I was awakened by the sound of a gentle rain dripping from the eaves.  What bliss to snuggle deeper into the warm, down comforter and drowse away the gloomy morning hours.  Butchie, noticed that I was awake and came up from the foot of the bed to flop down in the crook of my arm, purring her happy, morning greeting.

Ah, but it was not to last, Big Bob began lobbying for breakfast with his plaintive little mew, which so does not match his big bruiser body.  We have long suspected that he's gay and not just because of his soprano voice and kitty lisp.  He also has beautiful hair and really likes the other male cats.

I grudgingly gave up my warm nest and rustled up kitty breakfast for eight.  Everybody wanted to eat inside because it was raining and their muddy little paws made a nice mess of my clean white tile floor.  What was I thinking when I insisted on a white floor?!? 

Yesterday I squeezed a bunch of pomegranates to mix with orange juice and carelessly forgot to protect my favorite Tommy Hilfiger tee shirt.  It got all splattered with dark red spots that turned even darker when I tried to rinse them out.  So today I put the shirt in a bowl and poured half of the juice over the shirt.  It started out tomato red with purple spots and now it looks like this.

It's not perfect, but it's better than spotted.

I spent the afternoon cleaning Mom's house while she played the piano.  She doesn't play much anymore because her short term memory isn't up to the task of reading music as fluidly as it once could.  That, coupled with the fact that her old body grows weary from the exertion of holding herself erect on a hard bench, makes a once endlessly entertaining pastime a difficult endeavor.  I still love to hear the old melodies I grew up with, Rustle of Spring, Robin's Return, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, and it doesn't matter that she can't get all the way through the pieces without stalling because my memory fills in the missing notes.

Music, like smell, dredges up snippets of childhood, long buried under years of life.  A sharp recollection springs to my minds eye of Mom at the piano; Dad sleeping on the davenport (that's what they called it in Michigan; in California it became a couch); sister Babs was probably working at A&W or out ice skating with her boyfriend, Bob Clausen; and me playing on the floor beneath the piano bench, fascinated by Mom's feet deftly prodding the pedals.  The vision expands to include Junior, one of our two Siamese cats cuddled up with Dad, and Katie, the more timid female, watching from the kitchen with its ivy on white brick wall paper.  What idyllic times those were.  We had no TV, it was wicked and worldly, so we entertained ourselves with books and music and each other.  And you wonder why I'm so odd.

Reading MooncatBlue's latest post was, as always, an inspiration.  She writes the way I would if I could write that well.  Her blog today was about things she's grateful for and one of the odder things was her matched sock collection. 

Now, I'm not much of a collector.  I tend to throw away, or donate to the thrift store, anything I haven't used or worn in two years.  My one weaknesses is DeFeet socks.  I still have my very first pair, a gift from a woman Mike and I used to ride with nearly fifteen years ago.  These socks simply don't wear out!  They get dirty and grungy and even fade a little, but they retain their elasticity and their sense of whimsy forever.

My first and second pair, a bit the worse for wear.

The three down arrows are the symbol for extreme downhill on a mountain bike race course so, of course, these are one of my favorites.

These are my girly socks, Petal Power, Pinky and Daisy Dukes.  Sadly mountain biking is a dirty sport for socks.

The Peaceful Glow socks actually glow in the dark.  Way too cool!

The Survival of the Fittest socks are probably an odd selection for a woman, but I thought the little sperm cells were too cute to pass up.

Violets and Amour - more girly socks.

I bought two pairs of these just because they were pretty and matched my bike.

$...that's what I want and New Mexico were just some kind of fashion statement because they matched a jersey.

The one with the coral snake says "red and yellow kills a fellow, red and black is safe for Jack" .  We don't have coral snakes around here so I probably won't ever need to know this.

These are two of my favorites.

Biker CHICK isn't a DeFeet sock but Shark*A*Tac is.

The Eskimo socks have wool in them so they say Wool*e*ator on the other side.  All the others say Air*e*ator by DeFeet.

Rubbadukky is one of my favorites & Kokopelli is good for riding in Utah where the sand is almost the same color as the Kokopelli.

And last, the Christmas socks.

The only person I know with a sock collection that rivals mine is my sister, Babs430.

Today I wore the Eskimo socks because it was barely 50 degrees when I headed out the door.  Gloria, Sally and I climbed Elder Gulch again just to gain some fitness.  After my day of manual labor yesterday, the old legs were in no condition to climb but the girls wanted a work out so... 

