I am getting the itch to rip everything out of the house that I don't like. This includes certain cabinetry, flooring, random sections of drywall, some clothes, selected computer equipment, and, in some cases, entire rooms. (But not, I promise you, people.) I'm not sure about this itch, but I want to scratch it, and scratch it hard. I will draw blood if that's what it takes to relieve the itch -scratch away until the flesh is torn and the bone ground down. Scratch until it's gone, and the house finally satisfies.

Something tells me that that will never happen, that the itch will nag ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. Ad noendum. Bummer! So I spent some time in the garden on Saturday, well, okay, the yard, ripping stuff out that was bugging me. (Pots with dead plants! Pathetic!) But it is mid-September, and time to switch out to some more hearty, seasonal foliage. I poured out all the old soil from every pot on the property and amended it with mulch and fertilizer, where it sat on the patio ready to grow something on its own, a wayfaring poppy seed on the wind, perhaps -when someone opened the screen door and the kids came out and promptly sat in it.

They're growing, plenty. They communicate with each other now, and it's a wonder to watch. It mostly amounts to the Little Digger playing Godzilla to the Little Ditchman's dollhouse, and the resultant toddler reprimands that ensue, but the little guy seems to laugh it off with a smart, albeit primitive, sense of humor. I was pleased to see this arrive before an actual vocabulary, as it denotes a certain intellectual mystique in a 10-month-old. The jokes run simply, and are the same every time: he puts the back of his hand up to his mouth and smacks it while he makes a noise. It sounds like a dimwitted Apache: bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah, ha! But I guess you have to be there. Anyway, it makes the big sister laugh hysterically. He's picked up on this, so he goes again: bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah, followed by more laughter. He pulls it out at random times to make her laugh, and I could watch the exchange all weekend. There's something fantastically reassuring about it. It's something smart, something real. And, for a 10-month-old, it's pretty clever (being so obviously hilarious to a 3-year-old.)

We spent Sunday doing a little winetasting -since we live so close to the premiere winemaking region in all of Southern California! It was nice, actually, and we tasted a goodly number of interesting grapes, fermented in interesting ways. Anything outstanding? Yes; the weather, the company, the Sangria... It was a good Sunday, followed by a long Monday, in which I sufferred a nasty gash to the leg, first thing. It wasn't too bad, and there wasn't much I could do about it. I just stared at the blood dripping down my shin all day, thinking, bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah.

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Man, what a mess I've made of my daily routine! 7:00PM and I'm sitting down to blog a bit, while the kids are getting some dinner, wife in the shower. Me, I got back from a run at about 5:00. This is all wrong. See what happens when all the phones ring at once at 8:00AM?

Messed with me, it did. We have FIVE phones in the house, by the way, if you count the fax machine. Seven, actually, since two of the phones have handsets on opposite floors, and yes, they both ring with every call, dammit. So they all rang at once this morning, freaking everyone just plain OUT and me especially, since the bulk of them were announcing that that delivery we were expecting 30 miles away was arriving at the job site about 4 hours early. And then the second call a half hour later saying, no, it's arriving 4 and a half hours early. So, yes: messed.

But I got through it, guilty the whole time that I have been neglecting the poor blog. And all of you won't stop emailing me, asking if I'm okay -thank you for your concern! I am not under a refrigerator. Anyway, it all amounted to me getting home early and my running running late in the day, for a change. Felt great!

It's 9/11, so I bring in the flag, which I fly all summer, beginning Memorial Day. I don't know why I do this, take it down on 9/12, but I do. I like the flag. I love the country. I love summer. But there's something off to me about running up the colors all year, all the livelong day, at your residence. I don't know. I just don't want it neglected. It gets faded enough as the summer wears on and eventually the neighbors see it like they see the paint on your house. (They don't.)

So it comes down tonight. I'll pull it out for Veteran's Day, Election Day, Thanksgiving, Pearl Harbor Day, Christmas, Presidents Day, and whatever else appropriate thing I can remember. Maybe even Easter, just to drive all the secular progressives on my block nutz. (Did you watch the president's speech the other night? Did you see what it said on the wall behind him in the House of Representatives? Sorry, but this is clearly not a secular nation.) Anyway, I'm feeling ornery. Must be the time of the day. Or the day. Or the wine. (Wineblogger, would be a good blog title, for someone so inclined, it suddenly occurs to me.)

