Teen learns the hard way that his mom was right. (And is nice to reporter documenting his lesson!)

I got a report one day that a car had driven into a house and dashed over to find instead that a teen’s Honda had rolled down the hill and onto his neighbors’ lawn after knocking over their mailbox.

“I guess my mom was right about always leaving the car in gear,” the boy told me soon after I arrived.

That was cool.

Not only because he quickly admitted that his habit of leaving the car in neutral to save him from having to pop it out of gear before he could start the engine was bad, but because he was so calm about a reporter arriving to document his embarrassing afternoon.

“I was just in the paper last week,” he said, explaining that his sports accomplishments had earned him the earlier attention. Maybe that positive coverage helped him accept my presence; whatever the reason, I definitely appreciated his willingness to talk to me.

Understandably, that’s not always the case when people’s lives are disrupted, particularly during much more traumatic events.

Another time, I was taking pictures of a home engulfed in flames while the resident stood crying in a friend’s embrace. When I asked the friend if either of them wanted to talk to me she stiffly declined, then after a pause added, “You know, I never understood why you guys never have more details about stuff like this. But I get it now.”

I appreciated her realizing that while many of us feel entitled to as many details as possible when things happen to other people, when those events happen to us, we usually want them to remain as private as possible.

I also appreciated her calmly asking me to give them privacy, which I did.

And although the teen whose car had rolled onto the neighbor’s lawn gave me his name, I decided not to print it and instead let his sports achievement dominate his press coverage.

As I turned to leave, he steeled himself for a conversation with someone he wanted to talk to even less than a reporter: his mother.

“This should be a fun one,” he said with a sheepish grin as he sat down in the car to dial his cell phone.

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Some kids don't want to leave their hometown. And I think they might end up happier.

At a high school graduation one year, I was talking with a teacher about the kids who don't want to move away. While so many of their classmates can't wait to leave, some kids are happy to stay right where they are. “They’re minimalists,” he said.

That was cool. And it got me thinking that maybe the kids who stay will be happier than the kids like me who left their hometown as soon as they could. Why? Many reasons:

• They must be easygoing

Someone who wants to stay in their hometown likely gets along with their parents, and most everyone else. I figure they aren’t easily annoyed by people. And even if they are, they don’t hold grudges.

“Living in a small town taught me a lot about forgiveness,” a friend told me. “If someone pisses you off, but you know you’re going to keep running into them at the grocery store or your kids’ soccer games, it’s a lot easier to just let stuff go.”

It took a lot of time and effort for me to learn to let things go. I have to imagine that people who could always do that have had a lot more fun and gotten a lot more sleep in their lives.

• They likely have a built-in support system

One of the hardest things about moving to a new city is not having anyone else to call for help, even for the really small things. You wake up without creamer for your coffee or get halfway through a batch of cookies before you realize you don’t have enough flour. If you’re where you grew up, those things are likely just a couple of doors down.

And so is someone to help you bring home new furniture and take the old furniture away, take care of your animals when you go out of town and drive you home from a medical appointment.

And when you have a baby, you likely have a babysitter you already trust. You also don’t need to spend all your vacation time dragging a grumpy toddler along with its car seat and stroller onto a plane to see their grandparents. Or your child’s grandparents don’t have to spend their retirement fund flying to see you.

Starting over in a new city can be exhilarating. But when you get a cold and you pull the soup pot from the top cupboard and the thick ceramic plate you forgot was on top of it lands on your head, you realize that having someone nearby who could bring you soup is pretty great, too.

• They have a built-in sense of belonging

All humans want to feel understood and appreciated. Not feeling like they belong is a reason why many people leave their hometowns, especially those not wanting to suffer emotional or physical abuse for just being themselves.

So imagine how nice it would be to have that feeling from day one. To spend all stages of your life in a place with the same people, who know all the cool things and accept all the dumb things you’ve done. And later it’s really nice to have people around who remember what you were like before all the wrinkles and gray hair.

