Metamorphosis

Recently came across what I thought was a cool picture…It's this woman sitting on this rock, the world is being destroyed by volcanoes around her and she has this butterfly landing on her hand. It's got this title Iron Butterfly. I didn’t know it was an old hippy band with a heavy ecological slant…kinda neat. Sometimes I feel like that woman up here. The world is going crazy around me. Sometimes I am the crazy world. Sometimes I feel like the butterfly - fragile - yet strong. Anyway - Going to start blogging. Typing. Writing. Thinking about MY OWN METAMORPHOSIS...

My life up here in the Sierra. I'm calling my blog Sierra Gold. From sirens down in Los Angeles to crickets and frogs up here. Some nights the frogs are so stinking loud it’s all you can hear when the windows are open. We used to hear people blasting their bass so loud it was commonplace. The other day with good girlfriend at lunch a person drove by with heavy bass and the noise jarred my memory back into the days of hearing that noise as it went pumping up and down our street. Little does my eldest know that she could have grown up listening to that beat ingrain her head - muffling her life through all her early years. There are no bass thumpers up here. At least not up in our little patch of paradise.

I’ve had some pretty close encounters with the amphibious and reptilian kind since we’ve lived here. (stepped barefoot on a frog in our living room, lizard crawled into my pants when I was in the bathroom one day, bats in the house, mouse in the yard, snakes on the back deck and front walkway). The other night I walked--barefoot, mind you, into our bedroom and bath (it’s so small I consider it all one room) Luckily I had the light on and voila! A large lizard staring right at me in our bedroom! It was, of course right at the spot where I stand to get into bed. Startled I screamed for my darling husband and he ran in and attempted to catch the damn thing. He always tries to catch things, but gives them too many chances. He misses, then misses again, then misses again, in the meantime the thing proceeds to make fools out of us and we are huffing, puffing and sweating all over the bedroom (not in a sexy way) to get this damn critter --- we finally coaxed it with a broom out from under our bed. He was waiting...hovering above it with a plastic container and I laying crazily on my side under the end of the bed trying to help but was secretly relieved that it was finally over. He released it outside. I wondered how it got into the house. If there were more. Did it have babies. Was it going to a nest?

I was glad he released it outside. Afterward, I ruminated over how when I lived in Southern California I had a lizard scare the crap out of me also when it startled me in a laundry basket in quite the same way. I wanted it dead though. Nowadays, I want it alive and out in our yard to eat bugs. Is that because I am older? Or because I am a land owner- And value the help that these small animals can provide our yard? Or is it because I’ve grown lazy? Hahahaha Yes, lazy and tired from slowly being worn and beaten down by my two busy children each and every day…. aj