Including: Angela’s Mission San Juan Capistrano birthday, the 22nd Street RV Campground with the Levers, bowling party, Mom’s first collapse and family pictures, the Jason era, Bill’s marathon, and More!
Check this out! Cut directly from the web site of the LA Times, our Roger participating in a downtown LA anti-war demonstration. There was even another picture of him in the hardcopy edition, front page of the California section, no less. Keep The Faith!
Roger and sixteen of his compatriots got themselves arrested. It took about an hour from sign-in to release. Then they all went out for pancakes.
My tenant Stacy, her perfectly adorable son Eric on holiday leave from the Air Force and Stacy’s grand-ferret Molly. Molly does not live with her Grandmother!
James, Carolynne, Justin and Jake also, like Les and David, spent New Years in Disney!land! ‘camping’ in their motorHome, Home being the operative word. Then they parked right here for a couple nights and we had a plenty good time. It was cool. An urban campground on 22nd Street.
According to James, everything went very well with the RV and the only twitch was when they were required to feed-the-beast. I have been chuckling over this expression for days now.
Hello dear adorable ones. Oh Carolynne, did I Ever have this much energy?!?
L&H&Mom got back from Colorado just in time to join us for a lovely dinner. I’m copying this in here for the historical record. It’s confusing. It’s not really very interesting at all unless you are related. Feel Free to skip it.
Who are these people? My half-sister Phyllis, (my fathers daughter from a previous marriage) had four children and the oldest, Tim, was exactly my age. Tim and I were like very close cousins because Phyllis and Phyllis’s husband Don lived with my parents, (Phyllis’s father and her father’s new wife, my mother) and Lona, my mother’s daughter from a previous marriage, when Tim and I were born. Tim and I and my father and mother and Lona and Phyllis and Don spent my first few years living together on the Great Highway right across the street from the esplanade and the beach in San Francisco.
Phyllis’s next child, Jennifer, has lived most of her life in a group home due to many severe handicaps.
After Jennifer came Erica. She and her husband Mike, have three children, Amy (just graduated high school), and Nicholas and Bradley.
The youngest of Phyllis’s children is James. He and his family are the ones pictured here. James and his wife Carolynne and their two children Justin (almost 9) and Jake (2 1/2).
Isn’t this so cool! A $&#ty-something year old man, taking up long distance running and then running Marathons!! A very model for us all who ever strive, strive to be stronger, better human beings!!! Oh wait, but maybe just writing all these exclamation points is striving enough!!!!
Bill sent me these pictures because I asked him to, because really, how darn cool Is this. Cheryl, cheering him on GoGoGo.
Bill and I rode the LA Marathon together many times on our bikes. One time his daughters rode too. It’s a special treat to do this – ride miles through LA with no cars and no traffic lights and no reason at all to stop. And it’s easy, not a bit like a Real marathon (I won’t however go on about how it was two years ago, in the freezing pounding parallel-to-the-ground Deluge). Next time though Bill will do a Double – first ride than run. Then it’ll be me and Cheryl, GoGoGo.
Bad bad driver. Bad excuse. Worse than those unforgivable cell-phone drivers. Bad. Ok, but doesn’t downtown look amazing all pastel like this.
Jesse James Fannan and his bestest pet ever, Molly. Can it be true that Stacy’s ferret and Jesse’s boa are both named Molly? Check out the big eyes on that little girl!
Richard and Emilia were having a birthday party for Jesse, Annalee and Emilia’s daughter Vanessa. This is Annalee and Jesse and Jesse’s girlfriend. And I remember Jesse and Annalee when they were teeny-tiny babies. And now look, so handsome, so grown-up. I only said that maybe four or five times.
What a pity! I don’t have any pictures of Vanessa and the rest of Emilia’s grown-up children, All of whom turned out to be adorable, warm and welcoming people. The guests were mostly native Spanish speakers and from one couple I got the whole low-down for my trip to Mexico City. Ole!
Auggg, the foto’s too dark. Here we are, a timer snap, having attacked the mountian of boxes and piles of miscellanea and years of ‘wait, we might need that’. Jonathan – cleaning up his old life in readiness for his new life. Mom and Dad, tidying up the empty nest for Their new life!
If you’re going to Union Station and can’t park right in front they send you off to a place called, I think, Gateway Park(?), something like that, and there are connecting passages from that place right into the train station. As you pass through the various corridors at one point you come upon this amazing beveled and etched glass dome surround by this mural. It is SO LA.
Darryl and Angela and I are meeting for a daytrip to Mission San Juan Capistrano. Angela didn’t grow up in California and never had to build dioramas or map out the travels of Fray Junipero Serra. I brought a book and make her look at it. Once a Mom…
This statue was meant to represent what the missions were meant to represent to the people who were already there when the missionaries built the missions. Notice the ‘father’ and ‘son’ imagery. Get it, get it.