It is 9/11. I watched some news today, just a few minutes worth, and I started to get choked up. It all seems a stunning memory, but like a remembered dream. I fear most of us truly have forgotten, as we promised we never would on 9/12, like some note in our senior yearbook (BFF '88!). They don't show them anymore, but the images are still every bit as shocking, and today play with the addition of a ghostly, eerie sense. (Check out Lileks' video.) I know it sounds crazy, but, we should all thank our troops, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney, among others, for keeping us safe for the past 8 years. I know many people think of other things when they consider those names. Would you recommend thanking someone else? Or would you call 9/11 a fluke? A lucky shot? So, times have changed. Anyway, who knows what the future brings? If you had told me that night, back on 9/11/01, what I'd be doing 8 years hence, I would have told you to go cram it. (Glad I was wrong.)

Furthermore. If you are standing at the podium in the House of Reps, giving a speech about war or health care or something, with that quote behind you, do you know what you are looking at, on the wall behind all of your country's congressmen? There are other images, but they are in profile. This is the one in the middle, looking directly at you:



Have a blessed weekend!

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09/09/09! Awesome! Life hasn't been this great since 08/08/08! To celebrate, at 9:09:09 AM this morning I drank 9 cups of coffee and tonight at 9:09:09 PM I am going to pound 9 beers, watch channel 99. According to this article,

[the date 09/09/09] represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it.

Swell. Also, it is the 252nd day of the year. Significant? Yes, when you add 2+5+2 you get -wait for it- 9! Ladies and gentlemen, this can't possibly be a coincidence. The end is near.

Or new iPods! I was hoping for a wow-tastic AppleTV upgrade or revision, but instead it's just a rainbow of iPods with tiny cameras built in. It's nice, but... who needs another thing that plays music and takes pictures? Seems like everything does, nowadays. And I'm a proud owner of an iPhone, which does simply everything. Well... everything short of getting me a beer and pouring it into a frosty mug, handing it to me on the couch, and climbing up behind me to rub my tired shoulders. Nowadays it seems the new better things are merely varied permutations on the old better things.

Today's aluminum patio cover got delayed due to a stucco problem. The general on the job has issues with the inspector, who he mentioned could bite him, of all things. So I returned yesterday's trailer to the equipment rental place and asked to borrow their lawn aerator. They gave it to me for free, which made my day, and I spent the morning aerating the lawn, front and back. The lawn is dying, sadly, so a summer's-end aeration amounts to little more than a yard-size tracheotomy, as it lays there, struggling to breathe in the September heat. What else am I gonna do? Dose it with gypsum, fertilizer and pesticide? Intravenous hydro-therapy under the cover of night? Okay, I'll do it -but only because there's no Living Will for these things clearly delineated in the Sunset Western Garden Guide.

My neighbor is crazy, and I don't care if they know I think it. In the dead heat of summer they hired the other neighbor's gardener and decided to till the ground and plant lawnseed in their backyard (which was an obviously stolen and transplanted plot of barren Mojave.) Fine, but they've got their back sprinklers running ALL NIGHT LONG. I'm not kidding about this. Oh, sure, it's growing and all, but it must be costing them a few grand and the good will of the neighbor on the other side, who's been asking if the SHAKA-SHAKA-SHAKA kept us up all night, too. I'd complain to the authorities about the senseless waste of water, but then... well... then my green envy would be wholly exposed.

Also spent about $999.99 to fix the family SUV today, since at high speeds it felt like the driveshaft was going to drop out of the chassis and roll down the freeway embankment. In Japanese, the word for "nine" is a homophone for the word for "suffering". This all makes sense now, since it's a Toyota.

UPDATE: Patti pointed this out. In the words of Keanu: "Whoa."

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An excellent Labor Day weekend was had, and thus, the summer ends, as so many summers have at this age. There are another couple of weeks left, of course, and if the public school system kept your kids 24/7, those last two weeks of summer would be duly enjoyed by all the parents in the land, but alas... what a waste.

Still... excellent all the same. Mrs. Ditchman and I connived our unsuspecting relatives to watch our diminutive hellions so we could haul off to a 40th birthday party for an old high school chum of mine, which was altogether oh-so-serendipitous. We didn't really know anyone else at the party, but it was a good excuse for a change of scene after a busy summer, and we're glad we did (at least, I am.) Costume party! All things 60s/70s! She looked fine in something she just pulled out of the closet. I wore my Dharma-issue coveralls. I wasn't sure a fictional background character from a popular tv show set in the 70s would fly, but the host of the party was dressed as Austin Powers, so it was deemed acceptable by default, and a relief. Anyway, it was a great party.