Every day would feel like how one young woman described returning home to work on a television set with her family, her childhood friends and her teachers.

“Growing up I was always focused on going elsewhere to work, but getting to come home and work in my hometown with the community that raised me was something really special. My second-grade teacher was there with us all week, girls I grew up doing ballet with were there, and my mom and brother were there.”

For kids who stayed in their hometown, days like that aren’t special events. They happen all the time.

If my family lived in my hometown after graduation, I might have stayed.

• They have simple needs

Wherever you go, there you are. And unless you’re experiencing torture or deprivation, if you can’t make yourself reasonably happy wherever you are right now, there’s a good chance you will never be happy.

And that’s not to say we don’t need people with the desire to explore and achieve, to invent and discover. We certainly do. But when it comes to being happy, I think the people who have always been content with who and where they are have the best odds.

How I learned to love Lucy, the cat with the baboon butt

A few weeks after we adopted her, our cat Lucy got locked outside and began screaming at the top of her lungs.

That was cool.

Cool because her panic melted my heart, and for the first time I thought I could love this creature I hadn’t wanted in our home since the day she arrived.

Lucy quickly learned to love the outdoors.

She used to belong to my husband’s friend, but he moved to a new place where he said he couldn’t bring her. To prevent her from going to a shelter, my husband agreed to take the cat.

I didn’t want another cat, and all I saw when he brought Lucy home was how inferior she was to our kitty Stella, whom I could not have been more in love with.

Stella was a sleek silver tabby who spent most of her time exploring outside. Lucy was a chunky indoor cat with dull black fur flecked with dandruff and a skinny tail that looked like a rat’s.

And it just got worse when she started losing that fur in big patches mostly around her rump until she looked like a bare-assed baboon.

It also didn’t help that she was clumsy and always getting her claws stuck on things. One time I emerged from the shower to frantic wailing from the bedroom and found her hanging upside down with all four paws wrapped up in the blinds. I tried to untie her but she bit and scratched me, so I finally had to cut up the blinds to free her.

Then we started finding piles of vomit everywhere. She’d yell to be fed, then promptly yak up everything she ate on anything that happened to be nearby. Before we found one pile she was yelling to be fed again so she could make the next one.

But the final straw was the anal squirts.

Few things are more pleasant than a warm, soft cat purring away, so I decided I could forget Lucy’s faults by inviting her onto my lap. It worked at first, with her gratefully purring and soon enthusiastically kneading away at my stomach.

But then I felt some drips on my bare leg and found a brown substance smelling like rotten fish which I realized dripped out of her behind – yes, poor Lucy has a tendency to expel from her anal glands when she gets excited.

I felt then there was no hope for us. A lifelong cat person, I had easily found things to love about every one I knew. Until Lucy.

And then she got locked outside. 

A strictly indoor cat before, Lucy seemed afraid of the outdoors so I never thought she would follow me when I took out the garbage one day and get herself trapped outside when I closed the garage door.

But soon I heard this strange yowling and looked out the window to see her in the driveway, totally consumed with panic and wailing like a car alarm that was getting louder and louder.

It reminded me of my grandmother’s stories about how terrified I was of getting lost as a kid, especially the time we were in a store and she merely stepped around the counter. Since I was too short to see over the counter, I thought I had been abandoned and began screaming in panic, humiliating her.

So I knew how Lucy felt, suddenly cut off from everything she knew and with no idea how to get back inside to the voices and smells that had barely become familiar. All my other feelings disappeared and I felt nothing but empathy and compassion for her.

Because everybody deserves a place where they feel safe. Even a cat with a baboon butt who squirts from her anal glands when she’s not throwing up.

So I brought her inside with a hug and talked to her sweetly for the first time. I started calling her Lucy Liu, her hair grew back when we got rid of the fleas and I eventually found a thing or two to love about her.

I especially love that not once in the six years since she got stuck in the blinds has she bitten or scratched me even a little bit, no matter how many times a day I pick her up without warning, squeeze her until she squeaks, then drape her over my shoulder for a quick dance around the house.

