Time to Prepare for Winter!

Preparing for Winter in Minnesota:

  1.      Wait for the fine line in the weather when it turns from hot and muggy to cool and rainy to make the transition from summer to winter, but don’t wait too long or it will be difficult to work in the mud and the ground will be too soft.

  2.      Pull the dock out – but don’t do this too early as there could be good swimming days left. Wait for that one day when the water temperature drops roughly 30 degrees overnight to signal that it is no longer swimming weather. Once this happens, don’t wait, as the water will soon be turning to ice.

  3.      Put away bikes, scooters, skateboards, rollerblades, and all other summer toys.

  4.      Put plow on truck/4-wheeler/ranger/bobcat, or whatever vehicle is used to push the mounds of snow out of the way .

  5.      Put chains on tires of above vehicle.

  6.      Rake up leaves and mow the grass one last time or it will be a huge mulchy mess in the spring.

  7.      Prepare driveways for snowplowing by moving all stationary obstacles as far away from plowing areas as possible. If this is not done, you run the risk of burying them in the snow and losing them until spring - that is if you don’t find them by hitting them with the plow.

  8.      Fill the barn with hay so the horses don’t starve over the winter.

  9.      Put hay over the septic systems and well to keep them from freezing. Nothing like having your pipes freeze half way through winter only to spend the rest of the season bringing clothes to the Laundromat and showering at friends’ houses.

  10.  Put summer clothes away and pull out all long sleeve shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, long underwear, turtlenecks, boots, scarves, mittens, earmuffs, down jackets, snow pants, and anything else that will keep the chill away.

  11.  Pull out winter toys, including snowmobiles, sleds, skis (cross-country and/or downhill), snowshoes, and snow molds for building snow forts.

  12.  Change the tires on the car from summer tires to snow-tires.

  13.  Change oil in the car to winter grade.

  14.  Fill up the windshield washer fluid in the car.

  15.  Put away the ice tea and stock up on hot-cocoa and marshmallows.

  16.  Turn off the air-conditioner, and move the wood pile closer to the house for cozy nights by the fireplace. 

17.  Stock up on Kleenex and cold medicine. 

  18.  Put away the potted plants and make room for Christmas lights.

  19.  Now wait for the snow to come…

Preparing for Winter in California:

    1.      Put pool toys in shed.

    2.      Pull out sweatshirt.

There's Something About Crisp Autumn Air...

I miss the fall in northern Minnesota. Right now in the Midwest, the temperatures are dropping, people are digging out their cozy sweaters, and the leaves are starting to turn. The air will be crisp and have the most exhilarating scents of falling leaves and dampness and fresh wilderness. The bugs will go into hiding and the horses will feel a little friskier.

It's my favorite time of year to run on the trails through the woods around my hometown in Minnesota, and take the dogs for long walks. I loved digging out my comfy jeans, cozy sweatshirts, and favorite sweaters. Hot tea tastes good again, and cocoa by the fire is just around the corner. There's an energy to autumn that makes a person feel like all is good with the world and life is stable. The season comes on fast, changing from heavy humidity and the heat of summer to crisp air and lightness overnight.

If you've never experienced fall in the Midwest, it is truly spectacular. The colors are vibrant, even iridescent. Forests in Minnesota extend as far as the eye can see, completely uninterrupted by buildings, power lines, or any signs of civilization. It's one of the things I relish when I go back to Minnesota and look out over the rolling hills of trees that surround my parents' horse farm and extend far into the horizon. The endless view restores my hope that the world is not being completely taken over by humans.

As much as I love where I live in Southern California, this fall I am really homesick for Minnesota and the majestic beauty of autumn there. I'm missing the energy and that feeling of hunkering down and making the most of every minute before the days get shorter, the temps get colder, and the north woods prepare themselves for the next change of season.

This fall I won't be able to return to Minnesota for my annual autumn weekend at the horse farm, but I'll be there to get my winter-fix over Christmas. In the meantime, I'll make the most of the cooling air and the trees that do change colors in the midst of the palm trees here in SoCal.

"You Can Never Go Home Again..."

There’s an art to shoveling horse manure efficiently, and I no longer have it.  I used to, but it’s gone.

