Woman in the Middle

You know its hot when I break out the tank tops, in spite of my farmer’s tan.

You know its how when the sheet and blanket stay at the bottom of the bed, untouched, all night long.

You know its hot when the unheated pool reaches 85 degrees all on its own.

You know its hot when we tell Big Bro (who lives near the beach) “Oh no, we will come your way for lunch!”

Stay cool out there and hope you have a great weekend!

Update: When we left for the beach this morning at 10 a.m. it was a warm but bearabe 88 degrees here. At the beach, where we had lunch, it was overcast and 77 degrees at 2 p.m. When we got home we exited the car into an oven like 106 degrees! Fun times! I didn’t expect the 30 degree difference!

It has been a delightful few weeks here in Inland So Cal. On most days the June Gloom in the morning helped keep the day from over heating. It has cooled off nicely at night and I have enjoyed having the windows in the house wide open from about 7 p.m. until bedtime. I have even left a couple open all night, which makes the house so nice and cool in the morning.   But the weatherman is telling me this delightful weather is over and it will be as high as 107 degrees this weekend. I keep trying to tell myself that it will be great weather for swimming, but it isn’t helping. The heaviness that comes with really hot weather is weighing on my soul. Sigh! The inevitable arrival of summer is upon me and I am not happy about it!

At least Hubby and I won’t have to look like this in order to go swimming!

As I have mentioned before, the rug by the sliding glass door that leads into the back yard is one of Blackie’s favorite places to hang out, especially in the warm morning sun. Unfortunately, Blackie had an upset tummy last week and made a mess of the rug. While we waited for the maid (that would be me) to wash and dry it, the whole family was forced to observe this pitiful picture:

Apparently, being forced to lie on the cold hard floor was not enough to keep Blackie from his favorite spot! I am happy to repor thtat the rug is once again clean and back where Blackie can enjoy it.

As most of you who read my blog know, I live in inland So Cal. Specifically, I live in one of the largest counties in the country, Riverside County. We stretch from Orange County in the west to the Colorado River in the east. We are bigger than the state of Connecticut. That gives us folks in Riverside County plenty of room  for very divergent life styles, as was pointed out to me recently.

A couple of weeks ago you may have heard that President Obama was meeting with President Xi of China. They met at Sunnylands, In Rancho Mirage, California. Shockingly enough, for those two days, the President of the United States, the President of China, and I were LIVING IN THE SAME COUNTY! We were all hanging out in good old Riverside County.

However, our weekends couldn’t have been more different. While the two presidents stayed in what was once one of the most luxurious privates estates in the country, I was cleaning my bathrooms. While they looked at stunning scenery, I looked at two-week old garage sale signs and wondered why people didn’t take them down.

Photo courtesy the White House

And such is the schizophrenic place that I live!

If you are interested in more information on Sunnylands, this is thier web site: http://sunnylands.org/

Have you ever been to Graceland, Elvis’ home in Memphis? I have relatives in that neck of the woods so it was inevitable that we would end up there at some point. Before we went my cousin Carol told us that Graceland “wasn’t as big or as tacky as you might think.”  Hum.

Since Elvis died in 1977, the home’s various rooms reflect the decorating trends (or even crazes) from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Many people over the years have mentioned the home’s “over the top” decor. I am afraid I didn’t find that to be the case. Hubby and I thought Carol was right. It wasn’t as big and as tacky as one might expect. In retrospect, decorating trends from those three decades can look a little over the top to us now. Besides,there was no way I could citicize Elvis’ decorating style because Elvis and my mom decorated their kitchens exactly alike!

It was the oddest thing. I walked in to the kitchen at Graceland and exclaimed “It’s Mom’s kitchen!”

