Tonight I am in the Best Western Pepper Tree Inn. This motel has been here as long as I've been traveling up the coast. Nice room, but small. An orange and an apple and two bottles of water awaited me. I had some of my sourdough multigrain bread from Trader Joe's and the last of my gourmet olives for dinner. I'll probably wander out for a real meal about 7:30 or so.
The drive up was lovely; warm and sunny. I listened to dance hits of the 70's and 80's on 93.9 FM in LA until they faded out, then put classical on. I managed to get lost trying to figure out how to get to Highway 1 and ended up on the 605 south to the 405 northwest to the 10 west, which becomes 1 north. If I'd taken I5 north to the 10, it would have cut about two hours off my travel time. The 405 was a parking lot and so was Highway 1 in places, both because of road construction. (Highway 1 has evidently suffered a few landslides around Malibu.) Because of all the rain this winter, the hillsides are greener than I've ever seen them, and there are big billowing clouds of wild mustard and daisies, all bright yellow. Anyway, I made it to Santa Barbara and got a room where I wanted to.
The rest of this will be kind of random.
John and I drove out and saw Mom yesterday. We met up with her and my aunt Emma at Chili's. Mom looked awful. Emma told me she had paid for Mom to get a permanent when the hairdressers came to the facility, and no one had come to get her, so she never got the perm. Her hair looks dull and disheveled, and she smelled kind of vinegary to me. She couldn't read the menu; all the colors and jaggy print seemed to confuse her and she turned it upside down once, trying to figure it out. Eventually John helped her to order a turkey sandwich. She only ate half of it and got the rest to go, but I'm sure it will sit in her fridge until it turns green. She has taken to picking up rocks, claiming she will put them around her potted plants, but the truth is that she never removes them from her purse. We ended up getting her to pull everything out of her purse and I "liberated" a double handful of rocks and stuck them in my own bag (and later left them on Emma's coffee table as a joke). Trying to get her back to the car to take her home was an effort as she had to stop and examine every little piece of quartz and granite in the planters. Her room is a mess, clothes and papers everywhere. Her latest thing is to ask where her drop-leaf tea cart is and then accuse Emma of stealing it. The truth is that the tea cart dried out and fell to pieces at least 25 years ago. The last time I saw it, it was a box of parts, and she said "Do you want this?" and I nearly laughed. I said "no" so I'm assuming it went to Salvation Army. For some reason she wants it now and when we tell her she gave it away, she frowns terribly for a while, and then you can almost hear the reset button click, her vision clears, and she says, "Where's my drop-leaf tea cart? Did Emma ever return it?" Along with the rocks in her purse, she had a million pieces of kleenex and paper napkin shreds she's been using as kleenex. John wrote down her next perm appointment on a napkin and I told him she would just use it to blow her nose. Sure enough, by the time we got her home, she had put it to just that use. We both can see that she's just about ready for the next level of care. She says they allow her to walk around as long as she stays in sight of the building, but I guess they've had to chase her down a couple times when she's forgotten that. She didn't remember the facility where she lives now, and once inside her room she couldn't remember what the courtyard outside looked like. When Emma brought her in to Whittier for an appointment on Tuesday, she never mentioned the house. She seems to have forgotten she ever lived there. I wonder what it's like to only have a "now" for reference?
Chili's was a bust. Not even up to Acapulco standards, and we thought that Acapulco was a downmarket El Torito. Sad when you discover an old favorite is going downhill. On the other hand, one night when John and I went to dinner even later than usual, we found that Bob's Big Boy in our neighborhood was open until 10:30. I didn't even know the chain had been resurrected. I had my childhood standard -- a combo burger and a chocolate malt -- and John and I invoked Dad by saying "Drink or dessert!" He never let us order both, ostensibly because we didn't finish our dinners. I've never known that to be a problem with our family, so I think he was just cheap. The shakes and malts are still served in a silver fountain "glass" with the leftovers in the mixing cup alongside. The silver glass is much smaller than I remember but I got two full refills out of the mixing cup so I guess not much has changed there! And it's nice to have a place that still knows what a malt is!
My friend Lloyd gave me a respite from sorting for a couple days. However, the Rav 4 I got upgraded to decided to break. Lloyd rolled down a window and that window refused to roll back up again. The one on the other side worked fine so we knew it was the window that was busted and not something we'd done. I drove Lloyd to the Whittier Hertz office, but they didn't have any cars so they directed us to the one in Downey. Heat and traffic later, we showed up to be given a Nissan X-Terra that was nasty but was the only thing they had. They hadn't even bothered to clean it: there were Dorito crumbs and the lingering smell of cigarettes when we got in. Later, when I went to fill the tank, we couldn't find the gas cap release, and while I was searching under the driver's seat I discovered the previous occupant's CD stash. We had already found his rental agreement in the center console. Hertz is going to get a piece of my mind.
Anyway, we did nothing but run errands that first day, but the second day I took her to La Brea Tar Pits as a consolation prize for missing out on Disneyland. http://www.tarpits.org/ I just couldn't take spending all that money to go to Disneyland when I knew I wouldn't be able to stay the whole day. We had a pretty good time. They have different stuff every time I go there, and this time I realized that there are little asphalt seeps all over the front lawn of the place, and even one in the parking lot! I wonder how the Page Museum manages to stay in place?
We had dinner with a couple of friends of hers at Il Fornaio, which is a GREAT Italian place. We were seated by a nice man who said he wasn't our server, but who brought us water... and then bread ... and then took our order ... so we never did see our "real" server but he was just fine!
I'm not done, I'm just burning out and will now go out and see if I can find a sandwich and a book. See you later.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Catching up a bit
From the text file I was keeping for a while:
7 MARCH
What a hoot. I logged into blogger.com today to discover I'm running a spam blog. Some actual human will have to verify that I'm just a wordy bint before they release it.
I've been making some progress with clearing things out, and also with going back over the things I've saved out and tossing some of them back in. Someone wrote to me and said that he and his siblings had to do the same thing, and they discovered there were three piles: childhood memories, Mom & Dad memories, and junk. That's not quite true here; if John had more time, and I lived nearer, I think we could clean up on eBay from all the retro stuff. But he doesn't want to spend the time, and I can't spend the time, so it will all go into the garage sale.
