Year end review 2020-Part 5-July/August

July

For 4th of July, we had a socially distanced get together with the Frosts at Conejo Creek Park, at which we also celebrated little Andy’s graduation from high school. We sat six feet apart and watched as Deonna’s boys played with stomp-rockets, a toy that they had to run up to and stomp on with their foot, to launch a spinner toy. They had so much fun competing to see who could get them to fly furthest! Then it was time for Alex & Athan to learn how to do cart wheels. I think Travis and Deonna and maybe Kenny took turns demonstrating and explaining the techniques. Athan gave up pretty quickly but Alex kept trying until he did a pretty good one.







Brayden got passed between his grandma and grandpa while all that was going on. He didn’t seem to mind.

July 8-Vladi received pictures of the celebration of the Bat Mitzvah of his youngest niece, Celia. She turned 13 in May. He stays in communication with his sister-in-law even though his brother passed away. His nieces and nephews are in Israel.

Rivkah, David and Isaac holding Celia.




I worked on a slideshow/video for Debbie’s birthday July 10th, consisting of pictures and tapes that we made in 2003 when the kids and I visited the lake house (still under construction at the time.) I also found some letters that she had written to me and sent those to her as well. She was quite touched.

Gideon’s birthday was in July also and Vladi and I talked to him and Yael on Facetime, where we captured this still shot.

I think it was right after that that Olya asked if I wanted to spend a little time keeping Yael busy on Facetime while Gideon did a couple of classes and she-Olya-tried to work from home. I thought it sounded like fun but I also think I over-prepared and overdid it because after a couple of days, Yael was no longer interested. I felt bad. I so want to spend time with them in person. I love children in general and them in particular. And I feel like I have so many ideas for things I’d like to do with them. But Facetime on a phone is not an ideal mode of communication for a 4-year-old.

August

So as we slogged into August, there was still no light at the end of the tunnel of this Virus. . .

But, on the 21st we celebrated our 10th anniversary by taking a drive toward San Luis Obispo. Along the way, we found a place to take a walk in Avila Beach where there were big fancy expensive houses on one side of a street overlooking a beach that didn’t look like one that a lot of people could easily get to. There was a real nice walking path and we had fun looking at the way rich people could live.


 

After we took our walk, we continued on into San Luis Obispo. We walked around there for awhile, looking for a nice place to have dinner. We found a place called NOVO restaurant and bar that fit the bill perfectly. We were seated on their beautiful patio, shaded by huge old trees and overlooking a greenbelt with a stream running through it. And omg was the food ever good! And beautifully presented. We felt very content with our celebration.








Zuli turned 7 on August 26 (National Dog Day). Janeen discovered that both of our dogs liked edamame.

Year end review 2020 Part 4-May/June

May

In May, I got an email from 23nme (a DNA website that Vladi and I submitted samples to last year) telling me that a Dianne Davidson wanted to connect with me. It turned out that she was the daughter of my first cousin, Cindy, who is the daughter of my mom’s brother Jim. Because my mom passed away when I was very young, and my mom’s siblings lived in Texas and West Virginia, and my dad didn’t put any effort into staying in touch with them, my relatives on my mom’s side have mostly been a mystery to me.

The trip that Vladi and I had been planning to take to West Virginia for Memorial Day (before the pandemic burst on the scene) was going to be a first time meeting with the daughters of Charles, another of my mom’s brothers. So to hear from someone from Jim’s family was a surprise and delight.

When Dianne contacted me, I was thrilled to be put in touch with Cindy. We began a torrent of back-and-forth emails. Over the next month or so we were comparing stories, sending pictures, and telling each other about our families. I learned that she had three grown kids that are about the same age as my kids and that Cindy has two siblings that also live in Texas. She is the only one of her family who married and had kids. As I got to know about Cindy and her husband, I kept thinking that they would get along famously with my sister Barb and her husband as they seemed to share an interest in travelling and adventure and they share an active lifestyle that keeps them fit and healthy. Cindy and her husband have even climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa!

Even though our emails to each other covered a lot ground, I feel like we only scratched the surface of learning about each other.

