L.J. Zinkand - Blog

Our Friend Skeezix

11/28/2021

Skeezix, aka Adventure Man and our spiritual advisor, went over the Rainbow Bridge on Wednesday, November 24. He was 16. He spent his early years in Austin, Texas, then moved up to Medford, Oregon, where he regaled the local woodland creatures of his armadillo-chasing tales. Settling into life in the Northwest, he enjoyed tree-climbing, gopher-hunting, nail-sharpening, and often followed me out to the woods to help gather kindling.

In his last months he became obsessed with food, so honed in his skills that he could often snatch an entire enchilada off a plate if our backs were turned. He also developed a taste for PG Tips tea, daily knocking over Wayne’s Yeti mug to lick the spilled tea. So it was hard to say goodbye to a cat this lucid, although the physical signs of his withering body were morbidly apparent. Still, the day before, Tuesday, he followed me out the woodpile and trotted back with a satisfied smirk after taking a quick dump in the kindling tent. Wednesday morning his last act was to turn Wayne’s Yeti mug over one last time, just for good measure.

He was a real trooper, ready to take on every pitfall or adventure that came his way. He’s left a huge, silent hole in our household, making this Thanksgiving somewhat somber. We will miss him every day.

Okay, Now I'm Mad

9/8/2021

I was scheduled to exhibit my Dreamland dolls in a festival in downtown Medford this coming October. It was going to be a whole lot of fun - art, music, food...
Well, the event was just postponed until 2022 because of COVID, and our local hospitals being stuffed to capacity with ill people who didn't want to get the vaccine. The producers of the event did the right thing and honestly have our safety in their utmost thoughts. I'm just getting really tired of these whack-job anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers deciding what our lives are going to be like. It's almost as if they're getting off on the power they have over the rest of us. Grrr!

So here's my latest letter to the editor of our paper. Also, I got a mention on the cover's teaser sweet spot!

Tip-toeing through the summer

7/30/2021

Gertie, the possum.

It all sounds pretty terrible on the news, although we keep saying that we’re 100 miles away from the Bootleg fire. Seriously, (knock on wood), it’s been a good summer so far, as regards smoke. It’s blowing east. Sorry, east coasties. In the future, please refrain from calling us the loose nuts who rolled out west when they shook the country. We’ve got smoke and we’re not afraid to use it.
So it’s quiet here – not a single lawnmower or chain saw.

One thing I suggest to avoid at all cost, is pulling a muscle in one’s shoulder. Let me repeat that: Do not, under any circumstances, pull a muscle in your shoulder if you can possibly avoid it! Still imagining myself to be 27 years old, I tried to power my way through an already worn shoulder blade by going to the gym for the first time in 15 months, followed, the next day, by an hour of weed whacking. Since then, every stroke of the stylus, every click of the mouse = agony! I finally surrendered and went to the doctor, at Wayne’s suggestion, when I cried while he applied Biofreeze.
Really, there’s nothing one can do about this kind of injury except wait it out, basically. I got some muscle relaxers, Tylenol and exercises from the doctor. The muscle relaxers made me kind of dopey, though, so I gave them up and took it easy instead. Worked at half-speed. I sighed as the star thistle slowly began to take over sections of the front yard. I did get some CBD capsules, which helped.

Meanwhile, Dreamland Zinkand has gotten a great response at the Talent Evening Market. My favorite thing is watching people break into a smile when they come by the booth. Okay, my second favorite. I like it even more when they buy a doll! Still, if my life’s mission is simply to make people smile and laugh a little, then I guess I’m doing okay.

Dummy Downhill 2021

4/16/2021

After an 8-year hiatus, Wayne and I returned to the Dummy Downhill competition at Mt. Ashland this spring. In keeping with our tradition of Wizard of Oz characters, I presented Wayne with detailed technical plans for Dorothy. We still had the ski platform we used on Miss Gulch On Her Bicycle back in 2013. I had the outfit, which you may have seen in a previous post when I dressed as Zombie Dorothy for a Halloween fundraiser a few years back. The dress is pretty scratchy though, with annoying underlying taffeta, and it never really fit that great anyway, so I figured I’d surrender it to the Dummy Downhill instead.

