Seattle 2012

I survived my fear of heights to visit the Space Needle with my daughter in 2012. That was pretty awesome.

But the best part of the day was our visit to Chihuly’s glass garden nearby. I had never seen his work in person before. Incredible.

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The Daily Prompt: Survive

Portland Memorial 2015

I’ve been a blogslacker lately and I don’t have an excuse. Today’s prompt word search brought up this photo from my trip to Oregon, and, as it turns out, it’s only a few days late for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It was a very sobering experience to pay my respects at the memorial.

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The Daily Prompt: Roots

10 Years After

Exactly 10 years ago today I flew to Maui with my husband and children. I still have the children, though they are adults now ~ two beautiful daughters, smart, kind, good people, successful college grads, and fully employed. I no longer have the husband.

Sometimes I think about an event and say to myself aha this is the moment my marriage really ended, even if it hobbled along for years after that. Hindsight is so awesome, right? There are times I believe my marriage collapsed in in 2001, 0r 2004, or on this trip to Maui in 2006. But who knows.

I’ve visited Maui twice (and the Big Island on another vacay) and loved it so much. What a gorgeous piece of paradise. But as my regular readers know, I don’t enjoy extensive traveling, and so I probably won’t go back again. It’s a long plane flight (for me) and it’s expensive. Takes a lot of planning. Etc. I don’t like to leave Gatsby either. It’s important to me to spend at least a little time with him every day. I feel something’s missing when I don’t.

As I age, a new feeling has begun to coalesce: I can like things, even love them, and not ever have to own them or experience them again. Forex, a house. Sometimes I think, oh gosh, I’ll never be able to afford another house and I “should be” sad about that because isn’t that the American dream, to own a house? But I ponder that more and realize, no, I actually don’t want the burden of home ownership again and I’m happy I’ve had it a few times, when I was younger and had more energy (and when my mother was around to help)… that’s enough. Living in an apartment is easier.

The couple times I did stand-up comedy were fun and I’m glad one of my friends highly encouraged me to try it initially. People seemed to be a bit puzzled that I wasn’t going to do a third routine, but all I wanted to do was prove (to myself) that (1) I had the confidence to go up there in front of a live audience and (2) I possessed a bit of talent to get a few laughs. I accomplished these objectives. I had no need to continue.

A serious destination vacation, such as a trip to a beautiful island, is also something that shall have a happy place in my memory box and not be an item on my “bucket list” (such as it is). What lurks on that mysterious list anyway? When I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know. 😉

Portlandia!

Diane and I went to Portland, Oregon for a few days ~ it was so much fun! I love this city. The vibe was so mellow and friendly. Everything was clean. Great place,  fab food, beautiful gardens… wanna go back someday. ❤

https://goo.gl/photos/yUc8V8k3vWwxCoor6

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

The Bead Goes On

When I was up in Berkeley last week visiting my daughters, we had the idea to go buy some beads and make cool necklaces and things. I love bead stores! I get so excited by all the possibilities. Of course I know nothing about making jewelry, even though I spent a lot of time around age 10 creating a bunch of junk. Some of it wasn’t too bad and I’d wear it, or my mother would. I threw all my stuff out ages ago, but my mom kept a few things. Sharon has a necklace and bracelet I made back in those days ~ she says she likes ’em.

 

 

After beading as a kid, I moved on to embroidery and knitting and needlepoint. Even had a run at candle-making and tee-shirt painting and cake-decorating. My impulse to create lives on through my daughters. Diane is a wonderful artist and Sharon is into cooking and making neat stuffs. Here’s the necklace she gave me last week…

 

 

 

It was a great visit and vacation. 🙂

Wordless Wednesday

Hearting the Google

How did people write without Google? I vaguely remember trips to the library to research things, so tedious. Oh! Triple A! The maps, my gawd. I’d go over there and request maps so I wouldn’t screw up distances and towns and stuff. Can you imagine? I had piles of papers I glanced through once, or ended up not needing at all. Gah.

Anyway, last night I wanted to have my characters go on a Christmas cruise. I’ve never been on a cruise, so I was all ack what to do? But no prob, because I go to the Goog, type in Christmas cruise and get times, dates, prices, the whole deal. And I even learned it costs too much to text/call from a ship, so no one is gonna be doing that.

In a serendipitous twist of fate, ABC News has a timely article up saying that the average person gains 13 pounds on a two-week cruise. First, who the hell takes a two-week cruise? As I noted above, I just checked the prices on cruises. These things are expensive, even if you stay in a crappy room, porthole, or whatever it’s called. (I am not hep to boat lingo. Will improve when writing cruise scenes.) If you’re wealthy enough to do that, you can bring a bag of cocaine with you to muzzle your appetite. Second, I’d be afraid to eat much anyway. Don’t people end up with some icky intestinal virus half the time? Third, aren’t you supposed to lie around the deck in your swimsuit, changing into a different one three times per day? Who would pig out before putting on a swimsuit or god forbid while wearing one? Maybe that’s just me and my ’70s mentality. Well whatever,   according to the article writer, a cruise is just one giant feast all day long, day after day. And your mission, should you accept it (for thousands of dollars that YOU PAY), is to avoid eating said feast. K. Sounds like a deal!

I’m at 43.5K for those keeping NaNo score (I think there’s one of you) and hope to be finished early next week.

Enjoy your weekend!

Failure to Solutionize

So I brought my father’s car in Sunday morning for an oil change and check-up, figuring they’d get me for something, as mechanics are wont to do, assuming it’d be battery or brakes, but they called said everything looked great. Yay! Except there was a little bit of a weird noise. Oh? Weird noise? Yah. It might be the timing belt. Did Dad have the timing belt replaced  by Toyota perchance? Well, I didn’t know obv, though it’s hard to believe Dad would have passed up an opportunity to hand someone a wad of money. They thought the best thing would be to inspect further make sure the timing belt wasn’t about to fall apart wreck the engine. Natch. I said I’d bring it back later for that. But I definitely appreciated their thoroughness.

Then I was fussing to Sharon about timing belts and stuff and she got all mad, said she didn’t want to hear this on her vacation. I said it was important, and she said no I stress way too much and fail to solutionize. What is this word, I asked her — “solutionize?” It’s a BMUN (Berkeley Model United Nations) word, she told me, and it’s what I should do instead of drowning in worry. SOLUTIONIZE!

Well, all right then. How can we solutionize about the timing belt issue on the white Camry, I asked her, when I don’t want to pay mechanics to poke around in a 13 year old car, but I also don’t want it to fall apart on our road trip? Simple, she said. We’ll drive the blue Camry to Berkeley next week. But you’re always bitching that the blue Camry isn’t as comfortable, I reminded her. This is why I threw up during my calc final, she said. You drive me nuts. OK.

I guess they must solutionize in the real UN, too. Like if some rogue country is trying to get nukes, the UN peeps don’t sit there and agonize over the end of the world, they simply solutionize and come up with sanctions or whatever.  And if those don’t work, they blame someone’s mom.

Anyway, I called the Toyota dealer service shop this morning and of course my father had the timing belt replaced — way before the 60K maintenance was due, in April 2010. Eyeroll.