I don't know if I can adequately express how much it meant to me to be able to communicate with a cousin from my mom's side of the family. I've always loved the cousins on my dad's side, but there is a whole part of my identity that feels hazy. Cindy expressed similar feelings. At one point she said, "I just wish we had known about each other sooner. We could have been spending time together." Exactly! Because of the pandemic, I still haven't been able to meet her face to face, but as soon as we are able, Vladi and I plan to visit all my new-found cousins. Since Cindy and her husband live in Texas I mentioned to her that I’d love to visit where my mom grew up (which is not too far from where she lives.) She seemed excited to do that with me. I hope it will work out.

These are some of the pictures that Cindy shared with me.



This is Cindy with her husband at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which they subsequently climbed.



And here they are at the top



And this is Cindy with her daughter Diane. Diane owns a meal delivery business in San Francisco.

As I was writing to her, I also started writing to my cousin Frankie, who is one of my Uncle Charles’ daughters. We sent quite a few messages back and forth as well and I even spoke to her on the phone. If the virus is under control by Memorial Day 2021, we are still hoping to attend the reunion in West Virginia. I wish I could get all my sisters there with me. It would be such a grand family reunion!

Also in May . . .



One of the businesses that was considered non-essential and therefore closed was the nail salons, and by mid-May, I desperately needed a pedicure. Christy had been learning the skill in cosmetology school and offered to give me one. I was so impressed with the thorough and professional job she did!



On May 20th we purchased a second avocado tree on the 10th anniversary of planting our first one. We are hoping that the 2nd one will increase our chances of getting a better harvest of avocados. We always get a few fruit, but not very many.

For my friend Janeen’s birthday in May, we had her and her husband Ralph over to have dinner and play games on our patio. We ordered food from Cisco’s Mexican restaurant. Their Cabo Taco sampler is made up of a shrimp taco, a grilled fish taco and a battered fish taco with cabbage and baja sauce. Janeen and I like them with crispy shells. They are muey bueno!   The weather was pleasant enough to sit outside and the health authorities had said that gatherings held outdoors were preferable to indoors.

At the end of May, the news temporarily shifted from the grim statistics of new coronavirus cases and deaths to a story from Minneapolis, of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was killed by a police officer, who knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds (the news was very specific) while Floyd was saying “I can’t breath!”. Most of the country was outraged and protests erupted in cities across the nation. The “Black Lives Matter” movement gained recognition as people pushed for changes in policing policies that were disproportionately harming men of color.

I think it was in May or June that Vladi expressed a desire for his own treadmill because we had joined a gym in November of 2019 and had not been able to go to it since March, when gyms were one of the places that had to close due to the risk of spreading COVID. He found a treadmill that wasn’t too expensive and placed an order. This began a months-long effort to get a decent machine. The first one came with the box all mangled and parts sticking out and when we refused delivery, the delivery guy got upset because the thing was so heavy and he had struggled to get it off the truck. Vladi tried to order a different one but I guess there was a big demand so it was very difficult to find anything in stock. He finally did get one several months later.

June

I don’t have many pics from May, June and July because I’m pretty sure that Vladi and I tried to stay home.

On June 8, we went out to eat for the first time in months. Some of the restrictions had been lifted and we were able to eat indoors, but seating was very limited and we had to use disposable cutlery and single use condiments. We went to Los Dos Amigos on Thousand Oaks Blvd. The food was good, but it was definitely a different experience than usual.

We did take the dogs to our favorite dog beach on June 14. The parking lot was packed, but when we got down to the beach there was plenty of space for everyone.




These pictures are looking in either direction on the beach.



The following weekend, June 21, we decided to take a drive with the dogs in a direction we don’t normally go. So, we headed south. The first part of the drive was through L.A. and the scenery was not great but when we got to Dana Point and Oceanside it got much nicer. We got out of the car and walked around and had a nice lunch at a dog friendly restaurant. The day was a little overcast but that kept it from being hot. We had a good time.

We did have the pleasure of having birds make a nest on a cross-beam on our patio, in a perfect spot for us to see them as the babies poked their heads up to be fed.


