In defense of earthquakes

American accents are pretty distinctive, especially in a country where most of the television programming is imported from the US. So, it is not surprising when people ask me “what part of the States are you from?” when they hear me open my mouth. What is surprising, however, is the reaction I get when I reply “the San Francisco area.” An astonishing number of people respond, with a little quiver of horror in their voices, “Oh, where they have all the earthquakes!”

I’ve checked and between 1906 and 2009, the San Francisco Bay Area has suffered two…and only two…earthquakes that caused loss of life. Those quakes were the notorious 1906 quake and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. There was a quake in The City in 1957 that cause some significant property damage, but no deaths, bringing the total number of major quakes in the Bay Area, over a 103 year span, to three. That's right...just three.

So what is the big deal about earthquakes? I lived in the Bay Area for 30 years and actually experienced the Loma Prieta quake, and I just don’t get it. The horror people express at the thought of a quake baffles me. I mean, it’s not like earthquakes level a major American city every year, right? The frequency of deadly earthquakes in California is low, and in the Bay Area, numbers only two in the last 103 years. I mean, c’mon…you are more likely to get hit by a car while crossing the street than to be injured or killed in an earthquake!

As deadly natural disasters go, I think earthquakes get a bad rap. Their frequency, after all, is significantly less than tornadoes, floods and hurricanes. In fact, the Gulf Coast has suffered 40…forty!...significant hurricanes in the 107 years between 1900 and 2007, and loss of life in the 1900 Galveston Hurricane alone was double that of the estimated death toll for San Francisco's entire 20th century quake history!

Then there are tornadoes. In the 44 year period ended 1994, Texas alone suffered 5490 tornadoes! That’s an average of nearly 125 tornadoes per year just in Texas. The top ten tornado states, including Texas (the leader), suffered a combined total of 19, 511 tornadoes during this period, averaging more than 440 tornadoes per year… that’s an average of more than one per day! And since it is unlikely that tornadoes that cause no property damage are even reported, it’s pretty safe to assume that these tornadoes damaged homes and businesses…and we know that some of them cost lives, as well. How is this…an average of 1+ tornadoes per day…less frightening than an average of three damage-inducing earthquakes per century??

Okay, I know I am comparing the expanse of ten states against the smaller region of the San Francisco Bay area and that Southern California suffers its fair share of quakes as well, but the fact remains that such natural disasters as tornadoes and hurricanes occur annually in other parts of America without triggering irrational fear in potential visitors. Truth is, you are more likely to get swept up in a tornado than buried in an earthquake simply because tornadoes happen multiple times per year and the frequency of earthquakes is considerably less. The Bay area has had only two “killer” earthquakes in more than a century: Middle America suffers more killer tornadoes in an average year.

One of the things about earthquakes that I appreciate, vis-à-vis tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods, is their brevity. The moment of impact to the moment of cessation is measured in seconds. There are no hours of stressful anticipation, waiting for the hurricane to hit or fretting over whether or not the waters will rise enough to get into the house, no long minutes of hiding in a cellar or in your bathtub…with an earthquake, it is just WHAM! and then it is over and you can get on with the business of cleaning up.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that most earthquakes are unfelt and cause no damage at all. Even quakes that rock the bed and roll under your feet ordinarily don’t cause any property damage, let alone injury or death. Compare that with a tornado that, even if your house escapes destruction, will most likely destroy somebody’s property and possibly inflict personal injury or death. Ultimately, photos of the aftermath of tornadoes, hurricanes and floods show no less destruction than earthquake-stricken areas, and deadly earthquakes happen with dramatically less frequency.

After decades of living in earthquake country…more than 45 years in total, having been raised in Southern California…and a few years living in places given to blizzards, lightning strikes, windstorms, and flash floods, I have to say that earthquakes really do get a bad rap. Given a choice, I’ll take my chances with twice-in-a-century odds over a 440-times-a-year certainty any day of the week!

For more info about these natural disasters and photos of their consequences, see:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/alm/quakes3.html
http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/gulfcoast.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Alley

I write for Angels Weekly. It’s full of great articles from terrific writers, and I’ve recently published a pair of articles about foods that are toxic to your dog. You can find it here: http://www.angelsezine.com/

Free sewing pattern!

