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Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

Being Afraid

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on October 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It’s Halloween. Some people like going through haunted houses, dressing up with ghoulish makeup, and tricking you into handing out candy. Perfectly normal women become sexy French maids. Not me. I won’t watch horror movies or anything with zombies. In fact, I was watching a trailer with Ralph Fiennes in LA that caught me off guard – what appeared to be a cooking contest turned into something else entirely. I closed my eyes.

Did I say LA? Yes, Bob and I took a short, stealth trip out West to see the Rocker and Aunt Kiki. We flew in to see their finished home perched on a hill. It was so sweet to sit and talk, watch Cooper’s hawks gliding above us, and play backgammon. We didn’t Go Go GO! Instead, Bob taught them how to make pasta from scratch. I found myself looking around, at their beautiful home, at the amazing life they are building together in California, and catching my breath.

Kiki came home with her studio’s new coffee table book, so I immediately ordered mine. The living room on the cover is divinely inspired…. “Shamshiri: Interiors.” I’m lucky to have such an outstanding designer daughter on speed dial! Then we went for a seaview walk hike and I saw my first wild coyote.

The coyote is a medium-sized member of the dog family that includes wolves and foxes. With pointed ears, a slender muzzle, and a drooping bushy tail, the coyote often resembles a German shepherd or collie. Coyotes are usually a grayish brown with reddish tinges behind the ears and around the face but coloration can vary from a silver-gray to black. The tail usually has a black tip. Eyes are yellow, rather than brown like many domestic dogs. Most adults weigh between 25-35 pounds…”

https://urbancoyoteresearch.com/coyote-info/general-information-about-coyotes

It actually did look like a skinny wolf. I wasn’t afraid of the coyote, but I understood why my son’s cats must stay inside. They are predators and usually hunt rodents and rabbits, not people. You’re supposed to make a lot of noise if you see one, and indeed this guy looked at us, turned around and slowly sashayed away. I could picture his text bubble: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

We’re back in Nashville and luckily I bought tons of candy before we left. Our new/old house is in a neighborhood of young families. I didn’t count last year, but I hope I don’t run out of treats tonight. There’s a skeleton waving from my front porch rocking chair and that’s the extent of my spooky decorating skills this year. After a week that’s seen another mass shooting in Maine of all places, and more and more anti-semitic rhetoric on social media I’m feeling enraged – but I guess that’s better than fear.

I will not let fear dictate my behavior.

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Sunrise

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2023| 2 Comments »

I was going to write about our glamping getaway with friends to Wildwood. But then I thought I’d have to start off before our Granville, TN jaunt, with our trip to the Emergency Department of the Bride’s hospital. And then Hamas attacked Israel.

At sunrise on Saturday the war began. The terrorists entered the country by land, sea and motorized paragliders – launching over 2,000 rockets and overwhelming Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. The descendants of Abraham are caught once again in a biblical battle and my heart aches for all the innocent Jewish and Arab citizens who are caught in the middle.

But make no mistake, their hatred runs deep.

Before glamping with friends last week, our whole southern family met up with my step-brother Eric at the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky. If you recall, the Flapper married Eric’s father, her third husband Mr B, when I was in middle school. He was a distinguished judge in town, and he and Bob’s father shared the honor of being first and second presidents of the Dover Jewish Center Brotherhood.

Eric and I have been wanting our Grands to get together forever; he has three granddaughters living close by in St Louis, about the same age as our Bug and Pumpkin. Eric spoke fluent Hebrew and worked on a Kibbutz after college. When Vietnam happened he was drafted, and because he is a pacifist, he served as a med-evac Huey pilot. He introduced me to Arlo Guthrie and the fine art of passive resistance.

I was looking forward to hearing his thoughts on the politics of Israel today, on the extreme Orthodoxy that would like to turn Israel into a theocracy like Iran… before Saturday.