The gift shop at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
It was odd, the items in the gift shop being Navajo turquoise jewelry and Zuni pots and made-in-China plastic lamps with saints and roses. ‘What’s with this?’ I asked the attendant. ‘Oh’ she said, without lowering her voice and without the least hesitation, ‘the Indians around here were really lazy and didn’t make much of anything.’ Whooo. Now There was one mighty PC-Incorrect gal!
This little panorama program is so very very cool. I just took these pictures so I could play with it. Now I want to go out and panorama everything even though it isn’t too suited to this web site. Hummm, maybe I could have a whole ‘chapter’ with just big panoramas and that wouldn’t mess up the story pages. Hummm.
We were sitting on a bench in the mission, finishing up our visit with a little deep breathing, doing that light meditation, I Am Alive thing. The weather was specTacular in the California Dreamin’ kind of way which was a perfect accent to the theme of our outing.
An outing at the Getty. And I forgot to check for extra batteries. And my batteries died about here. What was I thinking? Not, obviously.
And ‘The Restaurant’, Dee-Lish.
We went to see the Bill Viola show. Bill Viola is a really rather amazing artist who makes art with video as his medium. He’s been around for years, apparently but I’d never seen his work before, never heard of him actually.
This picture (Nancy’s) is kinda how I felt walking out. Only without all that horror.
And you know, Modern Art and all. All the reviews are pages and pages long. I would have been better served to have read them before going. But the combination of the vision and the technology is a knock out. The incredible, lust-worthy flat screen displays, the intensity, clairty, three-dimentional-ness of the images made me gasp every time I caught a glimpse of a new picture.
Isn’t she Fabulous?
Now I Really have to upgrade my camera. I want a bigger lens so I can take sharp pictures in low light. Nancy can take pictures in low light. I want to take pictures in low light too! Me too. Not fair. CanI?CanI?Please!
The Computer Crowd goes Bowling. As the blury faces appear: Deron, Bernie, Bill, Kamal, Edison, Greg, David, Bill, Dan, Dan’s SBG and Lilan.
Doesn’t John look happy? Doesn’t Daron look like a really nice guy? Say Daron, if anything Anything goes wrong, we’ll have to hunt you down like a dog. Simple as that.
Check out the top score. DJ. We were all slack jawed. Strike, strike, strike, strike, strike, strike all in a row. Whoooa. There he is below finding it rather amazing himself.
Mom had to do a three week business trip and Dad’s On Duty. Lucky Dad – just you and me, it’s the best!
Friday night, February 7 – Here we are at St Johns Emergency Room. Mom looks so fine now and what is she doing? She is bawling out Lona for taking her here.
“Some news of my mother – although she has not been 100% for quite a while, on Friday night she completely lost awareness of where she was and went into a panic attach so scary that Lona and Hartley took her to the emergency room. She recovered in about an hour and after tests and MRIs and whatnots they sent her home with no particular diagnosis.
She still was not herself but was managing with 24 hour help (we all took turns) until Monday morning when she collapsed to the floor with a crippling headache. Again L&H took her to the emergency room and again they could not find anything wrong. L&H then took her to her own doctor who also could not pinpoint a specific diagnosis. They sent her home wearing a device that records all her functions – pulse, temperature, etc. and the doctor will analyze the results in 24 hours.
This morning, Tuesday, she is perky, chipper and looking forward to making herself better because she has decided to. You go Mom.”
The Family Chrisman: Laure, Ron, young Kyle and baby Brian. Brian is having a rough start but things are looking up and he should be going home soon to the great delight of his family.
Laure reported ‘Kyle kept saying over and over “Kyle is the big brother and Brian is the little brother.” Also, Kyle seemed excited to discover two things that they have in common: “Brian has dark blue eyes and Kyle had light blue eyes!” and “Brian had a monster poop, and Kyle had a monster poop too!” This last observation was repeated loudly and with gusto, much to the amusement of the ICU nursing staff!’
My first weak attempt at the brush-and-ink look I WannaWanna do. This is not so hot but I’m optimistic. I might take some pictures with just this idea in mind. Also I should track down oem photoshop filters. Our cameras, Endlessly Entertaining.
Christian from across the street and his cool dogs. Check out those tatoos. They are exotic, colorful and huge. Next time he’s hanging around the neighborhood without his shirt, I’m gonna’ gather up my nerve – we’ve been friendly for years after all – and really showcase that exotic, colorful, hugely decorated torso. Oooo maybe there’s more!
Photo Op! Photo Op! Mom, Windy, baby Xander having just had his first birthday and isn’t he just cute as A Button, Lucas and Betsy.
