Clutter Busting

Trying to get my ducks in a row...

My first “real” job out of college was at an office supply company. This was in the mid-80s, before the days of mega office supply stores. Businesses would order their paper clips and Scotch tape and copier paper from the Boise-Cascade catalog, call it in to me, and we would deliver it the next day. It was billed if they were good customers, COD if they were not.

I grew fascinated by the seemingly endless array of doodads needed to make an office run smoothly. Clean plastic stacking shelves in so many colors. Pristine manila file folders, identified with color-coded, neatly typed labels, resting primly in proper green hanging folders inside 3-drawer, 5-drawer, or credenza style file cabinets. The huge variety of pencil cups, some with matching desk protectors. Cases and cases of 24-pin computer paper (remember dot-matrix printers? anybody?), legal or letter size.

One winter some co-workers and I earned extra money by meticulously labeling hundreds and hundreds of new file folders for a doctor’s office. They were changing to the system that’s the norm today: the first two letters of the patient’s last name on large colorful labels, with a separate sticker for the whole name. We sat in the cold warehouse with fingerless gloves and created an ordered world.

Ah, the promise of an ordered world. Now here I am, twenty some-odd years later, and I’ve just purchased yet another magazine which has filled my foolish heart with hope and desire:

“Secrets of Getting Organized!”

Oh, yes. To crack that code. Like the office supply catalog of yore, how I love the promise in those magazines: the photos of mudrooms and home offices, the memo boards decorated in rickrack, the kitchen chalkboards with “Timmy’s soccer game 9 am” written in a delicate hand. Little white wicker baskets, neatly labeled, hold the children’s SHOES, TRAINS, LEGOS. I’m not kidding, I get misty-eyed with the notion that my own home could somehow be like this.

Ask me how many books I have (in a box in the garage) on the subject of organizing. Hmmm, let’s see if I can remember. Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? Organizing From The Inside Out. The Family Manager’s Everyday Survival Guide. (Okay, that one’s inside the house. Somewhere.) Now let’s look in the basket for magazines! Oh wait… I have to pull the dog toys out first… there you go. Storage Solutions. Better Homes and Gardens: get organized! 50+ ways to pare down, cut clutter, store more. Hey look, here’s an Oprah magazine from 2007.

Looking around the living room, where I do my writing, there is a basket of un-paired clean socks on the coffee table in front of me. Stacks of kid art poke out of the basket for the dog toys. (Oh yeah… that’s where they go.) My daughters’ laundry waits to be folded; in the meantime it rests on the back of the big chair. The Swiffer broom is, for some reason, on top of the dining room table.

Look, I’m busy, right? Who isn’t? Three kids, two dogs, and a tiny house. I’m exhausted the minute I walk in the door: it’s like there’s a vortex of disarray, threatening to suck me down in it, and I swim against its current madly and ineffectually. Last Christmas, when the kids were at their dad’s for a week, I spent the whole time cleaning and organizing the girls’ room. It’s April and you’d never know it. The cute little wicker baskets are in there; they just lie in the middle of the floor serving as houses for stuffed toys. The color-coded hangers are on the floor of the closet. The milk crate for Emma’s shoes is now a mini-bookcase that she keeps on her top bunk permanently. The shoes? Floor of the closet. Or in Claire’s milk crate. The toy chest just for dress-up clothes is now home to every Littlest Pet Shop playset that Target has to offer. Dress-up clothes?

Floor of the closet.

The girls really don’t care. They’re happy. My husband gets by, as long as the kitchen is navigable. My soon-to-be-teen son: haven’t seen him. He’s in his room until graduation, I guess.

But I continue to dream, because you have to have a dream to make it come true, right? If I just had the right baskets… if I just had those little color-coded thumbtacks…

So the lure of the Get Organized scam continues. Not long ago, I cruised the aisles of The Container Store, almost orgasmic at the possibilities. Oh, the sugar and flour canisters... a whole wall of them…

Somebody get me a cart.

Thunder only happens when it's raining...

 

The mudslides destroyed this home in La Cañada Flintridge. (photo, Glendale News-Press)

The sudden rumbling took me by surprise. I peered out of my car's front window, squinted through the rain, and said out loud, "is that thunder?"

