62 Years and Counting

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!

Procrastination

PROCRASTINATION: Someone in favor of a country full of crasties

Successfully having procrastinated one more day a task that I have put off for one more year, I fully herewith commit that I will accomplish and succeed at this task TOMORROW. In the words of thinkexist.com procrastination may be "...hands down, the thief of time" but it is also "...the key to prolonging life".

If you happen to read this blog after April 28, please help me be accountable by checking in and seeing if I did what I said was going to do.

Blue Skies Ahead

Manuel Antonio Park

Thank you Facebook for letting longtime but not forgotten friends reconnect.

When I found Nancy Bailey who had also searched for me but spelled my name wrong (and frankly, who can blame her because who knows which of my last names she used?) and received, I'm sure, a heartfelt but not acceptance-expected invitation to join her and her boyfriend at their new digs in Costa Rica, I was all over it. In the past week I have had so much fun receiving emails from her asking what I'd like to do and see as she sends suggestions, including checking out Manual Antonio Park. That is definitely on the list. I've never been to a real rain forest. Long Beach and New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas don't count. I'm looking forward to the howler monkeys although Sawyer is making remarkbly similar sounds himself. And 30+ years ago I used to read a children's book to my kids by Gyo Fujikawa that included a picture of a sloth. Now I might see one in the wild, not just at a zoo, or the one looking back at me in the mirror. Along with all this I hope to be the girl in the pink dress experiencing many slothful moments. Sofa be gone...hello hammock!

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

If someone said, "Come to Costa Rica" would you go?*******If someone said, "Fares are so low you can't pass it up" would you start searching flights?**********If somene said, "We'll pick you up at the airport, feed you, and let you stay in our mountain villa and seaside cottage" would you start blowing the dust off your swimsuit?********************If someone said, "We'll teach you how to surf?" would you start looking for board wax?**********************If you knew the only time you could make it was in less than 2 weeks and you could only manage 4-5 days would you say, "Heck yeah, I'm in!"?******************************************If in the course of all of this you could additionally and intentionally schedule a 5-hour layover in Houston after a redeye to have breakfast with one of your dearest friends would you buy Visine?

Planning and planning and planning....way too much time and time is money.

Spontaneity......priceless.

Cherries Plukt at Noon

In the course of going from one thing to another to another I came upon a paragrah in a 2006 word document I'd saved that was my "introduction-bio" or whatever you'd call it when I spent two crazy months on two LDS singles sites. The paragraph made me laugh and barf at the same time. Just a few days previously, an apparently somewhat mentally unstable woman in my ward told me that I must go to the Orange County LDS singles activities because my future husband was searching for me there but he was ready to give up because he was afraid I wasn't coming. After checking to see if she had tarot cards or tea leaves stashed in her purse I told her that I wasn't quite ready for a husband yet; that I still had some things I had to do (like my taxes, clean my room, wash my hair, alphabetize my spices, see my grandchildren married, etc. etc.).

These two little experiences shouldn't have freaked me out but I admit they did. It's caused me to ever so slightly evaluate my current social standing of which I had been feeling quite content. I'm trying to create a career that can carry me for the next 15 years or before dementia sets in, whichever comes first, and mixing that up with a love interest isn't in the business plan.

Meanwhile, my niece sent me a recent essay she wrote about why she loves cherries and acknowledges the chief contributors being her mom and me. And one thing leading to another and another and another caused me to capture this picture from the internet and use it as my laptop wallpaper along with a poem by Jeffrey Spahr-Summers:

Cherry

Said to be

Red

Sweet

With seed

Once in a lifetime

Treat

Firm

Ripe

So certain

Like love

Then lost

Forever

Is this my problem?

He Is Risen

All that is gold does not glitter,

not all those who wander are lost;

the old that is strong does not wither,

deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

a light from the shadows shall spring;

renewed shall be blade that was broken,

the crownless again shall be king.

--j.r.r. tolkien

How Do They Do It?

"Resting on a Girder" inspires and frustrates me. I'd love to be one of those guys able to sleep anywhere. But here I am, almost midnight, and wondering if I can get my brain to calm down. A few hours ago I couldn't even make it through more than 10 minutes of The Office. But when it's official time to go to sleep I'm like, "Hello! What's happening!"

I study Sawyer's wake and sleep patterns. His yawns give me comfort signaling I might want to yawn, too.

