’25 January

The kids are set for some winter fun. Rome is going to Chicago with their girlfriend Aubrie for a few nights to enjoy a winter wonderland and Lilly is going to her high school’s Winter Formal Dance held in a spiffy venue that is not the high school gym. That I get to keep up with these fabulous kids every week is 100% amazing.

My Persian Poetry group is back after the holiday break and it was so sweet to see everyone again, a delight really.

The women I’ve been having a meal with every Monday for decades is still going strong. Every time I drive out there to the SF Valley I recognize how much I appreciate the routine, and that we’re doing lunch instead of dinner now that we’re all retired, and I don’t have to drive in traffic, and I don’t have to drive in the dark.

It’s Academy Awards season and all the good movies are available, some of the new ones in the theaters and almost all of them are streaming. I’m excited to participate in all that come with The Season, watching movies, talking about movies, thinking about movies. Ahhh.

Both my sisters are still living within shouting distance of me and we get together fairly often. How lucky is that?!

For many weeks I’ve been going to Physical Therapy for the aches that ail me. I just love going to PT, it makes exercise almost tolerable.

I’m going to the Getty Center on Sunday and planning to get back into the swing of catching the PST Art programs. I’ve talked about it before and you can click around on the link to see what’s available. It’s such a wonderful opportunity, I don’t want to let it slip by.

How fortunate I am to never feel lonely, I don’t know why, it’s just a thing, and when I get tired of myself and I don’t have upcoming plans I can always call up family and friends who will listen to me, who will join me for a meal or a walk, or keep me company while I’m driving in the car. And I started with a therapist too, like the cool kids, I can say “my therapist thinks…”.

For the time being I’m going to try to spend more time living in the Good Things and leaving the rest of it for later.

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Maybe we escaped the mudslides and toxic ash runoff that would have been our fate had the rain been worse but it looks like just a few more hours and it’s over for now.

But I’ve been a little sick. You know that hacking cough with no other symptoms, the cough that makes your ribs hurt. It started Thursday when Cecilia was here to get the nurse’s rental turned over, but not so bad so I went out with Sharon on Friday. I cancelled my plans for Saturday and Sunday and just lazed around. Today, Sunday, was a good day to laze around and enjoy the rain.

First thing in the morning I went to PT and did exercises for 50 minutes straight. It went well and I was feeling >this< much better so ok for that. Then Susie and I went to a charming little one-room museum, PieAM Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum. We particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm of our guide.

After the museum we walked to a vegan-friendly Korean restaurant which was a fun change of pace. And since I was in Redondo Beach anyway, I had a quick visit with the kids before heading home.

The oranges on the tree are now to my exact taste for making juice, and the ancient grapefruit tree has put out more grapefruits this year than it did in the last few years combined. I don’t know when these tress were planted but the house was built in 1922. How long can fruit trees keep this up?! The internet seems to think more than 100 years is certainly possible.

These grapefruits look like oranges but irl they are quite yellow.

There’s nothing like a visit to the Disney Concert Hall to lift one’s spirits. Marsha and I saw a program of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”), conducted by Philippe Jordan with Yefim Bronfman, pianist for the Beethoven.

They were both fantastic performances but I was particularly moved by the Tchaikovsky. I hadn’t looked at the liner notes first, and this is AI’s quick read of the piece: “Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, also known as Pathétique, is a deeply personal work that expresses a range of emotions, including anguish, longing, despair, and isolation. The symphony is about the struggle between life and oblivion, and its final image is of emotional and physical collapse.”

Yes, you know, I’ve been feeling pretty punk myself!

So why did this strong expression of anguish and despair lift my spirits? Because they did it so well, so much better than I, and because I got to share those emotions with the audience, everyone feeling the weight of loss, and with the extraordinary artistry of LA Phil.

Dumplings at Din Tai Fung, Lilly’s favorite lunch, and then we had a little wander through the mall.

Marija and Ljubica’s sister Vinca who lives in Germany but goes home to Croatia every year, sends homemade šljivovica (slivovitz) and I always get some, lucky dog me. This time there were two different kinds, one the traditional plum version and another made with pears. The fun thing – Vinca found the pear version in the back of a cupboard dated 2006! (It’s stored in glass btw and she transfers to these bottles for shipping.)