Something odd. I chatted with my old chum's parents for a while, whom I adore and with whom I haven't spoken in years. John's dad asked about my dad and I had to break the news that he had died five years ago. Such terrible, old news. It didn't really make me sad or anything, but it made me feel like the years were beginning to show themselves. I suppose it did for John's dad, too, upon hearing this, but I didn't ask. I changed the subject and wondered aloud if his costume was "new" or if he had just pulled it out of the back of the closet. He smacked me.

There were gaming tables! We all found ourselves suddenly wealthy with thousands in gaming chips to just drop on Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, etc. Hooting and hollering ensued from either side of the makeshift, be-tinseled casino (while mojitos were poured freely and swiftly) and the chips were later cashed in for raffle tickets which won gift certificates to popular coffee franchises and the like. I scored a $25 iTunes card which I blew on iPhone aps before work this morning. Awesome!

So we met some fun folks. Most of them were smiling, because most of them had left the kids somewhere else. I took a look around the party at one point and found that I was surrounded by people who were all about 40, all about 3 kids deep, and all just about as exhausted from the ordinary grind of daily living as I was. But everyone was happy, or at least seemed so. It was highly encouraging, and gave one the sense that the world was, in fact, spinning in the correct direction and at the proper rate. [Here's a word to the miserable: if you can muster it, hide your misery and surround yourself with happy people. Even if you don't know them, it does wonders.] Anyway, John and his wife's friends and family are hilarious. It's one of the reasons why we've been friends for 25 years: we at least admire our ability to surround ourselves with quality folk.

25 years! It's a wonder to be friends with someone for so long. Of all the people in attendance at the birthday, aside from the family I was the one who knew John the longest and, as far as I could tell, had traveled the farthest to be there. I know I wasn't obligated to go to the party (John and I don't connect more than once or twice a year, nowadays) but, given the circumstances of longevity, I chose to attend out of respect for our little institution of lasting friendship. John and I are pretty different, but with some people, just sticking it out for that long transcends enough differences to make it worthwhile. What else is there for us to endure now, besides our prolonged parting and distance? But none of that matters. It's a priceless thing, to feel like it's only been days, instead of months, or even years sometimes, between a rendezvous. It's the magnificent blessing of old friends.

Mrs. Ditchman and I stayed until 1AM or so, after most of the other guests had peeled off. We sat outside in some lawn chairs with a few candles. Someone had bought John an expensive bottle of whiskey, and he got some plastic cups and opened the bottle -without hesitating or even considering that there might be a more deserving moment in some future of his where I probably wouldn't be present. Someone else had given John some fine cigars, and he handed one to me, a light in the other hand. I don't drink whiskey or smoke cigars anymore, at least, not like I used to, but then again, I don't hang with John like I used to. So we laughed about the old times, and bored our shivering wives with the old stories. And it was a fine cigar. I guess, at 40, if you arrive at the point where the retelling of the great stories outnumbers the creation of them, well... it's not a bad thing.



Me and John. Acapulco, c. 1994.


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One more pic of good ole' Larry's house in La Canada. Not much can be said about it, as it speaks for itself, eh? Pretty sure it's the same view from a lot of houses in La Canada, La Crescenta, Tujunga, Altadena, et al. Moonscape-ville. Welcome to Tranquility Base.

If I had a helicopter, I would fly over my house and take pictures all the time. Does every pilot do this? Fly over, circle once or twice, and say, "Hey! There's my house!" Funny.

In other news, Lileks used the word ichor in a sentence on his blog the other day. I would never in a million years think to use the word ichor, though I happen to know what it means, and have seen it before. This is why I will never be a professional writer, because words like ichor never appear in my brain at the necessary and appropriate time. No matter how much I write, or how hard I pound the keys, ichor does not manifest in my cerebrum as a utility. Mrs. Ditchman had a bloody nose in the shower the other night, dripping ichor on the linoleum and calling my name. If I had thought of the word myself, it might have been a great little story. Hilarious, even. But I didn't have the words. Writing can be such an ichor-letting enterprise!

As is building aluminum patio covers. Yesterday it was hotter, but the previous day it was more humid. I infinitely prefer the heat to the humidity, but that is a preference that has no bearing or matter on anything in my life. It's not like I'm trying to decide between a vacation to The Grand Canyon or a vacation to Wailua Falls, and in that case humidity would win out, so, hey, what do I know?

