however, people in our prisons would also be qualified because they are accustomed to living in small spaces. Prisons should be teaching classes in rocket science.

What do you suppose Anatolia will look like in 50 years? It will never have the charm of downtown Sacramento, the City of Trees. I doubt these houses, tinted in various shades of dung, will last as long as the Anasazi cliff dwellings – our nation’s first example of piling houses one on top of the other.

The worst thing about places like this is they’re all that’s being built. If you get a little equity in one and then decide you need something with a bigger yard, you aren’t going to find it in this county. One size fits all.

It's in the Genes

One of the nice things about living in a small community for several generations is that things like this pop up.

This picture of my grandmother, Nancy, was given to me by the daughter of a lady who used to be Nan's best friend. You can only see the bottom of her head because the important part of the picture is her dog, Nick.

This could easily be a picture of any of her great-grandchildren and one of their dogs. Obviously canine appreciation is a dominant gene.

Gourd Festival

There was a Gourd Festival at the Corn Stand this past weekend. It turned out to be the biggest festivity here so far. All the parking spaces were filled, including the new dirt lot halfway down the fields.


People were given rides on the farm wagons to get to their cars.

There were lots of folks with tables who were exhibiting gourds they had for sale. There are basically 2 kinds: the artsy ones and the craftsy ones. Some are artsy/craftsy. Here are a few.


Animals are a popular theme. Here’s a goose (I think) a moose and a peacock.


I guess this is one of those Japanese blowfish that is poisonous to eat.


There were lots of holiday, decorative gourds. The little ones make great snowmen, or for Halloween they make great ghosts.


Here’s a music gourd, just for you Bernard. I wonder what music this is?


I prefer the artsy gourds. This was my favorite.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time, spending a day in the country.

Octomato

I like to stop by the corn stand and pick up veggies to take to work to share. My office mate Melanie brought me one of her own home-grown veggies. We called it Octomato because it sorta looked like a bunch of fetuses stuck together.



When we dissected it we determined that it was actually on 3 separate tomatoes that grew together. Looks awful, but it was very tasty.

Doing Fine

Someone asked how things have been since John moved out a couple of years ago. (Or maybe it was 3 already.)

This is a picture of my house in 2001.


And this is a picture of it in 2009.


John seems happier now, too.

Walking the Cat

Charley has a new harness. It's lovely blue and he thinks it's funny.


George thinks it's funny, too.


George: What's that thing for, anyway?
Charley: Jan says she's going to take me for a walk outside if I don't stop being a pain in the butt.
George: Oh, I get it! I could help.

My Sunflower

Here's the watercolor of the sunflower I did in Sandy Delahanty's class a couple of weeks ago. I thought I was finished, but now I see I haven't dealt with that white vein on the biggest leaf. Somehow things look different when you're not looking at the original.

Painting this was fun. I need to go out and take pictures of the zinnias now, before they start looking ratty, so I'll have something bright and cheery to paint this winter. What would we do without flowers in our lives?

Can't Wait for Spring

I squeezed a stop at Green Acres into my schedule a couple of days ago and look what I found!


I can't imagine this is real. It looks like someone created the flower in Photoshop or from a fractal. Has anyone out there grown these morning glories? I can't wait to plant them next spring.

Do You Want a VW With That Takeout?

Today’s blog stars Melanie, my office mate:

She says “It was just a typical Sunday evening, I was waiting for takeout food at Dos Coyotes, leisurely sipping my beer and playing Word Warp on my iPhone... until a woman drove her car right into the restaurant just to the left of my table. Wow!!!!! Not something you ever expect, but no one was hurt, not even the driver.

P.S. I had my five minutes on the Channel 13 news.”


The driver had evidently passed out. I asked Melanie if her hair and attire were suitable for a TV news interview. Alas, she had just come from the gym. You may have seen her on the news wearing a 49er cap.

The table Melanie was sitting at is the one in the front. The table behind it was occupied by a fellow and his 76-year-old mother.


Melanie said she got her takeout order just fine and was kept busy watching all the cute firemen at work.

