For Whom the Bell Tolls

My first task, after we are told where we are moving next, is to look up the city and surrounding areas on Trip Advisor. I know that this particular review platform is not as relevant as it once was and maybe I would be better served by reinstalling my Yelp app, but it’s habit now and old habits die especially hard around me. So, when I typed in “Things to Do”, number one was the Korean Bell. It sounded…disappointing. I kind of wanted a world-renown art museum or maybe an epic science center. But what I got was…a bell.

It turned out to be so much more.

The Korean Bell was a gift from the people of the Republic of Korea to the Americans on July 4, 1976. It was and continues to be a symbol of friendship and trust between the two nations. It also happens to be a fantastic place to fly a kite. Or have a picnic. Or do a little yoga. There is always a breeze and the view of the Pacific from the bell is really unparalleled.

The Korean Bell also tends to pop up in the most unexpected places…like a Hyundai commercial…and the basketball court adjacent can be found in Viagra commercials. Once you take a solid look around the hidden hamlets of Los Angeles county, they immediately become more conspicuous on the television, too. In fact, that is probably one of most enjoyable aspects of living here. TV and movies no longer seem like products of some far-away landscape…I know that craggy coastline, I’ve hiked her beaches at low tide. I recognize that stretch of highway, I traveled it to Blue’s parcor class every week. It’s not just a peek at the wizard behind his red, brocaded curtain. It’s sitting down and having a kombucha and a korean bbq taco with him. For 24 months.

And look for the bell in that Wednesday night replay of The Usual Suspects on TNT. You might just be surprised.

Motivated to Move

12 November

I am grateful for fun, unexpected moments in the course of a normal day. 

I am almost a serf (my initial thought was to put “slave” but that seems hyperbolic considering the actual life of a slave) to my bucket lists. When we get a new assignment, I spend hours and hours on Trulia looking for a house and on Pinterest, looking for things to do. Heaven help us should the assignment ever change mid-move (which has happened to people we know personally). I am not bored easily, but with a high-energy seven year old in the house, I feel a certain level of pressure to keep active during the waking hours. Sometimes that means playing in the dirt until the sun goes down, but sometimes it calls for a grander plan. So, I like to have several options at the ready for when we just need to get out of the house. This has not been a problem in Southern California. The bigger issue is narrowing it down. Beach or mountains. Hollywood or Joshua Tree. Biking or hiking. Museums or playgrounds. Music or silence. OK, I’m not exactly sure where you can go for complete silence around here. We once pulled into a very remote section of Sequoia National Park to have a picnic and someone actually drove by, looking for their own picnic spot. So, music or…traffic, I suppose. As a person who can be frozen into inaction by too many choices, it has been a challenge to just pick something. And then sometimes what’s on my bucket list from a Pinterest post from 2010 has closed or renovated into something completely different than it was before.

Such is the case with Clifton’s Cafeteria, which used to be an actual cafeteria housed in a room filled with taxidermied animals. Think: Blue Boar Cafeteria and the Rainforest Cafe have a baby. With a dash of L.A. tossed in at the last second. How could we not go? Unfortunately, apparently they shuttered a couple of years ago and just recently reopened sans food and with a pricey drink menu. As tempting as it is, I can’t serve my child a Manhattan for lunch just so I can check this place out. So, we ended up at Good Stuff Restaurant on Hermosa Beach. I mean…on Hermosa Beach. You step out of the dining area and onto sand. We watched volleyball players setting and spiking under a smog-cloaked sun and wondered who are these people on the beach at lunch on a Wednesday? And then, when our bellies were full of fish tacos, we walked the Hermosa Beach pier.

Hermosa Beach is the proud home of surfing, which came as a surprise to me because I’ve lived here for almost 2 years thinking surfing was born in Huntington Beach. The pier’s boardwalk incorporates a surfing walk of fame with inlaid plaques on both sides of the walkway. No surfers to be found last Thursday, though, as the tide was on its way out and the waves laid down lazily across the shore. But plenty of folks fished at the end of the pier and an abundance of birds looked for a snack dangling at the end of someone’s line. I was cautiously approaching this feathered friend, snapping away on my cell phone, when Blue made a sudden movement that caused him to splay his wings and take off. I caught the shot and then turned sharply to scold Blue for nearly ruining my picture. He looked at me and beamed. “Did you get it? I did that so you could get the action shot.” He was so proud of himself that I couldn’t quite bring myself to criticize him for scaring the wildlife. He knows better, but sometimes his instinct for the shot overrides everything else. We’ll work on that, but in the meantime, I do love an action photo.

Good Golly, Grunion

10 November

I am grateful for the grunion. 

When we found out we were being stationed in Southern California, a fellow Army wife in our unit in Pennsylvania exclaimed, “You HAVE to go to the grunion run!” It sounded a little like a salmon run which, thanks to the Kratt brothers, is officially on my bucket list. So, I added “Grunion Run” to my notepad and then promptly forgot about it.

Our first grunion run was something of a bust. Just like everything else around here, everybody and their brother showed up so it meant Blue didn’t get to hatch a grunion because they ran out of eggs. And then we lost the group on our way out to the beach and ended up not seeing a single grunion in the wild. Grunion only come ashore in the spring and fall, during a full moon, an hour or 2 after the high tide…which in child-speak is basically “way past my bedtime, Mommy.” So, at around 10:30 PM, we gave up and went home.