A person wouldn’t think that’s a big deal, but it’s turned into a bit of a crisis for me because I’m feeling it’s very symbolic of the fact that the life I used to have in Minnesota is now part of my past. This isn’t my way of life anymore; it’s a place I visit and I am no more than one of the thousands of tourists that descend on my old hometown every summer only to stay a short while and then return back to some other place.

It’s been two years since I moved to California, and I’ve made many trips back to Minnesota in that time, but up until now, each trip back has felt like coming home after being away for an extended vacation. This trip back to Minnesota has made me feel very homesick for Minnesota and the life we used to have here. I miss the woods, the small town, horseback rides with Mom, chatting with Dad about business, running into so many people I know when I go into town, and the beautiful countryside that we used to call home.

Staying at the farm where Mom and Dad now live - the house that Fritz and I built, and where Fritz and I raised our son for the first nine years of his life - has been strange this time. I look around the familiar rooms, turn on the familiar light switches, and hear the familiar creaks and groans of the logs, and it pulls on my heart strings a bit. This isn’t mine anymore, I’m a guest here. This was a happy place for us, and there are so many wonderful memories, and living on the farm was a good way of life. I loved walking out the front door and into the woods, listening to the birds sing and the horses stomp, hearing the leaves rustle in the wind, and it makes me homesick for what once was.

But a person can’t go back and have the same thing over again. It will never be the way it was, or at least not the way it’s remembered. Case in point: I’m not even very useful in the barn anymore because I can’t shovel shit the way I used to! Despite the homesickness, nostalgia, and loss of what was that I am feeling on this visit back to Minnesota, I don’t have regrets. I know me, and I know that I often look backwards on my life with rose-colored glasses, thinking it’s too bad that I never realize how good the moment is when I’m in it. And as much as I miss the peace and beauty of northern Minnesota and the nearness to family, I’m happy where I am. I love my neighborhood, I love the ocean, I love wine country, I love the friends we’ve made, and I love the life we have there. 

My only complaint about southern California is there are too many people, but Minnesota has too many bugs...

At least I can squish the bugs without getting in trouble.

Street Painting Fair in Old Town Temecula - A Must See!

Old Town Temecula is a favorite place to go for so many different reasons: the farmer's market, Temecula Olive Oil Company, Soro's Mediterranian Grill, Old Town Rootbeer Company, and a plethora of other great shops and restaurants. But one weekend a year is the Old Town Temecula Street Painting Fair - our favorite weekend of the year in Old Town!



The Fair starts on Friday, but our favorite time to go is on Sunday. Artists spend the entire weekend working on their masterpieces, preparing them for final judging on Sunday afternoon. Early in the weekend, the artists can be soon in full-frenzied action, sketching and shading their pieces, but by Sunday, many of them are done, or only the final touches are left, so they can be enjoyed in their full splendor.

Artists come in all ages, and the subjects of their work range from whimsical to mythical to realistic. Some artists will display the photo or painting from which their masterpieces are drawn, so viewers can marvel at their ability to so accurately reproduce the image on a grand scale. Other artists just let the image flow from someplace within. And for budding artists, there is a section of squares blocked off where anyone can try their hand and display their creations.

  

Chalk drawing from the amateur section...
 

Camp Pendleton

Living in Minnesota, we knew people in the military, and there were quite a number of individuals from our little town deployed to the warzone, but ours was not a “military community.” Living a stone’s throw away from Camp Pendleton in Southern California, this is definitely a military community. The main gates to the base open up into Fallbrook and Oceanside, and those cities are intrinsically intertwined with Camp Pendleton. Even living in Murrieta, more than a 30 minute commute from the nearest gate into the base, we know we are in Marine country. In our neighborhood, Marine families live in three of the first six houses of the block. Half of our closest friends have at least one spouse who is in the Marines.

Camp Pendleton covers almost 200 square miles, has 5 elementary schools, hundreds of acres of training terrain, shops, restaurants, and beautiful beachfront. The Marines stationed there number 40,000, but 80,000 people are on the base on any given day, including family members, vendors, visitors, and contractors. Tens of thousands of people, who are not Marines, count on the base for their livelihood.

I knew this. I knew the base was big. I knew there were lots of people who lived on the base. I knew that 80% of the Marines stationed here live in our communities instead of on base. I knew they trained there because we can sometimes hear the booms of the artillery and see the smoke in the distance. And I knew these Marines went off to fight wars with the community praying for their safe return. Yet even though I knew all this, everything I imaged Camp Pendleton to be was nothing compared to the reality of the place.