I'm also having to make allowances for age and infirmity. I don't have the stamina or the attention span I used to have. I can't get down on my hands and knees nor up on a stepladder. And sometimes I just don't want to do this any more. I've taken to having a nap around 5:00 and only waking up when John calls between 7:00 and 8:00 to ask where I want to eat dinner. Today I'll go back out in the lovely sunshine and run some errands. I need boxes and a Los Angeles Times for packing material. John accidentally bought queen-size sheets for the full-size guest bed, but I have a queen-size at home that doesn't have a plain sheet set (I use flannel ones mostly). I figured I'd swap him for one the right size. And since I can't do a download on borrowed wideband, I figured I'd buy a new version of Sims 2 that's actuall for Intel Macs. Mine is the PowerPC version, and there's a free upgrade but when I try to download it, I get a projected time of 10 hours, I don't think that's true but since we're stealing the wideband link, I'd rather not take the chance on making someone irate. I'll just buy a new disk.
Yesterday I took a cruise around to our old house in West Covina. We moved to Whittier from there in 1964. I'm amazed at how neat and tidy it is for a blue-collar neighborhood, and how incredibly wide the streets are. Of course, the only eyesore on the entire block is our old place. Scabby lawn, mattress leaning up against the side of the house... maybe they're moving, but the mess didn't have that temporary look about it. Anyway, I drove by twice and then told TomTom to take me back home, and he did, by way of every single fricking side street in the valley. I don't know why he didn't think Interstate 10 was good enough. But it was kind of fun to wander around these neighborhoods anyway, and notice that the worse the neighborhood, the fewer the Starbucks.
MARCH 8
Today I have been cleaning out the "emergency supplies" that Mom had in two trashcans down on the lower level of the back yard. Probably one of the most disgusting jobs I've had to do. The one that only had candle stubs in it was fine, but the one with all the supplies was half full of disgusting brown liquid. Every single thing inside it was rotted or rusted out, except the aluminum foil she wrapped some fabric in (bandages?) and two drinking cups that looked pristine even after being fished out of the murk. Leslye helped me and thereby qualifies for hazard duty. The smell was incredible. There are things drying out on the back wall between the levels so that we can recycle what's left of them after the rust flakes fall off.
I also cleaned out some more of the kitchen cupboards and pulled more things from the garage into the stack of "my things" to box up and mail off to various people. Some of the kitchen things are so retro that I'm keeping them just because I know they're worth more than the pennies John will get for them. He doesn't want to make the effort to get them valued so someone is going to get a hell of a deal on a lot of it.
7 MARCH
What a hoot. I logged into blogger.com today to discover I'm running a spam blog. Some actual human will have to verify that I'm just a wordy bint before they release it.
I've been making some progress with clearing things out, and also with going back over the things I've saved out and tossing some of them back in. Someone wrote to me and said that he and his siblings had to do the same thing, and they discovered there were three piles: childhood memories, Mom & Dad memories, and junk. That's not quite true here; if John had more time, and I lived nearer, I think we could clean up on eBay from all the retro stuff. But he doesn't want to spend the time, and I can't spend the time, so it will all go into the garage sale.
I'm also having to make allowances for age and infirmity. I don't have the stamina or the attention span I used to have. I can't get down on my hands and knees nor up on a stepladder. And sometimes I just don't want to do this any more. I've taken to having a nap around 5:00 and only waking up when John calls between 7:00 and 8:00 to ask where I want to eat dinner. Today I'll go back out in the lovely sunshine and run some errands. I need boxes and a Los Angeles Times for packing material. John accidentally bought queen-size sheets for the full-size guest bed, but I have a queen-size at home that doesn't have a plain sheet set (I use flannel ones mostly). I figured I'd swap him for one the right size. And since I can't do a download on borrowed wideband, I figured I'd buy a new version of Sims 2 that's actuall for Intel Macs. Mine is the PowerPC version, and there's a free upgrade but when I try to download it, I get a projected time of 10 hours, I don't think that's true but since we're stealing the wideband link, I'd rather not take the chance on making someone irate. I'll just buy a new disk.
Yesterday I took a cruise around to our old house in West Covina. We moved to Whittier from there in 1964. I'm amazed at how neat and tidy it is for a blue-collar neighborhood, and how incredibly wide the streets are. Of course, the only eyesore on the entire block is our old place. Scabby lawn, mattress leaning up against the side of the house... maybe they're moving, but the mess didn't have that temporary look about it. Anyway, I drove by twice and then told TomTom to take me back home, and he did, by way of every single fricking side street in the valley. I don't know why he didn't think Interstate 10 was good enough. But it was kind of fun to wander around these neighborhoods anyway, and notice that the worse the neighborhood, the fewer the Starbucks.
MARCH 8
Today I have been cleaning out the "emergency supplies" that Mom had in two trashcans down on the lower level of the back yard. Probably one of the most disgusting jobs I've had to do. The one that only had candle stubs in it was fine, but the one with all the supplies was half full of disgusting brown liquid. Every single thing inside it was rotted or rusted out, except the aluminum foil she wrapped some fabric in (bandages?) and two drinking cups that looked pristine even after being fished out of the murk. Leslye helped me and thereby qualifies for hazard duty. The smell was incredible. There are things drying out on the back wall between the levels so that we can recycle what's left of them after the rust flakes fall off.
I also cleaned out some more of the kitchen cupboards and pulled more things from the garage into the stack of "my things" to box up and mail off to various people. Some of the kitchen things are so retro that I'm keeping them just because I know they're worth more than the pennies John will get for them. He doesn't want to make the effort to get them valued so someone is going to get a hell of a deal on a lot of it.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
I'm back!
Well, Blogger decided I wasn't a spammer after all, but they didn't tell ME that. I had to come and look. Today is a busy day; mailing six or seven heavy boxes home and trying to find the stuff I know I had separated out but which is now missing. John succumbed to his guilty conscience and went into work early this morning but was able to get out in about three hours and is now having breakfast. He'll come home and have a nap and then we'll set off for the post office and on to see Mom (oh joy, oh rapture).
