I wanted to title this entry something like “The bitch is gone” or “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead” or something equally horrible, but I’m having a hard time working up hate lately.

Oh, don’t get me wrong; I still find her behavior completely reprehensible, but I’m starting to see that the woman’s so incredibly fucked up that she may not know how wrong she was. She’d left a note on the mirror for Jeff claiming to love him more than anything, and that just made me stop with my jaw open in amazement. Yes, we left it there. Burning the artifacts is his privilege.

That’s how you treat someone that you “love more than anything?” You treat them like dirt, use them, stomp all over their hearts, cheat on them at the very first opportunity, and at the lowest of times? Man, that’s fucked up, and if that’s how she treats someone she professes to love, may a god who may or may not exist have mercy on her child. Because that kid’s doomed unless she pulls her head out of her ass, and fast.

I will say one thing for her though; she has behaved with more grace in the last few days than I would have expected from her. She seems to be feeling remorse (although I’m excruciatingly cynical about that) and she did at least leave the house clean. It actually smelled good when we walked in, which surprised the hell out of me.

We had less to do than we’d anticipated: change the locks, clean out the refrigerators, document the condition of the house, and shut off certain electrical circuits. It only took our crew of four a couple of hours. Now it’s down to the executions of some low-level maintenance plans to keep his house looked as lived-in as possible; one of us will be up there every week or so, and a lady who lives in the area has a key as well.

And if I feel relieved, I can’t imagine how much better Jeff feels. Good, as things are looking just a little tense over there lately, and he’s developed a disconcerting new habit of riding in helicopters. I do wish he’d stop that, and go mess with plumbing like a proper water guy!

My friend LA asked in my comments:

I’ve always wanted to know how water towers work. How do they get full? Does the top open to catch rain? Why are they so tall? I assume gravity is involved somehow. Do animals get inside and drown? What keeps the water from freezing solid? I’m embarrassed I know so little about something so ubiquitous, but you’re my go-to girl on this subject and I know you won’t mock me for my ignorance.

Well, I’ll do my best to answer you, but remember, I’ve led a really, really sheltered life as an operator, running one small system of the easiest type, and in a state where we don’t do freezing much. The last hard freeze was in the nineties, and we don’t even bother to wrap our pipes many years. In fact, most of the wrapping is probably left over from the ’99 freeze and is disintigrating and waiting to bite us in the asses as we speak.

Mine is a simple system. We have two groundwater pumps that pump from a very deep aquifer (very nice and ancient water, and below any contamination, which my day job addresses.) The pressure from the pumps sends the water up into the tower, which tops out at 140 feet at the very top, plus those little rotating airplane lights (we are an airport too) and some antennas that probably bring it all to 150 feet or so. I have not and will not ever go up there. No way, no how. Oh, and it holds 525,000 gallons. We’re about the size of a largish industrial park; in the summer, when we’re watering the grass, the pumnps come on about every day. In the winter, every few days is fine. I should be good for the long weekend, as there’s hardly anyone there flushing.

My main pump is pretty far away from the tower, so we chlorinate that water at the wellhead. Groundwater’s the cleanest water source, since you don’t have all of that fish poo and other fun things to deal with. The chlorine is to keep it that way inside the piping. Since the well is so far away, the connections between it are hooked right up to the piping between the pump and the water tower. The pump gives plenty of pressure, and the water to a building just comes from the other direction when it’s off. The other, secondary pump, only goes up into the tower and chlorinates right before it goes in.

Both of them send the water straight up into the stem of the tower, and it’s released to storage up near the top. You guessed right about the height of the tower being for pressure. We’re lucky enough to have a pretty flat system; at sites with hills, they have to put the tower at the highest point or use booster pumps to get it up to the ends of the lines, or both. We have a State-mandated minimum pressure that we have to meet, both for everyday operation convenience and for fire use. I was just talking to one of my inspectors, and suggested that we refill an old 700,000 gallon storage tank that was used only for fire suppression in the big hangars to have a cushion if our treated water gets low again. (I know it’s empty because I’m the one who emptied it, for my day job. So circular, no? They should hire me.)

