DIVERTISSEMENT

I would need to look up that word if I came across it out of the blue. It's just a fancy way of saying "diversion". And that's what the visit from Chris, Frances and Owen was, a divertissement of the best kind.


They were here for a few days and then went to San Diego to visit Frances' brother and his wife. Frances has a college roommate who lives in that area, so there was a visit with them and a day at the San Diego Zoo before coming back here. They left to return home this morning after we had breakfast together. I'm not very good at goodbyes. If all goes well, they'll be back to visit at Thanksgiving.

Frances used her organizational skills to help me put some things in proper places. I'm in awe of her abilities and regretful that I lack
that talent. My room has a high ceiling and tall walls, but still, I suspect we have too many framed pictures. I made myself part with three items. The theory is that keeping a photograph makes parting with the item easier. I'm not so sure about that. I get a pang when I look at the pictures. When Tim discovered that I had taken this picture to the donation room, he scurried down and rescued it for himself.

 Chris pounded nails and got some things up on the walls. Miles to go, though. Hopefully Tim and I can get everything in order by Thanksgiving.

Tim's car is a jeep and difficult for me to climb into in the best of times, so it was Chris who took me on my first outing. 

First stop was the post office where our credit union has a branch.
I had three checks to cash, one made out to Mr. Bob. The tellers

were fond of Mr. B. and glad to see me out and about.

I can't recall if I told you about asking a charge nurse a month ago, when I might have a margarita. She thought a minute, no doubt mentally going down my list of medications and said,
"I don't see any reason why you couldn't have one now." To which I responded, "I don't know how to get to a Mexican restaurant". She didn't know, either.

If you're a parent or a grandparent, always take a book with you. For that matter, it makes sense even if you're going solo.

Tim finds it sad to drive past our old house, but he wasn't with us. I'd give my eye teeth to know what the new owner found worth
saving in the back garden. I'm not brave enough to go look.

Last stop was at Diane & Roger's. They called to see if I was open to a visit from them at the Manor and I suggested that we save them gas money.......we were right there. Due to the 100 degree weather we didn't talk for long, but it was a fitting end to our outing.

My brother had a saying as a tot when he wanted a repeat performance of a mechanical toy, "Make it again go". That's how I felt the other day.

SUNDAY DRIVE

WHAT WERE YOU UP TO last weekend? Tim came over on Sunday and we had Mr. Bob decide where we should eat......in the Manor dining room or at a nearby In-N-Out. He chose the latter, even though the Manor food is outstanding. 

I don't know how this how this hamburger chain can keep their prices so low. Tim  assures me it's a matter of volume and theirs is high. Sunday was no exception. Every seat was taken; therefore the trick is to eye a table where the diners are almost finished and then leap upon it at the precise moment it's vacated. 'Twas good. Our order number was 49 and before we left it was well over 100.

With Tim at the wheel, we decided on a Sunday drive (shades of my childhood) and headed for  Sierra Madre.

With the help of a GPS we found the canyon where there's a little market/restaurant that I want to visit someday. The one time Mr. Bob and I decided to have breakfast there, a group was using the canyon locale for plein-air painting and the parking was completely used by the artists. Our plan was thwarted so we have yet to eat there, but it's still on my "Bucket list".

The houses in the canyon are interesting and this is some of what we saw.

Before heading home we searched out E. Waldo Ward.
You just have to know that it's there, for in a residential area, there is no sign or at least I didn't see one in front of this house. We

passed it by before I realized it and backed up to go down the dirt driveway to the left where we could see the sales office (up the steps to a small showroom). Of course they're not open on Sundays, but we were sight seeing rather than planning to shop.

Continue on around the circular driveway at the back of the house and see the packing shed. I didn't photograph the kumquat orchard next to the house.......you'll have to take my word for it.

On the way home, as we passed Catherine's, the "large ladies' store where I shop", Tim asked if I wanted to stop. In unison, Mr. Bob said, "No" and "Yes" came out of my mouth.









P.S. We stopped and I bought 3 shirts which will alleviate my closet boredom.

“When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.”

Elayne Boosler

THE LOCAL KID

IT FALLS TO the offspring who lives in Hollywood to keep an eye on his elderly parents. The one in Alaska wishes she lived closer, the one in Castro Valley makes arrangements to come down when he can, but it's Tim who's "on call", so to speak. Two sides to that coin, I'm sure, but I'll have to say this.......he never makes Manor visits appear to be an inconvenience for which I'm ever grateful. Duty calls are not my idea of a good time for anyone concerned.

He's in charge of seeing that his mother gets beyond her city limits, thus preserving her sanity and it helps that our tastes are somewhat parallel in things to see and do. He sees the wisdom of driving surface streets rather than always taking the freeway. He likes food, interesting food........it's a fault we share. He keeps a list in his head of places to go and things to see. A few weeks ago he drove us to Fullerton, with a plan to visit our favorite jazz club. He'd called ahead to be sure the Golden Eagles were playing and even made reservations for three with a real person. When the day came and we drove the hour to get there, the only ones on hand to greet us were the servers. No music scheduled. Disappointment all around until Tim remembered a nearby restaurant he'd heard about and the day was saved. 

Mr. Bob usually opts to stay at home on the Sundays Tim appears. The three of us go to the dining room for dinner together and then the father waves us goodbye, looking forward to alone time for a couple of hours. Off we go, sometimes the outing is as simple as a visit to a couple of supermarkets for supplies, other times we explore. One Sunday, driving to Pasadena, Tim turned on a residential street, saying, "I think there's a lake somewhere back here" and sure enough, we found it, hidden away.