For our second grunion run, we attended as members of our local aquarium. There were about 40 other people with plenty of eggs to go around. Blue and I hatched grunion and then followed the aquarium staff to the beach, which was nowhere close to where we ended up last time. At around 9:30, the grunion began to arrive…en masse.

The females washed up, dug their holes and waited for a male to fertilize their eggs before leaping back out and catching the next wave out to sea. You really had to be careful where you stepped. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe such a thing existed. Apparently, some people catch and eat grunion…although it seems like it would be a lot of work for not much pay-off, but people are probably used to that mentality around here. I don’t have any desire to eat one, but it certainly was awesome to watch them mate and get whisked away again. Creating babies between the waves…talk about your 10 second contribution. But I guess that’s all it takes.

What’s Trapped in Tar

5 November

I am grateful for a place where the Ice Age comes to life. 

Let’s be honest…when I tell visitors that I’m taking them to the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown L.A., the response is usually an amusing mix of confusion and anticipated boredom. Branding does not seem to be the museum’s strong suit. Perhaps I should start selling it as, “A day spent exploring the current excavation sites, filled with the bones of saber tooth tigers and giant sloths.” That sounds like we might run into Indiana Jones, or at least Catherine Zeta-Jones, at any given moment.

The La Brea (“bray-uh”) Tar Pits were just a check-the-box item at first. It was on every single Pinterest L.A. bucket list so it had to be something, right? But as soon as you step through the gates, you can smell it. It smells like every interstate construction site between Cincinnati and the Smoky Mountains. Orange cones, speckled black, dot the grass. These mark the places where tar is actively bubbling up…presumably so social media influencers don’t accidentally drop a Jimmy Choo in a puddle of goo. The tar lake at the front of the property, which is bordered by Wilshire Boulevard (considered the “symbolic spine of L.A.”), is constantly burping air bubbles that have escaped. The woolly mammoths trapped in the tar lake might be fake, but the gas exchange going on under the surface is definitely real. Walking around the excavation sites is free, but if you really want to be wow’d, pay the museum admission. The Ice Age animals that were dug up outside have been reassembled inside and they. are. massive. Like no kids’ movie featuring Denis Leary and Ray Romano can prepare you for. Mammoths, ground sloths, an entire wall of saber tooth tiger skulls.

And, really, the Tar Pits are kind of an allegory for L.A. herself. The siren song of something wonderful (water on a hot day, an extra part in Modern Family…whatever) draws you to downtown L.A. You drink from that watering hole (of fame). Suddenly, your weight shifts, your feet sink, you are stuck. You struggle. You sink deeper. You are drowning and no one is coming to help. Here comes someone. No, wait. That’s someone who has been waiting for you…waiting for you to come here and die so that they can eat you. OK…maybe that just took a weird turn. But you’re stuck here in this awful place with no way to escape and things are looking pretty grim. The only twist of Karma is that the predator ends up getting stuck, as well. Looks like you’re going down together. And that is the story of the La Brea Tar Pits. And roughly half of Skid Row.

And now we are all marveling at your bones and paying $14 each for the pleasure.

Although as a homeschool mom, it’s just really cool to see something so abstract as saber tooth tigers and woolly mammoths being extracted from the ground on a daily basis. It teaches Blue that the world has not run out of discoveries. He just needs to put on his safety goggles and go find them.

What I Now Know.

I am a Virgo who was raised by a Virgo. If you know anything about astrology, you know that results in an adult who is wound fairly tightly. I give Neal a lot of credit for marrying me anyway. But I think he also saw some potential for loosening, especially when I got pregnant. I didn’t see it. I had grand plans for this child. Mozart before birth, no TV for 3 years, wood toys, cloth diapering and homemade baby food. Nothing that needed batteries. I didn’t even buy a swing because it seemed so unnecessary. A month in, I was at Target with my best friend buying a swing, a package of diapers, and the latest V-Tech (not to knock any of these things…it was just not in my vision because I was raising something like Tarzan mixed with a Scandanavian love child). I did eventually go back to cloth diapering, but only because the “experts” said that cloth diapers made it easier to potty train. That’s a load of poo in a plastic diaper. That child outgrew his cloth diapers, it took so long. And that’s saying something because each diaper had like 14 different levels of snaps. But 3 years later, there I was…back at Target buying diapers and cursing the load of laundry I had done everyday for 36 months.

I say all of this because something somewhat revealing happened to me last month. I half-assed Halloween. Remember the year I had 3 different costumes? Or the year I made mummy hotdogs? Or the year the whole family dressed as characters from the Peanuts strip? None of that happened this year. In fact, this is what happened this year:

A Hobby Lobby, half-off, find from 2 years ago that I still haven’t gotten around to finishing painting. And it hung in our hallway for a month like this. Maybe it looks intentional. Or maybe it looks like I’ve stopped caring, in my daily yoga pants, sports bra, messy bun, and worn-out Birkenstocks. Maybe this sign says, “Hey, at least the family was fed a homecooked meal almost every night, the sheets were washed weekly, and Blue has learned how to add double digits in his head.” Or maybe it says, “Nothing to see here. She thought she could…but then she quit.” And the thing is, whichever signal it’s sending, I didn’t give it more than a passing thought for more than 30 seconds for all of October. It is what it is and this is the season we’re in. The season of hiding food wrappers behind the couch, and squeezing in workouts during an episode of Wild Kratts, and fighting about the need to be educated instead of just agreeing with the 7 year old that he already knows it all. There are priorities and, right now, this sign was not one of them. I’m not even a little bit sorry.