I guess she’s decided that’s a fair price to pay for feeling safe, and even loved.

You will never achieve happiness if you let others define it

A fresh high school graduate was talking to some middle-school kids recently about being a firefighter cadet and acknowledged that while some might recognize him from calls he responded to with the local fire department, they might also have seen him mopping and emptying trash cans. “Yes, I am the evening janitor here.”

That was cool.

I so admired him for saying that. Because while at his age I was also still in my hometown working a job that others might look down on while most of my classmates had gone off to college, I was nowhere near secure enough in my situation to point it out to a room full of twelve-year-olds.

 

But he was. While still in his teens, he already appears to know most of us struggle our whole adult lives to absorb – you shouldn’t let what others might think of you affect how you feel about yourself.

 

We all know how to be happy with ourselves from the start. But then we change. Usually right around the time we start school.

 

For me it was slumber parties, where I was trapped with girls from another planet who made it painfully clear that everything about me was wrong – the way I dressed, the way I acted and especially what I wanted to eat.

 

The hostess of my first slumber party wasn’t like that, however, and she started things off by bringing out a big bag of Starburst for us with a huge smile on her face. Since I wasn’t allowed to eat candy at home, I wanted nothing more than to return her huge grin and reach into that bag and pull out as many of those squares my hand could hold.

 

But the other girls all shook their heads and waved the bag away. And when the hostess offered it to me, I let their judgment fall on me like a net. I shook my head at the bag, her smile vanished and I looked down, both of us now miserable because I let those other girls decide what I should want.

 

I don’t remember anything else about that party, only how it felt to deny myself something and upset that sweet girl because of what some strangers would think. It seems too ridiculous to even fathom now.

 

But that scene played out again and again in the years to come, each time with stakes much higher than me not getting a handful of Starburst and a young girl not understanding why her guests didn’t want the candy she bought for them.

 

When I was the age of the fire cadet, I was working at a pizza place in my hometown to put myself through community college. 

 

Most of the time I was pretty happy with myself. I was already living on my own and paying all my bills, something my classmates wouldn’t do for years, maybe decades. But when they came home during school breaks and I stood behind the counter from them in my sauce-stained apron, I let what (I imagined) they thought of me affect that satisfaction. 

 

And my finally moving away didn’t solve that problem, because by the time I transferred to a four-year school most of my high school classmates had finished college and were on to the next stage. As proof, one of them showed up as the fresh-faced professor of one of my history classes.

 

I was mortified. And while a younger me would have dropped the class in shame, I remember deciding to not resent her accomplishments but appreciate them, and maybe learn something from those accomplishments. 

 

And I’m glad I did, because she was a great teacher – the kind you get a lot from because they also expect a lot from you. She impressed me. And, funny enough, I managed to impress her, too.

 

Because at the end of the class she told the rest of the students that we had grown up together, and that she wanted to commend me for handling an uncomfortable situation with humility and grace.

 

I started the class proud of her, and ended it proud of myself as well. Because I knew I was learning what was really important – making yourself and the people who matter happy, and ignoring the people who don’t.

 

Oh, and when someone offers you Starburst, or something else you want to eat. just take it!

Hike through history on Mt. Konocti, where a tragic piece of Ukiah’s past still sits

A recent hike up Mt. Konocti offered the great exercise and stunning views of Clear Lake I was expecting. But it surprised me with fascinating glimpses into the past, including the former home of a determined widow and a tragic piece of Ukiah history I knew nothing about.

That was cool

The Wright Peak Summit Trail is about three miles and begins after a short drive up a winding dirt road in Mt. Knocoti County Park near Kelseyville.

Sure, the trail is technically a fire road, but it does take you through an apple orchard and offer you bathrooms every mile or so, which I found to be a rare and most-welcome treat. There is no water available, however, and the trail gets very hot, so bring plenty to drink.

Most descriptions of the trail I found explain that a short side trip will take you to the home of Mary Downen, which is a cabin built in 1903 that the homesteader refused to leave even as an elderly widow.

