I got home Thursday night to a few messages from Roger. Bad! Sandy was in a car crash and they were over at St John’s Emergency. She had a spinal injury and was going to be immobilized until tomorrow’s mri after which they would decide about surgery. Awwwwo.
Awwwwwooo. In two weeks she gets to sleep free of The Collar. Can you just imagine? But she’s home, no surgery required, and the whole healing process is supposed to be done in 2-3 months. I can’t imagine!
Happy Birthday Roger! Roger, Sandy (awwwwo), Randy, Charley (Charlie? probably some far more exotic spelling!) and Fred, at Shanghai Reds.
Christa and I went to scout out a location for our Fire Pit birthday party and then had some lunch at Encounter. Christa thought all the lava lamps and oozy decor was real neat.
The ladies room is such a great place for portraits even though the light is invariably Bad and you can’t flash because of the mirror and they all look over-processed, I still like the feeling. I should call them Potty Portraits. Maybe someone will pay me?
In my dreams of a lovely life I imagine a place eXActly like this one. A comfortable lounge, a jazz combo, cool and warm and at the perfect volumn, a fabulous view and right down the street from home, to share with a dear friend – I’m weakened.
Love those shots in the toilet mirror. Thanks Marsha for a dear-friend happy birthday. No, I am not all crunched down. No, Marsha is not standing on a ladder.
Another hotel down the road from Casa. I just keep making these pictures bigger and bigger. Very Soon Darryl will hook-me-up with a Bigger and Better way to do all this. TickTock.
Happy Birthday to the MOM! Breakfast! A cake and a card and a gorgeous glittering crystal for the window! And a sweet visit, help in the garage and a SONG (‘from your son and the future mother of your grandchildren’).
I hope D remembers the technique he used to make this picture (take four or five or something…): head down, eyes closed, exhale and sigh on one, inhale and smile on two, and on three – look up-eyes open-click. Perfect.
Angela’s got her own method down already. I should ask what it is. Lona’s got this thing where she makes a wad of spit bubbles and then sticks her tongue and the spit bubbles behind the space between her front teeth. I need to get me a trick too.
It is early evening. The lights are dim. The room is large. But no problem for me and my new Camera – nothing a little slow-flash-fill can’t handle! I guess you probably have to care to appreciate the glory of this ordinary (boring?) photo. And handheld no less. Can you even Imagine if I haul a tripod around? Look at those chairs in the very foreground – no hot spots – and you can see pattern in the rug all the way to the end. GaGa.
Dale and Joann – I made then sit still for this. That white thing between their heads is a rose. A nice idea at the time but now I’m thinking it needs to get gone.
I never actually met this kid so I don’t know his name or who among the guests were his parents but seeing him standing there for many minutes, long enough to chase up the camera and frame the shot, all I could think then and now is ‘golden boy’.
They have f*i*v*e cats. There is this one (actually, my favorite because if it were not for the fact that Uni is still alive I would say this cat is the reincarnation of Uni)and another one that looks just like him only whiter.
And then there is this one and another one that looks just like her only blacker. And then there is a tiger cat left over from the previous generation of cats.
How does one family end up with five cats? Are we talking some sort of pathology going on here? Time will tell.
Hi Les. I was over at Dale’s wine locker and we were thinking of you and I thought you’d enjoy this. That’s right. All of them. 1945.
MarshaMarsha Birthday Girl… Shall I say how old Marsha has become? Oh, ok, if you must know forty-nine. And we all know what That means…
Anne Marie took the previous picture. Thanks! No, no she’s not that tall. She’s standing on the first step of a small ladder. Looks like I really n.e.e.d(?) a tripod…
D and xo, in motion.
Is this not the most amazing dog park in all the land? Get ready for Pages of this stuff. Too bad, I couldn’t choose.
Having discovered ‘unsharp mask’ I have now, in this sequence, gone nuts and wow is this overdone but what a bright-ness and clarity-ness improvement. Of course I can’t ever generate the energy to redo anything, so I’ll just have to live and learn…
At the moment the frisbee hit the air, all these dogs appeared to join xo in the chase. Notice how the two labs, the tan one and the black one are bringing it back Together. First there was the requisite tug-of-war and then some sort of cooperative agreement to move along together.
xo, being the perfectly behaved gentleman. This is a fact. I saw it myself. Whenever there was a ruckus with barking and tumbling and dust-ups, xo would run over to the group in question and, really, I saw it, try and break up the scene – ‘hey, why can’t we all just get along?’.
And then if Any of the participants, even the smallest-mini-yapper, would yap at him, he was outta’ there like a shot. You could see his mind work. ‘Ok, fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you…’
This dog (from Hungary I think?) is sleek and fast and sweet and smart and I was crazy for her until the owner said she sheds so much he doesn’t remember the color of the carpet.
The owner told me this was an American Eskimo dog, and he is a male. Then, for the next fifteen minutes I was saying expressions like ‘hey you pretty girl’ and ‘what a lady’. Stereotyping for sure.
Then back to my place where we ordered up a Persian feast. D&A brought giant sprays of orchids for all the moms. Now how darn cool is that. Lucas brought flowers too, for his mom, his mom’s mom and the hostess. For half an hour he went around like this ‘grrrr’. ‘grrrr. Why didn’t EYE think to bring flowers for all the moms…’. Cynthia had to work of course, from dawn to dark during the busiest restaurant day of the year.
From the top and around: Hartley, me, D, Angela, Windy, Lucas, Liz, Lona, Mom (the Matriarch, she likes to remind us).
Wednesday nights with Hana. Watashi no sensei desu. Hana-san to nihongo de hanashiatte imasu. Arigatoo Hana-san!