It was so much fun to watch the mother bird sit on the nest and then, when they hatched, bring food to the babies. And the papa participated, too, first as a guard and then taking his turn to bring the food. Their chirping was such a sweet sound and it got louder as they got bigger. We could always tell when it was feeding time. They eventually grew big enough and flew away. We hope they take up residence again next year.

Year end review 2020-Part 3-March/April

March

In the beginning of March, my daughter, Christy requested that as a birthday gift, I accompany her to Austin, Texas, so that she could check out whether she would want to live there. She found a great deal on airline tickets on Priceline and I went ahead and purchased them.

Right after that, on March 4th, a state of emergency was declared in California because of the rapid spread of Covid-19. Governor Newsom requested that people curtail gatherings and non-essential activities. It wasn’t a mandatory order at that point, so Christy and I continued to plan our trip thinking that we could be careful and take lots of precautions.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law, who had been planning to stay in Santa Monica for a couple of more months, started preparing to return to her home in New York, fearing that she would soon be stuck in CA if she didn’t get going. It was around then that she told me she thought that whatever it was that had made her so sick at the end of 2019 had suspiciously similar symptoms to the virus that was now dominating the news. I later learned that her husband had been sick first and thought he might have picked up something at his gym. From him, my niece got it and had a cough that was bad enough to require a trip to Urgent Care. And then it passed to my sister-in-law, who suffered for weeks.
We started hearing more and more about how serious the virus was and how contagious. It was spreading like wildfire in a Santa Ana wind.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events that led to us having to start wearing masks (to cover our noses and mouths) and standing in line to get into stores, or when the term ‘social-distancing’ (meaning that we had to keep 6’ from other people) was introduced, but on March 12th, I posted my first reference to the corona virus with a meme showing a picture of John Travolta that said “John Travolta was hospitalized for suspected Covid-19 but doctors now confirm it was only Saturday Night Fever and they assure everyone that he is Staying Alive. Apparently, he was diagnosed because he had chills that were multiplying. . .” Made me laugh.

At that point I still didn’t see a problem with continuing to get together with my friends, Ralph and Janeen until Christy got upset that I was not staying at home like I was supposed to. But when she decided we better cancel our trip to Austin, I realized she was probably right and taking it more seriously than I was, and I started to stay home.

On March 19th, a stay-at-home order was issued in California, meaning we were to stay home except to do essential activities, like purchase food, go to doctor’s appointments and the like. There were limits placed on the number of people who could gather and many businesses that were considered non-essential or where the virus was thought to be spread (gyms, churches, bars, restaurants, movie theaters) were shut down or restricted. We were told to wash our hands frequently and try to avoid touching our faces (funny how you don't realize how often you touch your face until someone tells you not to.)

In the ensuing days there was a panic-run on disinfectant, hand-sanitizers, toilet paper, paper towels, bleach, and all germ-killing cleaning products and every store that carried those items had gaping holes on their shelves because they couldn’t restock fast enough and their suppliers couldn't keep up with the demand to produce them. We couldn't find a can of Lysol Disinfectant Spray for a full year. Food items that would keep for a long time got wiped out too. I wanted a box of Bisquick and it was weeks before I found one.

Costco and Trader Joe’s implemented rules for shopping safely from the beginning and maintained the best management of their stores.

There were a couple of other good memes that I shared in March:

“I don’t think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks earlier this month, we’d go from standard time to twilight zone.”

And: “You thought dogs were hard to train. Look at all the humans that can’t even sit and stay.”

But the craziness that was to come was distinctly unfunny. It’s hard to describe how weird everything felt. Many people started working from home on their computers. It became verboten to touch or hug anyone. People started fist-bumping and elbow bumping instead of shaking hands. Traffic on the freeways almost disappeared. Schools were closed and teachers had to adapt to teaching online. It was eerie to see empty school parking lots, no activities on playgrounds or football fields, no hordes of kids coming out of schools at 3pm. The bathrooms at the public parks were closed because (besides the risk of spreading germs) people were stealing the toilet paper!

One day, when I was walking Roscoe, I saw where kids had drawn pictures with sidewalk chalk on several driveways in a row.