Had dinner at Bob's Big Boy last night. They stay open till 10:30 and it's not too much of a drive. The food is the same as I remember. I had my usual from when I was a kid -- a combo burger and a chocolate malt -- and I'm happy to say that the malts come in the silver glasses with the "extra" on the side, just like they used to. The difference is that the glass is smaller, but I got two full refills out of the "extra" so I'm happy. And it's so nice to find a place that still does malts. There's one that's open 24 hours but I wouldn't drive to that neighborhood on a bet.
I will be back tonight or tomorrow.
Had dinner at Bob's Big Boy last night. They stay open till 10:30 and it's not too much of a drive. The food is the same as I remember. I had my usual from when I was a kid -- a combo burger and a chocolate malt -- and I'm happy to say that the malts come in the silver glasses with the "extra" on the side, just like they used to. The difference is that the glass is smaller, but I got two full refills out of the "extra" so I'm happy. And it's so nice to find a place that still does malts. There's one that's open 24 hours but I wouldn't drive to that neighborhood on a bet.
I will be back tonight or tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The first four days
En route, American Airlines Flight 0054, 01 March
Naturally, I got a case of the runs just before GBS came to pick me up this morning. I have no idea what caused it, since I've only eaten once a day for the last two days, I've been so busy. I'm also seated almost halfway between the two heads on this plane, so making a dash for it is going to be hard to do.
What I couldn't find: a second pair of distance specs, my Shure earphones
What I already miss: my Bose noiseblockers
What's almost as good: The Altec-Lansing earphones I got with the iPod speaker system. They have an earpiece that fits over the outside of your ear and keeps the speaker positioned correctly. Not bad.
The plane has video sound but no music programme. Thank God for iPod.
What I did right: small tote bag that fits inside backpack with all the small items I will need on the plane itself. Saves rooting through the entire backpack for everything.
I feel awful. The wind was blowing everything hell bent for leather last night. Between that and the fear I wouldn't wake up to the alarm, I was up every hour from midnight to 4:00, then lay there until 4:30 and thought, the hell with it. I got up, had my shower, and was ready to go by the time GBS showed up. I don't think I forgot anything -- nothing will rot in the fridge, for instance, although a couple of plants might die. I thought about leaving a note for the construction workers to water the only two I want, but the rest of them are so dead I think it would make them laugh.
I have a power point on my seat! (Well, I mean AT this seat.)
Oh hell, they just announced the movie. I was afraid of this. They had two great movies last month but this one is called "The Martian Child." I think I"ll pass.
3 March
I never like the movies planes show, and if they do have one I want to see, they're only showing it going in the other direction from the way I am (usually if it will change before my return flight). Then they show 45 minutes or more of complete garbage before the movie actually starts, and then it starts with no fanfare. If you can sit through the BS then you see the start of the movie. If you opt out of the BS, you look up and the movie is already 15 minutes in. I saw an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" with so many of the bad words censored out that you could hardly follow the plot. Why bother? Anyway, I opted out of "The Martian Child" but it looked like it might have been interesting after all, so I'll probably rent it at some point. I wanted to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks" but the BS beforehand was so profoundly awful that I gave up and went to sleep.
The wheelchair pusher in Chicago was an nice kid from Poland. I had forgotten to get any $5 bills before I left so I only gave him $2 and felt bad about it. It had been a short turnaround between flights and he worked like a dog to get me there, even though we had a wheelchair queue in Customs for about ten minutes -- it's the first time I've seen more then two other wheelchairs at all, and there were about 15 of us backed up. Then the American security was far tighter than the English and they made us wait again while they found someone to inspect the wheelchair itself to make sure I hadn't stuffed it full of gelignite while no one was looking. But he got me to the gate with time to spare, bless him.
The trip from Chicago to LA was so uneventful I slept through most of it. I did do some comparisons between travelers in Manchester and Chicago, specifically and to wit: how many women are wearing jeans. Normally I don't travel in jeans but for some reason I did this time. The difference was striking. In Manchester, the only women wearing denims were wearing them boot cut and with stilletos, fashion-forward. There were only two women who wore them as I did and both of them had glasses and no makeup, as I did. In Chicago, I only saw one woman wearing what I would consider "slacks" -- women who weren't wearing jeans were wearing track suits. I'm sorry, after about three washings, track suits all look scummy.
The wheelchair pusher in LAX was from Ethiopia. Amazing man. He said he had a degree in Mechanical Engineering from a German university. I said, "And you're pushing wheelchairs??" He smiled and said that he had brought his whole family over and they needed to eat; he couldn't afford the classes required to take the exams that would qualify him to work here. But he was working towards it and it would happen someday. He thought America was great because you could work as many jobs as you wanted. I thought he was kidding till he said that in some countries you could only work 8 hours and that was it. I never met anyone who thought it was wonderful that you could work as many as four jobs. One thing that bothered me was that he said all his jobs were part-time. I asked if he got benefits like health insurance, and he shrugged, no. I said, "But you're a dad. You should have health insurance." He didn't want to say anything bad but I could tell it bothered him. At the end of the ride, I happily handed him $5 (I had change from buying a sandwich on the plane) and wished him well. Good luck, fella.
My reserved Hertz Ford Focus got upgraded to a Rav 4. There must have been a competition on since he pressured me a bit to upgrade and said, "But you have so much luggage!" Actually, I was traveling pretty light, for me: the giant Kiva backpack and only one suitcase. But I gave in and let him upgrade me. It's a great car, other than the fact that I have to drag my foot over the high sill -- it's just a bit too tall for me. But it's zippy and nimble and, like the Prius I had last time, has the feeling it could pivot on one back wheel. I'm a Hertz Gold #1 Express member, but when Amex made the reservation and then keyed in my number, the rate jumped, so they took it back out again. For that reason, I went up to the regular counter instead of going to the Express or #1 Club desk, and got served faster than I've ever been served when I took a car back and had to talk to the Customer Service people at the other desk. Hertz LAX boggles my mind. You can show up at midnight, which I've done twice, and stand around for the best part of an hour before anyone talks to you. Get there at 6:00 on Saturday night and you're whipped right through the line. AND the clerk took one look at my cane and volunteered to go get the car for me. Sure!