Many years ago I was visiting Eric and his wife Bev with the Flapper for their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. He’d been a practicing dentist for over 30 years at that time. We were sitting in their living room with friends of theirs from Israel, one a young lawyer and judge who I’ll call Anat. I’d been complaining about Newark airport, about an Army soldier being searched before boarding our plane. It was the early 90s, long before TSA. And Anat said,

“You don’t think they would dress like a soldier?”

No, I hadn’t thought of that. Just like I didn’t think a plane hijacking meant a suicide mission. But her eyes changed, her posture changed, her essence changed before my eyes – Anat became a soldier. And so I immediately thought of Anat’s beautiful family in Ramat HaSharon, Israel on Saturday. I texted Bev to see if they were OK, and for now they are safe. I checked her facebook page but it was all in Hebrew, nothing past mid-September when the Holy Days began.

They should have been celebrating the end of Sukkot, a Jewish Thanksgiving and more. Last Saturday marked the end of reading the Torah in synagogues everywhere, and opening the book again to the first of the Five Books of Moses. It is a joyous time. Instead they are under attack from an enemy that wants to annihilate OUR people, the Jewish people. Their hatred runs deep. The British tried to draw boundaries on an area of nomadic tribes with fluid borders. But since shortly after the Holocaust, since 1948, Israel has been a sovereign state, a democracy, the size of New Jersey, surrounded by Arab states.

Make no mistake. Israelis do not slaughter Olympic athletes, or fly jets into buildings. They don’t strap bombs on themselves and walk into markets or behead journalists and children to post on Facebook live. Hamas must be stopped.

The sun is rising on part of my family in California – can you tell who is Jewish?

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Wales

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on April 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Bob and I just watched the latest Ted Lasso!

It was endearing and fun – SPOILER ALERT the team gets into a pillow fight, Rebecca falls into a canal, and Coach Beard turns into Ziggy Pop in clown drag. But I knew that was coming since I follow the Actor/Coach on Insta. We are left wondering if Ted actually tried a psychedelic! And for all you new kids, Baby Boomers may not have had MDMA, but we did a little tripping in our time.

Of course this Ted episode was filmed in Amsterdam.

A city filled with bikes, canals, and adventure. And TULIPS; I was there over 50 years ago and it looks like it hasn’t changed much. The real change is the recent, and not very well studied, use of psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD and severe depression. Do you really need a therapist next to you for an eight hour trip? And which “type” of talk therapy would be beneficial?

“It’s crazy, all the heterogeneity of what folks were trained in,” says Eiko Fried, associate professor of psychology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands… It’s not normal in a treatment study to say, do whatever psychotherapy you want, for whatever length you want,” says Fried. Such inconsistencies inevitably muddle the results, meaning “you can’t really learn much. You’re shooting yourself in the foot with protocols like that.”

https://www.wired.com/story/psychedelic-therapy-mess/

Only to muddle reality further, we awoke to the news that a Welsh soccer team, Wexham, just won a promotion to the professional league! Guess who owns Wexham? Two baby-faced American actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, bought the team for a mere pittance in 2021, its value now quadrupled.

Some people get puppies and bake sourdough in a pandemic, and some buy failing foreign football teams!

“Wrexham’s Association Football Club has formed an important part of the community in the small town in northern Wales since its formation in the 1860s, but despite strong support from local residents it has long struggled financially to pay its players and maintain its operations, almost going bankrupt with multimillion-dollar debts around a decade ago.”

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/22/1171479278/ryan-reynolds-rob-mcelhenney-soccer-team-wrexham-promotion

Wales is on my short list of places to see, ever since my sister Kay told me it’s the most beautiful country in the world! And thanks to Ancestry, my Welsh heritage has been confirmed – my maternal grandfather was definitely Welsh. There was always a bit of a rumor around my beautiful, redheaded Nana. The woman who was holding me in a car in 1949 when our family went out for a drive to see a new airport. The woman who brought me to my first motion picture, Picnic, telling me how “grown-up” I was before ratings became a thing. I knew I came from a long line of proud, strong Pennsylvania women.

“Throw your bread out on the water, and it will come back with jelly on it.”