Queenie inspired me to write about my wonderful day with her post about an overnight trip, over the river and through the woods, to visit a friend.  Lately I've been lax about posting because my life seems so routine and unremarkable.

Sunday morning I was sitting at the computer in my jammies when I heard the sweet voice of my favorite great niece, Ricky, outside.  She was visiting from Michigan for an extended weekend and had stopped by to visit Greatgrams and me.  Always a beauty, she took my breath away when I saw she had lost ten pounds.  She's blessed with her mom's luminous skin and I have no idea where in the gene pool her exotic eyes came from, but in my completely unbiased opinion, she's the most adorable, charming, beautiful, sensible (did I mention she quit smoking?), brilliant young woman ever to walk the earth.

We went back to Mom's flat in the backyard and got caught up for an hour or so.  Then we loaded my bike and gear into the car (for a later ride) and went to Niels' and Marissa's house for brunch.  Niels is actually my cousin's son but he lived with Ricky's family for years so they are like siblings (only they like each other).

Niels was busy making multigrain waffles when we got there so we settled in around the breakfast bar taking turns playing with baby Raine.  Raine is one of those charming babies who actually seems to like me.  Most babies cry the minute they see me but she willingly comes into my arms.  Babs arrived a little later and Tara (Barb's youngest daughter) with her son Bradley surprised us with a visit too.  There was another young couple with a baby, friends of Marissa's, so we had a house full of happy babbling people.  We ate and talked, had some more coffee, and blabbed some more in the easy, companionable way that families do. 

Cousin Dan came in with a fist full of money.  He had just sold another of Uncle Ted's motorcycles, a 1978 Ducati.  Uncle Ted has been gone nine months now and Dan is still disposing of his extensive collection of wheeled vehicles.  Many of them are collector's items and haven't been started in years, so Dan painstakingly restores them to running condition and markets them one by one.  He's a mechanical genius so it's not a difficult task other than the fact that he's often loathe to part with them. 

Dan and Uncle Ted were kindred spirits; both loved collecting, restoring, driving, riding, and spent many hours together puttering in Ted's many workshops.  Some of the motorcycles represent the hours of camaraderie and fun he enjoyed with his favorite uncle.  He confided that he was most ambivalent about selling this particular bike because he had hoped to buy it himself, primarily because of it's nostalgic value.  Unfortunately, it's intrinsic value was greater than his sentimental wallet could afford.

I eventually had to tear myself away from the party to go for a bike ride with Gloria, who lives nearby.  I rarely ride Gloria's trails because loading my bike into the back seat of the Lexus is hard on the leather upholstery.  Even though the car is a 1997 model, I still think of it as my new car.

It was one of those brilliant fall days when the air is so clear and dry you can see every wrinkle in the mountains.  We climbed the Elder Gulch fire road which is normally a granny gear, miserable climb. 

These are archive photos; it was actually a clearer day than shown.

It was steep but not miserable, mainly because we were distracted by the spectacular views and lively conversation.  I'm still all wound up about Jon Krakauer's latest book so I prattled on about that and Gloria listened politely. 

This is my beautiful friend, Gloria, also the world's best listener.

It was starting to get cool when we turned around to head back down.  The beauty of a hideously steep climb is the proportionally exhilarating descent.  The sun was at an angle that rendered the road nearly invisible when we rounded west facing curves, but Gloria rides this road twice a week and didn't need to see to whiz downhill.  I had to overcome good sense and follow her breakneck pace, trusting that she knew the line to take to avoid the ruts and rocks.  When we reached the bottom she confessed that she didn't normally ride it that fast but was riding on the edge so she didn't slow me down.  Wouldn't it have been ironic if we would have both gone sailing over the edge trying to keep up with each other?

Near the bottom of the hill there is a nice tame trail that meanders just above the housing tracts that have been built on the San Andreas fault line (one of the most active in the area).  One can look down into the beautifully landscaped yards with lavish pools and imagine what kind of courage it takes to raise a family in such a precarious environment, surrounded by tinder-dry, brush-covered hills that turn to liquid (when it rains) after raging fires, with nothing more than a shallow concrete culvert above to divert runoff.  Nice view though.

Recent rains had made the traction nice and sticky.  Gloria scampered down her familiar trail with me in dogged pursuit, until we connected with the manicured trails maintained by the homeowner's associations of East Highland.  The sun was settling into it's Southern arc as we coasted into her driveway, completely satiated.