A Non-Howling Success

The day could not have been more perfect, starting with the weather, which had been cool, grey and overcast all morning yesterday, but Brianna's christening day was sunny and warm--but not too warm.

We all drove up to Solvang, about 35 miles from here. It's a famous Dutch village, very popular with tourists. Laurel grew up here and Bethania Lutheran church where the christening was to take place is the same one where Laurel was christened (and possibly her mother too, but I'm not sure about that). Ironically, the church is at the intersection of Atterdag Rd. and Laurel Ave.

We met Laurel and Bri in the parking lot and the baby looked just adorable.

It was reported that she actually had a good night's sleep last night and we were hopeful that she would handle the christening all right.

Lemme share with you my thoughts on the rift in the universe. You know how when you have, shall we say?...difficult children? You tell them that you hope that when they grow up they'll have children of their own so that they'll understand the hell they put you through.

But then something happens and the universe shifts. In the scope of things, God intended for Bri to be Paul's child. Paul who never slept and who cried for most of his life. Instead, with Paul gone, she went to Tom, who was pretty much the ideal baby. Tom, who slept and was such a cheery baby. I have apologized to him for the fact that he had to get Paul's baby and experience the hell that Paul put us through.

The accuracy of my feeling was definitely proven during the ceremony. Bri had an audience and she loved it. When all the family was called to the altar during the services for the actual baptism, she looked out over the congregation, realized on some level that she had an audience and she performed. She smiled. She was overly adorable. Not a whimper out of her. No doubt about it--this was a Sykes baby!

After the services, we took pictures of Bri with Tutu in front of the altar before leaving the church. Tutu did GREAT all day. We weren't sure she'd feel up to even coming, and planned to take her back home after the christening, but she made it to the reception and wasn't even the first to leave.

Pastor Jarmo Tarkki talked with Bri on the way out of the church (I told Walt that he reminded me of radio host Karel Bouley...I don't know why. Tarkki's not gay and he's from Finland, but I'm weird...)

There was a reception at Laurel's aunt & uncle's house (my second time there--Laurel's baby shower was held there a little over a year ago). The house is on the outskirts of Solvang in the Santa Ynez valley -- horse country -- which is so gorgeous right now, after all the rains and in the beautiful sunlight.

Bri took a nap while we all ate lunch, and when she woke up, she was still sleepy, and didn't really want to be held by anybody but her parents, but she didn't cry at all.

There were formal photos (sort of) taken to show off her beautiful dress.

But she finally just got tired of all the paparazzi and wished Daddy would stop being so silly.

On the drive home, we stopped and took pictures of some gorgeous wildflowers.

All things considered it was an absolutely fantastic day. Now let's hope her first birthday in 2 weeks goes as well!

Bri, Paycheck and Grandma

"She had a bad night last night," Tom said, apologizing that Bri was tired and would probably be cranky. He was right.

She wanted no part of these strange people in her house. But she did eventually discover that Grandpa's beard was interesting enough that it overcame her fear of strangers.

(I love this picture!)

We are here in Santa Barbara because Bri is being christened tomorrow and we can't miss that! There are all sorts of preparations going on at her house today, so we didn't stay long, but we did get to babysit for 10 minutes. Laurel had been delayed and Tom had to leave for his golf game. Bri was asleep, so it seemed safe to leave her with Walt, me and Walt's brother. We were very quiet and she didn't even know Daddy was gone.

When we left Tom & Laurel's, we drove down to Stearn's Wharf. A whale, who has been nicknamed "Paycheck" has been living in the harbor for the past week or so and has become quite the attraction. Lots of people had lined up on the wharf looking for the whale, and we joined them to watch, for about 30 minutes.

Walt thought he saw a small water spout, and someone else spotted his back for a few seconds, but I think it's fair to say there was no real "sighting" for us today.