I brought my TomTom specifically to find the 105 freeway from the Hertz lot; I get lost every time. I switched to the USA map and waited for it to find a signal while I checked the mirrors and lights and miscellaneous switches. Seven minutes later it still didn't have a signal, so I thought it was broken. I had printed out directions from Hertz's kiosks as a lark, and ended up having to use those. I missed every turn and had to go back to it -- why doesn't LA invest in lighted street signs in the LAX vicinity!!? -- and as I was sitting at the signal prior to getting on the on ramp, suddenly my TomTom says, "Turn left." Well, hell, NOW you wake up, when I've found what I needed and don't need you any more. And at the 105 / 605 split, where the 105 ends, he did it again to me -- the 605 exits both go off to the right, then the two lanes going north break off and swing over to the left. He kept saying, "Bear right, and stay right." What he meant was, "Bear right, stay left but in the right-hand lane." Or something. I ended up making a tour of that neighborhood before finally finding an onramp north again because I got him so confused he stopped talking to me.
I got home in pretty good nick, John was there, and I basically dumped my stuff in the guest room and nearly had a heart attack when I turned around to face a life-size oil painting of Yours Truly. My mother had done it from a photo but I had never seen it before. I think it might qualify for MOBA as one eye is distinctly higher than the other, and my hair is kind of a muddy brick color. John got quite a laugh. Anyway, I talked to him for an hour or two, and then decided my head was going to fall off if I didn't go to bed immediately. I think it was only about 9:30 or 10:00. II didn't even shower or anything; just dropped into bed and was out like the proverbial light. What woke me up was Charlie. I'm in the guest room, which is normally the cat's room. Charlie's normal wake-up time is 3:00 AM. She was okay beating her toy mice around, but John had left a box under the window, and the third time she got up on that and started whanging the cord for the metal blinds, I opened the door and told her to go find Daddy. I didn't see her again. (I have to leave the door open for her if she's out, because her litter pan and water dish are in there.) Although I know she was on the bed with me at one point, she didn't sleep up against me like my two do, and I have to say I missed Muffin being up at my shoulder.
The house had a new furnace installed a year or so ago, and for some reason John feels the need to leave the central fan running all the time, day and night. There's no "low" speed, so the blast from the fan was in my face all night long. When I finally got conscious at 3:00, I went over and closed the vent to my room, and after that (and letting the cat out) I got some nice ZZZ's. [I have to say that this idiosyncrasy of his has managed one thing I never thought would happen in this house: I suffer from cold. Wherever I sit is in the blast from the vent in whatever room I'm in, and although the thermometer says 68 degrees F, the wind chill makes it closer to 60. Today he let me turn it off when he went to work but it was still after noon (and the thermometer read 71) until I felt comfortable. That's very strange; 68 is normally a perfect temperature for me. Could I be getting old?]
Sunday, John's "rent-a-wife" showed up. His friend Leslye is a paralegal and is being paid by our "family funds" to help him sort paperwork on the weekends. It's a hell of a drive for her, as she lives in Redlands, but I have to say that when she's in the house, she's working the entire time. She'll chat, but only if she's also doing something to earn her pay. We all went to breakfast at Mimi's, where I had one of their "buttermilk spice" muffins hot out of the oven (I was burned when I tried to pull it apart) and a Monterey omelette. Okay, I almost have my California omelette fix now, except that this one didn't have artichokes. I neeeed a Santa Cruz omelette: avocado, artichokes, jack cheese, garlic, onions, tomatoes, wrapped in about a dozen eggs, and sourdough toast on the side, ideally with Knott's boysenberry jam.
After brunch they did some shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond, and I went to tour the new Whittwood Mall and find a drugstore so I could get some deodorant and hand cream. The Santa Anas have been making a slight but noticeable appearance; the temperatures are in the high 60's / low 70's but it's dry as bone, and my hands are turning to parchment. And of course the one thing I managed to forget was B.O. juice. The mall has been completely renovated, and by that I mean that the only building still recognizable to me was the old Broadway building on the near end. It became an Emporium (I think; I know they were related for a number of years) then went through a number of changes, including being abandoned for a few years.... anyway, it is now a Sears store, answering my question as to whether or not Sears still had any stores at all. The rest of the mall looks like it was completely torn down and rebuilt. The Sav-On drugstore I was looking for isn't there any more, so I ended up exiting the mall and driving around until I found a CVS a couple blocks away.
Got back home and sort of helped out desultorily. I went out to the garage and sorted through about 50% of the things for the garage sale, nailing down some books I wanted to keep, and pulling out a few things I thought other people might be interested in. I found an entire box of old Mac Plus software, and a few feet away, balancing a couple of boxes above it, was my old Mac Plus. I thought that was long gone. Sometime this week I will have John move some of the stuff so I can retrieve it and turn it into an aquarium. And maybe someone in AMUG would like the software. I'm sure the disks are dead but the manuals might be worth a laugh. But I also found one of my fairy-tale books from my childhood, and some really nice hardbacks, and one or two things I would like to have in England. Some stuff I would like to see on eBay if I were going to be here longer, but I guess we just don't have the time for it.
John and I went to dinner about 8;30 (after Leslye had gone home) and we ended up at the Black Angus near Mimi's, where we'd had breakfast. Our waiter was Nick, the most stereotypical young Hitler-youth American for miles. (Well he was brunette.) Clean-cut, stood up straight, said "You got it!" whenever he was asked for something, and when he said his name was Nick but we could call him anything, I had to bite my tongue on the response. He was obviously not ready for such cynicism. My pasta Alfredo was great, the red wine was wonderful, but John's mushroom-and-bleu filet mignon showed up without the cheese, and when we pointed it out to Asshole.... um, I mean Nick.... he just brought back a little container of bleu cheese crumbles. Not quite the same as having that bleu cheese slick melted onto the steak, but I guess it tasted okay. On our way out, I noticed a CVS drugstore right next door. I had thought the drugstore would be in the mall proper, not up against Whittier Boulevard, and missed it completely earlier in the day.
I left the door open to my room last night and slept much better. Charlie stayed with John the majority of the night, and the wind wasn't blowing in my face. John came in from visiting a friend about midnight and I never heard a thing. One thing about that fan, it blocks any noise. It really roars but I'm used to sleeping with a radio on and my central heating wheezing and banging all night long, so I sleep through it pretty well. One thing I did notice was something John had warned me about. The central fan on the furnace runs all the time when it's just moving air around, but when it needs to turn on the heat, it shuts off and way deep in the furnace there's a deep turbine hum that winds up and runs until the furnace actually ignites and is running, and then the central fan turns on again. Very odd.
