Such drama!

There were two layouts I had in my existing collection that fit other challenges for the crop I am working on. one of them was this one, Tarnished Gold.

The assignment was, for "Drama Class," to do a layout about something dramatic. And for those who don't know the saga behind this layout, has it ever been dramatic. Hopefully, the series finale is coming soon, and Jurupa Valley will get the stolen money back and live happily ever after.

The clincher has come, it did so Sept. 1 when the Legislature passed legislation to restore the $6 million + each year Jurupa Valley had been counting on, but has never received because the state redirected Vehicle License Funds away from cities on June 28, 2011 - two days before Jurupa Valley's official incorporation. We were supposed to build a surplus during our first year, and we did. It was $3 million instead of $10 million. We were supposed to have a budget of $24 million this year, and right now we don't. Without the VLF, it's only $18 million. We cut our police force by 10 percent, but how much can a city cut when it's just getting started? For us, there would have been no way we could have cut enough. We will be toast if Gov. Brown does not sign the legislation. He has until Sept. 30. The Senate passed the legislation unanimously, the Assembly by a more than-two thirds vote.

But there are some villians in this drama. Most county governments, except Riverside of course, are opposed to this legislation because if more new cities incorporate, there is a slight potential it will mean less money for their existing cities law enforcement programs. At this time, the legislation is Jurupa Valley's only hope for survival, and will greatly help three other new cities in Riverside County (Eastvale, Menifee and Wildomar) and 144 others throughout California that incorporated territory and would have to make cutbacks somewhere to serve all of the new people without VLF. These villians are worried about what could happen, and in their mind, the potential inconvenience of that  trumps Jurupa Valley's survival and the ill effects on 147 other cites. The Los Angeles Times is also a villain in this drama, as it callously dismisses the four most severely affected cities as "unnecessary."

So, I am asking anyone who lives in California - especially ANYWHERE in Riverside County - to go to Jurupa Valley's website (www.jurupavalley.org) and find addresses of the governor's staff to write letters encouraging his support for AB 1098. This is important in such places as Fontana (where a large annexation happened) and in east Los Angeles County (where there is perennial talk of creating ONE MORE CITY), and in Madera County where it is hoped the orderly development of Rio Mesa will eventually lead to both the much less orderly developed Oakhurst and Rio Mesa joining Madera and Chowchilla as cities. In 2008, Oakhurst said no to cityhood the day Wildomar said yes. Oakhurst probably loves their 20/20 hindsight now, but I'm sure those people want the option to revisit cityhood some day.

And it's really important for Jurupa Valley, and for me.

Update (12/15/12): I was just looking at this and realized I failed to update all that the drama continues. Gov.  Brown did veto the bill in mid-September. We now have elected a Democrat to the state Senate, he is sworn in, and fixing this problem will be his second highest priority. His top priority is getting a medical school at UC Riverside. I wish him well on both endeavors, although I wish his priorities were reversed.

And now, three months later, we've all learned the Governor is being treated for prostate cancer. I have to say I hope he gets well soon, but I also have to wonder - Karma?

Thoughts about Rubidoux

To pass the time on some hot summer days, I wrote an essay about Rubidoux, the oldest and most urbanized community in Jurupa Valley. Then I took a picture of some pretty trees, replicated them in my art journal, and added a bit of my original essay.

The prompt from CSI Color Stories International prompted me to draw the trees again and write yet another short essay about relaxing and drawing trees at the Rubidoux Library.  An then I wrote the epic essay posted below.

Update: Summer's over! The scary finances I've been weaving into this essay were improved in one way already, and likely will be vastly more improved tomorrow. And then even more vastly improved on Saturday, when Don starts getting his Air Force pension.

I haven't had the best summer, and that may be part of why I haven't been diligent with this blog. But that's an excuse, a copout even. Because today's probably one of the worst days of days that have been going progressively downhill, and in that downhill spiral, I've come up with something good to write.

I have to be honest about the direction my life is going right now. Other than the blessing of having two job interviews this month (bringing the grand total I've had all year to five), I pretty much am an old, possibly retired lady of 50. I have all the time in the world it seems. And of course, nowhere near enough money to match that time. In fact, all this week,  EDD decided to hold up funds until they figure out that they have to extend my claim instead of giving me a new one, which in essence means they've decided my husband and I do not actually need an income to survive.

 Meanwhile, my husband, who just turned 60, is not quite in the same situation. He is very busy completing requirements for a course at CBU. In fact, CBU is on summer break, but they're requiring him to complete some extra work so they will give him transfer credit for a course he took at University of Phoenix awhile back. There are two phases to this. First, he tutors a third-grade boy at an elementary school. Second, he goes home and completes very time intensive assignments related to that tutoring. Except that he has not stayed home to do this lately. Because of the extreme heat the past two weeks, he has opted most of the days to go to the local library instead.