I know that this blog (and my other one, Behind the Garage Door) have not been a priority, either. Instead of writing posts and then boosting them on blog author Facebook pages, I’m on Pinterest downloading math worksheets and trying to find Youtube videos with a catchy melody and an easy way to explain multiplication. And at night, all I want to do is finish Ken Burns’ new docuseries, Country Music. By the time we get through it, it won’t be new anymore. We’ll probably have a new Ken Burns docuseries to catch up on. I have 8 years of photos on my laptop, made worse by how many pictures I take of the same shot on my cell phone. I have a running commentary of blog posts that live in my head and never quite make it out the door and onto the page. That’s probably the worst. Right now, Blue is re-watching The Spy Who Lived Next Door and practicing yo-yo tricks and if I was a better mom, I would be playing a board game with him or making pancakes with blueberry eyes. But I want…I need…to get some of this out. Not for you, but for me. Anyway, he isn’t complaining…yet.

One more thing. We are in our final months of L.A. living and I’m not even a little bit sad. It has been hard to write here because I try to keep this a positive space, but this duty station has brought out the worst in me. Me…an Army spouse who has been called a “chameleon” more than once. I just could not change my colors enough to fit in or love it here. I’m not even sure I like it. I tolerate it. But most days, I have not tolerated it very well and Neal has probably caught the worst of my frustration. My only saving grace has been my friends, this neighborhood, this family that lets me vent and then gives me wine.

But this L.A. life is not for me. Maybe it once was, back in the 70’s. When you didn’t have to pay $20 to park at the beach or smell weed seeping from every corner or constantly worry that your curious child was going to pick up a meth pipe. But I am not leaving L.A. better than I found it and L.A. has not changed me for the better. I’m more suspicious, jaded, angry. And we’ve paid through the nose to feel that way. We are still waiting on the assignment list to come out, but I’ve never been so eager to see what our next adventure is. To leave L.A. in the dust, taking only photos and friendships with me.

I recently got called out by a friend here for being so negative about this duty station. She said I’m going to miss this place. She said I’m going to look back with fond memories and recall adventures with Blue as he gets older. And I don’t doubt there’s some truth to that. I probably needed that fairly harsh scolding because it will stick in my head and I will hear her voice over the next few months. Every time I begin to complain about the 110 or the drug addicts roaming like zombies down Gaffey, I will hear her say, “There is more to it than this and that’s the part you’ll miss. It’s not all bad.”

So, to that point, I’ve decided to blog my SoCal gratitude for the next 26 days. Filed under: The Virgo Loosens Up a Bit, I’m already a day late. But I’m used to playing catch-up so for yesterday and today:

1 November

I am grateful for negative tides.

Negative tides are a result of the moon and the tilt of the earth (or something like that) and they only happen during daylight hours in the late fall. We caught one last week and were able to see my first bat star in the wild. More to come in November and we’ll be on the lookout for octopuses and sea stars. But the best part is that we can be at the beach in about 4 minutes. Of everything we have experienced in California, this has to be in the top 5.

2 November

I am grateful for our little military family Cub Scout Pack.

(I’m also grateful for Mr. M’s new Samsung that can take pictures practically in the dark.)

This was during the first night of our fall campout last weekend in an area of SoCal that I was sure was going to catch fire any second. But the most exciting thing that happened all weekend was the pack of coyotes that howled their way past our campsite when half of the boys woke up needing to pee. The port-a-potties were not that close. We weren’t sure if this Pack was going to happen this year, just because everyone is busy and the pot of volunteers changes, literally, every year. Such is life with a military-only Pack. But we pulled it together and I couldn’t be more pleased. Neal and I, as Cubmaster and Committee Chair, are having a blast and we are solidly backed-up by gung-ho parents who only ask, “How can we help you next.” I am going to miss this.

A Field Trip to the Fair

Field Trip Friday fell on a Wednesday this week. It isn’t preferable to be “out of school” in the middle of the week. Coming back to Math and Language Arts felt like pure drudgery, even after I made up a fun song about our grammar lesson. (And it’s no small thing to find something that rhymes with “simile”.) But we were taking advantage of Homeschool Days at the L.A County Fair. We attended the Orange County Fair last year and because we can’t afford to do both of anything in the same year out here, we saved L.A. for this summer, knowing it was our last chance.

So, for those of us who have set a high bar for county fairs (and really anything short of what you conjure up in your head while reading Charlotte’s Web is just a night at the carnival and should not rise to the esteemed level of county fair), let’s talk about what the L.A. County Fair does well.

1. Anything life-sized. Life-size condiments, snack foods, books, toys, creepy as hell Halloween characters. I mean, there’s no 1000-pound carved butter sculpture of a remote Amish homestead, but I guess you can’t win em all.

2. Capitalizing on area attractions. Since you can no longer hike anywhere near the Hollywood sign without LAPD tight-circling in their chopper overheard, we thought this was a decent consolation prize. (Fun L.A fact: When LAPD helicopters fly in wide circles, it means they are just checking out the area below, but tight circles mean whatever you are doing, you are so busted. Hide the weed! Oh wait, never mind. You can keep that.) We also could have indulged in a Randy’s Doughnut (which gives me a cavity just thinking about it) and a Pink’s hotdog (minus the 45 minute wait on a heat-trapped downtown sidewalk).