Today I discovered that John is not a morning person. He snarled "Do you always ask this many questions?!" when I was trying to find the coffee fixings and decide whether to heat up the coffee from yesterday or make fresh and asking him if he wanted any so I would know how much to make. I said, "I'll take it that's a 'yes' on 'do you want coffee'..." and only got another snarl. 8-)
I have spent my day basically sorting through Mom's recipe collection. I haven't found the Christmas cookies I was hoping to find; years ago I asked her for the recipes and she admitted she may have thrown them out the last time she sorted through them. Talk about anal-retentive. This woman didn't just have the usual headers for recipes, like "side dishes," -- she was down to filing them BY VEGETABLE: "avocado", "mushroom", "tomato." Since at the end she couldn't remember which recipes she had and which she didn't, she duplicated a lot. I have found handwritten recipes right next to the magazine version of exactly the same thing. And the record is finding six copies of that classic green bean casserole with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and French's French-Fried Onions. I also found the usual assortment of crazy-old-lady hoarding. Stashed in with the pile of unsorted, unfiled recipes were more address labels (she would send $5 to every organization who put something through the door; through all my visits I swear I've thrown out ten pounds of address labels) and books of stamps. And of course the hundreds of carefully-folded plastic grocery sacks. When my eyeballs couldn't take sorting recipes any more (type was a lot smaller in 1956) I would wander over and clear out another cupboard of its plastic bags, foam trays from packaged meat, plastic cups that originally held sour cream and yogurt, glass jars with no lid, lids without jars, and Tupperware that was so old it was greasy, although whether from just normal kitchen grease buildup or plastic disintegration was undetermined. The sad/funny thing is that I can hear her talking to me; her ghost hovers over my shoulder, as it did the last time I was here. I can hear her snap, "Why isn't that in the file with the rest of the tomato soup recipes?!" and when I leave off to do something else for a while, she complains about the mess I've left behind. I'm near tears a lot; in a way I'm grieving for her already. I think I mentioned this the last time I was here: the Navajos believe that when a person dies, what's good in them goes to heaven but all the bad stays around as an evil ghost, or chindi. I think Mom's chindi is the only thing left in her body now, because the rest of her is here in the house with me.
Naturally, as I have some time to do this whole blog thing, there's no wideband signal. Until John gets the house wired up with the splitter, we steal it from the neighbors, but it's never a strong signal and now appears to have disappeared entirely. My thing to do when it comes back tonight is to find the email from Allied Van Lines' International Office in Chicago, and talk to the rep who is in charge of my stuff. I don't know how much time they need but John would appreciate it if they could come collect a lot of the things I want sometime tomorrow morning, if not sooner. The love seat and Victorian regulator will be joining my things in storage in San Leandro. I was hoping to set all my stuff aside somewhere until we finished the job and then just have Allied make one big pickup, but I guess John would rather have them come and get it as we find it so that he has more room to sort through both his and Mom's stuff for the garage sales. I need to see how Alllied wants to handle it; John suggested that maybe they could store it all locally if we took it over there, and then they could crate it up and send it to San Leandro when it was all over. This chunk of it will be coming out of my pocket instead of Lockheed's, but the writing is on the wall for our contract in England and I expect to be back, one way or another, in five years or so. But we'll see. I've said that before and I'm still there.
John says that legally he can only hold two garage sales per year, so ideally he'll do one after I leave this time and hold off on the next one till my home leave in October. On the other hand, he says nobody really enforces that unless you start holding them every weekend. So I'll try to go through things like a crazy woman so he has enough to hold garage sales without doing too much sorting of Mom's stuff till I return.
Well, back to the recipes. I'm almost done. And I realized way too late that what I should have done was dump the entire collection into a box and mail it back, and have a recipe sorting party with my friends who cook. A lot of these recipes date from the 60's and 70's, and I even found a couple of mimeographed sheets from a class she took in Cleveland 2, Ohio, where they moved from in 1952. (The "2" was a postal zone, the forerunner of the zip code.) I saved one or two of those but the rest are in the trash. Too late. I'm keeping all the little Southern California Edison and Saxon cookbooks, because I collect those anyway, but I'm throwing out the Cooks Illustrateds because I have those already myself.
But I'll tell you, it makes me think -- again -- that I need to buy into an assisted living place sooner rather than later. My memory is already pretty bad and I still have 30 years to go, if my parents are any indicators. I can see all these hoarding tendencies in me, and that will only get worse.
Back to the sorting. Come on, Mom, your break is over.
4 March
Today has been a lazy day. I've kinda sorted stuff inside and out, and went to Marie Callendars for lunch. Mom always said the one by Whittier Hospital wasn't as good as the one by Presbyterian Hospital (is there something going on there, they're all across the street from emergency rooms?), and today she was right. Although I showed up just as the last of the lunch crowd was leaving, they still managed to (a) lose my order, (b) serve my Chinese Chicken salad without one ingredient (mandarin oranges), and when I asked about it, it turned out they were out of them but didn't think to inform the waitress. She didn't do a very good job of iced tea refilling, and then she undercharged me for the pie I ordered. When I brought that to her attention, she thanked me for my honesty and brought me a new bill, which had an OVERCHARGE for the pie which was on sale. I gave up and just beat feet, not realizing till later that I had based the tip on the entire bill, including the pie. I'll go back for lunch tomorrow and see if she treats me like a princess.
Right now I'm outside, borrowing the wi-fi and running down the Macbook battery. It's been super gorgeous weather with the promise of the same to the end of the week.
I spoke with Nor-Cal Moving today. They're the people in San Leandro who have my long-term storage goods. They can pick up anything from Whittier as they do regular runs to the LA area. The bad news is that their minimum charge is based on a minimum of 2000 pounds. I guess I'll be keeping Mom's hutch cupboard as well as the love seat and wall clock, since it won't cost me any more to send it up there! The per-month charge will be more, but it's only $4 per 100 pounds, not a deal breaker. I told the guy I'd have to think about it. His #1 guy will be here on Thursday but I said that was way too early to get 2000 pounds together. He said John could act as my agent in the event we left it till the last minute or later. At least he knows I'm here and that I will probably send some stuff pretty quick. I'm happy to hear that it sounds like they hire their own people, not some stiffs off a street corner somewhere.
