Summer

The real journey seems to be inside my head. I am still here in Kansas City, in the same apartment, which is one of four condos in a smallish, brownstone 4-plex built in the 20s, I think. The reason for this is the weather in Chico, California, where I thought I wanted to move. Chico is one of the few places in California where you have a fairly big city--OK, you could call it a "town"--and probably even, demographically, a blue area on that red and blue election map that always shows up after elections, and, at the same time, real estate prices that are more or less in line with the rest of the universe. (Not like the Bay Area, where my boyhood home, which was and still is large enough to house a couple people and a cat and one car, might cost you a million dollars.

Here's the trouble.  Chico weather, while typical of California with its wet, winter season and its perpetually sunny summer season, has a flaw. Maybe a couple. It gets impossibly hot in the summer. The high temps routinely soar beyond that good old "century mark" as the weathermen here in the Midwest call it, and, not uncommonly, over 105 degrees. 105 is the temperature that any seasoned Las Vegas resident will tell you marks that point where, "dry heat" or not, it's just plain old hot. Like, I'm-not-leaving-the-house hot. The kind of hot where people start doing their gardening at 6:00 a.m. and then stay inside with the A/C cranked up from 8:00 a.m. on.

So, there's that. And this year, combine that with wildfire smoke that apparently will migrate hundreds of miles across the valley to make your eyes burn and itch and water. I think I could live without that. Missouri suddenly doesn't sound so bad. All we get are tornadoes and, unlike earthquakes or wildfires, you are more than likely going to dodge them.

So, you know, here I am.

I took the cats to the animal shelter--a "no kill" shelter--and I can't bring myself to check and see if they have new homes yet. Both of the girls, Uma and Lizzy, are friendly little critters, both seem healthy and, doggone it, they're cute, so I am optimistic that someone picked them out to take them home. Now that I have decided to stay here, for awhile at least, I thought about checking on them and taking them back if no one had adopted them yet, but I also find that without cat dander in the air, my sinuses are much, much better and I have been off the Claritin the whole time. The reality is that a small apartment is not a good place for two cats and an allergic owner. This is just going to be one of those things that I am not happy about, or shall we say, at least mixed feelings.

So, in the way that it does, the universe sent me a squirrel. He spends a good deal of time each day in the attic space above the ceiling of my back hallway, just off the bedroom. He rolls nuts around and then runs and jumps and makes noise. It sounds like a tiny bowling alley up there.  It was a little alarming at first, as new noises can be, but I've become adapted to it and accepted his joint tenancy. Squirrels, I was delighted to learn, are not nocturnal, and we are both sleeping well.