I spent the day after Jab #2 last week fortifying the platform and painting yellow bricks onto it, as well as securing a pair of homemade ruby slippers to the surface. Later I built a skeleton out of PVC pipe and spent the rest of the week stuffing her with towels and dressing her while Wayne worked on her face.

It was a perfect day for the event; warm, the snow was soft, and the sky was a bluebird. We parked on the southern edge of the parking lot, facing Mt. Shasta in the distance – my favorite spot where I’ve taken my breaks this past winter, your car being the “lodge.” It’s been an odd year, but they had wi-fi all over the mountain and I saved a lot of money I would normally have spent on beer at the bar, and Sweet Potato Waffle Fries. Lordy, how I missed those! Still, it was remarkable how they managed to keep the mountain – aka my Happy Place – open in spite of the pandemic. Shutdowns and face coverings don’t faze the outdoor sports enthusiast. Due to the lodge being closed, the parking lot at Mt. Ashland became a socially-distanced outdoor party this year.

Wayne carried the yellow brick road base up to the staging area and after I glued Dorothy’s head on, I carried her body up there, along with my tool bag. We set her in her ruby slippers and glued her ankles, took some pictures, anchored her to the snow and went back to the car for snacks.

A while later we went back up to watch the design-judging and see the other entries. Nearly twenty of them, including all sorts of outlandish designs. We got our launching positions and began lining up our entries. By this time, it had become a party atmosphere with all of us chatting about our dummies, hanging with friends and marveling at the great weather. The spectator area was filling up, as people brought chairs to set in the snow by the ramp.

The launching of dummies began at 2 p.m. A drone hovered over the jump taking pictures. The general manager, Hiram Towle, was the DJ of the day under an EZ-Up tent, supplying a steady stream of humorous banter between launchings as he described each dummy. There were a few crashes, but most everyone’s dummy made it over the jump at the end.

Then it was our turn. “I’ve got this,” Wayne assured me. I surrendered the pull-rope to Wayne, then went down the hill and positioned myself to shoot the video.

After her introduction by Hiram, Wayne gave Dorothy a good push. She went straight down the middle of the ramp and got to the jump, nearly pausing at the top, then took a tiny jump and went over. Whew! Wayne rushed down the hill to meet me and we cheered on the rest of the entries.

Then there was a half-hour break while the judges made their final decisions. Wayne went down to the demolition pile to retrieve Dorothy’s head while I went back to the car and cracked open a beer. There were so many great entries, I thought, many of them getting bigger air over the jump than Dorothy. We probably won’t win a prize this time. We hung out at the car eating cookies, then returned for the awards ceremony at 3. On our way back people were congratulating us, so the awards ceremony must have gone really fast and we missed it. We got to the tent and were told that we’d won second place!!! We got two really nice Yeti mugs, which is great since I lost my old one and these are the more expensive kind that fit in my car cup holder.

The winner of the day was “The Flying Ace,” aka Snoopy atop his house. He got the best air of any of them, which is interesting as there were more projectile-shaped entries (one of which hit Dorothy in the demolition pile straight on, decapitating her). Snoopy really did win the day, though, and his house seemed to explode in mid-air after sailing over the jump. A season pass for next year went to his creator.

We collected our awards and a few stickers, got our pictures taken with our Yetis, then went back to the parking lot where a snowmobile had arrived, hauling a flatbed with all the wrecked dummies. We salvaged the ski-sled base/yellow brick road, and most of her mangled skeleton. The scratchy dress survived somehow, as did her wig. We put the wreckage back in the car and ordered a take-and-bake from The Great American Pizza Company on the way home.

Later the event aired on KOBI-5 News, including Dorothy! It was a hoot! The next morning we opened the local Medford Mail Tribune to see a picture of Dorothy headed down the hill with Wayne standing at the top.