They were so bright and cheerful, with encouraging messages, that it inspired me to see if I still had some sidewalk chalk. Christy and I ended up borrowing some from our neighbor, Wendy. And on March 21st Christy and I drew our own messages on our driveway;



“Be kind” and, “We’re in this together.” Rain came along a couple of days later and washed it away pretty quickly, but we felt good about our artwork.

Just before Christy’s birthday, I started uploading my home movies (videos I had converted to DVDs) to Youtube in order to share them with my family and friends. Over the next couple of months, I uploaded quite a few and I also spent time creating a couple of special ones. It’s a very fulfilling activity to edit a video and find just the right songs to go with it. It’s one of the things I find most satisfying to create, along with my scrapbooks. And it was a good way to keep busy while being confined to the house.

April

In the beginning of April, Vladi and I decided that it would not be wise for us to make our cross-country trip in the time of corona virus, so we reluctantly notified everyone that we would be postponing until 2021. I took care of re-scheduling our reservation at the campground in West Virginia where I was supposed to meet my cousins, and we started hoping that all would be back to normal by then.

We had some N95 masks (supposedly the best kind) left from our time of cleaning my brother's house after he passed away, so we started wearing them when we went out grocery shopping. We posted a picture of ourselves in front of Trader Joe’s on facebook, April 3.



On April 10 I posted a meme that showed a cat sitting in a line of people waiting to get into a store with the caption “I don’t know what the cat needs, but it knows how to follow the rules.”

4/11 There was a comic in our local paper that captured how we were all feeling.

Our routine had been interrupted in a way that made us all feel like we were in some kind of alternate reality. One of the things that was most frustrating to me was that it started being difficult to discern facts from opinion and speculation. The country had a distinct divide between people who thought that all the restrictions and new rules were an over-reaction and those who were trying to comply in order to help stop the spread of the virus. It was mostly Republicans who felt that restrictions were a way of trampling on their rights, killing the economy and taking away their freedoms. They even called the news of the pandemic a hoax. It’s true that the shutdowns devastated a lot of businesses, but as time went by, those that weren’t destroyed began to figure out how to survive. The government did pass a stimulus bill that pumped money into the economy in an effort to keep the country going. And efforts to develop a vaccine were launched by a number of companies.

At the end of the month, Vladi and I took a drive to Lancaster to look at the poppies in bloom.



We needed to get out of the house. The orange covered hills did not disappoint. Reminded me of taking that trip when I was a kid.

 

I took this picture on a walk around CLU (a campus near our house) with Roscoe when I realized we had some poppies right there.

The uncertainty of not knowing how long it would take to get the virus under control was taking a toll on everyone and we had to keep reminding each other that we were all in it together.

Year end review 2020-Part 2-February

February

I don’t remember exactly when we started hearing rumors about the novel corona virus (or COVID-19), but it started hitting the news sometime in February. It started out as news of a very contagious virus that had started in an open-air market in China, (possibly from a bat?) that spread like wildfire among passengers on a couple of cruise ships and then, when introduced into a couple of nursing homes in Washington, was killing off the residents in alarming numbers.

We weren’t terribly worried at first. It didn’t seem to be close enough to us that we would be affected, so we went on with our activities.

On Feb. 9, Tracy Cross, Tracy Bower and I got together for breakfast at Country Harvest and were delighted to find our friend Emmanuel Rodriguez working that day. We re-created a picture that we had taken with him back in 2009 and posted it on facebook.

2009

2020

Whenever I get together with those 2 girls, we have so much to talk and laugh about, it’s amazing. And Manuel has a great sense of humor, too. Back in the day, when he would wait on us, (we regularly ate breakfast at CH once a week) we used to call him Herman before we knew his real name and he took it all in good humor. We always thought he was the greatest. And he still is.


This is a picture of the sandwich I always order when I go to Country Harvest. It’s a variation of the Garden Pita on their menu, which we have nicknamed the “Rita Pita.” It has a bunch of veggies and I add turkey and cheddar cheese. It is awesome! (And the steak fries and Ranch dressing are out of this world, too!)