“We’re from County Mayo, God help us.”

I can only remember her long, black skirts and the sound of her black shoes on pine floors; her copious jars of pickles on shelves. But I remember the feeling of independence and confidence she instilled in me so long ago.

Today, a new Ted Lasso will appear on AppleTV. I’ve got a feeling the team’s losing streak is about to end. And I’m sincerely hoping my dance with breaking bones is done. Bob is asking me where I want to go next, the travel bug has infected him again. My gypsy/handy husband is ready to scour the globe, and I’m his reluctant, fragile wife. I didn’t rehearse for this part, I always played the fun-loving sprite, ever eager to try something new.

Opening new pathways in the brain is one way to defray the costs of aging I’m told. Have I told you that Bob has taken up woodworking and built a board and batten wall in our bedroom? With only a one-handed wife, he enlisted a little extra help with painting. Maybe we should go hiking in Wales? No other country has a dragon on its flag!

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Fat Tuesday

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on February 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

To celebrate Fat Tuesday, the Bride joined us for a quick Korean lunch of Bibimbap!

After trying out an Uzbekistan restaurant with our Germantown crew last week, we all decided to meet for dinner every month at a new and/or unusual place. Bob and I get to choose the next March culinary pit stop, so I asked my creative daughter for her thoughts – and I am paraphrasing here but – this famous Nashville chef, Deb Paquette, who owns Etch and Jasper’s to name a few famous restaurants has said that Korea House is her all-time favorite! And it’s right in our neighborhood.

I thought about Ada and her friends meeting at a NJ diner every Tuesday, and how I used to join them when I was in town. It was sad to see their numbers diminish over the years, but that sense of predictability and camaraderie appealed to me. Also not having to cook was a bonus. Is this another sign that I am aging; like watching Jeopardy? I think it’s more of a need to stay connected with our Italian cohorts since we moved a few miles away.

My foster parents used to go out to dinner, at the other diner in town and yes NJ has LOTS of diners, almost every Sunday. I would order the exact, same thing every time, veal parmigiana. That was before I learned about veal being a baby calf only six to eight months old and all. I must say that shopping and cooking for your family was not layered with climate or ethical considerations back in the day. I was supposed to clean my plate and that I did because they, the Greatest Generation, endured the Great Depression.

Which meant that nothing went to waste!

I remember giving up PIZZA for Lent, and I remember a priest rubbing ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, and all the statues getting covered in purple cloth at Sacred Heart Church. I’d never been to a Mardi Gras festival until we started traveling, so the whole eat/until/you/burst idea never came up in my childhood… except for the cleaning your plate problem. And Nell never allowed booze in the house, so Shrove Tuesday, aka Fat or Pancake Tuesday, was news to me, but think about it. It almost feels like Yom Kippur.

The whole making your confession thing and asking for absolution – only instead of not eating anything for a day, Christians give up their favorite food until Easter arrives. And then watch out, it’s chocolate bunnies and Cadbury eggs galore! Fasting seems to be a big part of most religions, either for a month or a day; in retrospect, deprivation should lead us to enlightenment, or hallucinations at least. Fat Tuesday, yesterday, was the end of Mardi Gras season, and it makes sense that the custom of drinking and dancing and throwing beads around was just this new Christian faith adapting to pagan Roman rituals.

“After Christianity arrived in Rome, old traditions were incorporated into the new faith and debauchery became a prelude to the Lenten season. This fusion resulted in a hedonistic period of boozing, masquerading and dancing with a heavy dose of religion.”

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/mardi-gras-fat-tuesday-history/index.html

On Fat Tuesday the world witnessed our President standing in Poland, after visiting a war zone, and talking about meeting the Pope. He was met with a large cheering crowd, wrapped in blue and yellow Ukraine flags while he spoke about freedom. In contrast, the Russian imperialist sat while giving his state of the Russian state speech to a small group of elites in a strangely blue ballroom. He touted lies with impunity and said the West started the war in Ukraine, and I find it hard to believe the Russian people accept this nonsense propaganda.