I must add, that considering my recent publication of Meteor Falls which includes a fictitious "Barrel Shoot" over a river, how could I not participate in the Dummy Downhill?

Chickens Raid Local Craft Studio

3/22/2021

Several chickens broke into a small craft studio in Southern Oregon, ransacking the fabrics and notions. They were later apprehended by the studio’s owner when spotted cavorting through the forest flaunting the yield of their stolen goods – stylish, dapper outfits they'd created for themselves.

Check out these new chickens at Dreamland Zinkand!

Jabbed!

3/7/2021

It's an expression I nicked from our friends in the UK. Jabbed. Thanks to our local medical clinic, I was able to make two appointments back to back for Wayne and I to get our COVID vaccines. Using the guerrilla phone tactics I remembered from trying to get an appointment at the Women’s Health Center in San Francisco back in the 70s, I called our facility right at their opening, 8:00 a.m. Easy-peasy! Compared to the stories I'd read about waiting in hour-long, drive-through lanes at the county Expo, we were lucky. Our appointments were in four days!

We arrived at the La Clinica facility on time and there were maybe a half-dozen other people there. The staff was friendly, competent, and had us out of there barely a half-hour later, including the 15-minute wait for any possible reactions to the Moderna vaccine we received.

Later on, though, I began to feel the effects. I became tired, sluggish, and sore all over. All low-key, but still, it felt like I had a touch of the thing I was getting vaccinated against. I’ve reacted more to a flu shot than I’ve ever experienced the actual flu, so I’m used to having a healthy-as-a-horse status. Plus I knew that I wasn’t actually ill. After several hours of working on my dolls, I discovered an intense need for chocolate.
“Surely that will get me out of this purgatory of vaccine reaction,” I thought.
Still in my work clothes, pants and shirt dusted with the remnants of paper-clay dust, I drove into town in search of the remedy. Again, most unusual for me. I never go into town in work clothes!

I returned with a couple of It’s Its, a delicious and thoroughly decadent ice cream treat from San Francisco, available at our local grocery. I spent the rest of the day sluggish, sleepy, slightly sore, and thinking about little else than the It’s It I planned to eat after dinner. Wayne was having little to no reaction, so I talked him into cooking us a frozen pizza. After we devoured our dessert treats, I fell asleep at around 8:30 p.m.

Today, the next day, I still feel a little punky, but glad to be vaccinated. Our next visit is in a month. My friends tell me the reaction from the second dose is worse, so I plan on generously stocking up on chocolate beforehand.

Squirrels!

12/7/2020

Lumi, Star, Toby and Parker

Our woods are currently well-populated with western gray squirrels. They often come close to the window seat where I’m writing, so I finally went out and bought some unsalted peanuts for them to see if they would linger. It’s a family tradition. My dad used to get squirrels to come up the fire escape of his childhood apartment in Washington Heights, NYC.

I got inspired to make a whole line of them, so here are the first four! I’m making the feet really flat on the bottoms now, so they’re free-standing, (although I wouldn’t trust them in an earthquake or a strong wind). Hence their toe beans are painted on, although the bottom of one foot is signed by me. And I’ll admit, throughout the creative process I’ve had a persistent craving for nuts.

Meanwhile, the local blue jays have shown an active interest in said peanuts, so I’m thinking about a run of bird people next.
Check out the new gray squirrels on Etsy!

Summer and all...

10/27/2020

When we got word last June that our septic drain field had failed, a test hole was dug in the front yard. (See previous entry). We approved the estimate, which turned out to be thousands less than we originally thought, then we waited for six weeks while the septic company obtained permits from the county. I might mention that our company is named A-Affordable Royal Flush: A Royal Flush Beats A Full House Every Time. Their trucks, of course, have a graphic of playing cards depicting a royal flush on them. Their people are friendly and conscientious, especially in light of the work they do.