In the summer of 1976 we moved into a new (to us) house. After several years of financial struggles, my father had found his calling as a real estate agent and was doing quite well. My parents took advantage of their new financial windfall by doing quite a bit of decorating at the new house before we moved in. The kitchen became a classic example of up to date mid 1970s decor. Mom had long before moved out of that house when, lo and behold, there was her kitchen in front of me at Elvis’ house!

Medium colored wood cabinets? Check!

Harvest gold appliances? Check!

Formica counter tops? Check!

Round plastic clock on the wall? Check!

Tiffany style hanging lamps? Check!

Indoor/outdoor carpet in a geometric pattern of rust/avocado green/harvest gold? Check!

When I think back on that kitchen, where I spent my teen age years, I remember lots of great meals, talking to my parents, and good times. But I still wonder – who in their right mind puts carpet in the kitchen?!?

Last Wednesday I took the day off work so I could go with my brother to a doctor’s appointment. After I got on the freeway he got a call from the doctor’s office asking him to come in early, because the doctor had been called into a meeting at my brother’s appointment time. Sigh! Well, the infamous 91 freeway was backed up like you wouldn’t believe. I called Hubby who raced from work on a different set of freeways. But it was all for nothing, as we couldn’t get Big Bro to the doctor in time and the appointment had to be rescheduled. Altogether a frustrating time!

Hubby had to go back to work but Big Bro and I decided to make the best of it. Have you seen the cable show “Storage Wars?” That is filmed here in So Cal and it just so happens that the thrift store owned by Brandi and Jared (who are on the show) is not too far from Big Bro’s place. So off we went to check it out. When we got to the unassuming strip mall where their store is located, one of their moving trucks was in the parking lot with a driver in it. You may have guessed from the following photo of my brother I posted a month or two ago that he is a real character:

Big Bro will start talking to any body, even more than I will. He has absolutely no shame or embarrassment in that regard! So Big Bro went right up to the truck driver and started chatting him up. He asked if  he was ever on the show (I didn’t find out the answer to that as I was busy taking photos and being slightly embarrassed). Big Bro found out we just missed Jared and that Jared is a nice guy, not the hard a** he appears to be on the show. We went in and poked around in the store for a bit, went to the used bookstore next door and then got lunch.

As my minister told me later, Big Bro probably needed that a lot more than he needed another doctor’s appointment. And she was probably right.

The new appointment was this morning and Big Bro got the results of his latest PET scan. It was good news! The chemo is working and holding the bad stuff in check or even shrinking it a bit. So, after our bad/good day last week, today it is all good! Whoo Hoo!

I have been so lucky in my life. I had a great Dad and my Hubby is a great father to my girls. It dawned on me, in contemplating Father’s Day, that I have never really written about my Dad in this blog. It is certainly time to rectify that omission!

My Dad was tall, and that kind of spoiled my in my teenage years. Aren’t all men 6 feet tall? No, no they are not! He loved sports, but basketball was his favorite. He played basketball in high school. In my sophomore year of high school, before I became too cool to be seen in public with my parents, my dad and I went to basketball games together at my school. At one particular game, Dad was yelling at one of the players, as people tend to do at basketball games. He was saying something like “Get your hands up” or “Play offense” except that he was using the player’s name. Oh, I was so embarrassed! I told Dad to stop it, and he said, “Why? His dad is yelling the same thing!”

Another funny memory also comes from those teen age years. Dad and Mom were going to get pizza with a couple they knew. Dad came out of the bedroom with a pair of medium brown pants and a shirt that was primarily pink. (Keep in mind, this was the 70s) I was appalled by this color combination! Dad didn’t agree and I keep harassing him with how awful the shirt looked with those pants. I just about had him convinced that he needed to go change his shirt when there was a knock at the door.  Their friends had arrived.   When Mr. and Mrs.. Skinner walked in the door, Mr.. Skinner was wearing almost the EXACT same outfit as my dad, except his shirt was a lavender print, instead of pink. This was not lost on my Dad and he shot me the biggest grin! Needless to say, I lost that argument big time!