Following the breakup of the USSR, the numbers of Russians identifying as Orthodox Christians has surged every year. Russian Orthodoxy was the main religion in Ukraine, until the Ukraine Orthodox church recently split from Russia… after 300 years. Instead of fostering healing, peace and diplomacy, Christianity has taken sides.

Ukrainians are not only giving up their brave men and women, their livelihoods and their schools and homes to Russian bombs, during Lent they are expected to abstain from meat, meat by-products, poultry, eggs, and dairy products! I wonder how many soldiers, on both sides, will be getting ashes smeared across their foreheads today. The online Britannica tells us that “The ashes serve as a memento mori and are often accompanied with some variation of the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” … Ash Wednesday is an obligatory day of fasting and abstinence, where only one full meal and no meat are to be consumed.”

We are all stardust, we are all peace seeking humans. But there are times to pick a side, to stand up to a bully. Silence and indifference must never win again.

This was yesterday on our favorite French island!

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Swaps

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

We all barter with ourselves. I’ll order the salad instead of fried calamari to start. If you pass this test, you’ll reward yourself with a night out. It’s our own personal sense of economics – guns vs butter, small decisions we must make, day in and day out. Which is why I find the Republican reaction to the Brittney Griner swap for Viktor Bout so enlightening.

Let’s preface this with my American flight home via Miami. Usually, I will read a good book on an airplane. Have you noticed that along with food, airlines no longer provide a travel magazine in your seat back? I always loved reading that magazine, and even know a travel writer who frequently published her essays in the happy skies. No worries for me; when I travel, jI load a ton of books on my iPad Kindle app, and I even remember to download them before getting on the plane! Imagine my face the first time I discovered this techno blip.

So here we were, in the flight from paradise, forever stuck on the tarmac. First it was our weights and balances. Then it was a delay because we were waiting for a “high priority package.” Bob predicted an organ was about to be transported. But then the Bride’s section said they saw a casket being wheeled out to the plane. Of course, one woman threw a fit and demanded to get off the plane, so they also had to find her luggage…

Needless to say. whatever emergency time cushion we had built into our connecting flight to Nashville was tick-tocking away.

I decided after saying my Hail Marys’ for take-off, that this might be the time to watch a movie instead of reading. Well, all those seat back monitors are gone now too, so it’s a good thing Bob had loaded the American Airlines app on my iPad. While browsing through their free movies, I came upon an old Tom Hanks flick from 2015. “Bridge of Spies.”

Hanks plays a NY insurance lawyer who negotiates the Cold War swap between a young Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot shot down over Russia, and Rudolf Abel, an older Soviet spy…. ps, this really happened! Espionage always thrills me, but that scene when the plane is spiraling towards the ground made me rethink my in-flight entertainment choice. Arrangements were made to do the swap on a bridge in East Berlin. The interesting bit though was that a young economics student had managed to get himself scooped up by the Stazi just as the Berlin Wall was going up!

So Hank’s character naturally insists on swapping the student along with Powers for Abel – two for one. Just in case you may want to watch the movie, I won’t spoil the ending. I also noticed in our recent Griner for Bout swap, that Russian media covered the event live, while we did not, supposedly for our citizen’s privacy. And that Bout was embraced and hugged by someone, while Griner was simply led to a waiting car.

Far be it for me to critique our foreign policy, but I have to admire the Biden White House for negotiating the swap. Could they have insisted that a Marine, Paul Whelan, also be released from custody? Could they have said NO DEAL without the Marine? Sure. But I think Putin has a long memory, and I’d bet he remembers the swap during the Cold War, or he heard about it often as a young boy. And he wasn’t about to give us two prisoners for one again.

Meanwhile, holiday festivities have started off with a bang! I’ve been baking hostess treats and doing cards and walking all over our neighborhood. Yes, My last PT appointment was today, and I’m happy to have graduated!