My friend Lloyd will be coming to visit Sunday night to Tuesday night. Should be fun. I want to take her to Disneyland but I don't really have the stamina for that any more (and especially not for the prices they charge nowadays). Don't know what to do about that.
Anyway... back to the job!
Naturally, I got a case of the runs just before GBS came to pick me up this morning. I have no idea what caused it, since I've only eaten once a day for the last two days, I've been so busy. I'm also seated almost halfway between the two heads on this plane, so making a dash for it is going to be hard to do.
What I couldn't find: a second pair of distance specs, my Shure earphones
What I already miss: my Bose noiseblockers
What's almost as good: The Altec-Lansing earphones I got with the iPod speaker system. They have an earpiece that fits over the outside of your ear and keeps the speaker positioned correctly. Not bad.
The plane has video sound but no music programme. Thank God for iPod.
What I did right: small tote bag that fits inside backpack with all the small items I will need on the plane itself. Saves rooting through the entire backpack for everything.
I feel awful. The wind was blowing everything hell bent for leather last night. Between that and the fear I wouldn't wake up to the alarm, I was up every hour from midnight to 4:00, then lay there until 4:30 and thought, the hell with it. I got up, had my shower, and was ready to go by the time GBS showed up. I don't think I forgot anything -- nothing will rot in the fridge, for instance, although a couple of plants might die. I thought about leaving a note for the construction workers to water the only two I want, but the rest of them are so dead I think it would make them laugh.
I have a power point on my seat! (Well, I mean AT this seat.)
Oh hell, they just announced the movie. I was afraid of this. They had two great movies last month but this one is called "The Martian Child." I think I"ll pass.
3 March
I never like the movies planes show, and if they do have one I want to see, they're only showing it going in the other direction from the way I am (usually if it will change before my return flight). Then they show 45 minutes or more of complete garbage before the movie actually starts, and then it starts with no fanfare. If you can sit through the BS then you see the start of the movie. If you opt out of the BS, you look up and the movie is already 15 minutes in. I saw an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" with so many of the bad words censored out that you could hardly follow the plot. Why bother? Anyway, I opted out of "The Martian Child" but it looked like it might have been interesting after all, so I'll probably rent it at some point. I wanted to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks" but the BS beforehand was so profoundly awful that I gave up and went to sleep.
The wheelchair pusher in Chicago was an nice kid from Poland. I had forgotten to get any $5 bills before I left so I only gave him $2 and felt bad about it. It had been a short turnaround between flights and he worked like a dog to get me there, even though we had a wheelchair queue in Customs for about ten minutes -- it's the first time I've seen more then two other wheelchairs at all, and there were about 15 of us backed up. Then the American security was far tighter than the English and they made us wait again while they found someone to inspect the wheelchair itself to make sure I hadn't stuffed it full of gelignite while no one was looking. But he got me to the gate with time to spare, bless him.
The trip from Chicago to LA was so uneventful I slept through most of it. I did do some comparisons between travelers in Manchester and Chicago, specifically and to wit: how many women are wearing jeans. Normally I don't travel in jeans but for some reason I did this time. The difference was striking. In Manchester, the only women wearing denims were wearing them boot cut and with stilletos, fashion-forward. There were only two women who wore them as I did and both of them had glasses and no makeup, as I did. In Chicago, I only saw one woman wearing what I would consider "slacks" -- women who weren't wearing jeans were wearing track suits. I'm sorry, after about three washings, track suits all look scummy.
The wheelchair pusher in LAX was from Ethiopia. Amazing man. He said he had a degree in Mechanical Engineering from a German university. I said, "And you're pushing wheelchairs??" He smiled and said that he had brought his whole family over and they needed to eat; he couldn't afford the classes required to take the exams that would qualify him to work here. But he was working towards it and it would happen someday. He thought America was great because you could work as many jobs as you wanted. I thought he was kidding till he said that in some countries you could only work 8 hours and that was it. I never met anyone who thought it was wonderful that you could work as many as four jobs. One thing that bothered me was that he said all his jobs were part-time. I asked if he got benefits like health insurance, and he shrugged, no. I said, "But you're a dad. You should have health insurance." He didn't want to say anything bad but I could tell it bothered him. At the end of the ride, I happily handed him $5 (I had change from buying a sandwich on the plane) and wished him well. Good luck, fella.
My reserved Hertz Ford Focus got upgraded to a Rav 4. There must have been a competition on since he pressured me a bit to upgrade and said, "But you have so much luggage!" Actually, I was traveling pretty light, for me: the giant Kiva backpack and only one suitcase. But I gave in and let him upgrade me. It's a great car, other than the fact that I have to drag my foot over the high sill -- it's just a bit too tall for me. But it's zippy and nimble and, like the Prius I had last time, has the feeling it could pivot on one back wheel. I'm a Hertz Gold #1 Express member, but when Amex made the reservation and then keyed in my number, the rate jumped, so they took it back out again. For that reason, I went up to the regular counter instead of going to the Express or #1 Club desk, and got served faster than I've ever been served when I took a car back and had to talk to the Customer Service people at the other desk. Hertz LAX boggles my mind. You can show up at midnight, which I've done twice, and stand around for the best part of an hour before anyone talks to you. Get there at 6:00 on Saturday night and you're whipped right through the line. AND the clerk took one look at my cane and volunteered to go get the car for me. Sure!
I brought my TomTom specifically to find the 105 freeway from the Hertz lot; I get lost every time. I switched to the USA map and waited for it to find a signal while I checked the mirrors and lights and miscellaneous switches. Seven minutes later it still didn't have a signal, so I thought it was broken. I had printed out directions from Hertz's kiosks as a lark, and ended up having to use those. I missed every turn and had to go back to it -- why doesn't LA invest in lighted street signs in the LAX vicinity!!? -- and as I was sitting at the signal prior to getting on the on ramp, suddenly my TomTom says, "Turn left." Well, hell, NOW you wake up, when I've found what I needed and don't need you any more. And at the 105 / 605 split, where the 105 ends, he did it again to me -- the 605 exits both go off to the right, then the two lanes going north break off and swing over to the left. He kept saying, "Bear right, and stay right." What he meant was, "Bear right, stay left but in the right-hand lane." Or something. I ended up making a tour of that neighborhood before finally finding an onramp north again because I got him so confused he stopped talking to me.