NoNOoo having just seen Winged Migration. Amaaazing amazing work. (I’m going to copy out one of those incisively well-worded reviews by a Professional writer.)
The Grove has finished becoming itself – the CityWalk of the city. The stores are a bit more upscale and the boomboom crowds a bit less overwhelming but still, there it is, the Disnification of street life.
Nancy’s picture and her outing too. And speaking of icons… This was a photo exhibit put together by an old friend of Nancy’s who took pictures of the early rock’n roll legends for legendary album covers, Rolling Stone covers, etc. All that nostalgia. All that (misspent?) youth.
I spent Sunday talking myself out of eating. It took every minute of the day as the moment my mind wandered from this conversation, the refrigerator door was open or I was dialing the phone, trolling for food. One thing I did to distract myself was I read through some PhotoShop info-sheets I had collected and tried a few of their ‘tips and tricks’ and now I want to redo every single picture I ever took. Why? I’ve stumbled into the densely layered and complex world of Layers! What a thrill!!
Mother’s Day! First Darryl and Angela brought gifts, then they took the moms out for the perfectly textbook version of Mother’s Day brunch…
…here we are at the best table in the perfect restaurant right on the boardwalk in Santa Monica where, once seated, we could sit as long as we liked and enjoy the yummy ala carte food, the entertaining views of the characters and their dogs as they pass by our window, and of course the company.
Here’s Angela’s mom, Liz.
I called up Marsha – is this a good day for you to invite me over for dinner? Why yes.
Then I called up Rosy – is this a good day for you to go to Tom and Marsha’s for dinner, I’ll pick you up? Why yes.
Then I called up Tom, told him the plan and told him not to tell Marsha. Why yes, why not?
Tom had previously invited Kelly and just like that part-ee.
“Nepenthe: 1) A drug mentioned in the Odyssey as a remedy for grief. 2) Something that induces forgetfulness of sorrow or erases pain.”
The christening of their dream to sail the world in amazement and wonder and peace and joy.
Alex got this idea from something he read that christenings, (or is it re-christenings?), must be performed by a female virgin. Now where, he asks himself, can I possibly find such a woman? These three girls, 10, 8 and 3 – perhaps the only female virgins he knows…
Congratulations! I always enjoy their long time and faithful friends who offer such enthusiastic and entertaining company.
so we can avoid taking on ‘the face’. Don’t give me the face. Is she giving you the face? Why are you doing the face?
At this moment Mom was not making ‘the face’ but I think all we girls are trying to come up with our own face…
We also enjoyed visiting a couple of temples which were basically far plainer than I expected. One of the priests said it was because of zoning. But that doesn’t really explain why the insides were like high school auditoriums with the only elaborate display of gods being on the stage-like platform. The same priest that mentioned zoning said we should go to the Malibu temple if we wanted to see some Really good stuff.
Cousin Darryl, Cousin Travis and Cousin Cynthia. I don’t think any of us could remember the last time Darryl and Travis saw each other. Travis drove the truck with Windy’s things, hauling her car too, and then unloaded the truck, set up the apartment, hung the pictures, lifted that barge and toted that bale.
I got to have a nice group over for dinner including Mom, Windy, Darryl, Angela, Cynthia, Jason and Travis. Travis has A Plan. He’s four years into his five year plan. OK! It’s too cool and soon enough the cousins will have a better chance to know each other and each other’s families. How fortunate for all of us!
After dinner, here we are, down the street at the pool hall.
Mom was pretty chipper today despite a ruckus that usually leads to her discomfort, the presence of these handsome young men put her on best behavior.
The pictures are gifts from a man she met while staying with Windy in Texas. They were quite enamored of each other. He is ninety now (omg age-appropriate…) and Mom’s comment was ‘oh if only he was a Christian’.
Then there’s the story of the lipstick. But that’s a story for another day.
I had L&H and Mom and Windy over for the nice combo L&H B’Day Brunch. We made some serious merry and then as a final touch L&H entertained us with a composition of their own design. They wrote it, they sang it and we hooted and we clapped wildly. ‘Happy Birthday to US. Thanks for all the fuss…’ For sure, a song for the ages.
We (we being me, Darryl, Angela, Liz) went to spend the day in Little India, in Artesia, in the 18000 blocks of Pioneer. You’re here, you could be in India, except without the crushing heat, and without the camels and without the cows…
Here’s the latest:
“I and my sisters, independently of each other it seems, have started calling her Mommy, as in ‘Oh Mommy, don’t worry, everything is fine, really’. We are calculating she is alert about 10-20% of the time and the rest of the day she is just befuddled – I haven’t found any better word to express her condition. Except when she gets to flirt…
Last week there was an incident that brought a few trucks full of hunky young firefighters to her block. Mom was instantly A!Wake! and made the acquaintance of every one of them. An hour later she was still thinking of them – amazing in itself as she can’t remember Anything for an hour – and she wanted my sister to take her to the firehouse so she could give these guys religious tracts, have her picture taken with them and generally just chat ‘em up. She was in heaven. Yesterday when we were out driving she didn’t know where she was going or where she had been but when she spotted a fire truck from company 63, ‘my boys!’, she giggled and waved like a teenaged groupie.
And then there was the incident with the upstairs neighbor, a really adorable young man, who dropped something off his balcony into Mom’s yard. He came downstairs and asked to retrieve his item. According to my sister Mom couldn’t get up fast enough and wanted to send him home with dinner etc etc and was all smiley face for many hours. Funny how that is.
When I got back from Mexico my little sister left for Texas to get her things and move back here. She has been wanting to for a while anyway as most of her relatives and her only grandchild live here, so it’s win-win.”
They are so sweet and kind. They welcome me so warmly: ‘oh yes please, we are so happy to see you whenever you can come’.
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??
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