For Valentine’s Day, Vladi and I decided to take advantage of our free week at Pismo Beach. It was the first time that we took advantage of this perk of our “Colorado River Adventures” membership that we bought when we purchased our RV. For the most part this membership was a big waste of money but we signed a contract that keeps us on the hook in perpetuity (pisses me off). But we have enjoyed 2 of the campgrounds in the system—Catalina RV Spa and Resort in Palm Desert and the Rushmore Shadows Resort near Mt. Rushmore. Other than that, we haven’t been impressed. But when we go on our cross country trip, we are going to try to visit more of the campgrounds. Anyway, we are entitled to spend a week at some beach cabins near Pismo, but reservations have to be made pretty far in advance. This time, we marked our calendar and scored the week of Valentine’s Day.

We took the car, no dogs, and headed out on Feb. 13. The cabin was nice if not spectacular. It wasn’t right on the beach as I had expected (picturing sitting in nice chairs on a porch looking out at the ocean) but was in a spot up the street from the beach in a big group of other cabins. It was comfortable enough and we settled in on the first day and took a walk to look around. We were surprised by the cars that were driving around on the beach, but the huge apron of sand lent itself to all manner of sand vehicles and there were a number of rentals available to use on the beach (like dune buggies and ATVs). It was rather chilly and I think we wore our jackets most of the time we were there. 

Then again, here is Vladi in his shorts and tee-shirt (because he don't need no steeenking jacket.)

On Valentine’s Day itself, we started out by visiting the Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove. It was pretty cool. It was an old grove of very tall eucalyptus trees where we could see splotches of orange amidst the grayish green long thin eucalyptus leaves. Occasionally the splotches lifted off and fluttered around to land in another location amidst the leaves. It was fun to hunt around and see if we could find them. Sometimes there were big clusters of them and the docents had telescopic viewers trained on the clusters so that we could see them better.



After spending an hour or so walking around there, we took a drive to The Bayside Café in Morro Bay Sate Park. We have spent several Valentine’s Day lunches there so it has become somewhat of a tradition for us. The little café has a full wall of windows that look out on a bay that harbors nice little boats and has a kayak rental place. It was a little cold for many people to be out kayaking, but there were plenty of birds enjoying the day. The thing that has brought us back every year is a soup they make called California Chowder.


It’s a mixture of clam chowder and this green chile soup that is out of this world! And on a nice chilly day, soup is the BEST thing to warm you up! So we had a lovely, leisurely lunch and took some pictures there and then across from Morro Rock, which was just down the road. We tried to perfect our heart shape with our hands and I think we got a pretty good shot.


For dinner, we went into the town of Pismo to have a meal at the Crab Shack. A lot of people had the same idea so there was a very long wait (over an hour) and it was really cold so Vladi and I decided to walk for awhile in hopes of warming up. I think we went around the block 3 or 4 times and then we got to sit by one of the outdoor heaters until they called us in. The food was SO GOOD! We enjoyed it thoroughly.



The next day, we went to have breakfast at a place we had seen advertised that looked like it would have good breakfasts. It was in Arroyo Grande, which is one of the “Five Cities” in the area. After we ate, Vladi noticed that we had a nail in one of our tires. We found a place to get it fixed and by the time that was done, it was time for lunch. I think we got a recommendation from someone at the tire place and we checked out The Mason Bar and Kitchen. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures but it was a cool little place. There was an interesting firepit, in that it was like a low wall, separating one part of the restaurant from another and there was glass on both sides of the flames so that the heat wasn’t too intense, but it created a nice atmosphere. And there were mason jars worked into the décor as well as the glassware that we drank from. The food was very good, though not our usual fare. Very healthy and on the fancy (pricey) side, but we enjoyed it.

On Feb. 16, we found something called the Bob Jones Trail, which was described as a 3 mile easy walking trail “City to the Sea” which ended up at Avila Beach. We were ready to do something a little more active, so we decided that sounded just right. And it was! We took some pics at the Avila pier and then walked back to where we parked the car. Easy peasy.



We drove home the next day.

The other big event in February was our friend Richard Heaton’s 70th birthday. We were invited to a party on February 29 at the Stonehaus which is a cool restaurant in Westlake Village where most (if not all) of the tables are outdoors in various idyllic settings, with lots of plants, vines climbing stone and ironwork, rustic wooden tables, romantic lighting, firelight, and just a European ambiance. We celebrated with many members of the Heaton family as well as many of their friends. There was a guest book set up in which the guests were asked to write down favorite thoughts and memories about Richard and although my mind was rather blank, I read what Christy wrote and was very impressed with her ability to remember many experiences she shared with the Heaton family.

