I always wanted a pink house. There was a perfect house I  passed everyday on the freeway in San Diego: light pink, with white and gray trim. My grandmother loved the color, and I inherited many of her pink cashmere sweaters. And now that I think of it, her house was pink. 
Anyway, my other houses were gray-blue, yellow, gray (now green), and gray again (at least I haven't had to live in many tan houses). When we got this house I didn't like the pink, it seemed the wrong shade somehow. But with my new green base, and brown trim (which I'm going to freshen up as soon as the birds finish nesting under the eaves), I think I've achieved my own pink perfection.
These are our bloomers against the house, very happy!

I haven't written about these apocalyptic world events. Yet. This is our seventh week here. We started with four, myself and T, my younger son, and a resident. For two weeks, it was a lot of cooking and gardening, and some socializing, but things didn't seem that un-normal. When Linda left we had another three weeks with A here, doing projects, and I was still cooking because he eats a lot. Then he returned to the city to finish his senior year online. In our family high school has never been the big thing, but I still mourn for him, missing all those milestones.
Now we are alone. Although we've been together now for about 11 years, we've never lived together. We need to preserve those private hours, to keep sanity and politeness alive. Of course the Moonhuts are closed so we don't have money coming in, but we are savers, so are not panicking. Yet.
I've been down, with reason. This was always going to be a transition time for me. Finishing up teaching. Moving from the city to the country. Trying to find a new career (big project on paper, but right now far from possible). Releasing my identity as "Mom," now that both my kids are moving away into adulthood. That's a big one. But all the things in our lives right now are huge: our environment, our politics, our health, our livelihoods.
My girlfriends and I meet on the hated Zoom once a week for HH. It's not the same, but better than nothing. We've decided next time to have five things we are looking forward to, because last week I told them there was nothing coming up in my life. 

So, a realistic list:
1. Summer storms
2. Our pool getting finished
3. Hearing  back from advisors on my big project
4. Getting back to my indoor exercise routine
5. Receiving a mail art project back from a friend in Sweden.

A list that is less realistic:
1. Art openings
2. Iceland next January
3. Downtown Los Angeles, coffee and restaurants
4. Residents at the DD
5. Hugging my family, seeing my sister, having dinner parties, going thrift shopping, wearing nice clothes, traveling, hearing live music, hmmm I'm making myself worse with this list. 

Summer storms.

From our front door we can see a single lonely house up on Campbell Hill. We finally took a hike up to inspect it late yesterday afternoon. It belonged to James Cagney (1899-1986), who came to the desert in the 1950s thru the 1970s when he needed a break from Hollywood. Read about it at the Historical Society here.
A friend who has lived in 29 since he was a child remembers it and also John Hilton's house, who started the 29 Palms Art Gallery. Luckily the Hilton house is being well cared for (@johnhiltonhouse), but Cagney's is abandoned. Apparently the family refused to sell it. There's no fence or protection, so looks like homeless have moved in and out, and part of it has been burned. It's a lovely site, with killer views. The bones of the house are beautiful, wish it wasn't looking like this.