Our Father's Day Adventure 2023

 

 

Vladi and I had a lovely Father's Day on Sunday. We started out with breakfast at Pickles Deli and then we went home to pick up Roscoe so that we could take him with us for a drive. I had asked Vladi earlier in the week to think of something that sounded enjoyable to him and when it came down to it, he decided on a drive down PCH. We have often driven North on PCH, so we decided to take the other direction and go as far as we felt like going. Then we would turn around and head back up to Ventura Harbor for an early dinner. I told Vladi that I wanted to take some pictures throughout our day, but I didn’t really get started until we reached our southernmost point. We had a nice, relaxed drive and I started telling Vladi that I had been thinking a lot about fathers for several days and that I wanted to write about what I had been thinking. That morning, I had been perusing Facebook and saw all the tributes, memories and praises people had been posting to their wonderful fathers. I wanted to say something about my dad and the dad of my 2 children, as well as something about Vladi but I hadn't completed my thoughts yet. I started to tell him some of the things I had been thinking and he suggested that I start writing them on my phone right then so I wouldn't lose my thoughts. It took me a couple of days to be able to get started on writing what I wanted to say—but that’s the subject of another page. I want to get back to our Father’s Day drive…

       We had a great conversation as we drove south. I encouraged Vladi to tell me about his experience as a dad and his experience with his own father. 

       The drive also brought up a lot of memories for me because it’s been a long time since I’ve driven past some of the places along PCH. There were the full-size jet models at the entrance to Mugu Naval Air Base. And the giant Mugu Rock that sits just offshore when you get to the coast. I remembered camping at Sycamore Canyon with the Frosts and a hike that Christy and I did with the girl scouts there. We passed Leo Carrillo Beach where I probably had some of my very earliest camping experiences with Helen and Steve (neighbors from my childhood). As we passed the long stretch of Zuma beach, I was trying to find the numbers on the lifeguard stands. I finally saw one, but the numbers seem to have faded on a lot of them. I remember trips to Zuma when the plan would be to “meet at lifeguard station 11 or 15” or whatever number we designated. We passed Moonshadows restaurant where I’ve had at least one romantic dinner. And then we passed Decker Canyon where my first husband Doug used to love to ride his motorcycle. As we passed all these places, I kept thinking about taking pictures, but I decided to wait until we were on our way back.

       We pulled into one little plaza so that we could stretch our legs and let Roscoe relieve himself. We wanted to see if we could walk to the beach from there so that we could avoid paying the pricy parking fee at the lots along the beach but there was no passage through so we continued on our way.

       We kept hoping that the sun would come out and brighten the day a little, but it stayed pretty gray for the whole time. When we reached Will Rogers State Beach, we pulled in and paid the $15 fee, so that we could get out of the car and get some pictures.

I did a pretty terrible job with my selfie attempts. I was trying to get a shot of the waves crashing on the rocks behind us but I was not successful.

Vladi took some at the same spot that came out much better. I liked this one the best.

        

Then we moved over to where the sign was and got a picture of that.

As we came out of the parking lot, I took a picture to show exactly where we were as we headed back north.

                                     

It was a lot harder to get the pictures I had hoped to catch on the way back. The only ones that came out decently were those of Mugu Rock. I started out shooting it from a distance.

                       

                       Then, got a little closer.

                       

      And finally, this one when we were right up to it.                                                                                                      

The only other shot I got was this one of one of the jets at the Naval Base. Well, you can ALMOST see it…   I tried.

                 

From there, we headed to Ventura Harbor to have an early dinner. We stopped at The Boatyard Pub, which had outdoor tables. Vladi ordered a cup of clam chowder and Roscoe helped him finish it.

When we got the rest of our food, Roscoe rested his chin on the table with great hopes of getting to help some more. Several people that passed by were laughing at his look of longing.

                                

   He eventually gave up and laid down at our feet.

All the while when we were eating, there was a crowd of people at a place next door, waiting to be called for their ice cream orders. We saw people walking by with all different colors of ice cream and different configurations of cups and cones. There was a particular one that intrigued me and after dinner, I was curious enough to go find out what it was. They were called fishzookies.

Three of Vladi’s favorite foods are: 1. soup, 2. fish & chips and, 3. ice cream. So, we had to top off our Father’s Day celebration by ordering these intriguing treats.

Because…                     

And they were DELICIOUS!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year end review 2020: Part 10-November and December

November

The next day, after we returned our rental car, Christy gave us a ride to the train station. We were excited for the train ride and I was really happy that Vladi finally got a break from driving. The train ride was a lot of fun.



We left in the early afternoon on Monday, Nov. 2. We stayed in our little bedroom compartment most of the time, where we sat across from each other and looked out the big picture window. But we also spent time in the observation car, which had even bigger windows and two long rows of seats facing them on either side. There was also a dining car where there were tables for eating meals. But our porter told us that in non-Covid times, the dining car was much more enjoyable and the food was so much better. Covid had dictated that passengers could only eat with their travelling companions and the food was all prepackaged rather than cooked fresh. Normally, one could go to the dining car and eat with other travelers and meet and talk to all kinds of people but only so many people were called at a time to eat their meals at every other table. So, we missed out on that communal experience.