PLEASE NOTE: Angels Weekly is no longer on the web. You can find the pattern here: http://www.sayorkshires.com/playing-dress-up-f6/diaper-pattern-t554.htm#6417 . Print it out so that the largest pattern piece fills the page from top to bottom. If you have a larger dog, print out the pattern and take it to a copy shop and have it enlarged.

If you would like to make the cute little doggie diapers that I use on Puddin' to prevent her from wetting on the bed and furniture, you can now download it in a .pdf format from Angels Weekly http://www.angelsezine.com/. Just go to the site, put "diapers" in the search box (it is in the upper right quadrant of the screen) and it will take you to an article on doggie diapers written by yours truly (Violet Burroughs is my nom de plume).

Scroll to the bottom of the article and click the download button and when the pattern shows up on your screen, save or print.

Enjoy and may your pup look as cute in them as Puddin' does!

Puddin' at 16 weeks

Today Puddin’ is 16 weeks old and it has become increasingly obvious to both Hubby and I that we are dealing with a “girly girl.” Oh, she is full of rambunctious mischief and is sometimes referred to as our “Yorkshire Terror,” but she’s definitely girly, nonetheless.



The first clue was when she looted my makeup bag. At first we thought it was just an example of Yorkie high spirits…these dogs are notorious for being energetic, after all…but the next time I opened the bag, I had to fight her off! She dove into the bag head first as if she were diving for treasure…which I suppose, in her little world, was the case. Her first foray into the bag had left the duvet littered with eye pencils and brushes, and she had even managed to extract a lipstick and get the cap off, quite a feat for someone who has no opposable thumbs!

The next clue was how cooperative she seems to be about wearing clothes. She has a small wardrobe of things both practical and pretty, and while she wriggles in protest at diaper time (a precaution against accidents when she is on the furniture or hardwood floors), she is cooperative when I put her onesies on her (usually for bedtime) and gets excited when I bring one of her dresses. She never fights or chews the clothes…even Hubby remarked that she seems to love them.

Grooming is a bit of a different story, but she seems to like having her face and head brushed, but not so much her legs and thighs. But she will sit and raise her chin for the brush to go over her face and throat, the top and back of her head and her ears, She even allows me to put her tiny little topknot in a pony tail with a minimum of fuss. But we weren’t convinced that she was fully committed to her femininity until the lace arrived…

Here in South Africa, it is a monumental task to find lace trims for sewing projects. In America you just walk into any fabric store and there will be a section in the shop devoted to lace and braid and sequins and ribbons of all descriptions. Not so in South Africa. Here, you have to go to a specialty shop called a “haberdashery”…assuming you can find one. Once you do manage to track one down, don’t expect to be spoiled for choice: the selections are invariably slim and prosaic. And heaven forefend if you are seeking ruffled or pre-gathered lace! It simply does not exist here! Being a person both resourceful and persistent, however, I have come up with a workaround solution: eBay!

I know what the meagre offerings of lace and eyelet trims go for here, so I use that as a baseline for my on-line shopping: trims that, including shipping, approximate the cost of a roughly similar item here, are within budget. So, if a piece of 1” wide lace would cost R25 a metre here, then a piece of lace on eBay costing $2.50 a yard, including shipping, is within my reach. Gathered laces can go for 50% more, since the gather ratio is usually 1.5:1. And so I have a fairly steady stream of small packages arriving from America as there are plenty of suppliers…some even ship free!...to feed my sewing machine.

A few weeks ago I received a packet of pretty pink lace…3 yards of it…and opened the packet on the bed where Puddin’ was taking a nap. I left the room for just a couple of minutes, returning to find her rolled up in it, yards of pretty pink lace wrapped around her like a cat! I took it away from her, but only under protest, and when I put the lace on the bedside table, she took to barking at it! Eventually it ended up trimming a dress and matching undies for her, and I thought nothing more of it…until today.



Yesterday I received a notice from the post office that my latest purchase had arrived and today Hubby and I stopped by to pick it up: 5 yards of gathered eyelet trim, destined to embellish a few more outfits for Miss Puddin’. Winter is coming and I need to get a few flannel pajamas and nightgowns ready. Don’t laugh…these dogs do not have an undercoat to trap air and keep them warm like most dogs do, which is why they do not shed. Also, because of their small size, regulating their body temperatures can be more difficult than for larger dogs, particularly since their energetic metabolism tends to keep them lean and without much fat to insulate them. As a result, they do need some extra measures taken to keep them warm enough in chilly weather. OK…they don’t actually need pretty dresses or nighties, but I can sew, so why not?

