Merry Christmas 2015

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 6^th and 8^th 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.