This was the sunset on our first night.

At night, the bench seat in our “bedroom” became a bed and another bed folded down from above it. The porter came in to prepare everything for us for sleeping. I was a little worried about being able to get out of the top bed to make my nightly bathroom trips, but it wasn’t as difficult as I anticipated. The clickety-clack sound of the train wheels and the gentle rocking movement made for a great night’s sleep.



The next day, the train passed through some fields in California, where the laborers were hard at work. We also caught a glimpse of the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, CA.



The sunset was beautiful over the ocean that night.


Vladi’s son, Sam picked us up from the train station that night. We were happy to get home to these guys.




As we were travelling home, the presidential election was taking place. We had submitted our votes by mail, long before we went on our trip, but anyone who went to the polls in person was doing it on the day that we were on the train.

In most other elections that I can remember, the results were known within a day of the election polls closing, although the 2000 election was dragged out because of the “hanging chads” in Florida but was eventually conceded by Al Gore to George W. Bush. In the 2020 election, because of the pandemic, there was an enormous number of mail-in ballots which had to be processed by election workers. For several days the country waited anxiously to hear who our president would be for the next four years. It was the biggest voter turnout in history and both candidates got a record number of votes, but on Nov. 7 Joe Biden reached the 270 electoral college votes that he needed to be declared the winner. In another historic occurrence, Donald Trump asserted that there had been widespread voter fraud and began filing lawsuits to get the results overturned. His lawyers filed over 50 lawsuits, none of which proved any of his allegations. All of them were thrown out of court because of lack of evidence. Trump fought for two months to retain his power, continually claiming that the election was stolen.

Personally, I could not wait until inauguration day arrived. I hoped that once Biden was sworn in, things would calm down and start normalizing. The country has grown more and more divided over the last four years and it seems like Republicans and Democrats live in two alternate realities. We get our news from different sources and the middle ground between our values seems to have become a chasm that can’t be bridged. I’m convinced that we have many more things in common than we realize but calm and rational discussion doesn’t seem to occur very often and compromise has become a dirty word. I enjoy hearing both sides of issues discussed in a thoughtful manner, because I want to understand why people think the way they do but trying to have that kind of discussion on social media is counterproductive. It inevitably seems to devolve into name-calling and accusations and suspended or terminated relationships.

I now understand with crystal clarity the advice my dad imparted to never discuss politics or religion in polite company. He was incredibly wise.

On the coronavirus front there were a lot of warnings about the danger of having gatherings over the holidays and indeed, the Covid cases were surging again in November. Just before Thanksgiving, I got news that my Aunt Louise had passed away from Covid. She was really the first person that I knew personally that had died from it. But around then my daughter heard that a couple of her former co-workers had died as well.

After all our adventures, Vladi and I were ready to stay home and have a quiet Thanksgiving. We bought a Rotisserie chicken from Costco and I made the traditional sides that we love: stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, butternut squash and cranberry sauce.



We toasted with our Asti Spumante and watched TV. We were happy that our friends that we usually celebrate with got a chance to go visit their kids in Idaho for the holiday.

On Nov. 29 Vladi and I were watching an episode of All in the Family. Growing up in Russia there are many American TV shows that Vladi had never seen and because Netflix gives us the opportunity to revisit shows from the past, we frequently watch old series that I think will give him a more rounded American cultural picture. All in the Family debuted in the early 70s. I remember watching it as a young teenager and I’m sure that at the time, half of it went over my head, especially the way Archie misused and mangled words.

But the episode we watched in November was especially timely and touching. (In fact, I was amazed how the themes of the whole series seemed just as relevant in 2020 as they were when the show first came out-how, sadly, little has changed.) The episode was from season 6 and Gloria had just announced her pregnancy. At first, her husband, Mike, was ecstatic, but then he began to worry about bringing a child into the world when there were so many things wrong with it.

He found himself in the kitchen of their neighbor, Irene, who shared a little newspaper clipping she had tucked away in a drawer. He took the clipping back to Gloria and she read it out loud.

What it said was just as relevant to today’s world.

“Even the prospect of early annihilation should not keep us from making the most of our days on this unhappy planet. In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.”-Alistaire Cooke

December

In December we were delighted to hear that 2 vaccines had been approved by the CDC. We were told that it would take some time before the vaccines would become available to everyone but Vladi and I started hoping that we might be able to get them in time to make our trip to meet my cousins in May.

As Christmas approached, I began to feel my usual anxiety about it. I’m not sure why I get anxious, other than feeling pressure to spend money (which I usually overdo). No one in my life puts this pressure on me. I do it to myself. With that in mind, I decided to take the year off from celebrating Christmas. I wanted to see what it would be like to not participate. I warned everyone that I wouldn’t be buying gifts or sending cards or baking cookies. I didn’t put up a stitch of décor other than the cards I received from a few people.