So we brought the eyelet home and I sat on the bed and opened the packet, then set it aside on the bedside table. A few minutes later we let Puddin’ up on the bed and, after her enthusiastic greetings were done, she climbed up on top of the pillows and began barking, her nose pointed at the table. After touching several things in an attempt to identify what she was barking at, my hand fell on the eyelet and her ears perked up. When I put the eyelet on the bed, she grabbed it and started unwinding it from the card! It was the pretty lace trim she was after.

She also likes jewellery. She will try to chew the aquamarine I wear on my right ring finger and last night, when we got home with seven pairs of new earrings…the insurance company finally sent us jewellery store vouchers to replace the stuff stolen in our Valentine’s Day robbery…she went for the little jewellery boxes just as soon as they were out of the bag! And speaking of bags…she ignores our briefcases…but if I leave my handbag on the floor, she will stick her head into it and root around.

So, when you add it all up…an attraction to make up, jewellery, designer handbags, hair brushing, pretty clothes plus a penchant for lace…seems like we’ve got ourselves a pretty girly little girl here. Now, if we could just convince her that chewing on other people’s fingers is just not ladylike!

Neighours and Neighbourliness

Nothing ruins a beautiful home and tranquil neighbourhood like having rude, inconsiderate, selfish, unpleasant people sharing your property line.

I have these neighbours who have two teenaged sons, neither of whom, apparently, understand the purpose of the two metre tall masonry walls that have been erected on the property line. If I simply wanted to mark the dividing line between the properties, a couple of stakes and a line of string between them would suffice, but the huge hint provided by a 12 inch thick, 6 foot high brick wall seems to have escaped these boys.

They don’t understand gates, either. Tall, iron-banded wood gates with massive security padlocks on them are, to these lads, merely climbing apparatuses…and climb them they do. Evidently the advantages of entering their own property through their front door…or ringing my bell to politely ask access to the property (which I would grant if the request had some legitimacy, like retrieving a ball that had gone over the wall) escape them and scaling my walls, being more expedient that respecting my privacy and property rights, is their preference.

I remember having parties when I was younger…in fact, I have parties now. But, there is a considerable difference between my parties and the 60 hour marathons these boys throw every weekend, starting mid-afternoon each Friday. I do not exaggerate in this…I woke up the other morning at 3:45 am to use the loo and we had left the window open that night. Through the open window came the unmistakeable throb of what passes today for music, not as a muted background to what should have been the soothing nocturnal cricket symphony, but thumping sound so loud that I could have picked out the lyrics, had they been intelligible.

It doesn’t stop there… We had guests over for Christmas dinner and the guest list included two 10-year-olds. Our back garden is huge and we have several small dogs that love kids, so we opened the patio gates and let them all out to play. Within a short time, one of the kids came limping back, the bottom of his foot cut by a piece of brown glass…a broken beer bottle. The location of the broken glass and its proximity to a certain part of our garden wall left no doubt from whence it came, especially since Thandiswe regularly finds beer bottles and other vice-related debris in that particular part of the garden.

We’ve given up on talking to their mother, she of the Cape Coloured accent so broad that I literally cannot understand her. Hubby’s ear is more attuned, however, and her basic response to our complaints is that they are teenagers and she is incapable of controlling them. Well. D’UH…I never would have guessed! Besides, both times we made a complaint about her rude children being on our property, we suffered a robbery within 30 days. The first time I was sure it was a coincidence…now I am not so sure.

I, who enjoys temperate weather, find myself eagerly looking forward to the chill of winter and their pool becoming too cold to be attractive. In fact, if luck is with me, the winter months will bring new…indoor…amusements to these young delinquents and by summer next year, the pool will have had its newness wear off and they will find other entertainments to capture their attention…preferably in some other part of town.

You'd think water was an abundant resource hereabouts...

“Good morning, municipal offices.”

“I need to report that my water pressure has suddenly gone away. Who do I report this to?”

“You can tell me about it. What is wrong?”

“My water pressure is too low, something is wrong with the water supply to my house.”

“I don’t understand. What means your water pressure is too low?”