3. The Midway. Filed under, “Y’all are making me smarter,” I just looked up why it’s called a midway. Apparently the term originated with the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It became the common noun for the area reserved for amusements at a state or county fair. According to Wikipedia, the Canadians use the same word. Although I’m sure it sounds much nicer when they say it. Anyway, the midway of the L.A. County Fair is more than just mid…it’s like 2/3rds of the party. Not one, but two, Ferris wheels spinning simultaneously. And ride after ride after ride of screeching fun, guaranteed to drop your stomach and bring back up that hot Cheetos-encrusted doughnut turkey leg you just ate.

But we didn’t ride a single thing because it was hot and I’m cheap. Wristbands were $50 and we didn’t drive 75 minutes on 7 different interstates to get closer to the sun. We came to learn about the life cycle of a goat and what a chick looks like when it’s just hatching from the egg.

But that’s where we would be wrong about the L.A. County Fair. Because we didn’t learn about any of those things. We saw brand-spankin’ new, barely walking goats, but no one to ask when they were born or how long it takes them to learn how to walk. We Googled it.

We saw a calf chillin with some sheep, but no one to ask how old cows are when they first start mating and producing milk. We Googled it.

We saw some sheepdog puppies hanging out with the sheep, but no one to ask what their role is in herding or how long it takes for them to learn the skill. We Googled it.

We did watch one cow-milking demonstration and learned that the 3 healthiest dairy foods are yogurt, milk, and cheese (not Blue Bell ice cream, I guess). We also heard the dairy farmer refer to “almond milk” and “oat milk” as “almond juice” and “oat juice”. (He later blamed zealous animal rights activists for the loss of public access to the local dairies. He said that to me privately and I don’t think he’s wrong, but also this is why we can’t have nice things. California is the largest dairy producer in the country and we are hard-pressed to find a cow we can milk this side of Kansas. If they aren’t careful, California kids are going to grow up thinking all straws are supposed to disintegrate in your mouth and their milk hatched in the dairy case overnight).

And we didn’t see any exotic rabbits, roosters, turkeys, chicks straight outta the egg, draft horses, alpacas, sheep being sheared, cattle being hosed down, 4-H high schoolers cuddled with their cows, or baby chicks tumbling down a slide. (OK, to be fair, the animal rights activities probably did away with that one a long time ago.)

This is obviously where the cool kids are every January in Pennsylvania. 

This is everything that’s great about the PA Farm Show. And somewhere above their heads, Charlotte is weaving, “SOME PIG.” 

But this wasn’t the Pennsylvania Farm Show, where kids from the countryside are competing for blue ribbons in everything from baking to bull-riding. This was, if we are being precise, a city fair plus a petting zoo thrown in for good measure. And it was a perfectly fine petting zoo.

But I paid $36 for 2 cheeseburgers from a food truck, not from the California Cattleman’s Association. And $6 for a root beer float from the Esports Gaming Hall, not the California Dairy Association. Food that was fried, on a stick, between 2 doughnuts, dipped in flaming Cheetos, on the bone, and wrapped in a tortilla. But none of it seemed to be from here. Even the “L.A. Made” section of the expo hall was disappointing and underwhelming. It could have been any county fair anywhere. Where is the Los Angeles pride? One of the most unique cities in the world is hosting the most vanilla fair we’ve ever attended. Los Angeles is so not vanilla. It’s horchata and edamame and dirty chai and Sriracha. Flaming Cheetos? Maybe if they are rolled in guacamole and lit on fire. That’s Los Angeles.

I don’t expect the L.A. County Fair to be the Pennsylvania Farm Show. The Imperial and Central Valleys can’t leave home for a month just to show off their award-winning pigs and heirloom chickens to those high-fallutin’ Hollywood types down in the city. And those 4-H kids are probably hesitant to get any closer to the INS office. But it sure would be nice if someone learned how to carve butter, or put a shade over the garden area so we could learn what squash looks like when it’s shooting off the vine without melting under the Inland Empire sun. And maybe the Cattleman’s Association could set up a grill. I would buy all. the. burgers. And a Dairy Association milkshake to wash it all down.

An Unsanctioned Field Trip

Honestly, I blame myself for the rain this winter. I spent all summer and most of fall complaining about the L.A. River, or lack thereof. Although more than once I was tempted to throw on my Pink Ladies jacket and race my Prius through the dry and dusty channels. I looked longingly at the new chicken wellies I had bought at the Tractor Supply Store on our way out of state last May. October approached and they still had the tags on them. 70 and sunny every day. I didn’t even bother to check the Weather Channel app before getting dressed. I didn’t check to see if we could play outside or needed to seek shelter indoors. Groundhog Day, Jim Cantore-style. I was completely bored.

And then the first storm came. Unfortunate timing, though, because wildfires had just ripped through Malibu and Thousand Oaks. Parts of the Pacific Coast Highway were buried under mud and debris. Traumatized wildfire survivors were put on alert: your house withstood the blaze, but it might slide down the hill. It rained for a week. Everyone thought winter had passed.

When Mom and Anna arrived on a Delta flight on the second day of 2019, the sun was shining. But then it rained for pretty much their entire visit. We scrounged for things to do because everything in Southern California is outside (or closed on Mondays). Soon after, the murmuring started…There might be a super bloom this year. I didn’t know what a super bloom was, but it sounded like a reason to stock up on lemon, lavender and peppermint oils. And Kleenex.

We had already been let in on the secret of Antelope Valley when we first arrived.

“That’s the place to see the poppies in the spring,” they said.

“It’s a drive and you have to go north of L.A., but it’s worth it,” they said.

