I have kept the oil platform so far out of the pictures from the Elwood Beach. But it’s there alright, sort of a pimple out on the edge of the horizon. There’s oil in the Santa Barbara channel, the one running between the coast and further out the Channel Islands. It’s very load grade stuff; expensive to refine, but possibly the price of gas these days makes it worth the effort.
I bring it up partly because, as of yesterday, a ship was moored just off shore, with a couple of smaller tug like boats hovering about it. I suspect it has something to do with the oil platform.
The sky this morning is once again yucky from the fire, and at the club, when I go to workout, if anybody is in the locker room somebody is sure to bring up the topic of the fire, how long it has been burning, how long it will burn, and what the heck we are breathing into our lungs. One fellow knows a man with terrible allergies, and since the start of the fire he has been confined to his air conditioned house. Another went out golfing to find his older golfing buddy wearing one of those masks.
One may locate some fairly imposing pictures of the fire plume at.
While out at the beach yesterday afternoon, Carol got a call on her cell. Her mother had been taken a few hours before to the hospital. Her breathing had become very labored. She has congestive heart failure and that, apparently, can produce fluids that weigh on the lungs. It looked as if we might be driving down to San Diego this morning, but this morning the doctor reported some improvement.
When I first heard about it and though we were going to drive down, I don’t know but I felt as if I had been hit in the chest with a sack of cement. I just wanted to sit down right there in the dirt and not move. I don’t think I have come to grips with how exhausting these last 18 months or so have been, what with WB dying about a year and half ago, Joan dying 4 months ago, and now to watch Carol’s mom preparing for her last exit.