Now, when Don goes somewhere I have the (very unappealing to me) choice of staying home without a car, or going with him. The elementary school isn't any of the ones near here. Because when he started the tutoring project in June, with a different boy who is now in fourth grade, it was for a summer quarter course at CBU. Problem was, the local schools were getting ready to go on summer break at that time. So, he had to find a school in Corona-Norco School District, which has year-round elementary schools, at which he could do this tutoring. That ended up being Eastvale Elementary School, which is of course in Eastvale. That's a 20-minute drive from here, maybe 25. Don tutors for 90 minutes, so that really doesn't give me enough time to justify coming back home. So, in spite of financial troubles, I have at least a small Cafe Americano at Starbucks in Eastvale, and often a medium-sized Carmel Macchiato and/or a scone. In spite of having no money in the checking account, I probably will even do that on Monday, because we do have money on Don's Starbuck's card. I think EDD is going to make a determination about my claim Monday afternoon, which will hopefully mean we have money on Tuesday. If not, we will limp through this entire week as best we can, and at long last, Don will start receiving his military pension next Saturday!

When at Starbucks, I spend the time checking my email. my Facebook, some job boards and Two Peas in A Bucket's message boards. I may need more time than my less than 90 minutes at Starbucks to do all that, but usually by late morning, or early afternoon at the latest, I am done with my daily computer routine. And there are still hours to kill. I often fill them with scrapbooking, but I'm not always so motivated.

I actually started a new hobby, art journaling, earlier this year. I of course also have the hobby of running, but that one has been a little difficult when it's 90 degrees at 6 a.m. and cooled back down to that at 9 p.m. Daytime temps in mid-August soared to well over 100, maybe 110. We just needed to find a cool place and sit, and that's the library.

I've made it a rule that I will buy NO new art supplies for the art journal, so I tend to rely on my old acrylic paints and very old scraps of paper, along with other scrapbooking and stamping supplies. to make this art journal . Since I can't really take bits of paper, paint, ink, etc. to the library, sI spent most of the time while we were there reading scrapbooking books. I'm grateful this is a large library, so large I wasn't able to read all these books during this period we were hanging out there. But another part of the reason I didn't finish them all is I just got tired of reading books all day. So, I tried to do the journaling part of my art journals on two of the days.

I'm using prompts I found on the website daisyyellowsquarespace.com. It's one of the best art journal blogs out there, and her "Kick Start Your Art Journal" archived section was the best thing for a beginning art journaler. I'm actually almost done working my way through the kick start prompts, and will soon be using her more recent, always updated posts for more great ideas. But recently, I was working on a prompt that suggested I find an unusual place to journal. To me, that would not be a library. But it would be the Bakers' Restaurant about one mile down the street from the library.

The library and Bakers are on Mission Drive, which is as "downtown" as you can get in Jurupa Valley. Mission Drive is the heart of Rubidoux, which was a community before the turn of the 20th century. Rubidoux alone is a community of more than 20,000 residents, so I'm not really sure why it never incorporated into a city prior to 2011. It certainly could have been a city in 1911,  and by the early 21st Century was a blighted semi-urban area.

Before and even for a short time after the city incorporated, Riverside County had used what was known as "redevelopment money" (another source of funds the state of California has taken away from local governments) to revive what had been a stale neighborhood. Buildings were cleaned up and given attractive storefronts, in fact the library and a few other county-run buildings were built from the ground up with redevelopment. Also, the median along the entire length of Mission Drive, at least from north of the library to the Riverside city limit, was spruced up.

The good work was either in the process or started shortly after we moved to Jurupa Valley in 2006. I want to say, but can't remember for sure, that the huge flowering trees were there before the project began, and redevelopment simply allowed the county to give them a good trim. In either case, they are now attractive trees and a dominant feature of what you see when you look at "downtown" in my city.

After writing an essay at Bakers, about Rubidoux and its troubles, I returned to the library and took a photograph while stopped at one of the four lights between the restaurant and the library. The trees dominate the photo. These particular trees were in the middle of the street in front of a mostly vacant lot, where a grocery store would have been built had the state allowed Riverside County to keep enough redevelopment to finish the project.

So, when I got back to the library, I decided to draw a picture of the trees and write a little bit about Rubidoux in my art journal. And a few days later, back home in the Jurupa Hills part of Jurupa Valley, I drew another picture of the trees, glued them to a 12 x 12 cardstock sheet and journaled about my life as it is this weekend. Doing that makes my life, and Rubidoux, look a little better.