According to the historical marker at the site, she didn’t want to live with her family in Lakeport, but every day at 2 p.m. she would walk to the side of the mountain and use a mirror to reflect the sun as a way to tell her daughter she was OK. When her daughter signaled back, Downen went back to her cabin.

But I knew nothing about the plane crash wreckage I found just before the summit.

The plane wreckage can be seen in the distance.

According to the interpretive sign nearby, Mervin and Julia Enzler of Ukiah were flying home from Santa Rosa on Jan. 26, 1970, in their small plane when it crashed on the top of Wright Peak during bad weather.

The Enzlers were in their 60s and had recently retired as owners of the Model Bakery, which is now known as Schat’s Bakery in downtown Ukiah.

The wreckage of their white and turquoise 1946 Navion A is still there, lying just a few feet from the panel describing the crash, which was built and dedicated in June of 2016 in a ceremony attended by the Enzlers’ son Ed and his children.

A bit more of the site can be seen in this video: https://youtu.be/_jj6ekURcl0

Or read more about the crash and the trail here:

http://konoctitrails.com/enzler-plane-crash-panel-dedicated-on-mt-konocti/

A Scrub Jay passed out in my hand one day so I could free it from my garden

My resident Scrub Jay.

I got to hold a Scrub Jay once when it got trapped in my garden.

 

That was cool. And especially cool that I found it all, because it was winter and I hadn't been in my garden for weeks.

 

But something made me walk out to it that evening. And I saw the jay, frantically trying to fly away but never leaving the fence because the netting I used months earlier to protect my cherry tomatoes (from thieves like jays) was wrapped around one of its legs. 

 

I put on my gardening gloves and reached for the bird. After a few tries I got my hand around its wings and felt it go limp immediately, likely collapsing from exhaustion and fear.

 

I cut off the netting easily with scissors, but still couldn’t free the jay because the talons of its foot were closed around the top of the fence. I had to carefully open those long, sharp talons before lifting the jay away from the fence, relishing being so close to a bird’s foot while still keenly aware that at any moment it could awaken and injure me.

 

Once the bird was free from the fence, I saw that the netting was digging into its leg, so I laid it down in a pot of dirt to perform surgery, carefully cutting off as much of the black netting as I could.

 

But I couldn’t get it all, some of it was just too tight. I stopped and stood over the still bird for a few moments, trying to decide if should get my seam-ripper and try to remove more netting, though I would be risking injuring the leg even more.

 

Deciding it was worth a try, I reached to pick the bird up again to carry it with me, but it was done with my help and scrambled up to fly away clumsily, dropping into the bushes as soon as it cleared the fence. 

 

Worried the jay might not have survived its ordeal after all, I checked the bushes the next morning but it was gone. And now every time I see a scrub jay at my feeders I scan their legs for a tiny black bracelet. 

 

But I haven’t seen one yet. And yes, I cut the rest of the netting off the fence and never used it again.

I saw a skunk tail in all its glory ... right before it sprayed my dog in the face

I saw a skunk tail in all its glory last night, sticking straight in the air and fluffed out like peacock feathers.

That was cool.

Unfortunately, that was seconds before my dog ran straight at the skunk and got sprayed in the face, so it ended up not being cool.

Even less cool, I’m pretty sure that was the fifth time she has gotten sprayed by a skunk. I think I’ve lost count. But I’ve definitely lost hope that she will ever learn to leave them alone.

However, one of the cool things about the Internet is this recipe I found to help get rid of the smell. (Don’t even bother with tomato juice. Didn’t do a damn thing but turn my dog and me into a wet blob of skunk-smelling tomato sauce).

Here is what works: one quart hydrogen peroxide, ¼ cup baking soda and one teaspoon dish soap.

These instructions from the Humane Society of the United States take you through the rest of the process. (Funny enough, the canine culprit in their photo looks a lot like mine).

I now keep those ingredients on hand at all times just in case, but the Humane Society suggests that you can use vinegar diluted with water in a pinch.