Since ours is so high and completely enclosed, critters aren’t an issue, but they can be for storage tanks that sit right on or even somewhat below the ground. They try to screen these out as much as possible, but those tanks are also usually full of pre-treated water, so it still has to get the full filtration and disinfection process anyway. I gather that the old fashioned storage tanks that sat on the ground weren’t always covered, which makes sense, as the original reservoirs (lakes!) sure aren’t either. Those are more of a convenience though, to have water sitting right there ready for treatment. I do not have a treatment plant, only a distribution plant, and as far as I know, all tower-types like mine are enclosed.

The cover broke on that one episode of My Name is Earl though. “Ricolaaaaaa”

Sorry, where was I?

I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t really know what’s done in very cold climates. I’m sure it was covered in my classes, but probably only minimally, as that was a California-oriented license exam, and we only have freezing weather like that in the very north state, and those are pretty small water systems. Even if we get a hard freeze, I’m only going to be worried about my smaller pipes and valves.

And while I was gearing up to write this, it called me three times! We have some new automated software, and a little power failure seemed to give it the hiccups. It started all on its own when it really shouldn’t have, but the cool part is that I dialed in to the computer from here, clicked a button, waited a couple of minutes, and it shut itself off. Without overflowing this time; I’m sure twice in one weekend would be some sort of a record.

This all makes me sound like I know more than I do. When things go to shit, there are times when I really want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. Since it’s an old Air Force system, not everything makes a lot of sense, and I dread the day when the last Air Force water guy retires and I have to figure out what kludges these guys used twenty years ago. I’ll either learn fast or quit in despair, I predict. I should go work for a nice shiny system to learn the right way first.

I’ve really been making an effort to keep my camera with me in the truck lately. Sure, it’s a little risky; things do get stolen around here, but it lets me catch some of those cool moments that I seem to always be tripping over.

Like this enormous cloud of blackbirds the other evening:

That’s a five-story hangar, to give you some sense of perspective. The bird cloud swirled up and around it like a giant black amoeba. I’ve never seen one so huge.

Having it let me hang my head out the window and actually capture a sunset, instead of just thinking about it like I usually do. And since I had the kids with me, it gave Seamus a little eye-opener about taking pictures when you see them.

It let me document the concept that two collies really are better than one. I’ve got Jeff’s dog Ringo now. He’s not very happy about being away from home, and I’ve had to keep him tied up in the yard or he’ll jump the fence the moment my back is turned and hide in the truck. Since I feel bad about that, I’ve just started bringing them both to work in the afternoons when it’s not so bone-chilling cold. They’re both very fond of their truck, and not fighting over it at all, although Angus will give him the smack-down if Ringo loves up on me too much. I guess it’s nice to know that I do rank above the truck with him after all.

Ringo’s kind of a shy dog, and his down-ears make him look even more mopey when you’re used to an up-eared dog, but he smiles from time to time and I think he’ll find his place pretty quickly. He’s already smarter about unwinding the chain from the porch posts than Angus is, and they’re sleeping together in the laundry room with no squabbling.

But I think the best part of having the camera on me was getting to document the water tower overflowing. Twenty-five thousand gallons of water spilling down like a massive thunderstorm all at once was a little spectacular. Without looking at it with a photographer’s eye, it would only have been a pain in the ass. No, it wasn’t my fault, but I was the operator on duty and standing right there, and I was the one who got to field the somewhat bemused phone calls from management. I do wish it had happened an hour or two later so the light was better, but I’m lucky to have seen it at all, and even luckier to be seen as the person who took care of it, since the water hadn’t been running at all for the previous two days.

And hey, at least my tower’s all clean and shiny for the New Year! Do you think they’d buy a monthly tower-washing schedule?

Besides the stress of the holidays and the weird schedule with the boys, Big Jeff sort of dropped a bomb on me on Friday, and his mom and I have been anticipating the explosion ever since then.

I have alluded before to the tension between Big Jeff, who’s serving in Iraq, and his former fiance, the cheating whore. That’s mostly his story to tell, but the last few days has swept me up into the sea of drama. Now that I’m reasonably sure that I’m not going to get sued or thrown into jail, I consider my part in it fair game to talk about.

