Hound Dog Day

28 January 2026

This morning, I put out the Spring Florals in my house, Larkhaven.  Dear Hubby came home from his post-sunrise constitutional with Jolene, and I informed him of my clean-sweep through the first floor of the house, complete with wet-rag and drying towel.

“I hope you didn’t dust too much,” he avowed.

“Oh, no.  I’m leaving the heavy stuff for you.”

Especially since you’ve found and purchased all kinds of gizmos to more efficiently perform the tasks that I’d been (slip-shod) doing with a mere damp cloth, rinse water, and dry towel for eons.

In my defense, I must say that my style of dusting is extremely non-linear, for a linear person; while that of Dear Hubby is down and dirty, direct and done in 1/10 the time that I take.  Me, I like to gently remove the powdery detritus from the object, recall when and where I purchased, created, or received it, and reminisce over its wondrous souvenirs.

It’s a time-consuming process, but My Muse (and I) immensely enjoy it!

During my pre-homeowner spousal life, I never was a big duster of the mite’s productivity.  I recall the quite memorable time when friends came to help Hubby and Me move from our apartment in Sacramento to Our First House in the completely undeveloped section of West Roseville.

One matey pulled the vintage bedroom dresser away from the wall.  The six-inch space between the mass of wooden furniture and the wall had been filled in with a solid sheet of dust.

I got a very curious look from someone who had believed I’m a neat-nik.  When necessary, I am.  The dust, however, isn’t going anywhere; I’ll get to it.

This morning, I got to some of it.

Last night, we had another rainstorm, complete with power outage at the break of dawn.  I haven’t a clue about the reason for the power outage — what PG&E customer ever does????

I am more than fed up with the copious precipitation that Placer County has experienced during this past Rainy Season.  I am grateful that we no longer walk around, smelling like the rotting mushrooms that proliferated, for weeks, throughout the wide open spaces beyond my windows.

Those ghastly views composed a weird brown-and-gray version of the already weird Disney classic Fantasia, an ancient art form that undoubtedly has had, or will have, a giga-weird freaky remake:

I don’t know about it, and I don’t want to know about it!

The wet spectre of chartreuse-colored pollens in the countryside is no longer a spectre.  It’s an omnipresent ogre OUT THERE, much in the oppressive image of our creepy idiot “Governor” who is Never Home.

Never being home, and not having a true home, but, rather, houses, those “gifted” mansions that own you — that state of being must be a freaky feeling, but California Psycho does enjoy those freaky feelings!

As a rebellion against freaky feelings, I informed Dear Hubby that I decorated with the Spring Florals.

“You’re declaring the End of Winter before Groundhog Day????”

“There is no Groundhog Day in California.”

We laughed.

My terse, comical announcement of that fact — “There is no Groundhog Day in California - because you don’t have groundhogs here.”

That statement of the truth was not met with kindness, benevolence, or even a smile upon my Arrival, decades ago, by the Natives in The Golden State:  Nirvana of New, Land of the Beautiful People, Epicenter of Hip and Cool, and Mecca of Open-Arms to the Outsider.

The Outsider in California during the Carter-Brown years was anyone East of Reno.  Citizens from the Northeast need not come, or even think of staying, just so they could horn in on California’s bounty of blessings.

Yes, my initial entry into California Culture struck me, in more ways than one, as being in the warm, sunny France of Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief.

The natives here were restless, and they still are.  The fact of the matter is that the non-natives outnumber the natives, and they have for quite a long time.  How long, I don’t know, but I’ll venture to say that the non-natives have always outnumbered the natives, starting with that Gold Rush of 1849 that brought the opportunists here.

Most of the gold-diggers quickly washed out at panning gold, mining gold, finding gold, and they took to being claim jumpers, or robbing gold, robbing claims, killing to get their hands on claims, and swindling miners out of their gold at assay offices.  The truly desperate failures set up stores in what became known as the Gold Country, and, if dire need be, they farmed the land.

Gold fever was, and is, a real sickness of the soul.

California is currently a land of gold fever among the public swindlers.  The image of open-minded opportunity left this state by the end of the Cold War, and the parasites have stayed, to feed off of federal dollars, AKA, our hard-earned taxes.

California is less rife nowadays with natives who superciliously crow about being 4th and 5th generation Californians, as if that generational fact is the equivalent of having come over to America on The Mayflower.

It’s taken me a long time to understand this schizo-state of mind, resentment toward the Easterner, combined with envy of her, but I guess resentment and envy go hand-in-hand in a certain type of person.  She is so parsimonious of heart and mind that she does her social climbing with a step-stool!

The East-Coast-envy that resides in the Californian is laughable, mostly because the East Coast doesn’t have a whole lot of genuine culture.  It’s got the image of refinement, one that’s been promoted and propped up by rich hissy-fit hypocrites, the type of person from whom I fled to come West.

Only to arrive in the supposed-West and discover namby-pamby, two-faced sycophants at the altar of respectability.  I hardly know which is worse, the progenitors of prissy phony East-Coat morality, or the Californians who try to mimic them, and not very well, I might add.

Dear Husband long ago informed me that I am not a Californian, but a Westerner.  On this day, I agree more than ever.

And today is Hound Dog Day!