See, we don't get many thunderstorms in Southern California. When I lived in Orlando, thunderstorms were almost a daily occurrence during the summer, and I loved to sit on my back porch and watch them. Spectacular events, they were: sonic booms that would rattle the windows, jagged shocks of lightning, and thunder cracks so dramatic that you'd swear a tree just landed in front of you. But here, the thunder is more sedate. Plus, you have to worry that it might be something else, like an earthquake or a mudslide.

So I had to double check the thunder. And it makes me think (although this is certainly not a scientifically proven fact) that this new rainstorm is going to wreak even more havoc.

You see, four days ago, Mother Nature caught us all offguard. The initial rains a couple of weeks ago had those of us in "the burn areas" prepared for the worst, and the worst never came. So when another rain was predicted for overnight Friday, everyone figured it would be no big deal.

Everyone was wrong.

For a number of homeowners about two miles from me, the worst case scenario came true. Rivers of mud, sidetracked by a boulder the size of a Volkswagen blocking the catch basin, barreled down their street and into their homes. Several homes were destroyed, many others suffered extensive damage. Cars left parked on the street were swept downhill and into the cement k-rails, which were no match for the mud. In some cases it flowed as high as the running boards of big SUVs.

It happened so fast and so unexpectedly; and unfortunately for the TV stations it was news on a Saturday morning. They scrambled to get reporters to the site, but only ABC-7 had the freedom in their programming to devote the whole afternoon to the story. And you know what that means.

I was glued to my television.

Later, I was able to pull myself away from the interviews with distraught homeowners and geological experts, and my stepson Sam and I went to the grocery store for Super Bowl supplies. The cel phone rang in the produce section; it was my Dad calling from Florida. "We're fine, no mud where we are," I said by way of answering the phone, and he laughed. Five minutes later I got a text from a friend up in Newhall, making sure we were okay. Sam, who lives out in Ventura County, didn't know what to think of it all, so I drove him up my street to show him the barren hillsides and to see if there was any damage there.

Where the fire devoured the earth, skeletons of trees reach up like claws from the dirt. "Dave should come up here and take pictures of this," I said, referring to Sam's brother, an accomplished photographer who is especially gifted at shooting landscapes. The rain had pushed some decent sized rocks and a bit of mud into the streets, but nothing newsworthy. We drove back down through a residential street, where an L.A. County Sheriff's car was parked across the road. The deputy motioned for me to roll my window down.

"We just need to let you know, if you leave this area, you won't be allowed back in. We're starting evacuations," she said politely.

I nodded and said, "that's okay, thanks," and we headed back home to make dinner.

Now it's Tuesday, and a new storm is rolling in. They're saying another two inches of rain could fall. And the evacuation orders, issued last night, went into effect at ten this morning. It's raining steadily outside; I have to pick my girls up from school in about an hour, and we're going to have popcorn and hot chocolate. I'll probably get on Facebook and compare notes with my friends back East who are dealing with the massive snowfall.

I'll be listening for more thunder and of course watching ABC-7. Sorry girls, you'll have to watch the TV in your own room. Mother Nature demands my attention.

After the Rain, Part 2; or, Dump Trucks on Parade

Now that the rains are over and the mud is done sliding, it's time for the clean-up. This involves a very large quantity of noisy, stinky dump trucks. As I've mentioned before, I live on the main drag up the hill, which means a parade of dump trucks outside my window (seriously, while I was writing that last sentence, I looked up and saw one going up and two going down).

I'm about a block uphill from a four-way stop, so right before the trucks are in front of my house they are braking and downshifting. I hear the earsplitting screech every few minutes, from wherever I am in the house. We had a yard sale on Saturday, and the noise was so bad that my neighbor Irene & I would stand with our hands covering our ears, like the "hear-no-evil" monkey.

When I went outside to snap a photo for this entry, it took only about 20 seconds for a truck to come into view. After only 2 or 3 minutes in my front yard, I watched a line of 5 dump trucks power up my street. Here you can see numbers 3, 4, and 5.

I don't know where they are taking the dirt and mud; I just know it's getting there one stinky truckload at a time. And there are a lot of very happy haulers out there, making truckloads of money cleaning up the mud in La Crescenta.

After the Rain

Emma (in her stylish houndstooth coat) and Lizzy don't see 

what the fuss is about. Rain is awesome!

