Saturday, July 05, 2008
Catching up on some posting - Sarah got her hair cut around June 19 right before we left for Missouri - the braid gets sent to Locks of Love tomorrow!
SARAH'S NEW 'DO
HAPPY 5TH OF JULY!
Did you know that the Declaration of Independence was not actually signed by most of the delegates till August 2, 1776? In typical American fashion, we jumped the gun and declared July 4 as Independence Day.
So why not wish you a happy 5th of July? Seems perfectly logical.
Yesterday we woke up. (A critical first part of the day.) Went on the dorky little neighborhood parade - which I really love. All the kids decorate their scooters and bikes with crepe paper and balloons and the Fire Dept. shows up and drives the truck real slow around the neighborhood while everyone trails along.
Our friend Kim is the GM of the local Water District - y'know they're all about everyone getting artificial turf instead of grass and not flushing toilets and things to conserve water. But she was SICK - so the fire guys hooked up the water hose and blasted all the kids for like 20 minutes. It was not so earth saving - but it was FUN. REALLY FUN. I'll tuck another $10 in the water bill or something...
Then we entertained some friends for a BBQ - they're moving into the neighborhood after a series of heartaches so it was great to get their minds on something else for awhile.
After a brief late afternoon rest - which we knew at least Becca needed because when she's tired she can't modulate her voice anymore (HEY!!!!!! (poke, poke) YOU WANT TO COLOR WITH ME????) - we headed off to one of the big fireworks displays. We decided to go up to Oceanside.
Oceanside has a really cool pier area. But for some reason, it was like someone invited everyone who had just gotten out of jail in the last 30 days, to this particular beach. Now... I never really mind this. I like to be out amongst the people. But our friends thought we were for sure going to be killed. We did come within 15 feet of live fireworks being shot off in the street on our way back to the car. Still, come on. This is the melting pot country here.
Actually that wasn't the real problem. The REAL problem was... after we had parked somewhere near Canada, the sun went down. The air temperature dropped and a thick fog developed. Otherwise known as the marine layer. Thick enough that you could not see the fireworks! It was like fireworks for the visually impaired...
I was proud of the crowd, everyone (100,000 everyones actually) just kind of walked back to their cars and went home. In the heat of Chicago downtown, such a rip-off would have been the stuff a small riot could be made of. I suppose Californians are just more laid back about stuff.
RELATIVES VERSUS STRANGERS
Friday, June 27, 2008
So in a pinch if you were in trouble - who would you rely upon, a relative or a stranger?
Before you answer so quickly, let me tell you a vacation story.
So there I was in the heat of a Southern Missouri morning. With my extended family, we were at a lovely resort overlooking a calm lake and enjoying each other's company while miniature golfing, and meanwhile Becca was working on her monkey bar callouses. I was with Becca - not because I am too worried about her on the monkey bars, but because I notice that strangers are QUITE worried that Becca will fall to her death.
So there's the first hint - here I am nonchalantly watching Becca hang 20 feet in the air and other moms are sort of walking around with outstretched arms thinking she's going to crack her head open.
It had rained the night before - really hard. If you haven't been watching the news, let me tell you, people in the Bible Belt are thinking they are going to see Noah float by any moment now. So the ground was extremely wet.
I started to walk down the hill between the playground and the miniature golf course - when WHAMMO - I slid on the wet grass and being in flip flops and on an incline and in complete slush, there was no saving myself. I went down. Kind of flat on my back. (and I might have made a little "umph" noise - I'm not sure)
And this is when anyone witnessing the event could easily tell exactly who my relatives were, and who the strangers were. My relatives laughed. Hard! And pointed! And made sure any relatives that had not seen the whole event, at least saw the aftermath! So they could laugh TOGETHER!
Including Becca, whom I had been spotting! (Casually, maybe, but I woulda caught her...)
(in fact if you are related to me - you're laughing now! QUIT IT)
The strangers rushed over and said "Oh my gosh! Are you OK? Can I help you up? Are you sure?"
And that made the relatives laugh even harder if there was such a thing. Blanche from Streetcar Named Desire did say "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers" - yeah baby.
TEETH WITH GOALS
Monday, June 16, 2008
Hey we were looking at a local freebie magazine over the weekend and our dentist is on the back cover! Pretty funny.
I remember when we first moved here and he asked me what goals I had for my teeth. This was pressure. I have goals for so many parts of my life, but teeth were not one of them... I started to get paranoid, thinking, am I some sort of dental slacker for not having teeth goals? The only thing I could think was that I wanted to keep them as long as possible.
But as you can see, Dr. Galli has teeth goals for himself. They are as white as the sailboat in the background painting, and they are big enough to offset his forehead. Well, I suppose if your dentist has lousy teeth you should worry.
My first dentist in Chicago (Dr. Shoneberg - who I went to till he retired) had really normal teeth. They were not Dr. Galli celebrity teeth. They kind of overlapped and there wasn't all kind of crazy tooth whitening going on. And he would say things like "you don't have to floss all your teeth. Just the ones you want to keep."
Sigh. In many ways, I will always be a Midwesterner...