Jeff emailed me on Friday morning asking if his mom had called me. That was a bad opening, since I really only know one reason for her to, other than generic Christmas wishes. We’d had a dry run at kicking the cheating whore out of the house last month, but she refused and cajoled Jeff into letting her stay. So the moment that he acted all serious, I knew that’s what he was talking about.

And sure enough, he’d had enough and wanted her out of his house, and the sooner, the better. His mom and his friends and I started to gather our resources and think about strategy. Since we expected her to be extremely antagonistic towards us, we were being pretty damn conservative about covering our own asses.

Jeff’s original plan was to give her notice that she had to leave while she was at work so that we would have time to enter the house and take things that belonged to him; important things, and not so very insurable things, like his guns and his animals and his grandfather’s flag. My plan was to document the hell out of everything with the camera too, before and after we took things. That would both make a record of what we took and of what kind of condition the house was in when we left it, in case we trashed the place.

Then Jeff decided to just email her an ultimatum, since he had a hell of a time getting to a phone on Christmas day in Iraq. And now that threw her location into doubt. She could have gone to work as planned, and we’d be free to work alone, or she could be holed up in the house with the guns, who knows? We were trying our best to do this cleanly and legally, so we talked about law enforcement backup. Jeff’s ex-wife’s current husband is a cop, and planned to be there, but he’s a little too involved to be an objective observer. I told everyone that I would call the County Sheriff’s Department and request a civil standby, which I did.

But when I met the deputy down the road on Tuesday morning and told him what was going on, he said that we couldn’t go into the house without her present and giving permission or having a court order in our hands. Never mind that Jeff’s mom holds his power of attorney and I had written permission from Jeff authorizing me to take what I felt necessary; we couldn’t go in if she wasn’t there. All the deputy would be able to do would be to interfere if she was there and demonstrated a criminal act against us. Since it is nowhere near out of the scope of possibility that that broad would take a swing at one of us, most likely me, I was fine with that part of it.

But of course, she wasn’t there when we got there. Jeff’s mom had already entered, not knowing any different, and our other people showed up to help not long after. I felt horrible, having wasted everyone’s time and possibly giving her warning and time to do some serious damage to his house. After the deputy officially witnessed us re-securing the house, he left, telling us that he could not witness us entering it, and that if we did, she’d have every right to call it in as a burglary. And, also of course, now it was my name and information on the police report for requesting the standby in the first place, so guess who they’d arrest first? Sure, there’s no way they could make it stick, but I do not have the kind of time or money that I’d need to fight a charge like that in court.

We stood around and debated the hell out of it, even getting Jeff on the phone from Iraq. The other cop insisted that the deputy was wrong, that we were authorized to enter the house, but that he wasn’t going to argue with the guy in his own jurisdiction. And of course not; that is the guy who has to make that call. Both the military counsel and the lawyer that Jeff’s mom talked to also insisted that we did have the right, and suggested that we start going up the County food chain to get their approval.

By this time, Jeff’s mom had just about completely lost her voice, so a lot of the calling and researching fell to me. I have no legal standing; I’m just his friend and business manager, but I am a pushy broad and I’m willing to use that when it’s needed. She and I hit a roadblock by the afternoon though, when no one important would return any of our phone calls. It’s hard to get things to happen extremely quickly during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. A lot of people are on vacation.

So we laid it down for the night. I did some internet research on landlord/tenant laws and stepped back down to my own life with the kids for a while.

Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I got a late-night phone call from Iraq’s early morning. It was Jeff, and she had received the email and they’d talked on the phone. And for what must be the first time in this woman’s life, she decided to be the bigger person about something. She said that she’d move out on Friday and that she wouldn’t touch any of his things. She even volunteered that she’d leave his engagement ring and the keys behind, which surprised the hell out of me. We’ll see, of course. She did also promise several times not to sleep with other men while he was gone, and we all know how that turned out.

