Hold onto your hats

From today's weather report in the LA Times:

Sunny. Highs around 60. From Leo Carrillo to the Hollywood Hills...north winds
20 to 30 mph with gusts to 50 mph through and below canyons. Winds decreasing to
15 to 30 mph in the afternoon.

Um, yeah. It is awfully windy here today. Last night was so windy ("gusty" is a better word), our windows rattled in their frames, our building creaked, the neighbors' wind chimes produced a nonstop, frenzied, cacophony, and our cats expressed their agitation by crying off and on during the early-morning hours.
The wind woke me up several times in the night. I find high, gusty winds quite unnerving. They're loud and violent, and they make going outside an unpleasant experience, to say the least. They also cause branches to snap and boughs to fall on people's cars and homes. And they wreak havoc with traffic lights and satellite television. They give me the impression that the weather is out of control and dangerous, and they make me anxious.
Back home, where I grew up in the Northeast, high winds usually preceded a thunderstorm. I loooved thunderstorms, so I loooved the gusty wind that came before them, because I knew what those winds meant. Also, those winds had a forseeable endpoint. These SoCal winds go on and on, with no rewarding thunderstorms at the end.
I should've known that the glee I was feeling because of our lovely Christmas weather would be short-lived!
Oh, well. It's still sunny out, and I do love that sun...

Quickie post

Ooooooo, it's soooo nice out today! I just got back from a lunch-hour walk in the lovely sunshine. I would guess it's around 70 degrees, balmy, slightly breezy, clear. Just perfect!
I miss many things about living on the East Coast: my family, friends, autumn colors, snow (and snow days), older architecture, and more. However! I do not miss the cold, punishing winters. No ma'am.

Still cold

Day 2 in Albany. Cold as all get-out. Took a brief walk around the neighborhood today wearing a thin fleece jacket and a leather coat. And gloves. Froze anyway! Was secretly relieved to arrive back to the toasty house.
Maya is enjoying exploring Grandma and Pop-Pop's house and playing with her mommy's retro 70s and 80s toys.
S and I are enjoying tasty home-cooked meals and lots of desserts. Tomorrow we will visit my Grandmas Watson and George.
There's hardly any time to get online here. When I finally did, the beep-bap-boop-creeeeeeeeeeek-fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound of the dial-up modem startled me. Talk about your retro toys!
:-)

Culture Shock

One week from now, I'll be in a suburb of Albany, NY with my husband and daughter, visiting my parents. I've been in the Los Angeles area for seven years now; going back home always produces some culture shock, especially in the wintertime.
For one thing, it is COLD in Albany in November. Two Thanksgivings ago in New York it was blizzarding and 20-something degrees. I remember taking a nighttime walk with my parents in the swirling, biting snow, straining to keep upright in the whipping wind. About 50 yards and three minutes into our stroll, S turned back. "I'm out, it's just too cold," he announced, and retreated to the warm indoors. My parents and I trudged on. I like to think that I haven't gone completely soft since moving out West.
Another thing about suburban Albany that always strikes me when I go back is the quiet, and the space. The neighborhoods feature large, wide yards and homes set far back from the streets. The houses are large. In the winter, especially, everyone is inside their homes or their cars; the neighborhoods seem empty and deserted. There's a sense of stillness one doesn't get in L.A., where everyone seems to be in perpetual motion. When my parents drive us back to their house from the airport, I always feel a strange little pang of loneliness, like, "Where is everybody?" There are beautiful trees and buildings and bridges and homes, but so few people, it seems.
At night, in bed in my parents' guestroom, the utter silence is both lovely and disconcerting. Here at our home in L.A., we hear airplanes, the occasional dog barking, the light footsteps of our friends who live above us, even our cats wrestling and meowing. Even when it's "quiet" at night, there's always some sort of ambient noise.
I don't prefer one place over the other. They're just totally different. Both agree with me, for different reasons. Both are "home," in different ways. I'm not a city mouse, a country mouse, or a suburb mouse. I'm flexible, I like to explore and appreciate various places for what they have to offer.
It's funny, going "home" to New York, then coming "home" to L.A. It's nice, actually, feeling so comfortable in two totally opposite places.

Smoke, Smog, and Ash

Every day this week I've been feeling very thankful that my home is not threatened by the wildfires that are burning south and north of my little patch of L.A. I worry for the families stuck in the Qualcomm center and those whose homes are still standing but are dangerously close to encroaching flames.
Here in the South Bay, where I live, and in West L.A., where I work, we don't see any fire, but we see evidence of it everywhere. Each morning this week, I walk to my car and find it covered in delicate, white, papery ashes. The air is desert-dry, and the sky changes color all day: grey, white, taupe, blue, brown, orange. The smoke has been doing strange things to the sunlight here---kind of diffusing it and toning down its severity, like a lampshade does to a bare lightbulb. The effect is often very striking and beautiful, oddly enough.
On the other hand, the smog is thick, brown, and ugly. I'm looking at it right now from my ninth-floor office window. I worry for Maya, who is probably playing outside at school right this minute and breathing that stuff into her little lungs.
I've noticed I've been perpetually thirsty, and my eyes are very dry. I also find myself slathering lotion onto my hands all day long. I'm guessing this is a combination of the Santa Ana winds and the effect of the fires on the local climate.
It's unsettling to think that while I go about my business this week, driving to work, playing with Maya, cooking dinner, there are families just a few miles up and down the coast whose lives are being totally upended as they flee their communities. I'm keeping these people in my thoughts.