I have a few minutes between the rainstorms to get caught up. I’ve been telling stories about the wacky weather, but the thing I've been trying - and failing - to get across here is the disconnect between what's happening to us and what everybody's seeing on the news.

On the news, Joe McReporter from KCAL or KTLA or whatever stands in the rain in La Canada Flintridge, camera trained on a hillside, warning us of what might happen. In real life, we are in our houses with our kids and chores and pets, and it is raining outside. For a week.

On the news, Dallas Raines (the ultimate weatherman, I'm not joking. I love him) makes his predictions about how much it's gonna rain and for how long. In real life, I try to get my old dog Nathan outside to pee in between cloudbursts. Little dog Clem has taken the persistent rain outside as permission to use the bathroom floor instead of the doggy door, so I keep busy cleaning that up as well.

On the national news, they show the same three or four scary mudflow videos over and over again. Which leads to the real life problem of friends and loved ones calling from all over the country asking if we're okay. Which is great, of course; it's nice to be loved, but I kinda feel like I'm letting them down when I tell them things are fine here. Just wet.

On the news, the anchors report about the evacuations. The reporters track down residents to interview, and really enjoy talking to the (seemingly foolish) ones who aren't leaving. In real life, the kids' school gets cancelled, mainly because the cops don't want the traffic problems. My friend Becki lives up the hill, one street down from the evacuation line. For a while there, she thought she was going to get that knock on the door, the same night they decided to cancel school. And, as she put it, "I don't know which is worse: evacuating, or being stuck in the house all day with the kids."

That's real life for us. It’s not something I ever thought I’d have to worry about, growing up in Ohio and all.

Real life is doing the laundry while making a mental checklist of things to take with you if an emergency arises. It’s helping with homework and making dinner, while watching three police cruisers tear up the street and wondering if that means the mountain gave way somewhere. It's trying to explain to my daughter that she can't have a sleepover, because maybe her friend's house will need to be evacuated overnight. We just don't know. We’re winging it here.

So the rain has stopped for now and the sun is shining. The reporters are gone from the neighborhood, off to cover the snow in Big Bear. The kids went back to school, and the little dog is using the doggy door again (yay). Another storm should be rolling in tomorrow. Now, like we did during the Station Fire, we watch and wait. Because when your real life is about dealing with some of the weirdest situations Mother Nature can throw at you, that's all you can do.

That, and laundry. There’s always laundry.

Muddy Waters, part 2

Amazing video of mudslide up on Canyonside Drive, about 2 miles from us. 

This was taken on January 18th and got plenty of airtime on the news networks.

This morning, as I walked out to the mom van to run an errand at the school, two L.A. County Sheriff's cruisers went zooming up the street in front of me. 9:00, I realized: time to start the evacuations. Being a nosy parker, I went looking for them after I was done; sure enough, there they were on Pine Glen, one of those streets I was talking about yesterday. On one side are homes, on the other side the sheer face of a saturated hillside threatening to surrender to gravity.

Three cruisers were parked on the side of the street and I saw two officers walking up to two different houses, clipboards in their hands. If residents refused to evacuate, they had to sign documents to that effect. These evacuations are serious. If you're popped from your home, you're popped until Monday. Unlike the fires, the mudslides are impossible to predict and you can't just put 'em out. And as you can see in the video up there, it's not just mud, either. There can be some pretty big rocks coming your way.

I had found the list of addresses being evacuated last night on the818now.com, and ran into the bedroom to tell Dan. "Holy smokes! These are right up the street!" One mile up the hill. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty long way for mud to travel, so my concern was for my old neighbors and other families I know.

Then at 10:30 the phone rang. It was a robocall from the elementary school, assuring us that school would be in session in spite of the evacuations. 5 minutes later we got the same call from the middle school. We want to provide the children with a stable environment during this difficult time, they said, and we know our community will pull together to support those families affected by the evacuations. 

There's a low, gloomy feeling of unease around here. I keep comparing it to the hurricanes in Florida: you know they're coming, but you don't know what the damage is gonna be. It's about 11 a.m. as I write this, and the next wave should be arriving in an hour or so. The weather dudes are saying this will be the biggest one, and we may get up to 7 inches of rain today. Today! In one day! And it's going to be really bad when school is letting out, too.

And me without any rain boots. Stay tuned...