As part of Leadership North County, I had the opportunity to spend an entire day on the base (along with the other members of Leadership). We learned the history of the base, heard the statistics of all the people who are assigned to the base or work on the base, and the impact they have locally and globally. We learned about the increased efforts of the Marine Corps to ensure their soldiers are prepared for civilian life when they finish their enlistment (not when they “finish being a Marine,” because once a Marine always a Marine). But the two parts of the day that were the most impressive to me were having a chance to hear from some Marines about their careers and their hopes for their future, and then touring a training facility.

Four Marines, two women and two men, spent nearly an hour telling us their stories and answering our questions. They were candid, realistic about the pros and cons of the path they had chosen, and proud of the positions they held. All joined the Marines for different reasons and served in different capacities. One young woman joined the Marines after finishing law school because she wanted to use her profession to give back to her community and her country, so she passed up a lucrative career and a big paycheck with a law firm to become a soldier-lawyer. She can hold her own in a courtroom, and she’s fully prepared to march into battle if needed. The other woman had a husband (also a Marine) and three children, but she’s also been deployed twice to the warzone. She said she’s seen things she hopes her children will never have to see, but she’s proud of the role she played in making a difference. She said the press likes to cover the exciting stories but she wishes they would write more of the “boring” stories, the ones that show people living and working in places in Iraq and Afghanistan that were once devastated by war. Both women spoke openly, but not bitterly, of some of the obstacles and prejudice they encountered as females in a world that has traditionally been for men. 

One of the men on the panel had been with the Marines for over 30 years, and now his son is a Marine following in his footsteps. He joined the service as a means to get out of Detroit, and never left. The other young man hopes to attend college to pursue a degree in English when he finishes his term, but first he plans to make the most of his enlistment. For the next four years, he will be serving one year terms at four different United States Embassies around the world as a security guard. He had no idea where his first assignment would be, or where he would go after, but he was excited and ready for the adventure and the challenge.

After lunch in one of the mess halls (which was great – I wish the college cafeteria where I work offered just half of what the mess hall did), we were off to tour a training facility. My husband was in the Army during the first Gulf War in 1991, and prepped to be deployed as part of an armored division (that war was over so quickly that it ended before his unit could get there). When I told him about the training available to the soldiers at Camp Pendleton, he just shook his head in disbelief. His words echoed the words of our tour guide – a retired Marine who kept saying none of the technology used today was available when he was deployed and the training wasn’t nearly as realistic and intense. Not to say they didn’t train hard, because throughout history, the military has never been known to be slackers, but the level of technology and the complete immersion into battle scenarios for soldiers today is way beyond anything their predecessors had access to.

When the bus stopped, we were in the middle of one of the more remote areas of the base at the bottom of the foothills on the edge of what looked like a Middle Eastern village.  Short, boxy, sandstone colored buildings spread across the terrain, and hanging on the side of one of the taller buildings was a huge poster of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. The site consisted of this mock village, and of an indoor setting that replicated a variety of buildings from market stalls to cafes to living quarters.

Our guide at the facility brought us first to a classroom to explain how the simulations work and the technology involved, then brought us to another room where we watched a live training session going on in the indoor facility. Actors, other Marines, and even avatars are used to portray the different people the soldiers will encounter in the simulations. The avatars are projected onto the walls of the rooms, but triangulating software is used to make the avatars track the soldiers with their eyes and weapons as they enter the rooms. The avatars are programmed to respond to certain sounds and verbal commands, and behind the scenes programmers are also used to create other real-time responses.

We watched on large screens as soldiers patrolled through the indoor village, with actors mulling around and going about their business as they would in an actual Middle Eastern market.  The training sessions are videotaped for the units and commanders to review and use for learning tools. Some of the training scenarios simulate entering an area that is completely hostile, and other scenarios simulate civilians going about their everyday business, with only a few hostile forces interspersed. In these cases, the soldiers don’t know who is out to get them, where it will happen, or when the situation will turn bad. Depending on the current scenario being played out, the facility hires actors and extras of specified ethnicities to take part in the simulations. 

These actors are vital in helping to set the scene and lend to the cultural realism of the situation. The sets also include animatronics from the same designers as those who built many of the animated characters at Disneyland. Scents are piped into the facility to replicate the smells that soldiers will encounter when in different settings. These included everything from market place foods and spices to sewage, burning tires, and decaying bodies (fortunately, we were there during the market place scent).  