I got a smallest possible microwave oven(!) for Christmas, my first microwave in 25+ years, and I had an idea of where to put it on the service porch that involved getting a plank of wood. But would it work? I wanted to try it before committing so I went to a lumber yard and the first guy was not helpful At All so I just hung around, looking, until a different guy asked me if I needed help. Oh yes please! And he fixed me right up including finding a scrap and cutting it to size for $3. $3! What can you buy for $3? And it did work so now I’m in the market for a nicer piece.

I was on the Promenade for some reason, I forget, and noticed this place, the Pickle Pop which, according to the guy inside has been here for over a year. Inside this huge space are three pickle ball courts. I guess there are so many empty storefronts, why not play pickle ball?

Here are the cats and Cheyenne taking care of Kathleen’s face after her treatment. (Take our picture they said!)

My life in physical therapy. It’s been quite a while it seems and I am often better and sometimes not better at all.

The big tree is Ann’s figs that we all love so much and behind it is the persimmon we love just as well.

Ann took in two families (her housekeeper’s and her tango teacher’s) evacuated from the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley. No structures were lost and the evacuation lasted only 2 nights. I think there were five folks in total. And two cats, a dog, and a tortoise.

And Ann and I finally got to our Happy New Year sushi!

(internet photo – I didn’t go out there, all these fire photos are the best ones I can find from the internet)

I’m 2 miles from the scene above. This morning I thought I was heating my house with a campfire and when I opened the front door it was even worse. Now it’s around 11am and I’m going to Redondo Beach for an outing with the kids and some fresh air.

The Santa Monica evacuation orders got worse yesterday afternoon but I was still ok, and then this morning the orders were back to yesterday morning, like the picture I showed on the 8th. Most of the tv channels were running Carter’s funeral but one local station stuck with the fires and I stuck with them. I’ve been channel-surfing the fires, doing nothing else, since Tuesday afternoon when I got home.

You’d think it would get repetitive watching the fires all day, but no, it’s a constantly evolving disaster, like just now I saw that Mount Wilson is on fire and the communication towers up there are threatened. Too much, just too much. My current favorite channels are local NBC and KCAL.

Above is the fountain in Ben and Bonnie’s garden that I’ve been lusting after for ages.

B&B took me out to lunch today at their neighborhood Uzbek restaurant because I’m totally into going to Uzbekistan in late October. We went to this restaurant and the waiter below was wonderful in chatting to me about my ideas, so confirming about the whole plan. The food was great, the company was great, and now I’m just wondering if I will be able to contain myself to Uzbekistan…

Tea and honeycake.

Where Uzbekistan is in the world. Politically, it’s quiet there right now and the main cities of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are a reasonable plane ride from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

My first idea is to fly into Tashkent and take the very fine rail system along the route below, stopping now and then. The guy at the restaurant said yes, absolutely, easy, safe, gorgeous, and then fly back to Tashkent for the return home. Or?! check out Bishkek and/or Almaty?!

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Rome, Aubrie, Lilly

We had a fun lunch at The Point, a table full of sharing dishes at True Food Kitchen, and at Van Leeuwen Ice Cream we all dug into a double ice cream in my favorite, a waffle-cone-basket.

That’s Lil’s selfie below.

Then Lilly went to a friend’s birthday slumber party while Rome and Aubrie made clay objects on Aubrie’s mini-wheel. I was going to make something too but I got distracted visiting with Angela and Darryl..so Next Time. I’m not usually there on the weekend so this was a fun change of pace.

While I was waiting there were a couple of kids, brother and sister, waiting too while their grandma paid. It took her a very long time to pay. I asked the kids about the charms on their shoes and got an excited and extended story on each and every one. It was ‘charming’.

Tony and Ingalill had a major fete on New Year’s Eve in celebration of 1) New Year’s Eve 2) Lill’s exact birthday and 3) Tony’s last day of work. WOW.

And from Tony’s facebook, this looks like some of the crowd who made it until midnight. I, as always, celebrate a New York New Year’s Eve.

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And then in the morning I drove out to Tom and Marsha’s to enjoy our traditional New Year’s Morning of watching the Rose Parade

and eating ham sandwiches.