But Wait! Christmas Ain't Over Yet!

I get in trouble when I let warm, fuzzy family holidays go undocumented for more than a month.  I'm already irrevocably in the doghouse for Halloween and Thanksgiving, so no point in trying to plea-bargain those, but I might be able to secure probation if I post Christmas pictures before Valentine's Day.  The judge is pretty strict about these things though.

Our Christmas traditions follow a pretty predictable cycle year in and year out.  Variety may be the spice of life and the genesis for good stories, but in many cultures spice is regarded with suspicion and malice.  Some folks look askance at spice -- "Away, you foul up-heaver of consistency!"  Salt and pepper are twice as much spice as some need.  Our spice-challenged traditions have always involved a Christmas Eve trip to Burbank to visit Stacy's grandparents, followed by the long haul to Agua Dulce for the annual Christmas Eve tamale party.  At least it has always been thus.  Why should the end of 2011 be any different?  (Well, Stacy's grandparents aren't in Burbank any more, for one thing.  They are both now in a nursing facility, but it's in Glendale, so that's probably close enough for our purposes.)

Stacy's brother Kyle had a pretty cool idea for a Christmas gift for Bunny and Lefty (a.k.a. GGMa and GGPa).  They have established themselves as the sweethearts of the nursing home they are in and have quite the reputation.  The staff dote on them and the residents, at least those of them who can remember who they are past breakfast, love them.  They are the octogenarian version of the varsity quarterback and his head cheerleader girl.  Kyle thought it would be cool to put together a picture book of all their old glory-days pictures to show their friends at the home.  He enlisted his scrap-booking fanatic sister to help pull the book together and on Christmas Eve we brought the printed version up to give to Bunny and Lefty.  It was really sweet to see Bunny light up as she looked through the book, pointing out certain pictures and giving a play-by-play.  Lefty hung over her bed, unsteadily following along, smiling and grunting his concurrence with the Queen Bee's descriptions.  I think he learned a long time ago to let Bunny tell the stories.  GGMa tires out quickly so we didn't stay long, but it was a nice visit and satisfying to see Bunny with some measure of energy and Lefty unusually clear headed.  It was good that we went that Christmas Eve afternoon because Christmas day would bring Bunny's fall that would throw everything into that chaos that is still raging strong.

In previous years our Burbank trip was also Stacy's chance to catch up with all the neighbors on Buena Vista Street.  Stacy grew up in a house across the street from Bunny and Lefty, so even when she left the neighborhood to take up with a questionable Southlander like me, she still kept abreast of all the Burbank news.  On Christmas Eve, after the stop at Bunny and Lefty's we would usually pop over to Grandma Helen and Grampa Dick's (a.k.a. Mr. and Mrs. Wahler), and then on to see Stacy's childhood across-the-street friend, Chad Becken and his family.  Tradition might vary a tiny bit from year to year with visits to Mrs. Shirley Hartenstein, Paul and Madelyn Thompkins,  Noreen Mackentie, and Karen Gilbert, depending who was around.  The crew has thinned out considerably over the last few years, but Stacy can't imagine a trip to the area without a stop on Buena Vista, even if Bunny and Lefty aren't there any more themselves.  So after we left the nursing home we made our Buena Vista pilgrimage, dropping in on the perennially cheerful Helen and belovedly grouchy Dick, and giving our Wassail to Chad and the Beckens another door down.

On Christmas Eve we try to make it up to Agua Dulce before sunset so we can get a hike in over at Vasquez Rocks State Park before they close.  This year we dragged our heels and it was full-on twilight by the time we got there.  Probably for the best.  I always manage to inflict damage on my marriage in Vasquez Rocks.

Of course all the usual suspects gather in A. D. - Grandma, Papa, Kyle, Aunt Claudia, Uncle Brian and Aunt Janet -- but the tamale party is really one of the best  opps to catch up with some of the further flung branches of the Harris clan.  Gene and Shanna Garno always come in all the way from Diamond Bar - Shanna is Kirk's cousin and she and Stacy are very close.  We get to see sweet Helen and Cathy Mires (Aunt Janet's Mom and sister-in-law respectively) who are both always so friendly and thoughtful, and there's usually a fair smattering of cousins in town - this year it was Julie Galan and her daughter G, and the blushing bride Laura Harris, with her fiancee Allan.  Kyle's girlfriend Sera was there, and this year even brought Aunt Wendy and Uncle Don from Venture in a rare Christmas sighting.

Cousin G in from Denver.  (That's one heck of a horse.)

The second cousin brigade.

N scores some holiday jingle.

Since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, our usual yule morning routine was warped somewhat by our standard church schedule.  Never fear - there was plenty of time to overload the kid's rooms with more gifts than we can possibly store.

Some gifts self-destructed after opening them.

As has been our Christmas practice for at least the last two years, the big family dinner was held at our house.  There was the four of us, plus Kirk and Lynne, Aunt Claudia, Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay, Kyle and Sera.  We forsook the turkey and ham, going for a seafood menu.  Stacy made a really taste cioppino and I grilled a huge salmon steak, ignoring its cries for mercy, until it was dry mealy slab of orange cardboard.  Everyone seemed to want seconds of the cioppino.  The salmon, not so much.

Uncle Kyle about to be Scrooged.