Vladi maintained his tradition of lighting his beautiful menorah with the pretty colored oil pots he always buys and I was happy with that. It really is beautiful.



On Christmas day Christy, Ben and I scheduled a zoom meeting and as we were talking, Jessica joined us. It was great to see their faces and we talked for 2 hours.

But my heart was sad that we couldn’t be together and I miss times gone by when we did a lot of fun things, especially with the Heaton family. One of my favorite traditions was our eggs benedict breakfast on Christmas morning. It was quite a feast! I have a few videos from Christmas when the kids were little and I indulged myself by watching them, but it makes me sad that their childhood is past.

For the last few years I have been saying that I need to start some new traditions and make Christmas meaningful to myself again, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Summation

The last couple of months of 2020 seem rather anticlimactic after the busy 10 months that preceded them but Vladi and I were very satisfied with where we had been, what we had done and who we had seen.

Vladi and I have felt an urgency to live life as fully as we are able while we can. If this year has taught us nothing else it has taught us that tomorrow is not guaranteed and things can change in an instant.

So I intend to continue getting the most I can out of each new day.

On to 2021. . .

Year end review 2020-Part 9: 2nd half of October

October-2nd half

Soon after we returned from our trip, our granddaughter celebrated her 4th birthday. We still weren’t able to visit her and her brother in person, but we spent a little time on Facetime.








While we were on our trip, Christy started making arrangements to move to Portland, Oregon. She was going to do the whole thing herself by hitching a U-haul trailer to her car, but that idea worried me so I asked her to wait until Vladi and I got home so that we could help her with the move. She agreed. She wanted to move to Portland to get a fresh start in a place where she felt she could afford to live on her own. She also liked the idea of being closer to her brother, who has lived in Portland for several years.
At the same time that she was planning this, my friend Janeen’s daughter, Deonna, was also making plans to move. Coincidentally, she was moving closer to her brother as well. She was moving to Idaho with her partner and their kids.

On the second to last weekend of October, we decided to throw a party to wish both girls goodbye and good luck. Vladi’s birthday is at the end of October as well, so we were celebrating that too. And it just so happened that the L.A. Dodgers were on their way to winning the World Series, and there are a lot of Dodger fans in our crowd so we had to set up a TV to watch the second to last game. We had the party on our patio so that there was plenty of fresh air circulating around us because we still had to be careful about the virus.



This is what the party looked like. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series two days later.

And here are the guests of honor. Christy is hugging Alex and Athan (Deonna’s boys), next is Vladi, then Deonna is holding her youngest, Brayden, and Kenny is her partner.

The following couple of days were spent packing the moving truck and getting ready to leave.



We had decided to drive separately, allowing Christy to go ahead of us in her car. She would be able to get there more quickly, with only one stop while we would need to make two.

The trip went smoothly and when we arrived, Ben came over to help us unload the truck. Vladi and I rented a car for the rest of our stay and did a little exploring around Portland.

First, we went to Union Station because we had decided to take a train ride home and we wanted to make sure we knew where to go to get on the train. We also upgraded our tickets from a roomette (which was very small) to a bedroom (which was still pretty small, but a little more comfortable.)



With that accomplished, we took a walk around downtown Portland. It was one of the places where protests following the George Floyd killing were most violent. Five months had passed and the damage was still very much in evidence.



I took these pictures across the street from the Apple store. Their broken glass windows were boarded over and the boards were covered with messages of pain and sympathy and demand for change. The Louis Vuitton store was similarly arrayed.



I didn’t take pictures of all the damaged buildings that we saw but what we saw was sobering. Ben told me that a lot of the buildings were still boarded up in anticipation of the unrest that was expected in the coming week. And what was coming up? The presidential election. It made my heart ache.

We did this walking tour on October 31st.

Even though the next day was November 1, and it should begin Part 10 of my story, it really fits better at the end of Part 9. Christy, Ben, Vladi and I took a beautiful hike at Powell Butte Nature Park. It was a gorgeous day and the most fun part of it was getting some great photos with my kids.



We started out with our masks on and Vladi took a few standard photos. As we saw fewer and fewer other people on the trail, we felt it was safe to ditch the masks and then Christy took charge of our “photo shoot.” We found several spots with good backgrounds and a place where she could lean her camera against something. And she directed us to “strike a pose!”

Christy and Ben are really good at this sort of thing. Vladi and I got into the spirit but our poses were a little awkward. We had so much fun, though, it didn’t really matter.

We’ve been asked by a couple of people when the album is going to drop. Don’t my kids look like rock stars?



We were leaning against this old fence and right after we got this picture, the top rail that I was leaning against gave way and I fell backwards flat on my back. Vladi and the kids were very concerned but I started laughing so uncontrollably at the how ridiculous I felt that they quickly realized that I was okay. Fortunately there were no sharp rocks or pieces of wood where I landed and the ground was pretty soft (you can see how grassy it was). But it was quite some time before I could stop laughing. We had a really fun time with my kids.

The next day Vladi and I left for home.