So Far So Good

So Far So Good

More than a month ago my kind-hearted senior-aged daughter was told she had to get rid of her four mixed-breed pit bulls, or move away from this beautiful horse camp on an Indian reservation in the mountains east of San Diego. The chief's jaw dropped when she replied she would move. She had rescued a badly injured mother pit bull and her three puppies almost two years ago thinking she would give the pups away. No takers appeared, and now she has become so fond of them all, she is risking everything to keep them.

As the head-shaking, eye-rolling, pessimistic mom, I, of course, expected disaster. Actually, we are not out of the woods yet, but it's looking good. She found a little two-bedroom house with two screened porches and two chain-linked yards on three acres of land for a rent she thinks she can afford. If she can't, someone else can move in with her and help pay the costs. I may have to be that someone.

The landlord lives about 65 miles to the east in Holtville, a little town in California's Imperial Valley. Yesterday we drove there to pay the last of the money needed up-front before she can move in. But first we had to go 65 miles down the mountains in the other direction toward San Diego to transfer money and get supplies.

The weather here has been very cold and windy for over a week. It's hard to believe such real winter weather could happen in sunny southern California so close to the Mexican border. I let my dogs out to run before dawn, and they didn't want to stay out long. When daylight came, I could see the ground was covered with pristine snow - only a few dog tracks showing. As I walked out to my pickup I noticed that the snow had a hard crust on it, and the windshield had a quarter of an inch of ice frozen solid. I had to get the hoe to scrape it off. I soon remembered how unmittened hands could ache when they get too cold.

We started for town at 7:30 a.m., and fishtailed our way up and down some difficult hills to the highway at Live Oak Springs five miles away. A snowplow had been through there, but there was still a lot of slush in the road, so I had to drive slowly until we had descended to a level where there wasn't as much snow and the road was clear. Neither one of us has driven much on snow and ice, so we didn't make very good time. All in all we didn't do badly at getting there safely and doing our errands. We were back and unloaded to start the second leg of our journey by 1:30 p.m. (As I write this I am listening to a coyote chorus accompanied by my daughter's eight dogs. I love this wilderness area!)

When we reached the bottom of the steep winding grade through the morass of rocks bordering that part of I-8, we headed out across the flat desert floor that goes below sea level on the way through El Centro to Holtville. Ahead we could see clouds giving up rainstorms in several areas. In fact we drove through one heavy storm. Rain in the Sonora desert is so rare that people living there can have a leaky roof for a long time before it comes to their notice. It had just happened to my daughter's new landlords who own and live at a small motel in Holtville. One of their rooms had been inundated with rainwater. That, and the fact they are victims of one of the innovative sub-prime mortgage loans that are currently plaguing the country, had put the Mrs. in a bad mood. But the transactions ended pleasantly and my daughter finally has a signed 17-month lease and was issued a set of keys for the house and fences.

We ate, or should I say gorged, ourselves again at the Golden Corral buffet, stopped to pick up empty boxes for moving, and were home to a happy bunch of dogs and cats by 7 p.m.

Today begins the hard part of packing and carrying the makings of my daughter's new life at the first house she has lived in for over ten years. She is a medical transcriptionist working at home on her computer, so her office will be the first project to get in order. Her trailer has done a good job of providing the kind of a moveable home she needed, but she is very happy to move into a real house with room to work, exercise, sew, close doors against pesky pets, and get a little rest.