Year end review-2020-Part 1-January

Although I normally jump right into January for my yearly reviews, I must cover a few events that occurred at the end of 2019 that fore- shadowed things to come in 2020.  
So let us go back a couple of months to the RV trip we took in October of 2019. Knowing that we would be travelling in Arizona, we thought that by waiting until October, we would be able to avoid the worst of the summer heat. We were wrong. Our plan to do 2 Adventurequests in Tucson and Phoenix were thwarted by the 100 degree+ temperatures. We had the dogs with us and knew that neither they nor we would enjoy the game in that kind of weather. Other than that, we did have a lovely trip (Christy joined us for the first part and then went off on her own) but we decided to postpone the quests until my birthday in January when we figured that it HAD to be cooler.

Also, at the end of 2019, we celebrated with family members (whose privacy/identity I want to respect) as my niece completed her Vidal Sassoon cosmetology course and became a licensed cosmetologist. The family had been living in Santa Monica for a year in order for my niece to attend the school there. Santa Monica is a mecca of international tourists/travelers and very close to the LA International Airport and port of Los Angeles. I think this may have played a role in later events.

In the beginning of December, my daughter, Christy and I went with my sister-in-law and niece to a special holiday event at the Descanso Gardens in La Canada, called “The Enchanted Forest of Light”. It was a magical experience and we had such a good time together that we wanted to try and do something else together during the holidays, like a drive to view Christmas lights. But as we tried to plan that, we kept having to put it off because my sister-in-law wasn’t feeling well. . .

As we postponed one week after another, she kept saying that no one could figure out what was wrong with her. She had a cough. her chest hurt, she was nauseous, her ears felt plugged and she just could not kick whatever it was. She took antibiotics, tried cough medicine (although the pharmacies were out of the prescription kind), and got a steroid shot in her ear, tried to rest, even took down their Christmas tree, thinking it was exasperating the problem. But nothing seemed to work.
My sister-in-law is so conscious of her health and takes such good care of herself that it was really strange that this thing hung on to her like that. She ended up being sick for a full 12 weeks. . . (more on that in part 3. . .)

Enter 2020 . . .

January

As the year began, Vladi and I started planning our most ambitious RV trip to date. Our only reservation was in West Virginia on Memorial Day weekend to be part of a family reunion with my cousins, Janeen, Frankie and Merilee; my Uncle Charles’ daughters, whom I had never met, but knew of through letters that they had sent me in 2003. Anyway, Vladi and I figured that if we were going all that distance, we should visit other people that we (I) know in the eastern time zone. And we might as well add a few other people in along the way. . . So, we started mapping out our route and notifying people of our intentions. We also posted a map of the USA on Facebook, with pins indicating the cities that we hoped to visit. We were excited.



From Jan. 16 to Jan. 22, Vladi and I took a road trip in the car without the dogs to complete our mission of the 2 Arizona Urban Adventure Quests as well as visiting Albuquerque to purchase some copper artwork I had seen there that I wanted to use as décor on the outside of our house, oh, and to celebrate my 61st birthday. We stayed in Airbnb’s, which were terrific, and we had a blast. And yes, the weather was much more pleasant, even though we got caught in a little bit of drizzle in Phoenix, some of my favorite pictures were of the fun we had trying to pose like the statues in front of the Herberger Theater Center there. Vladi and I shared a lot of laughs as I tried to balance on one foot and raise my other leg and arms to the correct angle. And he had his eye on the statue that didn't require any of that for his pose!

One of the things I love about the Urban Adventure Quests is finding unexpected cool things within the cities that we visit. In Tucson, there is a place called “Ben’s Bells” which I was drawn to because of the name. It is a little non-profit organization whose mission statement reads:

"The mission of Ben's Bells is to teach individuals and communities about the positive impacts of intentional kindness and to inspire people to practice kindness as a way of life."

How cool is that? We saw their artwork throughout the city.

