Poached Eggs and Flying Fish

We don't get to see Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay nearly as much as we'd like to, and when we do see them, it's usually because they made the effort to drive all the way into the South Bay from Monrovia. But since I finally had a weekend when I didn't have to go into work or worry about being yanked in by my pager (a.k.a. my beeper of obedience), we decided to return the favor and go see them! Of course we decided to pick a day that hovered in the upper 90º's, so we had to plan accordingly.

Beating the heat (and the traffic), we strapped down the kids and hit the road at 8:15 - our destination: Pasadena! Joyce and Jay have been trying to get us to one of their favorite restaurants/cafés up there for quite a while, so this morning we met them at Central Park for breakfast. It was awesome! Stacy had French toast made with a citrus batter and sprinkled with shaved chocolate. I had "Alaskan Benedict," poached eggs with Hollandaise on English muffins topped with shrimp and salmon. Unbelievable! We were quite impressed and now understand why Joyce and Jay have worked their way through the menu a couple of times.


N only shattered one dish, so it was an all-around successful outing.

When we were done it was only a short hop over to their place where the temperature pranced upward to tap dance around 100ºF. No never-mind to us! We hit the pool! Few things these days bring on the squealing spastic dance like the promise of going swimming. Both L and N have been taking swim lessons and it appears they've been sinking in; the last month or so they have begun to grow gills and scales and smell a little off when they sit in the sun too long. Fortunately they had Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay on whom to demonstrate all their newfound lack of terror and need for oxygen.

L will swim the length of the pool now without floaties. She's very proud of her breast-stroke and side-stroke, which she demonstrates by alternating one or two breast- or side-strokes with about ten thrashing, wild-eyed, air-gulping doggy paddles. Not quite a Michelle Phelps yet, but there's a hint of grace-in-the-rough to be seen.

She's starting to learn how to dive, but evidently didn't get the memo that you're supposed to enter the water vertically. (I suspect someone has a pretty red tummy tonight.) Along with pseudo-diving, she loves to be hurled great distances to strike the water at great velocity in all kinds of splayed out postures. She generally finds her way back to the surface each time.

L demonstrating a dive I call the "Hudson River Landing"

While N can kick up a tsunami of his own when he wants to, he tends to be a lot more laid back when left to his own devices. In his lessons he's learned what they call the "starfish float" which he's adopted as sort of his pooltime modus operandi. Makes you kind of want to stick a beer in his hand to complete the scene.






We would have been hard pressed to find a better way to beat the heat this morning.

Since we were in the neighborhood, on our way home we swung through Glendale and paid a visit to GGMa and GGPa. Bunny looks so good compared to how she looked a year or two ago. Having the full-time staff available to tend to her and help her has made tons of difference. She's been up walking around, has been reading books and is in altogether much better spirits. It has been a great relief and encouragement to Stacy.

But the day was long and our kids tend to get rather "extreme" when they're tired - though it seems they each seek out their own personal and opposite extremes:

We tried clearing the kids out of GGMa's room by going out to the garden, which helped for the short term, but it was soon obvious that the day's activities needed to be winding down. So our visit was short and then it was back in the minivan to carpool our way back to Harbor City, with kids sawing logs before we hit the freeway on-ramp!