When we left there, Alice Nan went to get her nails done while Walt and I had lunch. Then I dropped him at his mother's and I went off on some errands, meeting him back at Maravilla around 3:30. We had planned to meet Tom, Norm and Tom's friend Steve as they were finishing their golf game.

When the game ended, Walt, Norm, Alice Nan and I picked up Joe (Alice Nan's husband) and we all went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. I loved the name of the place.

Kind of the Vietnamese equivalent of In and Out Burger, I guess...but much more elaborate. The menus came with photos of each dish.

(The food was good too!)

We stopped back at Maravilla after dinner for one last visit with Walt's mother and make plans for getting her to the christening in Solvang (an hour away) tomorrow (many tanks of oxygen and a wheelchair are involved!). Now off to sleep so we can get on the road by 8:30 in the morning!

Cover Girl

Laurel has posted new pictures of Brianna. Grandma has to brag. (Feel free to add your own caption -- some of these are crying out for a caption!)

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Why You Have Mothers

You have mothers so that they can suddenly surprise you with magnificent things.

"I have a surprise for you," my mother said when we arrived at Cousins Day. She frequently has a little something she's picked up somewhere and thought of me, but I wasn't expecting what she put in my hands.

Inside the box was....an iTouch! She had been at the newly expanded Costco this week and saw them on display and remembered when I'd gushed about it when we saw a TV commercial. She hadn't given me a birthday present yet and thought I'd like this.

Like it? Is the Pope a former member of the Nazi youth?

I wanted to try it right away, but of course you have to do it all through iTunes and my computer ws at home. So all I could do was look at it and admire its shiny face, but now that I'm home from Cousins Day and have about 20 minutes to spare, I'm trying to get it set up.

Thank you, Mommy! I love it!!!!

Cousins Day was a HUGE success. For me. After month after month after month of watching Peach walk away with all the money (she took home $48 because her bag was getting too heavy!...and she still has a full bag of money!), this was MY day. My 2 days, actually.

We played 9 games of 65 and I won 6 of them and split one game with Kathy and one game with Peach. I just couldn't NOT get good cards this time. This, for example, was a hand with the cards arranged as I got them!

I was also, sadly, the first person to get the boob, when I threw down a wild card as a discard.

But that's OK. At least this time I didn't spend the whole 2 days donating money to my 2 cousins!

It was a great Cousins Day, with lots of laughter about the physical ailments that afflict us as we get older. Lots to laugh about that!

Kathy made Moscow Mules to drink (Vodka, ginger ale and lime juice)

and Peach put together a great Chinese chicken casserole, and she is going to share t he recipe with the rest of us, because I know we want to make it again. My contribution was hors d'oeuvres and I made some sort of a cheese "cookie" that is topped with red pepper jelly and was pretty tasty.

I'm throwing this entry together on the fly because we're supposed to leave in 15 minutes and I'm not packed yet! But priorities come first, right?

If anybody sent me e-mail while I was away, I can't access it because my server's e-mail is down. I'm hoping it will be back up again by the time we get to Santa Barbara tonight.

"Hon, Like a Good Girl..."

I don't think about my father's mother much. I suspect nobody does. Some time after her death my mother and I were saying how sad it was to live so long and have nobody miss you after your death. Nobody knew exactly how old she was because she altered the family Bible so that her birth date didn't show. We know she was as young girl during the 1906 earthquake. When I was born, she didn't want to be called "Grandma" because it made her sound too old. She was always "Nannie."

It wasn't that she was mean; far from it. But she was domineering and just...irritating. Some of her -isms are still indelibly imprinted in my brain so that I have never, I don't believe, ever said to one of my children--or anybody's children, "Hon, like a good (girl/boy) would you...." That may seem like a little thing, but she would plop herself somewhere and then begin issuing orders. "Hon, like a good girl could you get me a tissue, please?" "Hon, like a good girl, could you refill my glass, please?" "Hon, like a good girl could you open a window?" The term "Hon, like a good girl could you..." still grates on my nerves, even though I haven't heard it in over 35 years.