Kyle and Sera

Papa ponders.

Lynne's Christmas gift.

Papa-claus

Pontiff-claus?

In Living (Room) Color

I didn't get a whole heck of a lot done over the Christmas break, but I did wrap up a project started over the Thanksgiving break - repainting the living room. When we had our kitchen remodeled our interior designer friend had recommended a better color scheme. She also picked out a living room color to match the new kitchen, since the existing technicolor yellow up against the kitchen cream could potentially induce a photosensitive seizure in the artistically sensitive viewer. The new color is a tannish, greenish off-white, creamy color that my Dad would inevitably describe as "calf sh*t yellow."

The kitchen got painted by our contractor, but the living room was up to us. I started over the Thanksgiving holiday with the priming, getting a lot of help from my friends - OK, a little help from my kid. L actually turned out to be much more careful and meticulous than her usual level of kinetispacial awareness allows. I didn't trust her with the cut in, but she did a tolerable job with a roller and a wide swath of wall.

Priming underway!

Priming complete!

Cut-in!

Well along!

The bulk was done before I had to go back to work after Thanksgiving, but there were a few touch ups and oops-es that required a little yuletide labor.  But the New Year sees a completed living room paint job!

Ta Da!!!

It Bears Be-peating

An overheard conversation between L and N yesterday:

N:	Today is Grandma Donna's birffday. [Grandma Donna lives next door.]
L:	N, today is her birthday!
N:	That's what I said! Today is her birffday!
L:	No, today is her birthday!
N:	Today is her birffday!
L:	Birthday!
N:	Birffday!
L:	Birthday!
N:	Birffday! Aw, L. I can't be-member it.
L:	!!!

Life and Death and Some of the Stuff in Between

Stacy's grandmother Bunny is in the hospital in Glendale. We drove up a couple of times this week to see her and check on Lefty who has been left alone and lost at the nursing home without her. Since Bunny is in the ICU, the kids can't see her, so yesterday we drove up and installed them at Aunt Claudia's then went and grabbed lunch before heading to the hospital.

We drove slowly through downtown Glendale looking for some place to stop, but the multitude of over-marketed chains lining Brand Ave was depressing rather than appealing and we found ourselves all the way through town to the hospital without finding something agreeable. Knowing there was a little strip up ahead on Los Feliz with a slightly more bohemian feel, we past by the hospital and proceeded on another mile or so. We parked on a residential side street and then Stacy and I walked hand in hand along Los Feliz.

It was a young area, somewhat hippie and multicultural. There was a psychic on one corner, an Indian grocery on another - a pizza joint over there. Palm trees and traffic, and that Los Angeles compact, shabby, single-story disheveledness. I kept expecting to smell incense or pot, but I never quite did. Twenty-somethings jogged past, buff and beautiful, but impoverished because the auditions hadn't been going their way. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember thinking what it was like to be freshly married, without kids and in a sense free. We could take walks alone and go into bookstores or art galleries. We could hold hands that weren't sticky and were the same size as our own. We could eat at restaurants that didn't serve macaroni and cheese. We could be young and handsome and proudly self-conscious, (rather than awkwardly).

We found a cafe that overlooked a narrow peninsula of golf course that somehow managed to squeeze into the dense LA landscape; we ate on the porch in the warm winter midday. There were young couples and foursomes scattered about; a few couples in their 50's or 60's who looked like they might have spent most of their time in Orange County. There was a guy who was probably thirty sitting behind Stacy talking loudly on his cellphone ignoring his girlfriend. "They're in their late twenties and you're calling them old?" he said into his cell. "Thanks a lot!" A young couple who were in their late twenties sat across the patio from us. They had a blond California boy of about three with them. He was chattering away and reminded me of N. But N's older than that now and some of the fresh cuteness has faded. Stacy and I talked about vacations. How hard it was to go to Maine. How we would like to go on a cruise, but it would have to be Alaska and not the nasty Caribbean, and it would have to wait because we couldn't justify spending all that cash on a trip the kids wouldn't appreciate. Bunny and Lefty went on a lot of cruises, we remembered. But they waited until the kids were gone and they were freed up with both time and money. They went all over the world. We talked about Sweden and Switzerland, how we had wished we had the chance to show the other our old Euro-haunts, but the conversation was pretty much framed in the past tense. We won't get to Sweden or Switzerland now, at least not for a while anyway. Bunny and Lefty had to wait to travel. Lefty is in a nursing home and is often confused and frustrated. Bunny is in the ICU at Glendale Memorial with a broken neck from a Christmas day tumble out of a wheelchair. Lefty misses her greatly. I don't know if she'll ever be able to go back to him again.

We paid our bill, retraced our steps through the neighborhood and found our car. It took us very little time to reach the hospital and Bunny's room. She was half asleep when arrived, stilled drugged-up from a just-completed MRI. She looked like hell - purple and blotched and in a neck brace. As she tried to move she would moan with the pain. We told her about Christmas and how the kids said hello. We found her TV remote control. Her hands fidgeted purposelessly on her chest the whole time. We told her how much Lefty missed her. When we said that a brief smile passed her face and her blue eyes were alive and striking again, and I saw clearly that classy twenty-something I've seen so many old pictures of. We told her she was beautiful and gave her kisses and then left her alone.