She did request that we wait until she was gone to go up there; the extremely large cynical side of me is suspicious that this guarantees her some time to trash things, but I really don’t think she’ll have time. Friday’s her only day off, and she really has to be ashamed to face us. A rational woman would be, but then, a rational woman probably wouldn’t have cheated on an honest man two weeks after he left for war. It’s hard to predict what the insane and immoral will do. Jeff seems to believe her (this time) at least, so we’ll have to carry on as if she won’t touch anything. But come Saturday, we’ll be up there changing the locks and securing the place.

Jeff did tell her that I was going to take the animals today though, as I promised him that I would take care of that. So Cowboy rode to my rescue today to pick up the horses and move them somewhere else while I grabbed the dog and hauled down Jeff’s horse trailer, which is full of hay. Angus and Ringo are now becoming great buddies, and Ringo will have to figure out that my house is where he belongs for a while. He’s already jumped the fence once, but now he’s tied up until he decides that it’s OK.

And even though I spent most of yesterday convinced that I’d wasted five other adults’ time and completely let my friend down by not being able to retrieve his things from the house, it’s worked out OK. I’m sure that Jeff didn’t intend for me to get arrested and he didn’t seem to hold the delay against me too much, although he was obviously disappointed. I’m just trying to take as much of the load off him as I can, so he can get his mind back to the project of staying alive in a war. They’re having mortar attacks on their base several times a day, and the last thing he needs is to be a little too slow to get to the bunker because some cheap-ass bar whore is messing with his mind.

I still hold her in the deepest contempt, but now that things are easing for my friend a little bit, they’re easing for me too. I tried to keep my mind on the business end of it; to get these specific things done and in this order. When my order got scrambled, I fell right down into the emotional side of it, which I’d been trying to stay out of. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight now that part of it is done. It doesn’t matter though. What matters is keeping my friend sane and alive, and if I have to crack heads or chase horses or clean filthy houses to do it, so be it.

I’ve been fascinated with the water tower since long before I was professionally associated with it.

After a late-afternoon storm, I’ve seen it as the only thing on the horizon lit by the setting sun, standing out in front of a sky of slate-grey clouds, and wished I’d had my camera.

At dawn, with the airplane beacon circling, it stands out like a clean, white thumb.

I usually like to take pictures of more natural things, but I’ve been photographing this base for almost ten years, capturing its decay and rebirth on film, and that water tower has been my constant landmark. The clean lines and industrial scale of the fittings are beautiful, as long as I don’t have to be the one to climb it and fix anything.

Now, it’s mine, at least by contract, and has been for a couple of years. I happen to be the only one on-call to attend to it at night for the next couple of weeks, and by god, if I want to go wander my grounds at night, I will.

So when I drove out to the Air Museum loaded up with camera and tripod only to find it closed, I kept on driving. The fog was rolling in and the moon was rising, and we were surrounded by a brightly lit but empty parking lot, thanks to the holiday. So there was no one there to look at me funny for setting up the camera pointing skyward and waiting until the beacon circled my way again.

The lights interacted with the fog to make what I’d call moondogs, if they were from the moon and not streetlamps, but they were beautiful just the same.

No, I’ve never climbed it, and I never will. I can see getting about ten feet off the ground and completely freezing up, and there’s no point to that. We just had divers climb it and clean it out from the inside this year, and I watched the video. That was good enough.

And for good measure, I stopped at the flag pole on the way out. It’s not lit half as spectacularly as the water tower, and the flag kept drifting in the wind, but I’m happy with the quality of the photo anyway. I’ve watched this landmark for the last ten years too.

Good night, folks, and have a Merry Christmas.

Of course, all is not always so serious and murderously paranoid here at Casa de Caza. We held our whole Christmas a day early this year. We’re always a little flexible about it anyway, but this year, their father decided to stick it to me and take them for both days to make up for the once-in-a-lifetime special trip over Christmas last year.

Whatever, dude. You can’t get to me that easily, since we’ve been known to throw our main bash as early as the fourteenth if that suited us.