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Birthday Season

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on August 8, 2022| 2 Comments »

Our family’s birthday season begins midsummer with the big boys and ends with the little Pumpkin’s falling leaves. We celebrated a milestone in Malibu. Although every birthday gives us a chance to rejoice or deny our humble beginnings; I’m in the denial phase at the moment.

The Groom’s family has a tradition where each person at the dinner table tells the story of the actual birth day. We all have different points of view so it’s like writing a book. Every chapter is the same time period only told from a different perspective.

The Flapper told me that my brother Michael was her easiest birth. She was outside hanging laundry on the line when she felt him coming and told my sister Kay to run through the backyards to fetch the doctor. I imagine her running barefoot through clouds of sheets. Michael was born fast, destined for a life in the sports world.

I was her only hospital-born baby. She told the doctor after five children she needed a rest.

As my Father lay dying, the doctor told the Flapper she didn’t have to boil my baby bottles. He said washing them was fine which was a tremendous help. I picture him looking like Santa Claus, in a plain gray suit. Cultural norms have changed since the 40s. Today more than 80% of newborns are breastfed.

While I was lying on the floor after my Malibu fall, Bob examined me. No broken hip, check. And my mind immediately cast blame on myself of course. Why do I act like I’m still 16? I don’t want to ruin this vacation so let’s just soldier on and walk up and down hundreds of steps to a beach. Until I couldn’t walk at all.

This week, the MRI tech who escorted me into the room told me I could take off my glasses and my mask. He pointed to a table and went on about how I’d be all alone in the room, and then he added,

“Dr Fauci is going to prison!”

At first I wasn’t sure if he said that, but to cement the thought he repeated it. I replied,

“I know he got Covid, but that’s not a crime.”

Then he gave me two ear plugs, tied my feet together and crossed my hands over my chest on the table. I was a prisoner in a metal tube with a redneck at the wheel. I tried going to my happy place but that wasn’t working so I just concentrated on my breathing while a jackhammer of sound waves attacked my pelvis.

Turns out I fractured the upper part of my sacrum. Which really isn’t a bad spot – too far to the right and I’d be paralyzed, too far to the left and my hip could have shattered. Lucky me.

I’m trying to resist absolutist thinking – like now I’ll never play pickleball. Instead I tell myself I could write more and read more and watch more Netflix while resting on the couch. Why do we need to give birth or nearly die to allow ourselves a rest? This American work ethic thing is real. I feel like a sloth or maybe an escargot!

Poor Bob. His birthday is coming up next and he’s on nursing duty. Washing clothes, cooking and watering gardens while walking dogs and tending to me. Not all at the same time of course. Turns out his talents exceed my expectations. I told the Pumpkin that TOGETHER PopBob and I would get through this just fine. “Don’t you agree Bob,” I said.

After an affirmative mumble from my harried husband, the Pumpkin looked at me and said, “Sounds like he’s not convinced!”

Wish us luck dear readers. I’m on the lookout for a rabbit’s foot charm, or an Irish shamrock to add to my feather pendants.

A reflection of me, before the fall

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Starstruck

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2022| 7 Comments »

We’re home – after a quick trip to NYC to visit my sister Kay and see a couple of Broadway shows.

The Grands had never been to the Great White Way, and this trip was the Bride’s idea. As soon as Broadway reopened, she booked our tickets, not knowing if the Bug and Pumpkin would be vaccinated yet. We were still moving in, opening boxes, some labeled “Beach House” which obviously never happened. Still trying to organize our Crystal Cottage – we put everything on hold to take a bite of the Big Apple!

And it was delicious!

I remembered the Rocker as a toddler, standing in the first row of “Into the Woods.” Felicia Rashad played the bad witch, but he only had eyes for the orchestra. He stayed still, transfixed by the musicians. I thought about the time we sat in box seats for “Chicago” with one of his friends. And of course, we will always have our “Grease” dance moment.

I tried out for every play in high school. I met Angela Lansbury at the Stage Door of “Auntie Mame.” Watching Barbara Streisand play “Funny Girl” left me breathless. I could see the sweat on Zero Mostel’s face in “Fiddler.” I didn’t know it then, but Broadway musicals would become a family tradition.

