Weaver's Web

Life has been in tumult. We’re driving forward with our move to our old property at the River from the place we purchased at the Lake. We were unable to sell the River house, largely due to the road that Mother Nature took out with a landslide back in February 2017 and that the county never did a proper permanent repair on. The road was open, but frightening if we have a further slip. Lowball offers were not things we were willing to consider.

Anyway with the two places less than 2 hours apart we’re doing the bulk of the move ourselves, one carload at a time. Gives me a chance to sort, and do a Marie Kondo, not that divestiture is my strong suit. Today I’ll be sorting through footware and by the weekend listing stuff on eBay. Note, we’re leaving a rare amount of things at the Lake to stage it for sale.

In the midst of all this there were wildfires here in Northern California that had us evacuated out of the River House back to the Lake, a 6 day preventative power outage PG&E instituted to prevent wildfires (not that it worked; the Kincaid fire appears likely to have been sparked by a power line they didn’t turn off. Ungh.) & on top of all of it my 11 yo husky cross was diagnosed with cancer and needed surgery. The days are running into each other and I’m not fully sure which way is up.

Our evacuation order got lifted Wednesday evening & we got power back at both the Lake and the River within hours of each other. I returned to Sonoma Thursday morning, car filled with the contents of the fridge and freezer (very well traveled groceries- they left with us when we evacuated,) and the dog across the back seat. I got to the vet in Sebastopol at 8:30am after a 2 hour drive. Despite having walked before we left and the moment we got out of the car, he decided to take a dump at the bottom of the Vet’s stairs, thus making clear what he thought about the situation.

Though I promised myself I would keep it together, I choked up chatting with the vet pre-op. She did her b st to be reassuring without sugar coating. The good news it’s a rule of tumor that tends to spread locally and can be aggressive locally, but does not tend to metastasize distantly. Then I drove back to the River house.

Over 2 & a 1/2 years the road has gone without its permanent repair. What did I find when I got the the slide site? Road crews. Earth moving equipment. Piles of steel I beams. And the road blocked 1/4 mike away from my driveway. Really? You’re doing this right now? This will be our new normal WHILE we’re now in the process of moving back. Weekdays until the end of the year, the road will be blocked for the majority of the day, 7am thru 5:30pm. Trash will not be picked up. Mail will now be delivered. I pulled back 10 yards, parked and started carrying things to the house. When I got back for my second trip, after putting 55 lbs of frozen food away, the crew moved things out of the way for me and broke for lunch.

At 6, I drove out to get Arjuna. Poor pooch was stoned out of his gourd. He’d been given 2 mg of Dilaudid for pain post operatively and was awake, but far from steady on his feet. There was good news; the sarcoma which had grown disturbingly quickly in the past few months, was infected. Yes there was a cancer, but infection and pus were behind a good portion of the apparent size of the mass. It’s been cleaned out and antibiotics should take care of the rest. I bring him back for a wound check Thursday. Till then he’s bandaged paw to shoulder and wearing the cone of shame.

All this upheaval has made for a good calorie burn for me. I dropped 20 pounds between the end of June and the beginning of October, I’m now down another 7. With luck it will be between 30 & 35 by Thanksgiving. I dearly would like to be south of 250 by New Years. We shall see. Ultimately, I hope to be at 200 by blthis time next year.