I got home in pretty good nick, John was there, and I basically dumped my stuff in the guest room and nearly had a heart attack when I turned around to face a life-size oil painting of Yours Truly. My mother had done it from a photo but I had never seen it before. I think it might qualify for MOBA as one eye is distinctly higher than the other, and my hair is kind of a muddy brick color. John got quite a laugh. Anyway, I talked to him for an hour or two, and then decided my head was going to fall off if I didn't go to bed immediately. I think it was only about 9:30 or 10:00. II didn't even shower or anything; just dropped into bed and was out like the proverbial light. What woke me up was Charlie. I'm in the guest room, which is normally the cat's room. Charlie's normal wake-up time is 3:00 AM. She was okay beating her toy mice around, but John had left a box under the window, and the third time she got up on that and started whanging the cord for the metal blinds, I opened the door and told her to go find Daddy. I didn't see her again. (I have to leave the door open for her if she's out, because her litter pan and water dish are in there.) Although I know she was on the bed with me at one point, she didn't sleep up against me like my two do, and I have to say I missed Muffin being up at my shoulder.
The house had a new furnace installed a year or so ago, and for some reason John feels the need to leave the central fan running all the time, day and night. There's no "low" speed, so the blast from the fan was in my face all night long. When I finally got conscious at 3:00, I went over and closed the vent to my room, and after that (and letting the cat out) I got some nice ZZZ's. [I have to say that this idiosyncrasy of his has managed one thing I never thought would happen in this house: I suffer from cold. Wherever I sit is in the blast from the vent in whatever room I'm in, and although the thermometer says 68 degrees F, the wind chill makes it closer to 60. Today he let me turn it off when he went to work but it was still after noon (and the thermometer read 71) until I felt comfortable. That's very strange; 68 is normally a perfect temperature for me. Could I be getting old?]
Sunday, John's "rent-a-wife" showed up. His friend Leslye is a paralegal and is being paid by our "family funds" to help him sort paperwork on the weekends. It's a hell of a drive for her, as she lives in Redlands, but I have to say that when she's in the house, she's working the entire time. She'll chat, but only if she's also doing something to earn her pay. We all went to breakfast at Mimi's, where I had one of their "buttermilk spice" muffins hot out of the oven (I was burned when I tried to pull it apart) and a Monterey omelette. Okay, I almost have my California omelette fix now, except that this one didn't have artichokes. I neeeed a Santa Cruz omelette: avocado, artichokes, jack cheese, garlic, onions, tomatoes, wrapped in about a dozen eggs, and sourdough toast on the side, ideally with Knott's boysenberry jam.
After brunch they did some shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond, and I went to tour the new Whittwood Mall and find a drugstore so I could get some deodorant and hand cream. The Santa Anas have been making a slight but noticeable appearance; the temperatures are in the high 60's / low 70's but it's dry as bone, and my hands are turning to parchment. And of course the one thing I managed to forget was B.O. juice. The mall has been completely renovated, and by that I mean that the only building still recognizable to me was the old Broadway building on the near end. It became an Emporium (I think; I know they were related for a number of years) then went through a number of changes, including being abandoned for a few years.... anyway, it is now a Sears store, answering my question as to whether or not Sears still had any stores at all. The rest of the mall looks like it was completely torn down and rebuilt. The Sav-On drugstore I was looking for isn't there any more, so I ended up exiting the mall and driving around until I found a CVS a couple blocks away.
Got back home and sort of helped out desultorily. I went out to the garage and sorted through about 50% of the things for the garage sale, nailing down some books I wanted to keep, and pulling out a few things I thought other people might be interested in. I found an entire box of old Mac Plus software, and a few feet away, balancing a couple of boxes above it, was my old Mac Plus. I thought that was long gone. Sometime this week I will have John move some of the stuff so I can retrieve it and turn it into an aquarium. And maybe someone in AMUG would like the software. I'm sure the disks are dead but the manuals might be worth a laugh. But I also found one of my fairy-tale books from my childhood, and some really nice hardbacks, and one or two things I would like to have in England. Some stuff I would like to see on eBay if I were going to be here longer, but I guess we just don't have the time for it.
John and I went to dinner about 8;30 (after Leslye had gone home) and we ended up at the Black Angus near Mimi's, where we'd had breakfast. Our waiter was Nick, the most stereotypical young Hitler-youth American for miles. (Well he was brunette.) Clean-cut, stood up straight, said "You got it!" whenever he was asked for something, and when he said his name was Nick but we could call him anything, I had to bite my tongue on the response. He was obviously not ready for such cynicism. My pasta Alfredo was great, the red wine was wonderful, but John's mushroom-and-bleu filet mignon showed up without the cheese, and when we pointed it out to Asshole.... um, I mean Nick.... he just brought back a little container of bleu cheese crumbles. Not quite the same as having that bleu cheese slick melted onto the steak, but I guess it tasted okay. On our way out, I noticed a CVS drugstore right next door. I had thought the drugstore would be in the mall proper, not up against Whittier Boulevard, and missed it completely earlier in the day.
I left the door open to my room last night and slept much better. Charlie stayed with John the majority of the night, and the wind wasn't blowing in my face. John came in from visiting a friend about midnight and I never heard a thing. One thing about that fan, it blocks any noise. It really roars but I'm used to sleeping with a radio on and my central heating wheezing and banging all night long, so I sleep through it pretty well. One thing I did notice was something John had warned me about. The central fan on the furnace runs all the time when it's just moving air around, but when it needs to turn on the heat, it shuts off and way deep in the furnace there's a deep turbine hum that winds up and runs until the furnace actually ignites and is running, and then the central fan turns on again. Very odd.
