“Are you in, as they say, The Industry?” I asked the man I’d just met, my tone of voice putting imaginary air quotes around the term. It’s what people in the movie business call their place of work, and it always makes me smile. I’m from New Jersey. When I hear “The Industry” I think of smokestacks. Not filmmaking. But after eight years, I’m getting used to it, along with many other terms.

Like “big rig” instead of tractor trailer and “crash” instead of accident, and of course “freeway” instead of highway but that last term may be one that’s headed for oblivion now that toll roads are being introduced. (When I was in high school, I was among Girls and Boys State alumni invited to appear on television with the Governor. “What will I ask him?” I queried my family, desperate to not sound stupid. “Ask him how long the tolls will remain on the Garden State Parkway just now being built.” I did and his answer was one that also makes me smile: “Just until the highway is paid for.” Yeah, right.)

When we first got here, the radio traffic reports kept talking about “sig alerts.” “What do they mean by that?” I asked the California daughter. “It means a traffic accident,” she said, her Jersey roots not completely obliterated. But why sig? Turns out the term honors a long-time LA radio executive, Loyd Sigmon who invented a system for speedily reporting news of traffic problems. His only compensation for the invention was having it named SigAlert, according to snopes.

I acclimated pretty quickly when it came to naming freeways, referring to them as “the Two” and “the Five” rather than Route Two or Route Five. And I do avoid such roadways whenever possible by taking what are called “surface streets,” even though that sounds as if all others are elevated.

Another LA habit I apparently have acquired is to give distances in driving time, preferably using the most optimal times possible. “Every time I ask you how far you are from a place, you say ‘twenty minutes,’” a friend back East said. “That can’t be possible.” Well, no, it’s not. But a lot of places are twenty minutes away, give or take some. (In New Jersey, our home was fourteen miles from Manhattan, which could have easily translated to an hour and a half on some days, so I think there you’d rather say mileage.)

So excluding Surfer Dude and Valley Girl phrases that I never come in contact with (I still don’t know if “gnarly” is a good thing or a bad thing), I am learning to talk LA. Now, if only I didn’t have to pump my own gas. (In New Jersey where it’s still illegal to do so, a certain relative with a conservative bent would fulminate about that situation every time he came to visit. “That’s just the unions making work for people,” he’d say, to which I’d reply, “And that is a bad thing because…???”)

OK, enough car talk. Next thing to consider is why sticks of butter here are shaped shorter than conventional butter dishes call for. But that’s a question for another time.

They’d been talking about the coming storms for days. Everyone knew, a small one due one night and then a really big one hitting all weekend long. The supermarket was crowded with people stocking up. A neighbor quickly cleaned out his gutters. And with the first storm came traffic accidents and closed highways. Really, just like the rest of the country. But this is Southern California and the precipitation was not snow but rain. Much needed in a state experiencing an unusually long-running drought.

Before we all had a chance for dancing in the streets, however, the experts warned that no matter how much rain falls in the next few days, it will still not be enough to end the draught. Farmers in the Central Valley will still leave some fields unplanted  ̶  “higher food prices!” your brain telegraphs. Ditto for vineyards  ̶  “oh no, not Buck-Forty-Nine Chuck!” (Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wine, formerly referred to as “Two Buck Chuck” and elsewhere as “Three Buck Chuck” is now during the Never-Ending Great Recession our house wine.)

Another neighbor just finished having a whole new roof installed and very nicely did not act smug when I asked for the roofer’s name. We’d known our roof needed work but we’d put it off   ̶  “hey, it never rains here.”

I’ve tried to be discreet this winter about the gorgeous 80-degree sunny weather we’ve experienced while the rest of the country had hideous polar vortex repercussions. The New Yorker daughter has sent snow pictures taken from her apartment window and even a video of the flakes gently falling. “But it’s beautiful,” I’d reply when she’d tell of the unrelenting wind and cold. The Los Angeles daughter, in New York for business, also sent a picture of a snowy street accompanied by a rude comment. “Still beautiful, though,” I said.

Ed does not share my nostalgia for snow.  The best part of the house sale back east, he says, was seeing the snow shovel walk out the door.

“Do you miss snow?” a longtime California resident asked me. “I do,” I told him. As long as you can remain inside, get someone to plow the driveway for you and not have to chip away at an ice-encrusted car, it’s really quite lovely to be snowed in. It’s a good time to tackle projects you’ve been avoiding like emptying out a cabinet and cleaning its contents. No snow days is probably why our cabinets here are filled with dusty objects. We’ll see whether a rainy weekend helps.