Sawyer just a few weeks old

Chelsea has fairly successfully helped him sleep through the night. The first few nights were rough when we committed to letting him "cry it out" for 15 minute intervals thanks to Brittany's advice and Sawyer's doctor's encouragement. And blessedly, the people that live above us weren't home that weekend. By night three he was a champion. He still is a little confused by his daytime nap schedule. I'm afraid he's inherited my insomnia. He starts to doze off and then startles himself awake, just to make sure nothing's going on without him. My iphone has a handy White Noise application that I rested by his ear today, in case he wanted to experiment sleeping with crickets or falling rain or a crackling fireplace. I've tried it myself but usually after tossing and turning for a few minutes I sing songs in my mind about crickets roasting on a crackling fire while raindrops keep falling on their heads. Soon I'm up and slouched against my tempur-pedic pillow while playing with some of my other applications like "I Say" or"Flight Control". Recently I downloaded the "Classics" app which causes me to then switch over and continue reading Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". Is this the grown-up version of crying it out?

I know I sleep better when my loved ones are around me. At least I sleep better in Dana Point than I did while living alone in Granite Bay. Boy, I had some long dark nights in that house followed by the neighbor's rooster who crowed every morning at 4:30. I sleep well when Brittany and her kids are snuggled in bed with me. Eli is coming for a visit in 2 weeks. Having him in the house helps. When I was little and had nightmares my mom would tell me to try to fall asleep saying "pretty flowers, pretty flowers". I don't know where she got this idea from but it didn't work very well. I'd try to visualize a field of poppies, but invariably a bad guy dressed in black would jump up from the middle of them and it'd send me running for her room again.

Jakey Boy doesn't seem to have a problem with sleep. He's alot like Brittany that way.

Little Jake without a care in the world

My Annie Girl is wired like I am. However, she managed to find a soft comfy place to fall alseep at Corona Del Mar. Just call me Chaise--Chaise Lounge.

Annie and Nannie Joy

I feel like I have to get this sleeping in when I can. I hear there may be no sleeping in heaven, which for a girl like me, may be my very own personal definition of heaven. No-Sleeping-Heaven with diet cokes, lots of ice, extra limes and for the rough times, extra dark chocolate with nuts.

The Little Hill

Sometimes when I'm feeling the urge to return to my roots or fly to Paris for that matter I switch to Google Earth. Recently as I was thinking of more things I wouldn't let my kids do that my mom in her wisdom allowed us to do was climb Albany Hill. If you look on the map you'll see 620 Clayton, El Cerrito, the old homefront, and then southwest of that is Albany Hill. One of the first things you learn growing up in El Cerrito is that it is Spanish for "the little hill" of which the city of Albany stole from us and renamed. According to mapquest it's 1.76 miles from my childhood home.

To get there from 620 you have to walk,..down Lincoln or Central, past half your friends' homes from Harding Grade School, over the railroad tracks, across busy San Pablo Avenue, and make your way into uncharted territory no longer considered your neighborhood. I know that cars and busses were invented back then but I don't ever remember climbing Albany Hill after having been driven there. Which means maybe Mom didn't say it was OK. Hmmmm. At any rate, I remember several picnics at the top, a few run-ins with poison oak, and long private discussions with my girlfriends in 5th grade. Which means I was 9 at the time. I know Sheila, Helen, and I agreed to have a secret club and the secret planning for it and secret sandwiches and cookies we ate to celebrate it were all carried out in the secret bushes near the top of the hill.

The Woolfs went over the mountain to see what they could see

When you got to the top and looked over there was a perfect view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Right below and across I-80 was Golden Gate Fields racetrack (I never went to the racetrack or hung out with shrimpy jockeys but Seabiscuit did and my high school graduating class had a few reunions there in the glass clubhouse.) It also provided a look at the original world headquarters of Jacuzzi and a great panoramic shot of THE ALBANY DUMP (capitalized out of great respect).

Looking at the other side of the hill from the racetrack

El Cerrito was an exciting place to grow up in the 50's and 60's. From the adobe clay that we dug up and made pots with or the close proximity to Berkeley and hanging out on Telegraph during it's heyday or the magical Sunset Cemetary that provided hours of fun for Hide and Seek, I called it home. It wasn't until I flew into John Wayne Airport from Sacramento last week and the security guard asked me where I was heading that I said, "I'm going home". I think it's the first time in all my moves and houses that I've actually felt that way since those days in El Cerrito. And I'm starting to figure it out. Geographically, in many ways, it feels the same in Dana Point. I'm not landlocked. When I need to find West I look towards the ocean. When I need to find East I look towards the hills. And when I need to find home, well I'm not looking anymore. I think I've found it.