Today I discovered that John is not a morning person. He snarled "Do you always ask this many questions?!" when I was trying to find the coffee fixings and decide whether to heat up the coffee from yesterday or make fresh and asking him if he wanted any so I would know how much to make. I said, "I'll take it that's a 'yes' on 'do you want coffee'..." and only got another snarl. 8-)
I have spent my day basically sorting through Mom's recipe collection. I haven't found the Christmas cookies I was hoping to find; years ago I asked her for the recipes and she admitted she may have thrown them out the last time she sorted through them. Talk about anal-retentive. This woman didn't just have the usual headers for recipes, like "side dishes," -- she was down to filing them BY VEGETABLE: "avocado", "mushroom", "tomato." Since at the end she couldn't remember which recipes she had and which she didn't, she duplicated a lot. I have found handwritten recipes right next to the magazine version of exactly the same thing. And the record is finding six copies of that classic green bean casserole with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and French's French-Fried Onions. I also found the usual assortment of crazy-old-lady hoarding. Stashed in with the pile of unsorted, unfiled recipes were more address labels (she would send $5 to every organization who put something through the door; through all my visits I swear I've thrown out ten pounds of address labels) and books of stamps. And of course the hundreds of carefully-folded plastic grocery sacks. When my eyeballs couldn't take sorting recipes any more (type was a lot smaller in 1956) I would wander over and clear out another cupboard of its plastic bags, foam trays from packaged meat, plastic cups that originally held sour cream and yogurt, glass jars with no lid, lids without jars, and Tupperware that was so old it was greasy, although whether from just normal kitchen grease buildup or plastic disintegration was undetermined. The sad/funny thing is that I can hear her talking to me; her ghost hovers over my shoulder, as it did the last time I was here. I can hear her snap, "Why isn't that in the file with the rest of the tomato soup recipes?!" and when I leave off to do something else for a while, she complains about the mess I've left behind. I'm near tears a lot; in a way I'm grieving for her already. I think I mentioned this the last time I was here: the Navajos believe that when a person dies, what's good in them goes to heaven but all the bad stays around as an evil ghost, or chindi. I think Mom's chindi is the only thing left in her body now, because the rest of her is here in the house with me.
Naturally, as I have some time to do this whole blog thing, there's no wideband signal. Until John gets the house wired up with the splitter, we steal it from the neighbors, but it's never a strong signal and now appears to have disappeared entirely. My thing to do when it comes back tonight is to find the email from Allied Van Lines' International Office in Chicago, and talk to the rep who is in charge of my stuff. I don't know how much time they need but John would appreciate it if they could come collect a lot of the things I want sometime tomorrow morning, if not sooner. The love seat and Victorian regulator will be joining my things in storage in San Leandro. I was hoping to set all my stuff aside somewhere until we finished the job and then just have Allied make one big pickup, but I guess John would rather have them come and get it as we find it so that he has more room to sort through both his and Mom's stuff for the garage sales. I need to see how Alllied wants to handle it; John suggested that maybe they could store it all locally if we took it over there, and then they could crate it up and send it to San Leandro when it was all over. This chunk of it will be coming out of my pocket instead of Lockheed's, but the writing is on the wall for our contract in England and I expect to be back, one way or another, in five years or so. But we'll see. I've said that before and I'm still there.
John says that legally he can only hold two garage sales per year, so ideally he'll do one after I leave this time and hold off on the next one till my home leave in October. On the other hand, he says nobody really enforces that unless you start holding them every weekend. So I'll try to go through things like a crazy woman so he has enough to hold garage sales without doing too much sorting of Mom's stuff till I return.
Well, back to the recipes. I'm almost done. And I realized way too late that what I should have done was dump the entire collection into a box and mail it back, and have a recipe sorting party with my friends who cook. A lot of these recipes date from the 60's and 70's, and I even found a couple of mimeographed sheets from a class she took in Cleveland 2, Ohio, where they moved from in 1952. (The "2" was a postal zone, the forerunner of the zip code.) I saved one or two of those but the rest are in the trash. Too late. I'm keeping all the little Southern California Edison and Saxon cookbooks, because I collect those anyway, but I'm throwing out the Cooks Illustrateds because I have those already myself.
But I'll tell you, it makes me think -- again -- that I need to buy into an assisted living place sooner rather than later. My memory is already pretty bad and I still have 30 years to go, if my parents are any indicators. I can see all these hoarding tendencies in me, and that will only get worse.
Back to the sorting. Come on, Mom, your break is over.
4 March
Today has been a lazy day. I've kinda sorted stuff inside and out, and went to Marie Callendars for lunch. Mom always said the one by Whittier Hospital wasn't as good as the one by Presbyterian Hospital (is there something going on there, they're all across the street from emergency rooms?), and today she was right. Although I showed up just as the last of the lunch crowd was leaving, they still managed to (a) lose my order, (b) serve my Chinese Chicken salad without one ingredient (mandarin oranges), and when I asked about it, it turned out they were out of them but didn't think to inform the waitress. She didn't do a very good job of iced tea refilling, and then she undercharged me for the pie I ordered. When I brought that to her attention, she thanked me for my honesty and brought me a new bill, which had an OVERCHARGE for the pie which was on sale. I gave up and just beat feet, not realizing till later that I had based the tip on the entire bill, including the pie. I'll go back for lunch tomorrow and see if she treats me like a princess.
Right now I'm outside, borrowing the wi-fi and running down the Macbook battery. It's been super gorgeous weather with the promise of the same to the end of the week.
I spoke with Nor-Cal Moving today. They're the people in San Leandro who have my long-term storage goods. They can pick up anything from Whittier as they do regular runs to the LA area. The bad news is that their minimum charge is based on a minimum of 2000 pounds. I guess I'll be keeping Mom's hutch cupboard as well as the love seat and wall clock, since it won't cost me any more to send it up there! The per-month charge will be more, but it's only $4 per 100 pounds, not a deal breaker. I told the guy I'd have to think about it. His #1 guy will be here on Thursday but I said that was way too early to get 2000 pounds together. He said John could act as my agent in the event we left it till the last minute or later. At least he knows I'm here and that I will probably send some stuff pretty quick. I'm happy to hear that it sounds like they hire their own people, not some stiffs off a street corner somewhere.
My friend Lloyd will be coming to visit Sunday night to Tuesday night. Should be fun. I want to take her to Disneyland but I don't really have the stamina for that any more (and especially not for the prices they charge nowadays). Don't know what to do about that.
Anyway... back to the job!
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