Even though we didn’t do a Quest in Albuquerque this time (we did one on a previous visit), we had a great time there as well. We went to dinner with Faith, whom we are friends with through other life-long friends, the Heaton family, and she chose a Japanesse restaurant where we met for dinner and boy, was it good! It was one of those places where the chef cooks your dinner in front of you and those guys not only know how to cook, but they are also terrific entertainers! So fun!

For my birthday the next day, Vladi and I went out for Mexican food (my favorite!) but we only got a picture of my cake.

Vladi had a great big soup to start his dinner and couldn’t finish his entrée (which he said was really good,) so we packed it up to go but then he forgot to take it with him. He was disappointed when we realized it the next day.

The next day we sought out the shop where I had seen the copper figures that I couldn’t stop thinking about. It was in the area where we had done the Adventurequest and it wasn’t hard to find. But it was hard to make a decision about what I wanted. There were so many beautiful pieces. I ended up getting pieces that followed a southwest/desert theme, including a sun, a group of wild horses, a howling coyote, a saguaro cactus and (a little off-theme) a trio of hummingbirds. They are so beautiful and I was very pleased with myself when we got them in place on the house. I have always admired things that people in our neighborhood decorate their houses with, so I was happy to finally join their ranks. This is how it turned out:

Continuing our trip, we stopped in Winslow, Arizona for lunch and we had to take pictures on the corner where there is a tribute to the Eagles song that made the place famous.

After having a great lunch, we continued on to Phoenix where we did another Adventurquest (see favorite pictures above) and then we headed home. We had a ton of fun, as we always do!

That very weekend, we participated in a surprise party for our friends Ralph and Janeen’s 50th wedding anniversary. Their daughter Deonna and grand-daughter Misty did the planning and had been working on it for several months. I provided a lot of photos from our 30+ year friendship. It was at BJs Brewhouse on Sat. Jan. 25. It was so good to see that all 6 of their kids made the effort to be there, plus most of the grandkids. It was a special day.



Ralph & Janeen and their 6 offspring

 

 The first group plus spouses, significant others and kids.

The next day, we joined Ralph and Janeen at Ralph and Sara’s Airbnb near the beach in Oxnard to play some games and spend some time together. While we were there, one of us got a breaking news alert (probably Vladi) that Kobe Bryant had just died in a helicopter crash, along with his daughter and others on their way to his sports academy in Newbury Park. It was a shock. First, because Kobe Bryant was in the prime of his life, second, because it was so close by (the crash was in Calabasas,) and third because it was so unexpected. Anyway, we still enjoyed our day, but we were a little subdued by the news.



That same day, Christy and my niece spent the day together at an annual hair expo in Long Beach. They had a great time and made plans to attend together every year.

It was a pretty glorious January.

One Degree of Separation

(I originally wrote this as an email to one of my cousins to describe the week of hell that my hometown has just endured.)

It has been a surreal week for us.  This is my written account of how it all went down for us (me and Vladi mostly)  It helps me process if I can put my experiences and feelings down on paper.

       The week started ordinarily enough. On Monday I studied and filled out my sample ballot in anticipation of voting on Tuesday. Then I began writing an account of the adventures we had in October, which was very eventful month for us and which I wanted to write about while it was fresh in my mind.

       Tuesday, we ate breakfast and walked down the block to our polling place, which we were gratified to see was humming with activity. I have never seen all the voting booths filled during a mid-term election. We completed our civic duty and took a selfie.

It was a beautiful day and we anticipated nothing more than to follow the election results. Most of the proposition results went the way we voted and I think all the people that we voted for won their races.

Wednesday 11/7, we had made plans to have dinner with our friends, Ralph and Janeen, whom we hadn’t had a chance to celebrate Vladi’s birthday with before that. We went to a restaurant called Lazy Dog which had just expanded its outdoor patio and was very pretty, with a beautiful tree wrapped in twinkling white lights, along with strings of pretty lights overhead and plenty of outdoor heaters to ward off the cool fall evening. Lazy Dog is located in what’s known as the Oaks Mall, which is just on the other side of the freeway and about three blocks down from where the Borderline Bar and Grill is located.