“The water coming into my house…when I turn on the taps I barely have any water.”

“What is your account number, please?”

“This has nothing to do with my account…my account is current. I need to know if there is a break in the water main or if someone is working on the water lines near me…and if not, then I need to report a fault.”

“What is your account number?”

“220440789.”

“Just a moment.” Long pause and background noises. “Sorry, that account doesn’t exist. Did you give me the right number?”

“220440789.” Another long pause and background noises. “Who is the account holder?”

“Mr. RN Smith. I am Mrs. Smith.”

“And what is your address?”

“ #24 Oudtshoorn Drive.”

“ #24 Outlook Drive.”

“No, Oudtshoorn…like the town…O-U-D-T-S-H-O-O-R-N.”

“I will make a query for you.”

“No! I don’t want you to make a query, I want you to tell me why I don’t have any water pressure and how long the problem is anticipated to last.”

“You will get that information from the query.”

“How long will that take?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“That is unacceptable!! If there is a water main break, that means water will be running for two days before someone fixes it. This is unsanitary…I don’t have enough water pressure to fill my toilet tank, so I can’t flush my toilets. I don’t want a query lodged, I want this reported now and I want to know what is going on.”

“I will make a query for you.”

“That is unacceptable. Let me speak to your supervisor.”

Extended pause and a long, muffled background conversation with a male voice.

“My supervisor can’t come to the phone. She is on a call.”

“Then put me in contact with someone who can help me.”

“I can help you.”

“You are not helping me at all, please connect me with someone who can.”

Click. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The line is dead.

Guess who is about to write a letter to the mayor…

How to quit cold turkey…and succeed

I smoked two packs of menthols per day for 18 years. I quit sometime in 1985-86 and have not had either a cigarette or a craving for one since. For me, it wasn't that difficult.

The key, I ultimately discovered, is that you have to be ready to quit...you have to really, truly, not want to smoke. In my case, I woke up one morning and as I lit my first cig of the day, the thought "I don't want to do this anymore" crossed my mind. And I acted on it.

I think what some folks forget is that there is more than simply stopping the act of smoking involved in quitting. There are a host of little habits and personal quirks that go with it and those have to be handled as well. My habits and foibles included:

1) I carried my pack of cigs with me where ever I went, except, perhaps, to the loo.
2) There were ashtrays conveniently located throughout the house, as well as lighters and matches.
3) I detested stale cigs...if the pack had been open more than 24 hours, I wouldn't smoke them
4) I bought by the carton, so there was always more.
5) I am fundamentally lazy, so everything was easily accessible
6) I don't like heights
7) A sense of true desperation will actually take precedence over my laziness

I quit on trash day, so I could get rid of the stash of cigs, matches, lighters, etc. very permanently. I put it all in the bin, put the bin to the curb, and waited anxiously for the truck to arrive. I felt as if I couldn't really quit until the truck came and took it all away. While waiting for the truck I prepared.

Since I had friends and family who smoked (and taking into account my frugal nature) I didn’t want to throw away the ashtrays. So, I washed them thoroughly and put them into the cupboard above the refrigerator…I don’t like heights and the fact that I would need to scale a ladder to get them would make me reluctant to retrieve them for anything other than an honoured guest.

I am one of those people who can stay home for days on end, car sitting idly in the garage, with complete contentment. But take my car away and I suddenly get cabin fever. Just knowing the car is there if I think I need to get out is, by itself, proof against my getting antsy. Knowing this about myself, I held one pack of cigs back from the trash bin, just so my subconscious knew that if I got desperate, there was a pack of smokes in the house.

Banking on my laziness, I decided to make the smokes unpleasant…knowing me, in a moment of weakness, I’d go for the nearest pack rather than drive to the store for a fresh one, so I made the nearest pack unpalatable. First, I ripped off the cellophane wrapper and tore the top off. This would make them stale…and every day they would get worse. Then I wrapped the pack loosely in paper towelling secured by a rubber band. This would make me work to get to them, giving me time to reassert my desire to stop. I put at least four layers of loose paper towelling (loose enough to allow air in so the cigs could go stale but tight enough to make unwrapping a nuisance) around the pack, each with its own rubber band. Then I put the cigs in the cupboard above the refrigerator, behind the ashtrays (to make them as difficult as possible to access), then closed and locked the cupboard door. The key to the cupboard, which looked like a padlock key, was put on a key ring with all the padlock keys for the gates and garden sheds (so it was not easily identified) and hung on the peg where the outdoor keys were usually kept, making the key relatively inaccessible.