Before:
Mom is all dressed up to go the the clinic for her overnight sleep study. We are of the opinion that at least some of her trouble could be related to sleep deprivation. She wakes up about every hour and this moring, Really scary, about 5am, BOOM, she fell out of bed smack onto the floor. Sound asleep, she just fell out of bed. Fortunately Windy was with her, got her knee iced up and generally was there to take care of things.
We have the same hair…
After:
Bad bad and nothing about this isn’t bad.
Here’s a funny story though. Mom and Windy are walking down the block after a doctor’s appointment, on their way to eat lunch at the Pancake House. Mom has got her eyes squeezed shut. Windy says ‘Mom, open your eyes’. Mom says ‘I don’t want to.’ A few steps later Mom adds ‘I want people to think I’m blind. I don’t want them to think I’ve lost my mind.’ Then she stumbled head on into Windy, her eyes being squeezed shut after all. ‘Oh!’ Mom exclaims, ‘this is better. People will think I’m just drunk!’
Now this’ll be a story for a good long while!
Cynthia and Jason had me and Darryl and Angela and Tara and Izen over for dinner at their new, lovely yet affordable apartment. Notice I say ‘Cynthia and Jason’ and I say ‘their… apartment’. Yup. Jason was in charge of the decor in the bathroon and he did a darn tasty job I have to say.
So actually, apparently, I had twins and one was stolen from me at birth…
I went out to visit Lucas and Betsy and Xander and we went for a walk to the park and ran into this amazing dog. So I asked the owner if we could have a photo-op with his dog and he was really into it. The guy was so talkative and friendly and said he lived right across the street. He was going off on all what he had done to refurbish his place and since Lucas and Betsy had done so much in their place I just said ‘ok, let’s go look’, which he was happy to do.
And this is just one of the amazing sights. Sweet Best Friends. Of course I missed a purrrfect shot with the dog’s tongue engulfing the cat’s entire body in one sloppy wet happy ‘hi honey, I’m home’ lick across the face.
OK ok everybody, line ’em up…
A Mom story:
A few days ago Windy just got done with Mom’s constant mumbling negativity. She feels bad, she can’t think, she is confused and miserable and was expressing these thoughts out loud and over and over whenever she wasn’t asleep and sometimes when she was. So Windy said ‘Mom, just for today let’s not say one single negative thing. It’s bad for your health to go on like this so for today, you’re not going to say anything negative’, to which Mom agreed.
About an hour later she says something that very well counts as negative and then immediately follows this with another negative comment. Windy rolls her head over to look at Mom. Mom squints up like she’s been doing recently, peers out of one eye, gives Windy ‘the face’, shakes her pointing finger at nose level and says ‘two negatives make a positive’.
Happy Birthday Cynthia! There I am stepping out trying to get the neighbor-recruited-photographer to just simply snap a picture. It is Not as easy as it sounds!
Here’s a macabre little Mom story:
Mom has been involved in a couple of aging studies for more than 10 years. She did always like to be a player! So last week L&H and Windy took her to her UCLA study where, noting her deterioration, the staff urgently remind the family that Mom has donated her brain to their program, just so there is not any confusion… Then yesterday they take Mom out to another one of the studies, this one sponsored by Helena, and They remind Mom that she has donated her brain to Them.
So she had donated her brain to two different studies and we have to wonder, what else has she done?! What else is out there!? Who else has claims to bring forward??
‘The review of all Grandma’s tests of the last few weeks brings the doctors to the conclusion that what they had speculated at the beginning was in fact true. At this moment they have nothing much to offer. She has been having small strokes centered in the memory portion of her brain and also a
affecting her balance. The damage is permanent and it is likely that the small strokes will continue to happen and her condition will continue to worsen. In a weird way I almost feel like the drama is over and now we all just want to be with her, to help her have a graceful life and to live through it as best we can. She could go anytime or live for years.
She has been up and down but basically stable lately and at a level that is not her worst. She forgets minute by minute and she often hurts a lot but overall she can putter along and she recognizes everyone and can maintain attention sometimes for quite a while. The dark glasses seem to help her headaches. There were periods when she was a lot worse!
And I am going to Yucatan anyway, on March 12 for six days. I have commitments with a friend, reservations, etc. and not the least that I really do want to go. My sisters were both very supportive although it will mean they won’t get what little break I give them. I’ve been taking a turn on the weekends. I’m The Church Lady. I stay with mom from late afternoon Saturday to mid day Sunday so my little sister can be with her son in Cypress and go to his church and so my big sister can get up at dawn to attend their extended church day. That’s me. The Church Lady. I’m also Ms Walkies because I go over in the evening and let ‘my little sister the nurse’ have time for a long fast-paced power walk, which she definitely appreciates.
We haven’t yet conceived of where this will all lead but we have several weeks before Windy has to go back.’
Mom can still enjoy company for an hour or two… She is such a flirt.