       After we had a nice dinner, we went back to our house to have dessert and play a couple of games. We decided to cut off the fun at 12:00 because Janeen had to get up early to work. So, we said our goodbyes and I did a little cleaning up before heading to bed. No sooner had I turned my lights off than Vladi came in to tell me he had gotten a news alert that a shooting had taken place at the Borderline. A few minutes later, Janeen called to tell me that on their drive home, they heard sirens and helicopters responding en masse to some huge event. We were all shaken to the core, first accounting in our heads for our own kids (Christy and Sammy both safely asleep at home) and then thinking about all the other people we know that could have been there. One of the girls I used to work with had talked about her daughter going there all the time (I found out later that her daughter was not there that night but her boyfriend was working as bartender-he was able to get away and hide in the attic). And in the subsequent days I realized how many of the other twenty- and thirty-somethings I know, had spent time there. Christy’s boyfriend, Brandon, had even gotten a notification of “something you might be interested in” that night, about “college night at Borderline”. It was chilling to think about how close they came to being there. We were all sending messages back and forth to check on people we were concerned about and we were all dreading the revelation of the list of names of the people who were killed.

       The next day, when we found out there was a blood drive going on, we all wanted to go, but before we even got out the door, we got messages that there were already hundreds of people in line and people were being turned away unless they had type 0 negative blood. So, we turned on the TV and sat glued to the news reports. A lot of the injured victims as well as the officer who was killed were brought to the hospital (where Christy was born) 2 blocks from us. Unfortunately, we found out too late about the procession for the slain officer when they carried his body from the hospital to the coroner’s office. But many people turned out to pay their respects, including Brandon (Christy’s boyfriend). We watched it on TV. We sat stunned and mesmerized as new details were reported from the scene of the massacre. None of us knew directly anyone that was killed or hurt, but we all know of someone who knows someone. I guess that’s one degree of separation. And even though it would be even worse to have no degree of separation, our hearts are all grieving for those that were there and their families. It is just gut-wrenching.

       And before we even had a chance to fully process this event, as we were watching the news and listening to the Santa Ana winds blowing wildly outside, at a little past 2pm on Thursday, reports and film of a fire started coming in. The first one started near a water treatment facility in Newbury Park, which is just a couple of miles from us. It was blowing north and west (away from us) but it grew so rapidly it was incredible. It took an eerily similar path to a fire we had 5 years ago that burned from almost the same location all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Over the next couple of days, this one did the same.

       Not long after the first fire started, there were reports of another one, this time to our south. Both of them caused massive evacuations and because of the wind were too unpredictable for the firefighters to get any kind of handle on.

 Throughout that day and the next we kept seeing huge plumes of smoke in different places all around us. One would seem to die down and then we’d see another one shoot up in another spot. A lot of our friends in surrounding neighborhoods had to leave their homes until the authorities determined it was safe for them to return. Again, I don’t directly know anyone who lost their home, but I know several people who know someone who did.

       The place where Christy works has been closed for a few days and she doesn’t even know exactly how close the fire came. Also, the Taco Bell where Sammy works is in the city of Calabasas, which is under evacuation orders. He went to see what it looked like and said that all the vegetation around it got burned. The building is standing but the power is shut off, so it is closed for now, too.

       Saturday, the wind calmed down so the smoke settled over the whole area. It was eerie and unpleasant. But it gave the exhausted firefighters a chance to gain a small amount of control over the fire.

       Sunday, the wind picked up again. As firefighters from all our neighboring states have rushed in to help out they’ve been able to address the spot fires that keep popping up all over the area and get them contained before they can get out of control.

       Even though the wind is still blowing, the sky looks clear and blue around us today, Tuesday, 11/13.

       As we venture out and drive just a mile or so in almost any direction, we see evidence of the fire’s destruction. I feel lucky to be one of the ones that suffered no personal loss (other than my sense of safety). But as I hear stories from people who know people who have either lost a loved one or know someone who was hurt or even present in the shooting, or someone who has lost their home, it makes my heart heavy with sadness. Our little town seems to have become a household name this week. No longer will we have to say, “I live in Thousand Oaks—about 30 miles north of Los Angeles.” People will know exactly where we are talking about.