Family
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Friday Randomness
OK, I know I said I don’t care about baseball, or sports in general, but I must admit I got sucked into this series. The drama of it all captivated me, and the scores kept flopping from one team to the next. First SF kicked KC’s butt. Then KC kicked SF’s butt. Back and forth, and it sometimes felt like you weren’t watching the same teams from one night to the next. After the first game, when SF won 7 to 1, I was kind of disgusted with the local press. It was very smug and sure of SF superiority. Sort of like, “Of course we’re going to win, it’s…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends! Our Friends to the North celebrate Thanksgiving in much the same way we in the U.S. do. Get together with family, eat some turkey, stuffing, sides, maybe a pumpkin pie. Very nice. My loyal readers will remember that my darling husband, Ted, was born in Canada, and has citizenship there, though he’s not claimed it in any way at this point. Because we are a family that enjoys celebrating life when we can, we like to have a Thanksgiving feast in October, just us, and then again in November, with Ted’s family (my parents came to California last year and joined in, which was…
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Maya’s Senior Ball
Last night was the Senior Ball for Maya and her classmates. The ball was held in San Francisco, at the new Exploratorium (which Ted and I have not yet seen). They started out with pictures in a local park, then moved on to dinner, then a limo ride into San Francisco for the dance. Home again, then to an after party/sleepover at a friend’s house. She drug herself in at about 6:30 this morning, and as of this writing, is still asleep. I remember my Senior Prom well, what a good time I had, and how nostalgic I started feeling for my classmates, and how we were on the verge…
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Still Alive
Yes, I’m still alive. I know, it’s been awhile. I hate writing that at the beginning of a blog post, but somehow, I find myself doing it more and more often. Today I took a few minutes and looked at blogs that I link to from my blogroll. So many of them are defunct, or might as well be. Last post in 2011, 2012, 2013. I should clean them up, move them out. But I don’t use an RSS reader or anything like that. My way of checking to see if you have a new blog post is to click my link, and go look. So I keep them. I…
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Doing Your Part
(Jesus the Homeless, by Timothy Schmalz) Last Saturday morning found Maya and me (and her friend) in San Francisco, handing out meals to homeless people. We had done this once before, when she was in 7th or 8th grade. In that instance, it was for a class, Teens Around the World, in which they learned about kids in other cultures. A group of 10 or 15 kids, the teacher, and several parents went into the city and handed out bag lunches, which the student had assembled the day before in class. It was kind of an amazing experience, and I think it helped Maya to overcome her fear of homeless…
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The Big 5-0
Richard is turning 50 today. How can this be? It’s a shocker in some ways. He told me recently that he was more affected by my 20th birthday than he was his own. I think I feel that way about his 50th. I mean, What? Then again, 50 is the new 40, or the new 30, or whatever. Is it weird that I now look at pictures of my grandmother in her early 50s, and my parents, and think they look young? They looked so old and mature and responsible to me then. Now I wonder if they knew what they were doing. I don’t question that Richard knows what…
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Happy Birthday Maya and Melissa!
Happy Happy Birthday to my wonderful sisters, Maya and Melissa, of whom I am so proud and whom I love SO much. I wish we lived closer, so I could see you and your beautiful families more often. When we do see each other, though, I enjoy that time so much. I’m very glad we were able to see each other this summer.
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20 Years
Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Ted’s father. We’ll be going to visit his grave and honor his memory. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years already. Pops was born in Guyana, came to the United States for college, went to medical school and became a doctor. He returned to Guyana for a few years, married Ted’s mom, and they moved to England so he could study ophthalmology there. When life in Guyana got to be a little crazy (independence in the works), he got a job at a Kaiser hospital in California. The immigration rules at the time were pretty strict, and they were unable…
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Good Advice
Many years ago, I received what I consider to be very good advice. I was talking to my boss. Ted and I had been together for 7 years…it was the anniversary of our first date, which we had always celebrated. But now we were married…so should we still celebrate our first date? So I mentioned to my boss that we had always celebrated our date-a-versary, but it felt strange now that we were married. He said something like, “Life can be hard, and sometimes is very difficult. We should celebrate life’s joys whenever we can.” I liked that advise. I still like that advise. Life is indeed sometimes very difficult.…
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Lemon Laws
I saw this story the other day, about a man in Germany so fed up with his lemon of a BMW (a $160,000 lemon, btw) that he had been trying, unsuccessfully, for 5 years to get fixed, that he took it to the Frankfurt Motor Show and smashed it with a sledgehammer. Happily I’ve never been in this situation, but the story reminded me of my grandfather, who was well known in Stockton back in the day, as he was a local businessman and on the city council as well. Grandpa used to buy a new car every year or two, and he paid with cash. In my mind, he…
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Quinoa Salad with Oranges
When we were in Portland last month, my step-mom Julie made a wonderful dinner for the family on the night before the party. She had lemon chicken, green salad, pasta salad, quinoa salad, and a lot of patience. I say that because as she was cooking, family kept coming in and telling her things they didn’t like that were included in the recipes she was making. If I were trying to get chicken and three salads on the table, as well as drinks, bread, and so on, for 10 or so people, this would have bugged the crap out of me. She is perhaps used to it, though, as it…
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Catching Up
I’m a bit behind here. Somehow I think when I have time off from work, I’ll have more time to write here, and to read your blogs as well. Instead, I find myself doing other things, away from the computer. I guess that’s a good thing, living my life and all, but still, I’m thinking of spending a bit of time this morning poking around blogs. But first, I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to. As you know, we went to Portland last weekend for my father’s birthday party. We flew up on Friday and home on Tuesday, and we saw family every day while we were…
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Staycation
Ted and me, photobombing Maya, Chloe, and Justin after the cable car ride. This was a lovely week in our humble abode. My sister, Maya, and her two children came and stayed with us for 4 days. They live in Portland, and decided to fly down and play tourist in the Bay Area, and spend some quality time with us. YAY! One of the attractions at the Musee Mecanique, which is always good for some morbid fun. They were interested in riding cable cars, going to Fisherman’s Wharf, and walking the Golden Gate Bridge. All of that is West of us, in my favorite city, San Francisco. We had thought…
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Revenge
There’s something about grandchildren, where they exact revenge upon the parents, and the grandparents sit back and laugh. When I was young, I did this or that or the other thing to my mom, which surely drove her crazy. She survived whatever it was, but then, when Maya came along and did to those same things to me, and drove me nuts, HA! My mom was so happy. Grandchildren are the best revenge, right? What I didn’t know before, was that children can also be some kind of revenge exacted upon your grandparents as well. (See how I skipped an entire generation there? Crazy, huh?) Way back when I was…
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Small Victories & Occasional Randomness
I went to the store the other day, in need of a new pair of jeans. I have a certain brand and cut that I like, and alas, they are phasing that cut out. No big pile with four washes from which to choose, which is how it was the last time I went to the store. So I looked all over, dug through pile after pile, and the only pair I found was 7 sizes too big. Rats. Every other pair in the store was a stupid low rise cut, meaning I can’t bend over without people knowing what kind of underwear I have on. I don’t like…