4th day in a row of thunderstorms

Today will be out 4th day in a row for thunderstorms.  Yesterday it was perfectly clear when I drove to school.  By the end of the day, there was a horrific dust storm and the western sky was dark (again)...As I drove home, I took out my little Nikon Coolpix for some photos.  Our mountains and canyons are already saturated and I honestly don't know how much more we can take here.  Roads in Palm Springs are now closed every day...Golf Club, Indian Canyon, Gene Autry.  The Indian canyons are CLOSED until further notice (they were right below the big fire last summer).  People have videotaped debris coming down the mountains from the fire zone in washes, including huge palm trees being carried by the flood waters.

My daughter and I are driving to Palm Springs this morning for the certified organic farmer's market on Pavillion Way.  I can't wait to go there and buy some fresh organic vegetables.  COSTCO has a Vitamix blender/juicer/smoothie maker in stock and I think I'm going to buy it today.  Since I attended classes over the summer, I got an extra paycheck and it will take my whole paycheck, but if it helps me to improve my overall health (which right now is pretty crummy), I'll buy it and start making green smoothies.  Does anybody have a juicer/blender?  Any advice?

A big thank you to my readers!

I want to say thank you to my readers and especially those of you who commented on yesterday's post!  I find that when I speak from my heart, I get more comments!  I grew up not far from downtown Los Angeles, in one of the wealthier suburbs.  My mother drove to LA every day for 40 years, teaching in a very poor neighborhood school.  Every summer she brought home the class guinea pigs or hamsters and I got to play with them and feed them.  I just couldn't WAIT to fingerpaint with those big 2nd graders!  :-) (...wink...)  Well, finally, I passed second grade and my mother went on to become a reading specialist.  My aunt also taught in LA~in east LA.  She taught gifted & talented 5th & 6th graders and, in those days, she and her husband and her aide took several of them out on their boat in San Diego bay.  Um, can't do THAT anymore...sigh...

Do I miss Los Angeles?  Sometimes...Hubby used to take me with him to the flower and produce markets when he was in the grocery business.  I DO miss that.  I do miss going to the theaters near LA and the museums.  I do NOT miss LAX!  Ugh.  Now we take our daughter and son-in-law to the Palm Springs airport when they fly to Oregon or other parts and we can park our car and walk in with them without having to walk for miles or take a shuttle!    It's just park and walk.  How simple is that?

I CHOSE not to attend UCLA.  It was too close to home and frankly, it was TOO BIG for me.  Instead, I spent my first two college years at the University of Redlands, which was an hour's drive from home.  I LOVED the old, wooden interiors!  I loved my classes and my professors, one of whom urged me to go to the University of Chicago to finish my political science degree....Um...NO, thank you!  Instead, I met my husband at Redlands and we were married in 1970.  We both had two more years of college, so we transferred over to UC Riverside and moved to Riverside.  I stayed on another two years and got my Master's Degree in political science.  Then, we moved to the desert because hubby got his first REAL paying job, in a market, as the wine manager.  This was with the old Jurgensen's Market in Rancho Mirage.  His parents also lived in Rancho Mirage, and we found a house to rent 2 blocks away from my in-laws.   I remember when we first moved to the desert from Riverside.  I SNEEZED for two months nonstop!  Now, I'd been to the desert frequently as a kid (MANY, many times, in fact!), but living there 24/7 caused me to sneeze...all the dust, I guess?  By 1975, we bought our house here and we've been in this house ever since (in Palm Desert).

Now we are nearing that point in our lives where we are THINKING about retirement.  My goodness!  WHERE did the time go?  To stay or not to stay in the desert...Well, for now, both of our kids are here, in Indio.  We don't think that will last forever, but, as long as they are only 15 minutes away, we are happy.  The grandkids are here, too.  It is just that the summers and the heat and the humidity are very hard on us "old folks".  So, we try to get away for a week at a time, either to the Sierras or to Arizona...up in the cool forests.  We DEFINITELY will not be retiring to a big city.  It will either be Arizona, or Sonoma, or Idyllwild or someplace cooler with lots of trees!   :-)

Thursday afternoon rain

This is one of the views from the Toro Peak webcam station.  They have cameras that face north, east, south, and west.  I like to visit their website and look at what's going on in our mountains.  The top photo shows the view north of the webcam (see the rain...).  The bottom one is rain falling to the east of Toro Peak, which would be facing Deep Canyon.  Yup...rain is definitely forecast today.  I stepped outside to feed the dogs and the humidity must be 70%.  It makes my hair frizz!

Monsoon clouds

After Monday's horrific rains here in the desert (some areas STILL haven't dried out...), we have two more days of monsoonal moisture and the threat of thunderstorms.  Really, our desert won't take any more water.  It's like a sponge.  It can soak up so much water, then the water just runs off.  We are that wet here...Anyway, last weekend I got a few photos of the monsoon clouds up in our local mountains.

We got RAIN!!!

We got rain yesterday...a LOT of it!  Rancho Mirage got 1.23 inches of rain yesterday afternoon.  Since we live on the border of Palm Desert/Rancho Mirage, I grabbed my camera and off I went to see the results.  I could hear sirens all around, coming and going.  You have to understand the desert:  Once the sandy soil gets saturated with water, it either stands and floods or it moves and floods somewhere else.  I KNOW...I've lived here nearly 40 years and I've seen two major tropical storms flood the desert.  One of them flooded our home in 1979.  Honestly, I haven't seen as much rain and water since 1979 as I saw yesterday afternoon.  Our front yard was completely saturated with rain water.  Really, it had nowhere to go...I did begin to worry about flooding, but we were okay...phew!  There's a large street 2 blocks over (my in-laws used to live there) and it was flooding.  A major spillway from the mountains ran down into it and it was closed to traffic.  A lot of its neighbors were out with their cameras and a news cameraman hopped out of a car to take video. I drove out to the Rancho Mirage library to check on the wash and yup...it was full and running with water.  There were high winds and rolling thunder for about an hour.  We called our kids in Indio and they got hit about 30 minutes after we did.  We are all okay, but more rain is forecast for today (in fact, it's already sprinkling).  It will be an interesting first day of school if it rains today!   :-)  These are the pics I took yesterday afternoon.

More squirrel antics!

Really, I could have just sat and watched these little guys all day, every day!  They were hilarious!  And, I found their tiny footprints all over the wash in back of the cabin every morning.  But, I didn't see any raccoon footprints the whole week we were at the cabin and there was plenty of food out for them.  The squirrels and birds both enjoyed a critter mix that I put on the fence and fence posts every morning.  In fact, a couple mornings I was greeted at 5:30 by a squirrel demanding breakfast!

Daily dose of cuteness!

There were about 6 of these squirrels around the cabin.  There was at least one female because, well, uh, er...we saw them "playing" one morning, only they weren't playing.  Is it that time of year already?  But, I couldn't resist their cuteness.  One male actually was quite tame (and he had obviously charmed quite a few cabin-dwellers!) and he would come right up on the porch and beg for a peanut.  Of course, he always got one!

Well, I'm heading up to the horses today.  It should be interesting because a huge storm system is heading our way.  I'm going up there this morning, hopefully before the storm hits!  :-)