Those things that some of us call senior moments are not necessarily signs of early dementia. They’re just an indication that we’ve lived so long, our brains are full. If we have trouble remembering a word, it’s because we have to scroll through so very many words we have accumulated through the years till we hit on the right one.

That comforting thought came in a paper from “Topics in Cognitive Science” describing the work of linguistic researchers from the University of Tubingen in Germany and reported by Benedict Cary in yesterday’s New York Times. It’s always been a given in psychology that, starting at about age 25, the brain ages, and these researchers started with the same assumption. But they employed data mining based on theories of information processing, Cary writes, and “used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases…Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. And when the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging ‘deficits’ largely disappeared.”

See? That senior moment was just your brain riffling through the files.

As people who worked our entire lives with words, Ed and I continually use one another as living, breathing thesauruses (thesaurusi?): “What’s that word that means putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward? You know, not running but…” “Walking?” “Yes, that’s it. Thanks.”

I exaggerate but sometimes the elusive word is almost as simple. The same is true with spelling. How can a person who knows how to spell antidisestablishmentarianism now not know how to spell judgment? And thank goodness for Spell Check. When I can’t ask someone else, there’s always the tactic of typing the word as close to accurately as I can and turning myself over to the computer gods for assistance. Or asking my husband.

Our desks are across from one another. “Excuse me, can I interrupt you for a second?” “You just did.” “Oops, sorry. But since I have, what is the word that means…”

The ban on plastic grocery bags has been in effect since the first of the year in Los Angeles, one of 90 cities and counties in California to enact such a ban.  Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully three times to outlaw the bags statewide but now think they’ve reached a compromise that has a chance of passing.

Environmentalists are pleased. Dog owners, at least this one, not so.

Shortly after the new law took effect, I went to Petco to research what nearly everyone indelicately refers to as “poop bags.” The shelves were stripped almost bare but I was able to learn the bags come in rolls or packs, biodegradable or not, even scented if your sensitivities demand it. I returned home and began using up the free bags we’d collected from the supermarket and other stores. Eventually the day came when I had to return to Petco and become a buyer of bags.

Plastic bags are a necessity of life for the owner of any dog but especially a large healthy dog – unless you’re a pig of a person who refuses to pick up after your pet. And I understand the environmental concern for landfills overrun with bags that will remain non-decomposed until the end of time. But instead of a law banning plastic grocery bags, why not a law stipulating bags be biodegradable? According to today’s Los Angeles Times, the proposed legislation suggests a 10-cent charge for “bags made of recycled paper, reusable plastic and compostable materials…In addition, the state would allow businesses to tap $2 million in recycling funds to retool manufacturing plants and retrain workers who make plastic bags.” Why not “retool and retrain” to make the bags biodegradable?

I know biodegradable plastic bags work. When we moved across country several years ago and unpacked, the massive amount of paper and other packing materials overwhelmed the huge trash bins the city provides for weekly pickups. So we began filling large black plastic bags and storing them outside on the deck until there was room in the bins. After a while, the bags began to melt away in the sun. We’d unintentionally purchased biodegradable ones.

The stores I visit have signs at the entrance reading “Don’t forget your bags” which invariably causes me to reel around and return to the car where a supply of reusable bags now resides. But wouldn’t it be nice if once inside the store there was another sign that read “Because we no longer have the expense of supplying plastic bags, we are reducing our prices by X percent.” Or even “paying our employees more.” Whatever. But no. No bags and if you want a paper bag it’s now 10 cents.

There are other ways to deal with problems. In some parts of Africa, plastic bag litter on the terrain is sometimes called “African flowers.” In Burkina Faso we saw people on the streets selling water in small plastic bags knotted at the top. The buyer bites off one corner of the bag to drink the water and yes, probably frequently drops the empty bag to the ground. We met a Belgian man who had observed that situation and decided to start a business. His bags are filled with pure drinking water unlike those of the street sellers and are made of a heavier plastic. And yes, they’re more expensive. But, he told us, the people like them because they keep the empty bags and use them for other things. It’s been several years but I hope his business has continued to flourish.

In a bookstore recently the checkout clerk offered me a plastic bag. I accepted of course because plastic bags have become treasured. But I asked her why her store is exempt from the ban. “Because our bags can be used for other things,” she said. Huh?!  I thought, can’t they all?