Interestingly, the soldiers are not just there to learn how to navigate the settings and pick out the bad guys; they are also there to learn about the cultural mores and to gain a better understanding for the impact they have. As an example, there are mock gardens and livestock pens interspersed throughout the village that the soldiers are warned to be aware of and to avoid whenever the situation allows as trampling on gardens or carelessly killing livestock could be taking away a family’s only means of eating. The guide stressed that whenever possible, it’s important for the soldiers to remain on the good side of the innocent people caught in the middle. Taking away a family’s livelihood could mean the difference between the villagers supporting and trusting the American soldiers, or despising them.

A “bomb” went off in one of the village buildings as we were watching the training session, and a man stumbled out, injured from the blast. The soldiers jumped into action securing the area and lending assistance to the injured man. Even knowing that something was going to happen at some point, the blast made most of us jump, and watching the action was intense. But that was the thing, all we had to do was watch. The soldiers in the training were being pushed to the limits of the real intensity they will face when deployed to the warzones.

The detail and care that goes into creating the sets, scenes and scenarios for the soldiers to train in is mind-boggling. The facility even has the ability to be changed into a variety of different settings and cultures from around the world depending on the current demands being placed on the Marines. The goal is for the soldiers to leave the facility already exposed to the worst they might see when deployed to the warzones. Every sense is stimulated during the training from hearing the languages and sounds native to the region, to being exposed to the (sometimes overpowering) smells that will be encountered. Makeup artists are on hand to add to the realism, and soldiers are shot at with paintball guns during the battles. It’s one thing to target practice and be in the best shape possible to prepare for the battlefield, it’s another to be submerged into the setting, navigate the narrow passageways of the village, see the people, hear the sounds, smell the scents, and deal with a simulated attack or raid. Touring the facility was unnerving, but it was also reassuring to know that our soldiers are being given the best training possible to prepare them to do the job we ask them to do.

I pass by the entrance to Camp Pendleton every day on my way to work, and I’ve always felt the presence of the base in our community, but the opportunity to spend the day there gave me a greater appreciation for what happens there on a daily basis, and the extent that our communities are intertwined with the Camp Pendleton communities. Whether you agree or not with what the Marines do and our involvement in the conflicts overseas, Camp Pendleton is a huge part of our economy and our society in Southern California, and hopefully here to stay. 

Our friend Linda welcoming her Marine husband
home from his deployment to Afghanistan. 

Lost on a Country Road (Who knew SoCal still had remote country roads!)

After work on Friday, the traffic was at worse than a crawl on the freeway, so I decided to try a back way home. There's a windy, hilly road that goes through the foothills and drops down into Murrieta bypassing rushhour traffic, but the drive is a bit longer. With traffic not moving, I decided I had nothing to lose.

I have a history of getting motion sickness, sometimes even when I'm driving, but if the drive isn't too long, I can deal with it, and this drive should have been about an hour. Definitely a better option than sitting in stop and go (more stop than go) traffic on the freeway for over an hour. According to the map, the route looked pretty easy, but of course, I missed a turn somewhere and ended up driving way out of my way on tight curves and roller coaster hills. When I finally stopped to check my iPhone map, I was car sick and not at all on the right road. But the drive was beautiful! I was so wrapped up in the scenery, that I didn't even mind being lost.

Most of my drive to and from work is through populated areas or on busy roads, so it was a nice surprise to find a country road bordered by farms, long white fences, and a canopy of trees. The drive took me over two hours (instead of one), in part from being lost, another part from driving slow because of being carsick, and finally because I was spending so much time taking in the view. Gravel driveways would wind away from the road and up into the hills, and at each one I would slow down and crane my neck trying to see up them. Unfortunately, this constant looking at the scenery exacerbated the motion sickness (anyone who gets carsick knows the best thing to do is to stare straight ahead or at the horizon because the land rushing by on the sides of the vehicle just adds to the agony - but I couldn't help myself!)

 It was a long drive home, but it felt like I discovered hidden treasure to find this remote countryside tucked away between the huge cities I work and live in. It renewed my hope that SoCal is not completely being taken over by people - which I do sometimes feel when there are houses, cars, and people for as far as I can see in every direction. Next time it seems that the world I live in has  too many people in it, I'm going to get lost on country roads on my way home again...