And then Lake Elsinore, which is significantly closer to us and south of L.A. (that’s an important distinction when accounting for traffic), reported a super bloom in one of the canyons.

And people lost their damn minds.

There were Instagram followers to delight and photos to be re-tweeted. Everyone was ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille. Until Lake Elsinore was forced to shut it down and re-group. And still someone landed their private helicopter in the middle of the wildflowers, jumped out for a selfie, and took off as authorities were racing toward them.

And although I was appalled, I wasn’t shocked. Because when you have 40 million people living side-by-side, someone is bound to drop their aircraft on private property just to say they did. The other 39 million will spend a week on Facebook threads trying to sleuth out who it was. Just settle in with a bucket of popcorn and read the comments.

So, we passed on the $30 shuttle to the Lake Elsinore super bloom and by the time it seemed like things were calming down, I overheard a gentleman at the Grunion Run say there wasn’t much left. Nature had taken its course, hastened by human nature. Next up was Antelope Valley, where the Poppy Reserve staff had gone to great lengths just a couple months before to say they were not expecting a super bloom this year. I didn’t blame them. Who would want to reveal their hand after the shit show at Lake Elsinore? But thanks for taking one for the team, Riverside County.

Pictures were starting to trickle in, though. The woman who runs the Mommy Poppins, Los Angeles website posted some photos she took of her kids at the fields over the weekend. It didn’t look mobbed. And what if we went on a school day? What if we left at 7:00 in the morning and tackled the 110 with the Fast Trak pass and a cooler of snacks? I talked myself into it. Then the night before, I saw a story in the L.A. Times about a 15-passenger van, loaded with poppy field visitors, that slammed into the back of a Mini-Cooper, presumably because the driver was too busy looking at poppies to drive.

I talked myself out of going. It just isn’t safe. Too many people. It’s not worth it.

And then I talked myself back into it. We may never see this again. What if next winter is dry? We can leave early. Super early. We will have zero expectations. That last one is crucial for being happy in L.A.

We were packed and ready to go by 7:15, but then a peacock walked across the street in front of our house and it was such a delightful surprise that we spent the next 15 minutes following it around the neighborhood.

By 9 AM, we were enmeshed in the 110 traffic, which leads right through the heart of downtown L.A. And I was deeply regretting that cup of coffee on the way out the door. I just have to make it to the 5. Then I can pull off somewhere and pee. It took a long time to get to the 5 and I seriously considered my ability to simultaneously drive and pee into a Starbucks coffee mug. And on that note, thank goodness that guy sued Starbucks for barring him from using their bathroom. At least I always know that when the need arises, there’s a public restroom in Starbucks. And they usually get an order of egg bites out of me in the process.

Blue and I started seeing the hills turn orange about 12 miles south of the preserve. Blue had been full of questions on the way north…like why there’s no Easter chicken (because bunnies are mammals and don’t lay eggs) and what he would use to wash Jesus’s feet (Children’s Motrin because it smells like oranges) when all of a sudden, the landscape blazed with color. Orange, of course, but also yellow and purple, all of which was edged in green. We had grown so accustomed to seeing brown all year, that we couldn’t stop looking. I checked for 15-passenger vans.

The road to the reserve is lined with places to pull-off, not just to step out and take a picture, but to leave your car and hike the trails. I made a mental note of that as we inched closer to the entrance of the reserve.

Turning in and taking our place in a line that snaked all the way out to the main road, I realized that the parking lot was probably already full and they were only letting people park as other people were leaving. I calculated how long that would take. I decided the appropriate answer was forever. We didn’t wait to reach the turnaround point. If the mini-van behind me could turn around completely after 5 tries, I could do it in 3. It’s kind of like driving a lawnmower sometimes.

We parked at the head of a trail (where a sign was posted that we would not be able to access the reserve from this point – which we decided we were cool with) and started up the hill. We met the jolliest woman coming down the trail and she offered to take a picture of us, which is decidedly better than any selfie.

Then we took out our cameras and began to explore. Blue tried to figure out what the life cycle of a poppy is (there are buds and small discs at the base of each bud, so which comes first?) and I tried to figure out how to accurately photograph the majestic beauty of a million wildflowers setting the hills on fire.

And I don’t know that I nailed it. It’s like trying to capture the vastness and the detail of the Grand Canyon. Plus it was almost noon and the sun was hot, high, and unforgiving. Blue was hungry and all I had was water on the trail. We were starting to sweat through the sunscreen.

“Take 40 more pictures and then let’s go,” Blue bargained. I thought that was fair. But I’m the mom so I took 42, although the last 2 sort of looked like the first 40. We made a game of counting the snake holes. We lost count at 29 when a woman in an RV stopped to tell us we should hike to the top of the hill for a better view. She had just driven there in her air-conditioned Winnebago. We said thanks and kept walking.

 

The road had gotten busy and people were now parked in front of and behind us. The trails closest to the cars were clogged with visitors, squatting for the perfect poppy shot. Look, Marge. If you take it in this direction you can get it without any people. I used to be Marge. But Mom taught me that it’s the people in a photograph that make it interesting. Neal still asks me why I’ve taken a picture of strangers – on the beach, at the farmer’s market, in an art museum.

Because people are part of the landscape. And besides, maybe someday my photo will help to solve a crime or reunite a family. Well, maybe not this photo…

We devoured our pb&j sandwiches, drank the sun-cooked water, and said goodbye to the poppies. It was someone else’s turn. Plus, when they number in the millions, they don’t smell very good. It’s almost rancid and made me wish for just a second that it was a super bloom of jasmine or mint.