Meanwhile, during those six weeks our telephone landline began to fail. The line became so noisy with static it sounded like we were trying to communicate with someone from Jupiter. We contacted Century Link and the problem was corrected somewhere down the road. Several weeks later the same thing occurred and they allegedly fixed it. When the line began to buzz and crackle intolerably for the third time, I concluded that we must be one of the last houses on the street with a landline, hence under-appreciated as paying customers. I decided to look elsewhere for phone service. Since we’re out in the boonies where cell phone reception is sketchy, we each have a couple of Tracfone smartphones for when we’re off the property or want to take a quick picture. We can text from here, though. But most of the contractors who’ve been through here seem to get a signal on their phones, so I figured it was worth a try to switch to a bigger cell phone company. Our first choice, Consumer Cellular, offered something called a “Home Phone Base,” into which we could plug in our old cordless phones and keep our original number.
“What happens if we port our number over to you and find out we can’t get a signal?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get you connected,” the customer service person chirped.
After hours of online chatting with Tech Support trying this and that, they concluded that their service didn’t actually cover our area, sending us several miles down the hill with our cell phones for the next bunch of days when we needed to make a call.

Meanwhile, our well water was running low due to a combination of drought and the ferocious uptick of hemp-growing in the area, so we had to have our storage tank filled. I sat at our porch “lunch counter”—a counter-top and three stools Wayne salvaged from the former Texacali Grill in Austin and refinished—drinking a beer and doing a crossword puzzle while the guy from the water delivery service attached a large hose to the top of our tank. He turned on the water and a few minutes later I heard him speaking to someone on his cell phone from inside the pump house!
“Who’s your carrier?” I asked when he emerged.
“US Cellular. They’re the most dependable in the valley.”
A few days later we were up and running with US Cellular and their version of a Home Base Unit, although I was forced to abandon our old landline number in the netherworld of Consumer Cellular. “Serves them right,” I thought. “They can have all those scam callers.”

Then we got the call from Royal Flush saying they were ready to start the job. The next day they delivered a porta-potty to our front yard., along with PVC pipe, giant rolls of packing peanuts wrapped in what looked like deer fencing, and a big load of gravel.
Monday morning, they showed up while I was at an appointment with my bone doctor. (I’ve had significant success in increasing bone density. Yay! I still have to do another round of Prolia shots, though.)
When I got back they were in full swing with an excavator and bulldozer. It was like a dance—I’ve not seen such precision in synchronized digging and pushing mass amounts of dirt around before, especially considering it’s August and our dirt is near cement. In one day they dug 6-foot-deep trenches from the septic tank bypassing the old drain field, sawed a 3-foot-wide gulley through the asphalt driveway, and looped a small canyon around the front yard. After they left, we explored the area. They’d removed two cedar trees I planted 16 years ago and left them in a pile, along with a woodland mahogany that’s been languishing. That part was heartbreaking. It felt like we’d lost three family members. These pictures don’t fully capture the level of destruction that took place. Part of it was the dry, dustiness under a cloudy, rainless sky, and the temperature that still lingered at 102°. We haven’t had rain for several months, so everything was beginning to look dead anyway.

The next morning the Royal Flushes were back here early. They finished laying the drain pipe, filled in the trenches, smoothed all the dirt and stones, loaded up their excavators and bang-zoom-Bob’s-yer-uncle, they were done. Two days! The front yard still looks like a depressing wasteland. I suspect it will until fall comes and we get rain, but we will most likely not have to worry about this drain field failing in our lifetimes.

Then there was The Fire.
The weather had been hot and unusually dry all summer. I mean, we don’t get much rain in the summers anyway, but we do get a shower here and there. This summer, nothing. On Labor Day, the wind began to blow in earnest. The thrashing kind, that sent the wind chimes on the front porch jangling furiously all night. The next afternoon I was on my way into Medford to buy some elastic for the dolls’ pants when I noticed a near traffic jam at our four corners. I quickly realized that it was some kind of detour. Rounding the corner I saw the smoke rising from Talent. When I got down to Pacific Highway, the police had closed the south direction and there was a steady line of cars coming north.