My Dad didn’t go to college, but he sure wanted me to. When my first quarter grades came out, I had gotten a C minus in my English class. Dad didn’t say a word to me but, instead, consulted with a man he respected, a man who had gone to college and whose children had gone to college. That man, Mr. Taylor, told Dad I would be fine. And guess what, I was! That was the type of man my Dad was, not afraid to seek out the consul of others who might have more knowledge than he did.

My Dad was amazing, as I am sure your Dad was (or is)! Hope you have a great Father’s Day!

It is definitely June here in So Cal. How do I know? June Gloom! We just love to name our weather phenomena around here.

Assuming you aren’t a sun worshiper, June Gloom is actually quite nice. What is called the “marine layer, ” a layer of clouds, forms over the ocean. After midnight the wind kicks up which pushes the clouds inland. Sometimes the clouds just stay along the coast, but other times they get quite far from the ocean  Right now the June Gloom is really coming ashore quite a distance, making it all the way to my neck of the woods, day after day.

This makes for cool overcast mornings. Considering what is in store for us later this summer, I am thrilled with the cool mornings. It means I can open my windows at night and cool off the house. The AC comes on less and my pocketbook likes that!   The only people that get annoyed with June Gloom are the mothers of school age children. When June Gloom hits, it is too cool in the morning to send the kids off to school without a jacket. But, by lunch time, the sun is shining and it is warm. Of course the kids don’t know that. They head off to lunch with their jacket on, run around a bit, get warm, and off comes the jacket. It along with hundreds of other June Gloom orphans end up in the school’s lost and found. Most will remain lost, few will ever be found, take my word for it!

Eldest Daughter shared an interesting theory with me. She thinks that  Blackie the cat isn’t a cat at all. She thinks he is an alien life form that is masquerading as a cat to study humans. She believes his natural (alien) form is some type of ooze, like the Odo character on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. She feels that this alien can’t completely hide his real, ooze like nature. You know, if she is right is would explain so much….

If you are still not sure that Blackie is an alien from outer space, this next picture might convince you!

The weather was great here for the 5K walk/run Hubby and I participated in on Saturday. Some people had a light jacket on at the 6 am start time but we were fine without one. When we arrived we found Eldest Daughter and her friends. One of her friend’s mother was also there so Hubby and I got to meet Lynne for the first time. When the race started and the girls sprinted off Lynne stayed with us and we had a very nice time chatting for 3.6 miles. An unexpected benefit of the race was a new acquaintance! Below is the beginning of the race, with everyone sprinting off ahead of me and my walking pals.

We began near the front of the pack but got over to the side to let the serious people who planned to run the race by. At the quarter-mile mark Hubby looked behind him and I asked how many were still behind us (thinking it would be quite a big group still). He said “Oh, a few.” so I looked around and maybe a dozen people were behind us. Humm….

Soon after that I saw this unexpected sight, an Emu!

Just before the mile mark was a real killer hill. Oh my, I just about lost it there! You know it is bad when you start looking around for a good place to throw up….but I didn’t, I am pleased to report. At the top of the hill was water and a flat spot. I eventually recovered my breath and it really was smooth sailing from there on out. However the crowd had really thinned out back where I was….

By the half way mark it was us three and two other couples bring up the rear.

We traded spots a little here and there, depending on the terrain, but in the end it was Hubby, Lynne and I that crossed the finish line in dead last place. I had a flash back to high school PE and all of those races I came in last…. The young man who won the race covered it in 17 minutes and 25 seconds. We covered the same course in 1 hour and 9 minutes!

Youngest Daughter told me she was proud of me for doing something so outside my comfort zone. Eldest and her friends waited for us at the finish line and cheered our arrival.  I met someone new who I really liked. And, except for Killer Hill, it wasn’t bad at all. I will do more 5ks in the future and I highly recommend it. Especially if you can find one without a big hill and you don’t mind coming in last!