And then I saw the sign…

Oops. But that’s typical. A rule with no one enforcing it. Sometimes California is cool like that.

We decided it would be in our best interest to stop at the barn of antiques on our way back to the freeway.

And we weren’t wrong. Blue found a microscope, some Army patches, a wood folding rule (which smelled like every trip I have ever taken with my dad to Lowe’s), an old hotel key tag, and some Cub Scout books from 1968. He also made a friend.

I almost bought a glass juicer, but saw a chip in the top and thought maybe I shouldn’t juice a lemon over broken glass. With our arms full and our tummies empty again, we cruised down the Civic Musical Road (which plays about 10 seconds of the William Tell Overture as you drive over it) and headed for Baskin-Robbins. And then to Starbucks for their bathroom.

By the time we got on the road at 4:00, Waze was routing us through the Angeles National Forest, which is a spectacular landscape, but not for anyone who gets car sick or is hesitant about heights. Some of it had burned recently and the charred trees were fascinating to Blue. He begged me to pull over and get a piece of rock so he could study it under his microscope on the way home. I had already indulged him a raggedy Security Officer patch and some peanut butter and chocolate ice cream. What was a rock going to hurt? He exclaimed his findings from his mobile laboratory. “It’s a rock from an asteroid! It has space dust!” I started to correct him and then remembered he’s 6. There is plenty of time for that later. Today, he just found a piece of the universe under a burned out stump on the side of the road in the Angeles National Forest. And he is examining it under the lens of a $15 microscope we found at a barn of antiques next to a field of poppies (where he is convinced a coyote went savage because…poppies). There is nothing to be corrected. It’s perfect, exactly as it is.

 

Putting the Wonder in Wonderful: A Screening of Wonder Park with the Bob Hope USO

Ask any service member or military family member what they know about the USO (United Services Organization) and you will probably get some sort of vague response about it being a place to rest and recharge in the airport, but outside of the security checkpoint…which is sort of the problem. Unless your layover spans multiple hours, the likelihood of someone willingly leaving the terminal (with kids and carry-on luggage) to find the USO is slim. I think Neal and I have been in one USO the entire time we’ve been together. There were some snacks, a few games, a small library of books, and the volunteers were incredibly nice. But we’ve never even flown with Blue, much less stepped foot inside another USO. Interestingly enough, since moving here, the Bob Hope USO is challenging everything I thought I knew about what the USO does.

About 2 months after reporting to his new assignment at Los Alamitos, CA, Neal mentioned that the unit’s family day was approaching. It would be held on a Sunday afternoon at a municipal park about 45 minutes south of where we live. Having been to a fair number of family days and even been in charge of a few, I set my expectations pretty low (which is also how I’ve started to live my life now that we have a kid who likes to tell people that his sister is a cat). I was so wrong.

The Chargers showed up, the Anaheim Ducks were there, but more importantly, the Bob Hope USO was serving lunch. And the 2 gentlemen in the front of this picture at the bottom left-hand corner are Tuskegee Airmen. They are native Los Angelenos and I could have talked with them for hours. So many stories about how the city used to be and what they miss about those days! I thought that was the last we would see of the Bob Hope USO.

But then I got a phone call from my neighbor.

“Did you get the email about the Wonder Park screening?”

“No. Who is hosting it?”

“The USO.”

“The Bob Hope USO?”

“Is there another?”

Not in this neck of the woods.

She forwarded me the email, which invited local military families to a Saturday afternoon screening of Wonder Park, complete with free snacks (ideal movie food like Swedish Fish, M&M’s, popcorn, and Twix bars), water, and photo ops throughout the lobby of…and this is the best part, y’all…the Paramount Studios theater. Is there anything better than watching a movie in the theater that is owned by the company that made the movie?

Nope, I think not. Except maybe the free parking that was included. No chance of me getting a $63 parking ticket for busting a meter by 9 minutes? Where do I RSVP?

Shortly after we arrived, our neighbors realized that if you stood in this one spot in front of the fountain, you could get the perfect picture with the Paramount sign and the Hollywood sign in the background. We are probably not the first people to ever take this picture, but that really didn’t slow us down any.

There were coloring sheets and yard games to keep the kids busy until the lobby doors opened promptly at 2 PM. This was a great set-up because after living in L.A. county for the past year, my typical plan when traveling into the city for the day involves checking Waze obsessively until time to leave and still arriving somewhere 30-45 minutes early. They had accounted for that.

Once the doors open, attendees were greeted by enthusiastic and friendly USO volunteers, multiple tables of snacks and drinks, and several spots to snap that perfect photo for your milfam Instagram.

I gave up posting beautifully posed photos to Instagram when Blue discovered he had free will. Now we are just adding to the collection of photos that I’m going to show in a looping slideshow at his wedding.

The lesson here? Mama don’t play. Either look excited or I’m going to do it for you.

#WhenYourNeighborhoodDoesEverythingTogetherAllTheTime

As if the fine folks of the Bob Hope USO already knew, the doors to the theater opened about 30 minutes later, just as the kids were starting to get antsy and the parents were running out of ways to entertain them. The theater is huge and we had no problem finding a row plus 3 seats for our party. Yes, we are that on-post neighborhood that does practically everything together. We took up an entire van for the wine tasting in Temecula a few weeks ago, we took over an outdoor patio at the local brewery last year, and we needed one whole row plus some for the screening. Also, this is only 5 families. Heaven help you if we all show up.