Muddy Waters

There are a lot of things about California that compel the rest of the country to think "why would anyone even want to live there?" Earthquakes, of course, top the list. Growing up in Ohio, I was one of those people. That's just nuts, I thought, why would you choose to live somewhere like that?

Now that I'm a resident – and completely dug in (that's another post for another day) – the crazy things about my home state keep piling up. The state budget, for example, has gone haywire. No wonder; we require a two-thirds vote to pass a budget, which is ridiculous in this partisan society. I don't think our legislature would pass a resolution saying "puppies are cute" with a two-thirds majority.

Smog was one of my big concerns when I got here. I chose the Foothills as a place to live, because I thought the air would be fresh and clean up high and away from the city. Not so. Apparently La Crescenta's nickname – "The Balcony of Southern California!" – came because all the icky air floats around merrily before looking for a place to land, and what better place than an outdoor balcony?

Then there's that whole fire business, which I've covered in a previous post. And now I'm smack dab in the middle of the consequences of the Station Fire: mudslides.

Yes, now the earth is giving way. Not by shaking, but by erosion. There are no trees left to keep it in place, and the rain is going to pummel it for the next several days. Folks around here are dealing with this prospect in different ways.

My neighbor is prepared to evacuate.  She has her bird's travel cage ready to go, computer backups on the table. She has checked the projections for "fluvial flow" and knows that in a worst-case scenario, the mud would travel down our main street and expand outward as it heads downhill. "We'll be ready to get on the roof," she says, "because if it comes, it comes really fast." Keep in mind that we are more than a mile down the hill, and there are hundreds of homes between us and the mountain; but I have to say, I've learned a lot about preparedness from her. Because who the hell knows? This is not something they prepare you for in school.


This morning after I dropped the girls off at school, I drove up the hill to see what had happened in yesterday's rain. There was muddy residue along the side of the road as I drove up. At the top of the neighborhood, where houses face a bare mountainside across the street, there were crews cleaning up a small landslide and reinforcing the area. I could see a few narrow ravines where the water had started to work its way down and into the mud.

Overall, though, it wasn't bad. I was encouraged by the presence of the road crew. Our street was clear, assisted by wide flood channels. I drove home, clear skies above, wondering what would happen later today when the next round started.

Officials are expecting the heaviest flows tomorrow and Thursday. The local television reporters are just apoplectic over the potential for disaster. I watched as an LA County Sheriff drove up to a KTLA reporter during a live report and told her to move farther down the hill. She was just about pissing herself with excitement. It reminds me of the reporters in Florida during a hurricane.

All of this challenges me to keep my chipper attitude. I mean, really, what are you gonna do? It's where I live, for better or worse. And there are plenty of good things about living in California, believe me.

I'm just having a little trouble remembering them right now. And I'm keeping my laptop and the baby pictures near the door.

One of the worst flows this round was just to the east of us in La Canada. 

Photo, Glendale News-Press.

An Emma Story

I usually listen to NPR in the car when the kids are all hooked up to their various devices: Nintendo DSes, iPods, even the occasional book. But as we drive back from Emma’s dermatologist appointment (plantar wart on her foot), my favorite station, KPCC, is on and she is listening. 

“This is All Things Considered, I’m Michelle Norris…”

“… and I’m Robert Siegel,” say my audio companions.

“Robert Seagull,” says Emma. “His name is Robert Seagull.” She finds this just hilarious and starts to giggle. “Robert Seagull is talking. He’s a talking seagull.” Claire snorts with laughter too.

“Seagulls can’t talk!”

“Yeah he can, he’s a talking seagull. I’m Robert Seagull, squawk, squawk!” They are dissolving in peals of laughter. “Watch out for the seagull poop!”

Meanwhile, Robert Siegel has started reporting about a story from Iran. Over the laughter, Emma hears a woman speaking a foreign language on the radio.

“I’m Robert Seagull, and now here is a woman speaking Spanish,” she says in her broadcaster’s voice.

“Actually, I think that’s Farsi,” I say offhandedly.

“FARTSY? Did you say FARTSY?” she screams. The giggles are ridiculous now.

“Farsi. That’s the language they speak in Iran,” I say, to utterly no avail.

“You said Fartsy! Ha haaaa!” They are both giggling now, squealing about seagulls speaking Fartsy language. By this time I am also laughing so hard that tears are squeezing out of the corners of my eyes.

Just another day in the minivan.