Flu season has started in California and I woke up today feeling good for the first time in awhile. It seems like I have been sick for a long time and the doctor says that I had a "serious flu". I missed school last week and I missed the printing of our second edition of the "Red Hill Reporter" for the semester. Gretchen brought me a copy on Friday and it had been over a week since I had seen her because we didn't want to get her sick. It was good to see her and to read the article that Tom wrote about the woman who was saved by her neighbor in last weeks flood. It has rained a lot the past 2 weeks and it seemed like I was really "under the weather" last week because of all the rain. Dad said that the rain is good because we are in a "drought", but that unfortunately it has caused some damage to the area.

Dad and cousin Bruce went to Los Angeles over the weekend to attend meetings and "rally" against the selling of our underground spring to "Water Barons". "Why is that bad?" I asked and Dad said that our town will loose the "exclusive usage of the small spring" to a big company that will sell it to people all over the state in plastic bottles. He also said that the company (which also makes chocolate) has said that because of the Colorado river that we don't need all the water in our spring and that our town will make money from the company buying the water from the county. Cousin Bruce said that because of the sale of our spring that our town and others in the county will eventually have to pay more to use water. I guess some people at the meeting got angry about the plan to take water away by using big plastic bags, which seems strange, and that the process pollutes and disrupts the environment. I asked "like what?" and Dad said that some ponds will eventually dry up and we won't be able to go fishing anymore in some of them. This made me mad! Now, I really know why Dad and Cousin Bruce are fighting the plan and I told them that I would tell people at school and write an article for this months "Reporter". They said that everyone should know about this problem and that then maybe more people would come out to fight against loosing our spring water. Even Grandpa Jem wrote a letter to our congressman asking for his support in the fight, which is great because usually Grandpa tells Dad that he is wasting his time and it was good to see Grandpa care about something which has helped him to feel better lately. For a while, Grandpa seemed depressed because he couldn't do very much and is in pain a lot, but now he talks with Dad more and even put on his boots yesterday afternoon and walked all the way to the end of the property and sat by the old pond with our youngest dog Max. Afterwards, Mom painted a color picture of Grandpa and Max by the barn and I later scanned it into the computer. Mom has gotten really good at painting and does it more than pottery now. While Dad and cousin Bruce were off fighting for the right to use our own water and keep our pond, Mom, Grandpa and a sick-but-getting-better "Boy" had a really nice saturday at the Lazy Eye Ranch.

"Drought" means "a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall; a shortage of water resulting from this" and an example of its use is "this year's drought was devastating to cotton growers".