I was lucky really. Growing up in New Jersey, with my fabulous, big sister across the river on the Upper East Side. When we weren’t listening to Frank Sinatra, the Flapper played LPs of “Flower Drum Song,” “Gypsy” and “South Pacific” non-stop. I’m glad the extravagant love I feel for this unique American art form, the Broadway musical, has rubbed off on my children. And I see the Bride is determined to pass the torch on to the next generation..

We had the most perfect weather last weekend. Tulips of every color were blooming down Park Avenue. We strolled over the Highline, over the hustle and bustle on the streets listening to the birds and an assortment of languages. We visited Kay’s vintage jewel of an apartment and talked about art and medical school. We feasted at Serendipity 3, just as I had when I was a girl. The Love Bug said, “This is like a girl’s dream.”

And topping it all was “Hamilton.” The songs, the dancers, the story conspired to create a most perfect union/play. I could feel the longing for freedom, the envy of power and influence, the self-sacrifice of a sister. I discovered that my skin can still produce goosebumps. Alexander Hamilton’s story tapped into our collective desire for love and camaraderie. Especially now. I haven’t cried in a theatre in a very long time.

Today I will open more boxes and continue my endless search for some glass shelves. I will try to clean up the back patio, despite the carpenter bees. I’ll re-write my To Do list and research the Forest Pansy Redbud tree. Maybe I’ll polish some silver and plant some grasses! Most likely I’ll be humming Eliza Hamilton’s song, “That would be enough.”

“LOOK AROUND, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now

Look around Look around”

…and if this child shares a fraction of your smile

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Peach Tree

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on August 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Testing, one two three. Testing. My patience has been tested like never before these past few weeks. First it was the dumpster.

Right before we flew to LA, a group of smartly dressed people began appearing in front of our living room windows; pointing up, taking pictures and generally talking about their dating lives. Our city farmhouse sits right up to the sidewalk so Ms Bean will yelp every time someone walks by.

Bob of course got the lowdown. It seems there is a major problem with the apartment building across the street. These were professional engineers and photographers and consultants who were about to investigate who was at fault – was it the building’s owners or the builders? They brought in the big dumpster, and dropped it right in front of our front door!

It would only be a couple of weeks they assured us.

Meanwhile, we turned up our classical music on Sonos, brought our cricket-chirping noise machine downstairs, and attempted to carry on all while parking our car at the opposite end of our street so we wouldn’t block traffic. I longed for my quiet Blue Ridge sanctuary as I watched a guy in a cherry picker strip siding off the apartment building and toss it in the dumpster.

Would this building collapse like the one in Miami? There was no time to worry since we hopped on a plane to California.

When we returned surprise surprise, the dumpster was still there and it had a friend – a big green cherry picker parked directly across from our garden. Before we left, the picker had left every evening, but now it must be moving in.

The black tarps down the five story building would flutter with the wind when I opened the living room shutters, and come Monday morning, a miracle. No noise! Tuesday morning came and nobody showed up, nada. So Bob had a little talk with the building manager and whatdoyaknow, the dumpster and the cherry picker disappeared…. All except the fluttering black tarps that grace the view from my window.

Instead of enjoying the relative quiet, we packed up Ms Bean and drove to Atlanta. Her car sickness is well behind her, she happily curled up in the back seat. The four hour road trip saw very few people wearing masks, and now that we’ve arrived it’s even less.

Our Big Chill reunion got off to a great start because everybody is vaccinated and our friends had just installed a pool! Our host was in Guys and Dolls with me, he’s a retired PA. I attended the Junior Prom with the lawyer from Buffalo. And Bob’s best bud came all the way from Richmond, an engineer recently single. Our history goes back to elementary school for Bob, and I was lucky to join the group of nerdy smart kids in high school.

But our host’s daughter was recently exposed to someone with COVID. So the weekend is ours to reminisce and laugh and cry over our lost brothers, Lyle, Rich, Dickie. To debate the merits of crystals. To catch up on our respective lives, good and bad.

