If you should ever have to spend time at another person’s house when they aren’t there, be sure and find out where the main water turn-off valve is.

It will save you a lot of grief, especially if no one is answering their cell while water gushes from the top of the tank, inundating the bathroom and moving on to the bedroom floor. Lapping at the bedspread. The internet did not save me here because I was sloshing around, and honestly, it did not occur to me to google.

Unfortunately, the bathroom floor did not have sloping sides and a drain hole in the center.

Thirty minutes later, when one of the people I tried to locate finally called, he told me to turn on the taps at the tub to lessen the pressure. The tub began rapidly filling up even though the drain was open. Then he said to reach under the toilet tank and turn off the water there, but that it would be difficult. It was, it sure was.

Clean-up was not my job, thank goodness.

This morning, I dreamed that I had enrolled in a class taught by Martha Stewart. I was in deep trouble early on when she found out I didn’t have a maid, which I needed in order to finish our first project: an elegant party for elegant people. She kept making a dismissive gesture in my direction, saying to the other students under her breath, ‘She doesn’t have a maid?’

Then we got to the hands-on part, garnishing the food with caviar. I had the bright red kind, which horrified Martha. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Well, Jeez, I was a student, how could I afford the Beluga stuff, not to even mention a maid?

I woke up feeling low. But yeah, the main water turn-off.

The sun was a vivid red-orange this morning as it rose over the morning glories.

Someone once wrote that their world in the late afternoon looked as if it were immersed in a glass of iced tea. Smoke from the Lick fire is coloring the Bay Area with a yellow tinge murkier than tea, but promising sunrises and sunsets of spectacular brilliance.