I scrapped my trip and headed home. Surely, I figured, whatever was going on would be resolved by tomorrow. Wayne came outside and I showed him the smoke billowing from Talent. A little while later the electricity blinked off.
We made sandwiches for dinner and watched a movie on Wayne’s laptop.
All night we could see a sinister reddish-orange glow in the sky, in the notch between the hills over Phoenix, while the wind continued to howl.

The next morning I made breakfast on the gas grill outside. I'm really glad I got the grill with the side burner unit! Since the sky looked clear from here, we drove down through the back end of Talent to see if we could charge our laptops and phones, and possibly get some spring water at the supermarket. Everything looked fine until we crossed the railroad tracks. Then we began to see small, hot-spot fires burning along the sides of the road. When we reached the supermarket, which was closed, of course, we discovered that much of the town on the east side of Talent Avenue had been destroyed, leaving a grotesque jumble of blackened washing machines, skeletal remains of bedsprings, bicycles, wood stoves, chimneys, and cars. Wayne wanted to see if our friend Frederick’s house was still there. We turned onto Gangnes Drive and the entire block was leveled. At some point I started to cry, and then the person in front of us abruptly stopped his Subaru in the middle of the street, got out and started taking pictures. Wiping tears from my eyes I realized we had no business in there, that we had to get out as soon as possible and I couldn’t turn around. So I pulled around the side of the photographer's car and headed out, before realizing that we were driving over a burned-up power line.
“Shit!” I yelled as I floored it, and went over another blackened line before reaching Talent Avenue again.
There was no wi-fi signal or power anywhere in town, so we headed north. We got on 99 and…it was the closest thing either of us has seen of Armageddon. Telephone poles broken in half with wire hanging freakishly off of them. Blackened fields and trees. We kept going until there was a police blockade at the I-5 exit in Phoenix. We headed west and found Sherm’s Thunderbird open, so we filled up with water, did some shopping, and got ice. I also noticed that The Laundry Center was open, so we drove back to the house, packed up the laundry and brought our computers and cell phones to charge while we were there.

Eventually the wind died down and dense smoke filled the valley for days, reaching all the way up to the house. On a good day the sun was merely a fierce, malevolent-looking orange ball. It was starting to get chilly, but we dared not light a fire in the wood stove, and had no electricity to run the wall heater. We began wearing our winter clothes... we watched movies on Wayne’s laptop… we ate a lot of sandwiches…

Six days later the electricity blinked back on. Six days of basically camping at our house. We flushed the toilet manually with water we got from town, and took sink baths. We kept the food cool by putting store-bought ice in metal mixing bowls in the refrigerator and freezer. I cooked on the outside grill. I was reduced to reading and writing in the new alcove we built up in the studio. If it weren't for the misery of so many people losing their homes, I’d think this was a blessing. I finished another revision of Meteor Falls while curious squirrels and deer stopped by the window to study me and Sofie, my writing muse, huddled under a blanket with my laptop until the daylight ran out.

It would be more than a week before non-residents were permitted to drive the section of 99 through Phoenix. When I finally took the “scenic” drive, my jaw remained dropped the entire way. All I could say as I shook my head was, "Oh my god…oh my god…” over and over again. It was nearly a 2-mile, steady swath of destruction.

I'm not much for posting pictures of peoples' properties laid to waste, but there's a 30-minute flyover someone posted the day after:

Those Wacky Socialists

8/1/2020

I was getting really tired of letters-to-the-editor about the "evils of socialism," hence I struck back today. Granted, I'm a true socialist at heart...

Tempest in a Test Hole

6/9/2020

We recently had a test hole dug for a new septic drain field in our front yard. "Shouldn't be any problem," the contractor told us, "your dirt looks good."
Several hours later, though, there was an unexpected commotion, heralded by a murder of loud crows.

Then a specter began to emerge from the hole in broad daylight!
Was there an old burial ground the real estate agent failed to mention all those years ago? "How many more are down there?" we wondered.

Wayne began shoveling dirt back into the hole in a frantic attempt to keep the revenant from escaping...

...in the end, he was forced to drop his shovel and flee the scene as the creature climbed out of the hole.

We're seriously on lockdown now, with the doors and windows bolted.