The idea here was to give myself an out so I felt that I could change my mind if I wanted to…there were cigs in the house and although I had ditched all the matches and lighters, I had a gas stove if it came down to that level of desperation. Knowing I had the freedom to change my mind…made it easier to stick to my resolve.

Next, I had to address my physical habits. Nature abhors a vacuum…you cannot break a habit but you can substitute a good habit for a bad one. Habit number 1 was carrying that pack of smokes with me everywhere: I bought giant packs of sugar-free gum and carried one of them around.

My second habit was mindlessly lighting up. I would not even be consciously aware until after I had taken two or three drags off the cig…and sometimes I would light up, only to discover I already had one burning. So, I would automatically reach for that cig pack only to find a pack of gum, which would trigger my awareness and then I could consciously decide if I wanted another piece of gum or not.

Now, I don’t like chewing gum, so switching to a chewing gum habit wasn’t a problem for me, since I quit the gum habit easily, once I was smoke free.

The battle was largely psychological, and my fundamental laziness is what saved me in the long run. In those first days when the physical craving came, I would mentally assess what I had to do to get a cigarette:

Did I want to get dressed in “outside” clothes, put on make up, put out the animals, and drive to the store for a pack of smokes? No, not when there is a pack here in the house.

Did I want to hunt up the key, climb up a ladder, move all those heavy ash trays, then unwrap half a dozen rubber bands and paper towels to get to the cigs in the house? Not really…especially that ladder bit.

OK, if I was that desperate to brave the ladder…think of how they will taste. Dry, sickeningly sweet, harsh…do I want to do all that work just to get a cig that will taste nasty?

By the time I had pondered all of this, the craving would have passed, assisted of course by a wad of chewing gum.

I treated that gum pack like a cigarette pack and in the beginning it was my constant companion. Within a couple of weeks I was leaving it places and when my left hand automatically reached out for it and found nothing, my consciousness was triggered. Did I really want a piece of gum? Not really…

I sold that house in 1990 and as I was packing to move, I had to clean out the cupboard above the refrigerator. I found the key and opened the doors and found a stack of big, heavy ashtrays that went into the “garage sale” bin. As I removed the last ashtray there, behind it, was a wad of yellowed paper towelling. It was not until my fingers touched the rotting rubber bands that I realized what it was…my “rescue” pack of cigarettes, dried out and long-since forgotten. They went directly into the bin and for the first time I realize I was truly smoke free.

You can quit cold turkey, too, but first and most importantly, you must want to quit…really, really want to. Once you have the desire, then it is a matter of analyzing yourself and your patterns and creating for yourself roadblocks to picking up a cig…roadblocks that work for you because they address your own habits and peculiarities. Maybe ladders don’t bother you, but you hate sticking your hands into small dark spaces where spiders might lurk…then that’s where you hide your rescue pack. Maybe you don’t need a rescue pack because you don’t get antsy when you don’t have a back up…or perhaps you need to remove them all from the house because stale cigs don’t gross you out the way they did me.

The key is a true desire to quit combined with setting up your environment to make it difficult for you to resume. Together, those set you up to succeed.

I’ve been smoke-free for nearly 25 years…you can be too.

Still shaking my head over this one…

Years ago my late husband’s auntie died and we were the recipient of some of her things. Among them was a kitchen timer, circa 1935, made of yellow bakelite plastic in an Art Deco design. It was fully functional and I added it to my collection of kitchen gadgets and thingies.

Well, last week it finally turned up its little toes and died, so I took it upon myself to find a replacement. I went to Boardman’s, a store specializing in housewares, and walked up to a clerk and asked “Do you have kitchen timers?”

She looked baffled by my question.

“You know, a gadget you time food with when you are cooking?” I elaborated

She brightened “Oh, you mean an egg timer!”

I shook my head. To me, an egg timer runs three minutes for timing boiled eggs. I needed a real kitchen timer for timing things like boiling potatoes or baking bread.

“No,” I said, “A kitchen timer…you can set them for up to an hour to time stuff you are cooking…”

She shook her head. “No,” she said “the ones we have only go up to 60 minutes…”