And just as we were lounging around the gorgeous pool, we heard construction noise nearby, like right next door. A tree had fallen on the neighbor’s house and so…. Here we were in this verdant Atlanta suburb, and it wasn’t filled with leaf blowers but good ole heavy construction was going on a mere 50 ft away.

We feasted on Low Country Stew and had a yummy peach cobbler for dessert last night. I wonder if it was a peach tree.

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Bad Boys

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 20, 2021| 2 Comments »

We’d been painting swatches of different colors on the drywalls of the Rocker’s new home in the hills of LA It was a construction zone; pipes and plaster everywhere. My son radiated happiness as he explained the timeline for the floors and kitchen appliances.

He’d been stripping paint off the wood ceiling and beams for weeks, when he wasn’t composing music.

Aunt Kiki was back at her studio, designing dreamy houses and hotels for the carriage trade. She’d picked the sumptuous colors for their new home and was planning on meeting us for dinner. Sushi was on the menu for sure.

I wasn’t quite prepared for the beauty of California. For the smell of oleander, the intense sun, for everybody wearing masks! Palm trees poked through the horizon as we headed back to their apartment, a one bedroom nest that was their workplace/safe harbor during COVID.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, sirens! The Rocker slammed on the brakes, turned to me and said, “It’s a car chase!”

Bob was in the front seat, we looked at each other as a grey sedan went flying by the front windshield, followed closely by a black and white police car. Within a second we heard a crash.

As we inched our way into the intersection, I looked down the street – a cop (holding onto his gun) jumped out of his car in hot pursuit of a runner (holding onto his pants). It felt like they must be filming an episode of Law and Order, only this was real. We’d just missed being tee-boned by a runaway felon. Actually, there were four guys in that first car, and the LAPD caught them all.

The Rocker swears this doesn’t happen all the time, and yet, if you Google “car chase,” The City of Angels is prompted. Later that evening, I asked Kiki if Cedar Sinai Hospital really had fine art hanging in their hallways. Thankfully she had never visited that ER. In imagining the worst case scenario, I put my own positive spin on our near death adventure.

To every war that ends, there is an aftermath. To every vaccine there is a variant. To every brilliant day in The Hollywood hills, there may be a car chase.

A view from the treehouse

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Glamp Camp

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on July 14, 2021| 2 Comments »

Ever want to just get away from it all? Our friends Yoko and Rick – who happen to be retired public health officials- picked us up last weekend for a little trip back to nature. Only this campsite was somewhere between a cabin in the woods and a fancy shipping container

Getaway is a great business model. Some enterprising folks bought land outside of major cities all over the US, and put up tiny boxes for city folk to rent. They provide everything you might need – a bed with a forest view, air conditioning, a range, a shower and throne room.

They even leave you wood by the combo grill/campfire! Oh and there’s no WiFi so you’re really off the grid.

https://getaway.house/

Every time I leave home, for any reason, my anxiety level shoots up. Adding a pandemic transition to the mix only makes it worse. It was just about a two hour drive to our #getaway but we traveled together and Rick was our fearless driver.

We stopped for lunch overlooking a lake in Kentucky. We stopped at a fish hatchery where trout are raised to stock Tennessee rivers. We enjoyed each other’s company and our combined grilling skills, plus I tasted Japanese milk bread for the first time.

The off and on rain didn’t matter, I whipped up a ratatouille with Farmer Bob’s bounty! And then on the way home we met a woman hiking a waterfall trail who was collecting Turkey Tail Mushrooms! She complained about people calling her long-haired, young son “they.”

So we had a brilliant discussion in the car about pronouns. Did you know the Japanese language doesn’t use pronouns?

The good news is my anxiety eased and my hip survived all the glamping activities so my PT must be working! If only we didn’t live in a state that would fire a health official, a pediatrician, for telling health care providers that TN law allows children 15 years and older to be vaccinated without parental permission.

When our doctors are censored and fired for telling the truth, what’s next TN?

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