So last night was our Christmas Eve, and we always do the bulk of our present-opening on Christmas Eve. The kids were suitable worked up about it, and when Gramma and Grampa finally got here (at the perfectly reasonable hour of four o’clock, but there’s no such thing as reasonable to a kid when presents are involved), they could barely contain themselves.

Thirty-seven seconds later, and it was all over but the cleaning up.

Even the cat got into it. I wasn’t sure how he’d do, as he really hasn’t seen very many people in the house in his short life, but with unerring feline instinct, he made straight for the only non-cat-person in the room, and loved up on my father, even following him down the hall to the bathroom to make sure this new and wonderful person wasn’t going to abandon him to the heathens in the living room.

The dog got into the act, after having watched us through the window, convinced that we were all insane. He’s such a tolerant soul, but was so pleased with himself that he couldn’t hold still for a second take, and instead brought me his purple Christmas ball to please throw? Now?

Seamus was delighted with his digital camera, and once he got the hang of the shutter delay (which I had forgotten about; it’s amazing how fast I can get completely ruined by good equipment), he became an instant shutterbug. I thought a 1 gig memory card would be plenty, but now that I’ve seen him in action, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him blow through that in a weekend. That’s OK; that’s the beauty of digital.

It’s fun to see the world through his eyes. There are a lot of fuzzy self portraits (I showed him the macro setting this morning) and a whole collection of things that he either felt were important objects to document or were just very artistic.

It’s even more fun when I control the portal to the Internet and can refrain from publishing some of the more unflattering photos of myself, generally with my mouth open. He’ll get the hang of it!

John really enjoyed his gifts too, and I think the whole holiday can be chalked up to ‘successful’ now. And to cap it off, I now have a day and a half entirely to myself. I’m going to take myself down to the Air Museum after dark, take pictures of the planes, and then come home, pour myself a nice bourbon, and watch chick flicks by the fire. How relaxing does that sound?

Yesterday, when I dropped off a batch of candy at my neighbor’s house across the street, we stopped and chatted for a while, as we always do. She’s the caregiver for her mother-in-law, and has been having a really hard time of it. Her MIL had been in the hospital, but had recently come home and the care was much harder than it had been. Maria’s such a sweet lady, but the family doesn’t give her quite as much support as they should and she gets exhausted, physically and mentally. Sometimes we sit on the porch and have a beer and give her a breather.

A couple of hours after we’d talked, the doorbell rang. Maria was looking pretty upset and wanted me to come check on her MIL. Now, I have no medical training; I’ve worked with animals all my life, not people. But Maria’s daughter, who’s a nurse, was on-duty and unavailable. As soon she asked me if I’d had CPR training, I realized that it was serious, so I went over too.

The gramma wasn’t looking too good, but at least it didn’t look like she was having a heart attack. Still, she seemed to have both a fever and a cold sweat, and she said that she was in pain and wanted to go back to the hospital. If she was asking for that, it was pretty serious indeed, as she hates the hospital.

So Maria packed her up and away they went, to the hospital that she’d been to before, so they would have all of her information.

I checked with her this morning, and it was a good thing she’d gone. Gramma had blood clots in her lungs, and the doctors said that if we hadn’t brought her in, she could have died. She’ll be there for at least four more days, and I hope they get their ducks in a row before they send her home this time.

But Maria just knocked at the door again.

Had I seen the cop cars at the house right around the corner yesterday?

Well, yes, I had, but I didn’t know why they were there.

Turns out, there was a home-invasion robbery there. They shoved their way into the house when she opened the door to their knock, held them at gunpoint, and cleaned them out, stealing their own truck to get away with.

Crap. I really should move. But for now, I’ve got the front door locked and the pistol loaded and sitting right next to it, and I think I’ll get back in the habit of wearing my cell phone when I’m in the house, instead of leaving it laying around out of reach. I’m mean and strong enough to defend myself, but I’d rather not have to, you know?

Well, OK, more like a 350-horse chipped and lifted F-250 diesel, but the sentiment was still there.

Take an extremely eclectic bunch of people: part of Connie’s family, some enthusiastic twenty-something neighbors, a pre-teen and a post-teen couple of grinchy boys, and me, who can’t carry a tune if my life depended on it.