My father's good mood could be ruined by riding in the car with her, when she would grab the back of his seat to give him directions. He would feel that hand pull back on the driver's seat and you could just see him tense up--and you knew that it would not be a good day after he let her out at home.

It was nothing big that she did. You couldn't point to anything and say "I hate her because she did this awful thing..." She was the Chinese water torture of grandmothers. She was a mosquito that wouldn't leave. Always buzzing around your head as an irritant.

Perhaps a big part of it was that she was just always there. My grandparents never owned a car, so were dependent on my father to take them everywhere, so we saw them all the time. We took them to church every Sunday. They seemed to go everywhere with us. (I wonder now how we all fit, since we always had a normal size car. Did they go everywhere with us when Karen and I began to get to be adult size?)

But, in fairness, not all of my memories are unpleasant. I remember as a young child having sleep-overs at my grandparents' apartment. They lived in the same apartment from the time my father was very young until my grandmother was no longer able to live on her own, a couple of years before she died. It was essesntially a 2-room apartment with kitchen and bathroom. There was a living room that looked out onto the street, a dining room, a small kitchen and the bathroom that she scrubbed daily. Both the living room and the dining room had Murphy beds which folded down from the wall and I thought that was the coolest thing. My grandfather slept in the dining room and my grandmother in the living room. Her mattress was so old that there was a huge indent in the middle of it and I loved to climb into bed and sink into that depression. She would move me over when she got into bed, covered with the creams that she bathed herself in each night before she went to sleep.

I remember that she kept water in the fridge. She also kept a glass in there so she never had to pour cold water into a room temperature glass. I loved going to that fridge and getting a glass of icy cold water.

Every dinner with my grandparents started with hors d'oeuvres and drinks. For us kids there was always ginger ale and the ubiquitous cheese curls. There would often be broiled mayonnaise-parmesan cheese-scallion topped toast slices as a hot hors d'oeuvre. Food was a very big part of my memories of my grandmother.

She was also always worried about my heart. From the apartment you could look down at the guy selling newspapers on the corner. My grandfather read the #9 Call Bulletin, the last published in the day (in those days there were several editions of the paper that were published each day!) and when it arrived, he would give me a quarter and send me down to get the paper. I would run down and run back again and up the stairs to the second floor apartment. My grandmother always scolded and told me I should never run because it was bad for my heart!

But one positive memory I have of her is manicures. At some point in her life she had worked as a manicurist and whenever I went to visit, she would give me a manicure. She would have me sit with one hand in a soap solution until the cuticles softened, then she'd work on that hand while I soaked the other hand.

First there was the orange board. I never figured out why it was called an "orange board" (for all I know it still is today). Just a stick that she used to push back the cuticles. Then she would shape and file the nails and end the manicure with a couple of coats of clear nail polish. I felt very grown up.

I know a lot of women who have regular manicures, but in my adult life I have had exactly two. I had one the day before our wedding day, while I was having my hair done at a beauty shop in San Francisco. I nearly missed the appointment because LBJ was in town and they closed off part of the freeway while his entourage passed.

The second manicure I had was in Santa Barbara a couple of years ago, when I went with all the women before Walt's sister's wedding.

Otherwise, I have not had manicures and don't really think about my hands at all, until time such as now when the cuticles are so cracked that they are actually painful. For one brief moment, I almost wish Nannie were back so she could sit down with me and give me a manicure.

"Hon, like a good girl, could you please make my nails look good again?"

Tomorrow is Cousins Day...next entry will be posted late.

Saying Goodbye

The one question people who have followed my puppy tails (and puppy tales) over the past three years ask me is "how can you give them up?"

Anybody who fosters dogs knows the answer to that one. You fall in love with most of the dogs who move into your house for longer than just a couple of days. There is the odd one or two here and there that just don't have the right vibes and they don't take a piece of your heart, but the puppies definitely move in and set up housekeeping (much like that big fat mucus cartoon on the Mucinex commercial).