On one end of the row, we are all kind of doing our best to ignore Mike’s mustache. Only 10 days left in March, Candace. Hang in there, sister. On the other end, Matt and Rebekah are watching a movie in a theater for the first time together. And they’ve only been married for like 13 years.

Before the film started, someone from the Bob Hope USO came on stage to welcome us and introduce one of the stars of the movie, Ken Hudson Campbell, who plays Boomer in the movie.

Mr. Campbell explained a bit about the movie, taught us how to say (and then scream) SPLENDIFEROUS!, and teased us with Boomer’s soon-to-be-famous snore. Then the curtains opened and the show began (without any previews, which, I’m just going to be honest, was amazing).

The film itself was a roller coaster ride and without spilling the beans on any of it, bring some Kleenex and your kids. It has a great message, which is delivered with an immense helping of humor.

After the credits rolled, volunteers from the Bob Hope USO called out the winning numbers for the raffle (free tickets were distributed at check-in). The culminating prize was 4 tickets to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards this Saturday, which Rebekah’s son won. (This isn’t surprising as Rebekah is the luckiest person I know and she seems to have passed that on in utero.)

It was a great afternoon that brought joy to our children and delight to us as we watched them. Truly, I can’t say it enough: THANK YOU to the Bob Hope USO and to Paramount Studios/Nickelodeon for hosting us. What a fabulous morale booster for those who were able to attend. Being stationed near L.A. and being able to participate in something so unique to the area makes it worth it. We all felt appreciated and we appreciate you!

Know Better, Do Better: The Christmas Edition

The question came up last week, as was inevitable: “What does Blue want for Christmas?” My mind went absolutely and completely blank. Because what I heard was not, “What does he want for Christmas,” I heard, “What does he need for Christmas?” And honestly…nothing. Our child wants for nothing. Sure he will tell you that he needs another Star Wars Lego set or some more Jungle in My Pocket toys. He will beg for a laser tag set and a whole semi-truck full of stuffies. But all he truly needs is an attitude of gratitude. Santa baby, can you slip that under the tree?

I understand that this problem is almost 100% of our own doing. From the time we found out I was pregnant, we have been buying for him. First it was all the toys that, according to numerous mommy bloggers and the Today Show, he had to have. I rolled my eyes at the wipe warmer, but he had a giraffe teething toy (but no teeth), the cutest little shoes (before he could even crawl), and a crib full of stuffed animals (many were bigger than him). Over the years, we’ve tried to supplement the growing footprint of toys with “educational” gifts. An entire library full of all of the “recommended” books, “brainy” toys – some requiring batteries and some made of wood, marble runs, and bins upon bins of Lego. There were plastic animals of every size and species, Army men and all of their accessories, Hot Wheels cars with the accompanying track and even a suitcase to carry them all. Ironically, nothing has made all of that seem excessive like living in and exploring around Los Angeles.

It is impossible to go anywhere, besides within the gates of our own neighborhood, and not see a member of the homeless population. Whether you drive or walk, you will see at least one person who is homeless every single day. Across the street, across town, in the parking lot of the vet’s office, outside of Starbucks, in the park next to the aquarium, sleeping on the beach. They live all along the L.A. river, under wind-shredded tarps that are strewn across sun-faded tents. They usually aren’t asking for money or help, they are simply moving about their day, just as we are. Some are passing the time by watching traffic, some are sleeping, and some -judging by their awkward propped positions – look like they may have passed on. I don’t know any of their stories, but I hear the locals talk about their “favorites”. Most are known, many are liked, some are helped. It has taken me months to be even a little bit OK with this. I want Oprah and Ellen to give every single homeless person a house, but the reality is that isn’t the root of the problem or even a viable solution. And the most difficult part for me to accept? There are so many homeless children.

When the school year started, I had to log into an L.A. school district website and confirm that we have a home. The default was not that everyone lived in a house, it was that everyone lives in something other than a house or apartment. The school district wanted to know if we were living with friends or family, in an RV, in a tent or in a shelter. I almost felt guilty by the end. No, no, no, no…no to all of that. We have a house. I’m so sorry, I wish they all did. And the truth is, there are children in Blue’s school, children he sees and plays with everyday, that are homeless. And I don’t think he had ever noticed. I wasn’t about to bring it to his attention, but a few weeks ago he began saying variations of, “This is the worst Christmas ever.” I let it go (for probably longer than I should have), but by the second week, I had had enough. We had a chat.

“Do you remember the people we see living in tents on the side of the road? Did you know that some of those people are kids? Did you know that those kids don’t have toys or stuffies or even a bed to sleep in? Did you know that those kids sometimes only eat when they are at school?” Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. Tears welled up in my eyes and a look of remorse washed over Blue. Homeless had become part of his lexicon, just as Amish had in Pennsylvania. The difference, he was beginning to understand, was that one chose the life and one did not. Sometimes I have serious doubts about moving every two years. Like when I remember fondly the Christmas traditions we shared with my grandparents and cousins when I was growing up. I become nostalgic for a time when my grandmother would stick the Bing Crosby 8-track tape in the player (which was installed in the wall) before decorating the tree. And I think, “Blue will never have this to reflect on each Christmas season. We are ruining his childhood.” But then we have a Come-to-Jesus about how he is not having the worst Christmas ever, although there are kids in his class who certainly are. Like Billy from The Polar Express….Christmas just doesn’t work out for them. And because he can look out of the car window every single day and see someone having the worst Christmas ever, he has stopped saying that. Next week it will be something else, but at least he has come around on this topic.