Another time we went in search of a gelato place I'd heard about. It was a beastly hot day, their location was nearly impossible to find,  tucked back in a largely vacated mall in Altadena.  But they have a following, as evidenced by the line that became no shorter as people continued to arrive.

 They are known for their pistachio gelato, using only nuts from Italy. Did you realize that most of the pistachios we buy come from Turkey and Iran and are handled in such a way that there's a chance they are moldy? Now I've wrecked that for all of us.

Last Sunday found us going to South Pasadena in search of a shop that was on my Bucket List. That town is a treasure. The residential streets are interesting, the trees are old, there's a main street full of unusual shops and restaurants. In a word, happiness.

For four years I've mourned the closing of a store which used to offer unorthodox clothing, offbeat greeting cards and objets d'art.

Recently I discovered that four of that store's employees moved around the corner and opened their own attached stores, carrying the same sort of exceptional merchandise. That was our destination on Sunday. Our visit didn't disappoint.

Admittedly, I'd outgrown the possibility of wearing their clothing (and I'm doing something concrete about that, starting today) but the books and other merchandise offered are still several cuts above the average gift shop, enough to make my head spin and my checkbook pulsate.

I tried, I really did, not to purchase a five year diary, the idea of which seemed a bit optimistic, all things considered, but this journal had an unusual format and my will-power crumpled. Consisting of a daily question and just 4 lines in which to answer it in each of the next five years, I found it too intriguing to pass up. It's a thought provoking tome and filling four lines hardly strikes me as a daunting task, so there's a chance I'll not abandon the project prematurely.

Maybe one of these days Mr. Bob will want to go with us on one of our "explores", as Pooh would have termed what we do. At the same time that I know he relishes his quiet Sunday afternoons, it feels somehow wrong to leave him behind, even though I do realize there's a tremendous difference in our urges for that sort of diversion. For me, those outings are life-savers. Maybe they are for him, too.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

CHARGE IT

IT'S NO SECRET that I consider us to be battery impaired. Long ago, my frustration was great when I couldn't take more than ten minutes of movies before the battery needed recharging. The vexation continued throughout my life with anything battery operated. I don't know about Mr. Bob, but I just plain don't understand batteries.

Last week on the hottest part of a sweltering day, we went to the post office to mail Susan's birthday package to Alaska. Do you know that feeling of "There! That's done" when you've accomplished something, however small? That's what I felt as I turned the key in the ignition in preparation for the drive home. Click, then nothing. Not a sound. Deader than a doornail.

Happily, we have AAA service and a cell phone. The dispatcher asked our location, the license plate number (do you know yours? I learn ours and then don't use it before I forget again), the make of the car, the year, the color and before I hung up, I told her my hair was grey, it was hot and please hurry.

It took the predicted half hour before the mechanic arrived and God had sent us a good man. When I told him I feared it might be the starter (because, beyond the click, there was no sound), he seemed amazed that I knew there was such a part. Things are so high tech now that he could run a test and show me on a paper tape the results which said there was a dead cell in our battery. I pretended to understand and in another show of modern technology, he produced a fresh battery, the date showing it was fresh off the assembly line and I said to go ahead and install it. Romeo was his call name, he was born in Guatemala and his last job lasted six years when he was a caretaker to a man with cancer.

Problem solved.

What do you suppose it means metaphysically when one has a second battery emergency within a few days? In this situation, I was too flustered to even think to use the camera.

 I  have an electric scooter that I use only for trips to a large shopping mall. Lazy as I am, I still don't want to become dependent on it. It's lightweight, lives in the back of our van and hasn't been used in the two years we've lived at the Manor. Recently Mr. Bob charged the two batteries for it.

Day before yesterday I awakened from an afternoon nap. Mr. Bob was nowhere in sight; I presumed he had gone downstairs to the Men's Group which meets on Tuesdays. Before I'd cleared the sleep from my eyes the phone rang. It was Mr. Bob with the news that he needed to be picked up. He'd run out of battery power. With clenched teeth, I followed his directions and found him sitting at the side of the road. He'd decided to take out the power chair and ride to the nearby library to return a book. Both batteries ran out of juice, batteries that were supposed to be good for fifteen miles. No wonder I have a lack of trust.

“You want a car to go for hundreds of miles,

and that's what a battery is good for,”

WHAT WE SAW

When we rose this morning and looked out of our east facing window, this was the scene that greeted us...........admittedly we used the telephoto lens.

You were all so understanding in your comments on yesterday's post (was that yesterday's?). I made some headway on the Manor photo album today to the point that my eyesight is a little blurry this evening, but I want to show you some of the things we saw when Tim took our British friends and us for a ride.

We traveled through some depressed areas of Los Angeles and I wondered where Tim was taking us. He knew what he was about. I had no idea there was a designated Arts District in Los Angeles.

Neptune, high on a building

Who? I wonder.

This mural had a naive quality that I found appealing.

Do you suppose the people who live in this house enjoy orange juice for breakfast every morning?

City Hall, once the tallest building in Los Angeles, now dwarfed by skyscrapers and in this case, apparently by palm trees.

My favorite of all.

Next, Tim drove us up and down the frighteningly steep hills in the Echo Park area and I was so nervous that I never thought to use my camera. 

When we neared home the snow was nearly gone from the mountains. We arrived in time for supper...........and,  apologies to the no-longer-living author of "Where the Wild Things Are", it was still hot.