The older the more independent the puppies get, the more there is this clutch in your heart because you know that very soon someone at Petco will fall in love with them and they will move to their forever homes.

"Good bye day" is always hard but the thing that makes it easier is that, first of all, you know that someone has seen in this little guy the same thing you have seen over the weeks that s/he has been with you. Second, you know that if you give in to the feelings you have for this puppy, that's the end of your fostering because it would just be too much to have three dogs living here forever and still foster pups who are waiting for their own homes. And third, there's always another puppy or dog who needs someone to love him/her and who needs a foster home until that forever person turns up.

The hardest moment is watching those guys you love so much being carried out to the car by Ashley or Megan to be taken to meet their forever families. The upside is knowing that you will pretty much have puppies in your life most of the time, because, sadly, there will always be other puppies who need you.

(Some people might consider that a downside, given all the pee and poop that goes with puppies. I should say, however, that Tater and Tot have only had a couple of accidents in the house since they returned.)

What's the most difficult for me is having to send dogs or puppies that I love to another foster home, for whatever reason.

After the pre-op for my surgery I read the post-op instructions which had all sorts of cautions about not bending over too low and not having dental work because of the danger of something getting into the eye. I realized that this would not be a time to have two needy puppies, so I asked Ashley to find another foster home. It was difficult to see them go, but it was a good thing to do. I was thrilled when I found out they needed to come back, and they have just been a delight to have here, especially since they came home more or less housebroken.

But "the e-mail" came from Ashley today.

There are three 9 week old puppies who are suffering from Demodex, the same thing Gizmo had (remember the puppy who looked motheaten when she arrived here?).

Ashley wondered if I would take them and she would move Tater and Tot somewhere else. There was this clutch in the pit of my stomach. Move? Move Tater and Tot? Not to a forever home, but to another foster home?

It's been fun since they came back, especially since the peeing and pooping is now mostly done outside, so we aren't tiptoing across the room all the time any more. We have a routine down. I love cuddling with them. Jeri and Phil are still thinking about possibly adopting one of them. How can I let them go to another home?

But, as I said before, I can't keep them myself and it sounds like these new little guys need me so the big switch will take place sometime on Friday. We are going to Santa Barbara for the weekend and Ashley, along with God knows how many dogs of how many ages, will be staying here while we are gone. By the time we get home, Tater and Tot will be in another foster home and we will have three new puppies to bond with.

Hard? Yes it's hard. Painful? Yes, it's painful. But it's the best thing for all the puppies. and it goes along with the job description of fostering puppies for the SPCA.

But I have lots of nice photos to remember them by.

Blog, blog, blogging along

I wonder how many of us still call what we write about our daily lives, our ideas, our opinions, our pets, "Journals."

In the early days of "blogging," when the term "blog" was starting to be used more often, there was a real snobbishness about us "Journalers." Blogs, at the time, were generally (not always, but more often than not) written by young people, with poor grammar, and nothing that you wanted to read unless you were a giggly teen talking about cute guys or unless you were angst ridden and totally illiterate, where you wrote in incomplete sentences, with poor spelling and poor grammar.

At least that was the feeling. We "journers" were so much above all that. (How arrogant we were!)

Well, there is real no distinction now between "journals" and "blogs." I still call Funny the World my journal, but when I post the exact same content with the exact same photos onto Blogger so it can be subscribed to thru an RSS feed, I call it a "blog." I often even refer to Funny the World as a Blog, though it makes me cringe almost as if I'd called San Francisco "Frisco" (don't you ever do that to a native San Franciscan, by the way!)

I resisted getting a blog reader for a long time. I couldn't get the hang of the first one that came out (the name of which I can't remember) and I even installed Google Reader a long time before I actually started using it. In the interim, subscription to blogs became much easier and following them on Google Reader was the easiest way in the world to keep up with the blogs that I found I was interested in. I became hooked.