Wrap up a flatbed trailer in hay and Christmas lights, and take us all out a-singing with no alcohol and no rehearsal whatsoever.

We had a fabulous time.

We cruised around the neighborhood, singing some of the time and laughing the rest. I am not kidding about not being able to carry a tune, but I know the words to lots of the songs, and I sang until my voice was hoarse anyway, right next to Connie, who’s in the choir, and her sister, who has a really nice voice. We on the back end of the trailer were usually a half-beat behind the kids on the front end of the trailer. We’d sing the first verse or so of a song, then get confused about whether or not we were going to continue with the other verses. So someone would belt out the opening lines to “Jingle Bells” and we’d all gratefully chime in with that. We must have sang that one fifteen times.

By the end of the evening, our toes and ears were numb, the battery running the lights had died, and the fog was settling in, so Marv headed us back for home. I tell you what, it’s a whole hell of a lot colder on the back of the trailer at 25 miles an hour than it was at five!

Then it was back to their house for cookies and hot chocolate and to thaw out our butts against the fireplace.

And in just a couple of hours is our Christmas, with my folks coming down and going out to dinner at the place with the bucking bull and maybe taking a quick tour of the Air Museum done up in lights.

Merry Christmas!

I’ve never been one to really get into the spirit of Christmas, or any holidays, really. Shopping, decorating, cooking; all of that is sort of a pain. Well, I do like to cooking part, but I like that all of the time, except when I feel obligated to do it. Such as at Christmas.

I’ve been happy to avoid as much of the hype as I can. Last year, when Grampa took us on the cruise and I didn’t even have to put a tree up, was an outstanding year. A couple of smallish presents for the kids, and I was done. I also don’t decorate for Halloween, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, or anything, except what the kids might feel like doing.

But this year, I’m surprised to find myself getting into it a little. It helps that the kids are old enough to take over some of it; all I had to do was get the tree up and put on the lights on the tall part, and they did the rest. I found really cool presents for them, and I’m done with my shopping in time to look around and sort of enjoy it.

I did send out cards this year, and that means cards coming back in, which had understandably tapered off as I flaked for most of the last decade. And I’m delighted to see them, and it reminds me to keep this tradition up for next year.

Marv has invited us over on Friday to go caroling. He didn’t think I’d be interested, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really am. He’s going to load up the flatbed trailer with some hay to sit on and decorate it with lights, and his family and friends are going to cruise the neighborhood wrapped in blankets and and singing, and then go back to their house for hot chocolate. I think the kids will really get a kick out of that, and I will too.

Of course, I promise not to sing (too loudly.) I may be slightly tone-deaf and I can’t carry a tune at all, but at least I know all of the words, thanks to teaching myself to read music and play the flute late in High School. The best thing I had to practice from was my sister’s piano book of Christmas music, so I played it all year long, no doubt annoying the hell out of the neighbors.

And on Saturday, my folks are coming down. This will be our Christmas, since I don’t get the kids on either day of the actual holiday (thanks, asshole!) We’re going to do presents, go out to dinner, and on the way home, stop at the Air Museum and enjoy their Christmas Tree Lane, with all of the antique planes done up in lights. I will drag along the tripod and try to get some cool family pictures, and may even make us all wear Santa hats. Or maybe not; don’t want to get too carried away.

But I find myself really looking forward to the season for the first time in years, and that’s cool.

Not of myself, no. It’s not an introspective weekend, but a productive one.

First, I took this:

And made stock, soon to become Four-Mushroom soup for lunch:

Then I took this:

Through its steps:

To make this (two batches so far):

And, saving the best for last, I moved the woodpile out front where Marv kindly split it like butter with his hydraulic splitter and I moved it back and stacked it nicely. Isn’t it beautiful?

That’s a lot of hard work right there, but every piece of it was free, either given to me by the County guys who were going to chip it or cut with my own two hands from downed trees on my sites. And now I don’t have to be stingy on fires for the rest of the winter; I’d make one today in celebration, but it’s got to be 70 degrees out!