Yer Birthday Blues

Friday 3/10
I hope you all are enjoying the winter weather. Summer is gone here now, we’re back to rainy season. I am feeling fine, same old same old. It’s 6am Friday morning of big dose week, first week of the monthly cycle, so today is the last day of the month for steroids. I’ve been getting up at 4am, 5am, no matter when I go to sleep. That will work to my advantage tomorrow, when the boys and I will drive to Yosemite in a snowstorm, leaving at 6am! Why? Dana is turning 50, so we rented a big house in Wawona. It’s supposed to snow there today through Sunday, so getting there could be tricky. Dana and her sisters are leaving tonight, but Johnny has to go to the big birthday bash for babacious babes, so we boys will head out tomorrow and Johno can sleep in the car. I hope to God he doesn’t do half of what we did at parties in senior year, but that is naïve.

I was pretty stuck on what to get Dana for the big 50, and was working on a big party with a band, but she didn’t want that, and didn’t really want a big party, so I saved a bunch of money there. I was standing in the hospital corridor waiting to take a blood test when I noticed this painting of Islay Hill by a renowned local artist, and it was perfect, so I called her and now it’s Dana’s. We are trying to get originals of the Seven Sisters, volcanic peaks starting behind my house and ending with Morro Rock in Morro Bay. There are actually ten peaks, and one is in Estero Bay past Morro Rock. So far we have Islay, Hollister and Morro Rock, four to go. This view of Islay Hill is about 130 degrees from my view of Islay Hill, so in the painting my neighborhood is below the clump of trees on the left side of the hill.



I am in the destruction phase of the house remodel. We are pushing out the walls of our dining room and family room and redoing the kitchen to open it to the dining area. The contractor will start with some deep footings as soon as the weather looks clear, maybe a week, maybe two. They think they will remove 20 cu. yds of material! Anyway, before they come I have to remove everything in the way, and transplant all the plant material. I have to remove half of the brick patio, and since we decided to brick the whole yard I may as well not move these bricks twice, so I’ve been working at getting the base ready. Now I will let the rain settle it some more and move the pavers after it dries, just before the excavator shows up. Gotta sell the spa and brick that area too.

The boys needed to churn up the physical activity level and find alternatives to PC gaming, so we joined Kennedy Club Fitness, this mega complex 2 miles up the road. I figure I better get them hooked on one thing first, so we have taken up racquetball, and it’s working. We go again today at 1. Both of them ran into babes they knew at the gym last time we went, and that is certainly a big lure of the gym scene (for them, not me). I will be in the 50 meter heated pool doing aquarobics with the other geriatric members! This place has lots of classes, equipment galore, a deli, squash and racquetball and a hot tub. It is quite the beautiful muscley people scene starting around 6pm, and Mike and John were too intimidated by the biceps to use the weights. I need to show them that the scrawny and fat use the Nautilus circuit training and get them going on that. I will lure Mikey into the pool by asking him to teach me to swim better.

Johno is a kind of campus radical at SLO High, I think. He has lots of friends, mostly girls it seems, and I think he is a lot like I was in class only nicer and present more often. But argumentative, lawyerly, wiseassing he has down. Because he was in Spain his freshman year he didn’t get dragged into a particular clique, so he hangs with other creative types, the theater crowd and people that like the music he likes (crashing ska type mosh pit madness). Johno will be the crazed singer. He said all the emo poetry in Creative Writing was driving him nuts, so he wrote his ‘Miasma’ poem and then started the ‘Miasma’ Club, which is ‘emover’ the top. (We are always having bad pun competitions).

John and some college friends started a band, ExSkalibur, and Mikey is in as the guitarist. Only one other band member besides Mike really has any musical training, Angelo, and he is good, he is a music major at UC Santa Cruz. They only get to practice about once a month when the Santa Cruz boys come home, but it is pretty fun to watch the interaction across the age groups.

Tuesday 7pm
We are back from Wawona/Yosemite, luckily, as it was snowing pretty good when we left at 10 this morning. The boys came back yesterday with their aunts so that they would only miss one day of school. Dana and her sisters couldn’t get to Wawona Friday night and had to spend a night in Fresno, so I was up until 12:30 trying to find them a hotel room. We finally got lucky, and they somehow hit a window when CalTrans had cleared rte 41 and they made it. By the time the boys and I got in the vicinity, about 11:30 Saturday am, the road was closed again. I was kicking myself for not leaving early, but I thought it made more sense to delay and let them clear the road. It wasn’t snowing and the road looked good, but somehow they didn’t have plow drivers. We sat there and waited until after 2 when they finally let us through. Although we had a house for 12 people, there were just 6 of us. Great house, and we had a great time.

We made a sledding run in the back of the house, and built Forest Lump, the biggest snowman I ever made, I think. We had a number of snowball fights, ate a lot and sledded a lot. We all drove into Yosemite Valley, 22 miles but an hour drive with chains. Dana, Mike and I were in one car and I was driving, and the aunts were following with Johno. It was getting hot in the car, and I wanted to get my jacket off but there were no plowed pullouts. So I decided to use the pullover method, where you get the jacket all pulled up and ready in the back, and when you have a good straightaway you grab it in the back and pull it over your head. Well, I had just shaved my head the day before, and I had velcro head. The outer part of the jacket came off, but the liner was stuck on my head, over my face. In that blind moment of terror, I was deciding to take the mountain and not the cliff. I hit the brakes, veered right, and tugged the liner hard enough to wrench my neck, cut my knuckles on the shifter, and get the liner off. Needless to say, Dana was a little miffed.

Bridalveil Falls was a mystical winter wonderland.

















After the aunts and boys left, Dana and I went back to the Ahwahnee Hotel for dinner, even though I was wearing jeans and white socks, not the suit required. They didn’t care a bit and let us hang with the wealthy, and we had a great dinner. Dana was getting all these mystical moon signs – the full moon was rising over Half Dome as we drove in. When we told the hostess at the Ahwahnee that we were celebrating Dana’s birthday, she gave her a present of two cards, art that she does, and they were Cosmic Moon over Half Dome and Cosmic Moon over El Capitan. Cosmic. While we ate, the pianist played Moondance and Happy Birthday. I was going to ask for As Time Goes By, but Dana thought she had such a cosmic connection going that he would play it without a request. He didn’t, but as we drove back to Wawona, she put in an old Prairie Home Companion tape, and as Garrison Keillor was going through the birthdays As Time Goes By was playing on a piano in the background.


So, check out the photos. Forest Lump was getting much more lumpy in this morning’s storm. I was thinking how much a snowman is like us, all shiny and new at the start, then kinda lumpy, and then he just fades away.