All of this was spurred by a Facebook post shared by a friend this morning. It urged people to stop giving Santa credit for the expensive gifts their children received. The iPads and gaming systems, the 52424-piece Lego kits and the new iPhones. Because when kids talk (as they inevitably do), it will appear that Santa is more generous to the families with more money. How old were you when you realized this? I was today years old. Why? Because our child has never wanted for anything, just as I never wanted for anything when I was a child. I never wanted a pony, but I wanted a My Little Pony. When I was Blue’s age, I got an entire stable full. One Christmas, the hot item was a Cabbage Patch doll. I received three. And now I’m doing the same thing. We wait for Blue to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas and then we order it from Amazon, with Prime shipping of course. The greatest irony is that for Blue’s third Christmas, we began the rule of 4: something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. Then Santa gave him everything else. We seriously restricted what he got from us and let Santa have a field day. Up until this morning, I thought we were doing what was best for him.

We are all doing the best we can as parents, which is sometimes a train wreck, often a fly-by-night operation, and occasionally flashes of brilliance. I’m certain we are going to look back in 20 years and regret many of the decisions we’ve made along the way. But if we’re lucky (and willing to accept that we are learning as he learns), hopefully the result will be an empathetic, kind, generous, well-rounded, and productive member of society. Blue may remember the countless renditions of A Christmas Carol that we dragged him to, the hours we spent sipping hot chocolate while strolling through the most decorated neighborhoods, Jingles the Elf fishing for marshmallows in the toilet, eating candy thrown from floats in Christmas parades, meeting reindeer at the zoo, sitting on Santa’s lap at the Macy’s in New York City, and any number of other unique experiences that we treat him to every Christmas season, but hopefully he will also remember dropping a $5 in the Salvation Army bucket, collecting food for a family in the church, buying toys to donate, making a meal for a friend, and sending care packages to our troops overseas. He will remember that at the center of Christmas is Christ and the light that He brought to a dark world (we can certainly argue until the cows come home about when Christ’s actual birth was – but that’s for another post). And when Blue has a family, he will share the traditions that we got right, change the ones that we got wrong, and do something for those who are having the worst Christmas ever. (And if there is karma in parenting, he will get to have a similar conversation with his own child.)

I love this post by Karen, whose blog, And Then We Laughed, is full of insights about life’s little moments. She and her husband have made the commitment to make more purposeful decisions and this post reflects that change. The Christmas season is full of things we do on auto-pilot, much we do because that’s how our parents did it. But there is no shame in stopping to take stock of our family’s needs and changing our traditions so that they represent what Christmas…Christ’s birth…means to us.

Friday Favorites

I’m taking a tiny break from Disney posts to share my favorites from this week….

We had a girls’ night out on Friday to say “See ya later” to one of our Momfia. She and her family are headed to the other side of the world, where they will have grand adventures and eat phenomenal food (and *ahem* have a driver…color me jealous). Until then, we got to have one last meal with her under the stars and on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. I had been wanting to eat here so this evening checked another box for me. The food wasn’t as divine as I had hoped, but the company more than made up for it.

 

On Saturday night, the Moravian/Episcopalian church that we attend hosted their annual lobster dinner. It was my intention to just help serve, but with 3 lobsters left, waiting to be claimed and enjoyed, I decided to pay my money and dig in. I needed some lobster extraction lessons, but by the second claw I had a pretty good idea of where to find the meat. Then they convinced me to eat the tomalley (the lobster’s liver and pancreas). Someone said, “It’s like eating the ocean.” And I can’t think of a better description. I ate some ocean and then got a bit of melted butter for the rest. Also, even though I was wearing my UK blue, we still lost to Texas A&M in overtime and now I owe my neighbor a Facebook live video of me singing the A&M fight song. That was a bitter pill to swallow…on many levels.

Towards the end of the evening, we were treated to a 20-minute concert in the sanctuary given by Katherine Cash on the violin and Norm Freeman on the vibraphone. Together they make up the duo “N2K”. A soulful excerpt from Dearest to Me can be watched here. It is a lovely way to spend 3 minutes on a Friday afternoon.

After church on Sunday, we called into our book club discussion and then headed down to Corona del Mar for their 57th Annual Sandcastle Contest. After we checked out the larger-than-life sculptures, we were inspired to try our hand at some castle building. Or hole-digging. Whatever. Turns out, creating something that resembles…well…anything…is significantly harder than it looks. I’m not sure the winner earned $100,000, but they definitely should have gotten a bucket of tacos.

On Monday morning, Neal and I took to The Strand, a cycling/pedestrian path that runs parallel to the Pacific from Torrance to Santa Monica. We turned around at Manhattan Beach because about 20 minutes into the ride, we realized that 44 miles roundtrip is far. Too far to be back in time for school pick-up, actually. But next time we’ll start at Manhattan Beach and see how far we can make it before we have to be back…kind of like hiking the Appalachian Trail, but with less humidity and blood-sucking insects.

 

We spent a lot of time at the beach this week and that always sets my soul at peace. Every time Blue gives me grief about hitting up the beach after school or church, I gently remind him that going to the beach in 18 months is going to take major planning and at least a week’s worth of vacation days. He doesn’t get it so I just drag him along anyway. Someday he will thank me. Right?

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend, full of tiny moments that bring you immense joy. Until Monday…xoxo