And you know how blogging goes...someone has a blogroll and you start clicking on something that looks interesting and next thing you know you've marked another blog to follow.

I've added some really interesting blogs in the past year, some for their photographic content, some for their writing, some just because they hit me in an interesting place. I thought I'd share a few and see wht you think of them.

Among my new "must reads" when they are updated include:

- Pioneer Woman. My friend Joan first turned me on to her. She's been around for a long time and the fact that she has thousands of followers and routinely gives away very nice prizes (iPod? DSLR camera?) from time to time tells me that she's one of the Important Blogs. But I'd follow her anyway. She gives great Photoshop tips, she makes great recipes, and her stories of living on a ranch, with all the photos that go along with it are fascinating. Great horse and cow and kid photos here. And the writing is wonderful. She may have 3 entries a day, one photograhic, one "house" based (decorating, cooking, etc.) and one run of the mill day to day life.

- And speaking of cooking, you can't complain about Noble Pig, whose blog I have linked to here before. She still turns out mouth-watering recipes and even more mouth-watering photos on a regular basis.

- Before leaving cooking, I have to talk about Cake Wrecks. I suspect more and more people are stumbling across this blog. For anybody who has ever deocrated a cake, this will tickle your funny bone regularly, with pictures of cakes that people actually paid money to a bakery for. The idea is that the pix are supposed to come from a professional bakery, so I don't feel so bad that many of them are much worse than things that I created and felt bad about.

- I recently found Poop and Boogies, the adventures of a young-ish father. This was a case where I was intrigued by the title and followed a link on someone's blog and found myself giggling enough times that I added him to my list of blogs to follow.

- Of course I can't not read Indigo's blog, Thoughts Outside My Head. Indigo (that's not her read name!) is the person whose site, "That's My Answer" I visit every morning to answer such deep questions as "Who is standing out as winners on The Celebrity Apprentice? Who are you hoping will be fired next?" "Do you carry an umbrella when you go out in the rain?" "Could you have given up Facebook/Twitter for Lent?" and "Would you rather be in the movies or a soap opera?" Her blog itself is more like mine--"how I spent my day" combined with, well, thoughts outside her head.

- I just came across "I Do Things So You Don't Have To," intrigued to read about how she ate expensive ice cream so I didn't have to. She seemed like a kindred spirit when I read, "In this time of economic hardship, we are trying to cut back on some of our luxuries, such as US Magazine and cat food. NO! I’m kidding. I can’t live without US Magazine. The cats, however, can live on table scraps and dust bunnies." She goes on to talk about gourmet ice creams including such oddball flavors as queso (Vanilla with kraft cheese pieces), maiz (vanilla with sweet corn) and donut 'n' cream. Another entry was entitled "I avoid housework so you don't have to" (thanks--but I'd rather avoid it myself). Anyway, she has promise so she's currently on my 'must read' list.

- My friend Bill Dahn (The Dahn Report), who tentatively stuck a toe in the blogging water a year or so ago, has garnered a nice following and has turned his guestbook into more of a chat room. He is caring for his aged mother and is getting a lot of support for others of our age who are taking care of aging parents. We've also seen him go through a successful weight loss program, we sent him sympathy when a hoped-for relationship with a woman didn't work out, and smiled with his tales of what he was learning in a comedy workshop he took last year. He's a neat guy.

- I've also started reading Blogging in Paris because, well, Jeri and I are going to Paris, so I figured I should start getting a feel for blogging there!

- And of course you have to read My Mom's Blog, written by Millie Garfield, who is almost my mother's age and who has become quite an internet celebrity in the time I've been following her, simply for learning how to surf the net in her 80s.

- I've even started reading Ken Jennings' blog, that Jeopardy wunderkind who walked away with over $1 million. His blog is actually quite entertaining.

There are lots of others, but these are some that I haven't really given much attention to here and I thought I'd share them with you, if you're looking for something new to read.