’09 June

June 23

I’m home! Don’t miss the last two weeks of Fabulousness in Wisconsin with dear Cynthia and her sweet boyfriend Mark.

June 30

Hi Aunt Cynthia!

June 28

I had a nice walk and lunch with Sandy today.

And then did I read, or work in the garden, or do any language study, or pictures or…what? Nothing. I watched the Entire first season of Weeds. Every episode, one right after the other.

It’s ok, but really, it’s not that great considering all the Emmys.

June 27

Check it out, Ben and Bonnie’s garden from several weeks ago and here it is now, the farm it was meant to be.

Then we had a fab evening at the Huntington…

…food, music, a total delight.

June 25

Happy Birthday Roger! We ate a feast, drank delicious wine, and generally had a jolly good time.

Seated from the left: Charlie, Sandy, r&s’s trainer, r&s’s neighbor. Standing from the left: Fred, Fred’s brother, Roger, Fred’s sister, Nancy. Darryl, Angela, and Rome came too!

June 24

Rome! I got to go for a school pick-up and when Rome caught sight of me she cried out ‘oh Granny Granny!’ and ran for a hug. How excellent is That?!?!

Pictures of us and one of her teachers in the mirror long enjoyed by rooms full of pre-schoolers.

June 9

It’s Tuesday and Rome and I make lunch. Today we made our lunch in the shape of the letter B because we are going to visit BAABIES!

First I got to meet baby Zack, brother of Zoe, son of Emily and Mitch.

I got to hold him for a Nice long time. We went into the living room while the moms chatted in one room and the little girls played in another. Zack and I had an excellent opportunity to visit and play and and make funny sounds and look around the house. What A Cutie!

And then…

…I got to go meet The Twins (yes, identical!), left to right, Lila and Anya, sisters of Nora, daughters of Katie and Jed. (Katie and Jed who, as my mother used to say, don’t know which end is up.)

Listen to this! I got to feed baby Lila! She looked at me with soft contented eyes, such cooing and snoogling. She finished off the whole thing, did a sweet little burp and fell asleep in my arms until it was time to leave. Ahh, joy.

A day of baby-love. What a treat! THANKS to Emily and Katie and to Angela and Rome too for giving me such a sweet send-off to Wisconsin.

June 8

NA Nancy has made a mess of her finger and she’s been going around like this for some time now. We haven’t given it a name…that’s odd.

Here’s what Nancy said in a recent email: “Today has been a great stay at home day though.. E-mail and computer stuff. Walk to post office with bb&b coupons. Mini-yoga at the park under the jacaranda trees. Now getting ready for lunch with Ellen. Oh, small nap on sofa with newspaper open on my lap. I think I may have mastered retirement already.” Cool beans Nancy!

June 7

Sandy’s at the Pacific Palasades Art Show. This is the first time for her to display the oil paintings she’s been working on and they are lovely!

June 10

I’ve got a second here in the Eau Claire airport, out here in The Badger State, in the home of The Cheeseheads…I thought they were The Dairy State and it’s not just me but Ms Wiki says The Badger State so that’s it.

What’s missing (maybe more I’m not remembering?) and I’m going to add the photos asap:

1) Sandy’s Art Show.

2) Nancy’s Injury.

3) The baaabies!

(internet pic)

June 5 and 6

I went up to Santa Barbara to visit with Michi and see her new place. She is 3-4 blocks from the heart of the elite and gracious downtown. Soo cool.

It was rainy on Friday and there was an accident on the PCH that Closed The Road so my arrival was quite delayed. We just hung around and worked on a photo project Michi was doing for an employer.

We were at the house in Montecito for the night and here’s one of the cats, not my favorite perfect cat, but a cool cat anyway.

This is some of the make-up belonging to the lady of the house.

I seriously puzzled. How can a person have 10 lipsticks and then buy another one? And then after having got the 11th go on to buy another and another?

We did all our out-and-about on Saturday.

Like breakfast at the Cajun Kitchen where I had jambalaya for breakfast and it was fab. Then we strolled the Farmer’s Market.

Here’s the outside of Michi’s senior housing complex. Wow.

Yes we are cute.

Then on the way back I did some research into the camping opportunities along PCH. After talking to rangers, scouring the internet, and remembering from past trips, I can say that those right-by-the-sand places are RV compatible but risky in tents. The sites are crowded and it blows, and it blows SAND.