Labor Day Weekend! Have a fine one. Don't work, don't have a baby, just take it easy. Why they don't just call it "BBQ Day" is beyond me, but then again, not a lot has been making much sense lately. Anyway, be careful with that fire.



Wailua Falls, Kauai


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Where have I been? Oh, who cares. Work, that's where. WORK. Yesterday was hot and busy, through and through. Got home after the sun went down, and almost sat to blog about it in one big, extended complaint, and then thought the better of it. I mean, who wants to hear about that?

Monday I have no excuse for. I was home for most of the day. I had a bit of time here and there, but I just didn't sit down at the computer. I was just eager to get August over and done with, as it seemed an interminable month, so I waited it out until the first September morning, which was Tuesday. And now? SEPTEMBER! And feeling great.

Here's a few more fire photos to remind you how petty your Wednesday worries are...


La Canada. I believe Larry took this pic with his phone from his helicopter last Friday night. That collection of buildings on the right, there, is JPL -NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's the #3 Mission Control for spaceflight ops in the country, behind the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. JPL handles all of the deep space exploration, so the shuttle astronauts are a little less concerned about the La Canada fires than are the robots on Mars.

The dome in the bottom left is my old high school gym, currently an evac center, and my old house is in that cluster of homes on the top left on that hill.

Here's one taken by Mitch a couple days ago, from his backyard...


A DC-10 flying that low over your house would otherwise not be cause for jubilance, but Mitch called it "The Closer" -as it pretty much finished off the flames licking up his hillside.

And finally...



The breathtaking, stunning, God's-eye view of it all, that we see in the paper once a year. Seems understated, since it's been deemed one of the largest wildfires (if not the largest) in California history. If the Santa Ana's were blowing, all that smoke would be going in exactly the opposite direction. So far, only 64 homes have burned down. I say "only" because I'm working around San Diego County and still see empty lots in many neighborhoods, and I vividly remember all the homes that burned down two years ago. All 1500 of them.


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If you live long enough, eventually you see your old high school turned into an evacuation center for some local disaster or another, as I have this past weekend. I mention the Southland wildfires every year, and was gearing up for it again come October, but the annual conflagrations have lit up the night sky a bit early this season, and without the wind.

No wind! Which is the greatest blessing of all this crisis. One can only imagine the destruction if the Santa Ana's had whipped up. All the same, I was monitoring the wildfire all weekend and it is a grand and sweeping demoralization to see the words "0 percent contained" in print.

La Canada is my old hometown and I've befriended all my old high school classmates on Facebook since leaving the place 20 years ago, so when I clicked on my Facebook newsfeed I just saw a list of people praying and evacuating, and mobile uploads of the burning menace in old friends' backyards. The fire was at one point less than a mile from the house I grew up in, and it made me think I barely made it out of there alive, having grown up all those years just this side of a massive tinder box. Though I do remember a few fires and some controlled burns from my youth, there was never anything like this.

I called one friend last week. He answered his cel and I asked immediately, "Is your house okay?" And he replied "No!" without having to think about it, which was shocking -he was loading stuff into his car as we talked. His place is still okay, as far as I know, but the evacuating is easy compared to the waiting, I imagine. Is everything going to be all right? We'll wait and see, wait and see...

One of my old classmates is Larry, who is a helicopter pilot/sky reporter for the local news agencies. Our senior class president, he still lives just up the street from where I grew up. Larry's been good about posting info and pics on his Facebook wall for all to see. He's a helluva guy; good-humored, not easily excitable, and everybody loves him. Here he is in his backyard the other day, chatting on the phone, catching some pics, calling in air support:





The caption on that last photo reads: My pool guy is gonna be pissed!

Other pics show him smiling with firefighters and being interviewed for the news -all with a margarita in hand. That's Larry. Helluva guy.

The fire is still burning, this way and that. Homes have been lost, lives have been lost, and it's all terrible to watch. Most of my high school classmates have moved out of La Canada, but none of their parents have, of course, so there is great and extensive concern. (Including for my own mom, by the way, but she is totally fine.) Generally speaking it all seems to be keeping at bay, staying just up the hill from the neighborhoods. I keep checking this map, for some perspective, but it doesn't seem to help. You just can't imagine the sheer size of it. And to think of what could have been with a Santa Ana condition, the horror of which would be beyond scale.


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