This year we focused on home improvement. It is superior to
self-improvement in almost every way: it requires no cringe-worthy
introspection, fulfills long wished-for items, and guarantees a better result
at the end of the process. I have spent
several weekends in quiet contemplation of my life without such benefits. Show
me the spiritually enlightened person with hard-wood floors to die for.
Speaking of home improvement on a grand scale, we started
the year at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. After a mysterious Doheny
family tragedy, the mansion has been considered one of the most haunted
buildings around. If you are looking for
a setting for a Gothic novel, this place of creepy extravagance would work
well. Both sets of grandparents shared the day with us. No family tragedies
ensnared us.
For Spring Break we traveled out to Utah to visit Paul and
Stephanie in Sandy. It was great to
spend four days with them. Other highlights included the girls skiing in the
Wasatch Mountains and the dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum on the University
of Utah campus. We went out for ice cream on a Friday evening and experienced
an “Only In Utah” moment: we waited thirty minutes to get a table at an ice
cream shop amid the happiest people imaginable waiting thirty minutes to get
ice cream. They weren’t grumpy or sullen; they actually enjoyed the time to
socialize with each other. They even struck up conversations with complete
strangers! So friendly, it’s like the whole state has never watched KTLA’s
“Live at Five” report.
Claire spent an entire week outside the company of family
during Outdoor Science Camp. Yet Camp Highland Springs is less than two miles
from where my own father attended high school. So there are plenty of familial
connections to the area. She climbed a tower made of logs while roped up and
went on several hikes. She was so inspired by the activity that she ran in the
5K at the Strawberry Festival after her return.
Sometime in the spring, I was persuaded by the salesman at
Lumber Liquidators that a new floor was easy to put in, “Just snap it in
place.” And he was right. After you scrape off the old floor (backbreaking and
tedious), level the subfloor (knee-killing), fit the vapor barrier (frustrating
and possibly purposeless), and cut the sound pad to shape, you can pretty much
snap the floor into place, except when you run into things like walls,
doorways, closets and stairs. Thanks to the help of my father, it came out
great. Many years ago, a man who was watching us work together said, “I could
never work with my dad like you two.” We hadn’t even realized we were doing
anything unusual. I am very fortunate to have him. And, of course, during the
project our antiquated electrical panel failed. I was faced with the choice of
spending some hundreds of dollars for poor fuses (old, lousy fuses are more
expensive to replace than new, good ones, paradoxically) and keeping the box as
it was, versus significantly more for a brand new panel. I had no guarantee
more poor fuses would not fail soon, and I bit the bullet and got a new panel.
Neither my father nor I had any wish to be electrocuted, so that project was farmed
out.
Since Garden Grove Unified School District outlawed the term
“Graduation” for anything other than completing twelfth grade, our girls
experienced something else at the end of 6th and 8th
grades. I think Claire had a “movement” to junior high school and Emily
“capitulated” to high school…sounds about right.
Afterwards, Emily departed for
Washington DC and New York with about 250 of her closest middle school friends.
She got to experience both Broadway and close contact with a debit card for the
first time. I am not sure which excited her more.
Once Emily got back, both girls, the dog and I set off for
Wisconsin in my parents’ van. Emily said she could get used to sleeping at KOAs
or at the Geise’s mountain retreat, just not one right after the other. We had
a fantastic time in Silverthorne with them and the Cotas, hiking, kayaking and
playing board games. Bailey charmed everyone (or so her owner thinks).
We finally made it to our cabin sometime around the middle
of July. Emily got to drive our van on the back roads for her first driving
lesson. Those scrape marks were on the trees before we got there. Claire’s
highlight was the new rib place in Hayward—we bought too much and had to take
some home, Drat! My highlight was our visit to the Holy Land of Football aka Lambau Field. Brats and beer in the stands even without a game happening is an experience.
At the end of summer vacation we were intending that the
whole family take four nights up in Sequoia with the big trees, but I had the
misfortune of getting a job that started right away. I had to weigh four nights
in the forest with my family versus a steady paycheck for months. One of my
family members was particularly persuasive, and I took the job. They
encountered a bear meanwhile, and treed it successfully (Ole Dan and Little Ann
would’ve been proud).
Emily returned from the trip right before school started,
and she had to make up for missed time with the Cross Country team, who had
been training all summer. She must have done all right, as she made the varsity
team. Oh yeah, and she was the number two runner on the varsity. And she ran at
Mt. SAC in the CIF Prelims, like her father and uncle before her, and because
Mt. SAC has this weird aversion to changing the course ever, all three of us
can describe each section of the race. I could (and really want to) go on, but
just say she had a very successful season (awards abounded). I am supposed to
maintain my usual self-effacing tone here, but I just can’t.
Claire enjoyed another season of AYSO soccer. She had a lot
of fun with her teammates and was very sorry the season came to an end.
In October, Jenn traveled out to Sandy to meet her new
nephew, Alex. She reported that it was a joy to hold a baby again, and if she
never changes another diaper, that’s okay.
On weekends, I have been putting in baseboards, door and
window trim. It didn’t seem like much when we took them all down five years
ago, but apparently it was much.
Our last two trips of note were our annual pilgrimage to
Joshua Tree with our local friends and the daughters heading off to Sandy to
meet their newest cousin. We have some lovely pictures of each girl holding
new-born Alex.
The last house upgrade for a while is a new stained-glass
window in our front door. There is still some finish work to do on the rest of
the door, but I’ve got to have something to do in 2016.