But there is a grand alternative. Sycamore Canyon! You can easily carry your chair and stroll over to this very cool beach with Shade!…

…and tables and the sea and All That.

And yet camp here, in the shade in the trees with decent space around the sites, tables and fire-pits, ‘facilities’, and that very reason for camping – the wild smell of the morning.

They’ve got tents, tent cabins, RVs of every size, but you know, it is a simple truth, the Volkswagon van/bus with the Westfalia conversion is the perfect choice were it not that the van/bus is such a cr*ppy vehicle.

I passed a few of them on the road today, watching them cough their lungs out as they struggled up the slightest rise, pooping black smoke all along the way. When When will there be a decent replacement?

It really is a nice place. A California State Park. Oh. Budget cuts. Bummer.

June 4

Susie and I had our long anticipated outing today. What with one thing and another it’s been months since we’ve had a chance to get together.

We’re in San Pedro now at the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur where Susie and her friend Ann have been painting murals on these storage containers. See the chain link fence? It just showed up and…

…is going to make it hard for them to finish their work!

They have paintings on the other storage containers too but the containers have recently been moved around and no one knows how it’s going to all turn out.

Great job ladies!

The Marine Mammal Care Center is a rescue service for mostly beached sea lions and elephant seals. Passionate, dedicated volunteers make it all happen.

Susie asked her mural partner what brought the animals to the care center. I’m going to quote a little from her response:

Some number of them come in injured by fishing lines or nets, or even, amazingly, gunshots. The demoic acid that they ingest from fish is worsened by agricultural runoff into the ocean. And their food supply is also affected by competition from commercial fishing. So a percentage of the seals being treated are there due to human behavior. Also a percentage are there due to their own failure-to-thrive conditions.

On the very short drive between the Marine Mammal Care Center and Fort MacArthur we find this church and what’s printed on the side of the building is a notice that masses are conducted only and entirely in Latin. I can imagine wanting to hear such a thing.

It sure doesn’t look like a Catholic church though.

We’re on the top of Fort MacArthur here, created in 1914.

Its current status according to Ms Wiki: “the Battery Osgood-Farley is probably the best preserved example of a United States coastal defense gun emplacement, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. A second site, Battery John Barlow and Saxton, was added to the Register in 1982.”

They’ve got a mini-museum under the embankments with a ton of memorabilia stuck on the walls and set out on tables. It’s very interesting, and a labor of love.

Go Lakers. Isn’t this a classy B-Ball court…

…and if you turn to the left you’ve got the Korean Bell of Friendship perched on the edge of a cliff at the edge of the Great Pacific Ocean. What a gorgeous day!

This is the shot full frame right out of the camera. When I clicked the shutter I was So careful to get everything lined up…and Look at the lawn segments?!? I thought everything was even. My eyes aren’t just seeing fuzzy, they are seeing dang weird. Wait…unless there’s something wrong with the camera…Yes, That must be it, there’s something wrong with the camera!

Some detail from the roof of the Friendship Bell pagoda. Excellent work by Korean craftsmen dedicated in 1976.

And here’s Another site right there too in this historic area of San Pedro, the Point Fermin Lighthouse.

Yes, that’s a lighthouse with the beacon up there on the top and an old Victorian house built around it. Opened in 1874, it was used as only a watchtower from the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

We ate a yummy lunch (my first Birthday lunch…thanks Susie!) and then made our way to…

…a watercolor show in this building. There was no way to know they were having a watercolor show in there so that’s one problem.

We were expecting a small collection of works by your Great Aunt Ida but no, unless your Great Aunt Ida was a really good water color painter. We liked it! You can read about them here at http://www.nationalwatercolorsociety.org

June 2

We’re off to walk around the block and see what we can see. Check out those shoes. They sparkle!

We just loove to watch the sunflowers grow.

Mighty grand.

We met the people who live in the house one time and they cut a flower for Rome to take home! A couple times a year we get these blooms. They reseed the patch with what they collect from the previous crop and then it just grows since they don’t even have water out there.

From a few days ago, this was the first time I saw the babies hatched – there are two of them in there – but I must have missed several days since they are so big and I never did get to see her feed them.

And then yesterday this was the scene, and today everyone is gone!