These pictures were taken on her iPhone (gotta love those iPhones). Mel said she managed to pause her Word Warp game as she was jumping away from the table, which was good because she had her best score ever.

I am not a math person. Until I got old and my brain deteriorated, I was fairly intelligent. But even at my best, math never made much sense to me. My high school counselor was also my math teacher. He generally counseled students to take as much math as they could. After sophomore Geometry he told me, "Do NOT take any more math. I gave you a mercy C."

You can imagine his chagrin in my senior year when I scored second highest in the school on SAT in math. I was highest in English, but that made sense at least. I might have even had the highest score in math if I hadn't actually tried to solve some of the problems. For the others I used the famous "eeeny, meeny, miney, mo" method. I was an inspired and talented guesser. And mostly I didn't give a hoot. After all, there's no way I could do well on a math test, I thought.

Over the years I have avoided math. Not arithmetic, that's fine. I can balance my checkbook. And now we have Excel and calculators. Nonetheless there have been times when my life was infected with mathematics.

By profession, I'm a typographer. Not a desktop publisher mind you, I was trained in fine typography just before it became an extinct profession. I've also worked at a newspaper, and for a large printing company where we did everything from college catalogs to the programs for the Raiders and 49ers. In 40 years, I've only worked for 4 companies.

For the past 15 years I've been working in education, specializing in assessments most of that time. The most challenging publications are math assessments, not because I need to understand the material, but because of the mish-mash of software that has to be cobbled together to produce a stable document.

I never had a computer at work that I could rely on for math. I'd get a version of a math program to work with the version of Pagemaker I had, and then the tech department would come around and upgrade the software (generally unannounced) and nothing would work again. And forget about accessing those old files.

I finally set up a system at home that worked. My personal tech advisor, Mr. J.B. With, found a refurb'ed computer in Alabama that was souped up. It's called Super Bubba. On that computer, with the right generation of the math program and the right generation of Pagemaker, I could beat my brain senseless composing math tests. That was 5 years ago. The computer is intact. But the rest of the world is using InDesign now.

For the past 2 months I've been fighting to get a math publication completed at work, using an ungodly combination of InDesign, PowerPoint, and MathMagic. Oh, and throw in some Micro(screwyoubillgates)Soft Word docs, too. I suppose some people would find it a great challenge to open a file they'd done 3 days ago and find that all the equations had changed. I'm beyond that kind of cheap thrill. It just irritates me to no end.

Even listening to oldies-but-goodies on my iPhone doesn't help. I stay irritated 24 hours a day. You know you're in trouble when, on your way to work, you fantasize about getting hit by a train so you won't have to deal with it any longer. It's down to the last couple of days now, and I'm really looking forward to being free of math software once again. I love the math people I work with, maybe I can find some other context to visit with them.

That's a long way of saying I haven't been doing anything interesting to post about. You probably guessed that after reading that I was playing Tappy Tunes to a snake.

I will close with this example of why math is dumb. Do NOT try to solve this problem, I can't remember the right numbers so it won't work.

Math Problem:
You have 225 apples to distribute among a field of horses and pigs so that each pig gets 3 apples and each horse gets 6 apples. The number of horses and pigs total 70 animals. How many of the animals are pigs, and how many are horses?

In my world, you wouldn't be stupid enough to take a box of apples out into a field with that many animals and expect to live. If you know anything at ALL about horses or pigs, you wouldn't try it. Yet we're told we need math skills to survive in the world.

Not my world.

See you after this project is put to bed.

Sssssnake on the Ssssssteps

The little garter snake was back yesterday. I found it on the front steps, on the one that has "Sometimes bacteria is the only culture we have." etched on it. It was stretched out and I could see it's grown at least 3 inches.

I had my iPhone in hand, but it was getting too dark to take a picture. So instead of entertaining all of you with a picture, I entertained the snake with music instead. I played The Entertainer on Tappy Tunes. You know, the song from the old Redford/Newman movie, The Sting.

The snake enjoyed it. It stayed right there until the song was finished, then slowly turned around and - doing a Michael Jackson moonwalk for a few "steps" - finally found a grip on the cement and slid off onto the ground.

I hope the hawk doesn't eat snakes.