Another Ohio Buddy

One of my long time blogger buds got left out of the toast to Ohio the other day.

Mama Badger.

Awesome and fun blogger who I have been following for a long time.

Check her out!

Just for Fun

I went to Zumba with Daughter on Thanksgiving and Friday.

Zumba Jen added a new song and Daughter prepped me by showing me the video ahead of time.



So much fun. I laugh my ass off every time I watch this and I had a smile grinning like a crazy rotting Jock O' Lantern through the whole number in class.

Which is saying a lot because I am usually swearing under my breath about what the fuck I was thinking half way through the class when I would like to quit early but all the ladies even older than me are acting like its a cakewalk.

TTT: Ohio Anyone?

I found an old friend on Facebook. Michael Miller. He and I worked together in a restaurant in the 80's. Then he became the room mate of my two best friends.

Oh, the fun back then. The dinner parties and bottles of wine... The beach days.

Later, he moved to Lanikai beach and we had get togethers over there. One time we all rented kayaks and paddled out to the Mokes. Had a picnic.

Wonderful, adventurous, fun-filled days. Before careers and families and mortgages....

Mike is also a wonderful craftsman and artist. He used to collect beach glass and make amazing earrings and beach glass mosaics to hang in the window.

Mike moved to Maui years ago and managed an art gallery over there. Then, sometime ago, he moved back to Ohio to help care for his aging parents.

I've never been to Ohio, but two of my long time blog buds live there.

Jan from the Sushi Bar. She is wise, wise-mouthed, witty, and a wonderful cook who knows more about food and sustainability than anyone else I know. She is also about to come out with a cookbook - how awesome is that?

Kristin Hoffman. An adorable twenty something and most excellent writer. Also, I think, the very first blogger I ever left a comment on.

Both of these lovely ladies have contributed to TTT before.

Mike has a consignment store in Tipp City. Crossroad Consignments, which you can also find on Facebook.

If you travel in his neck of the woods, please go pay him and his store a visit!

Tipp City, Ohio

Mike says wonderful things about Tipp City....

Got Travel? A favorite haunt by your home? Link a post on up.

Oh! Just realized this post will go up on Thanksgiving. A most Happy Thanksgiving to all. One thing I am most grateful for is the world of blog and all the friendships I have made out here.

Conversation with Daughter..

I have female professors who don't shave their armpits.

Why are you looking at their armpits?

It's a movement class. You can see the rings of sweat too.

Nice.

Armpit hair. Sweat stains. Before 10 o'clock in the morning. On one cup of coffee. It's a challenge Mom.

Almost Blogging

I was thinking I might be catching up on things after a rather intense month.

Therefore, I might have a moment to blog today.

However, while slicing some fresh kale I bought from the farmer's market this morning, I completely forgot my hub's warning that yesterday he had all my knives sharpened.

It's not easy to type while extending one's left index finger (wrapped in three layers of band aids) poised towards the heavens.

Spin Cycle: Halloween Past and Present

This is a repost, but Jen said "Halloween then and now" and this fits the bill to the tee.


Circa 1960’s
When I was young and growing up in the San Fernando Valley with my two sisters, Halloween was a huge deal. We COULDN’T WAIT for dinner to be over and dark to descend so we could go trick or treating. My dad had this horrid awful mask that he would drag out, not only for Halloween but also for slumber parties. It came from a movie set and beat the shit out of anything they sell today. It was SO REAL. Not at all rubbery. It was the scariest, creepiest, wrinkled, evil face ever. At least that’s the way I remember and I’m sticking to it. He’d wait until our guard was down, which means sitting on the floor, sorting our candies, and with mask, trench coat, and big ol’ boots, he’d slam open the back screen door and come tearing at us. Clenching hands and BRUUUUUHAHAHA. I’m surprised we never pissed our pants. That’s how much we fell for it every year.

Halloween 1991
Daughter was just over two and we had mostly managed to keep her from chocolate and sweets. Instead of taking her trick or treating, we dressed up and took her to a restaurant/club. You see, my husband and I met working at Bobby McGee’s. I was cocktailing to pay my way through college and my husband was a waiter. EVERYONE wore a costume at this crazy place to work. Even though we had both moved on, we still had a lot of friends there and they did a happy hour thingy on Halloween. So we dressed as the Flintstones. Cave clothes- mine and Daughter’s hair twisted around big, fake bones. It’s a great picture of back in the day when my husband and I used to both work out. Daughter was two and was the most precious Pebbles ever. Not that I’m prejudiced or anything. We went at, like 5 PM, and even after a shitload of fun and frivolity, we were back home by 8. Within 5 minutes of sitting down some kids came trick or treating. There was no hiding from the two year old the fact that I was giving stuff away and that was the end of her not getting candy for Halloween.

Halloween 1993
We had just bought our home that summer and it was Son’s first Halloween. He was 16 months old. He had the CUTEST fucking tiger costume. He toddled along and I swear our block looked like that scene in ET, where swarms of kids come out right at dusk. Being a new neighborhood, it was a beehive of toddler hood. I was holding his hand and waited on the sidewalk as Daughter and our friend’s kids went up to the first house. Son could barely talk, but he sure let it be known that he had observed what went on at the front door. He grunted and grumbled to see inside the kids pumpkin buckets. When he figured out that they were partaking of give-away stuff, he pulled and pulled on my arm until I walked him up to the next door. That was the beginning of his professional status at trick or treating. Everyone thought the baby tiger was too too cute and gave him twice as much as the other kids. But half way around the block he figured out how to unwrap a piece of candy and that was the end. Afterwards, he wanted to sit in the middle of the sidewalk and eat his whole loot. My friend had to take all the kids around so I could haul his little butt home and check his candy before he scarfed down a razor blade or an LSD tab.

Halloween 2006
My children are 17 and 14 and they have made plans to go out with some friends. Son is actually trick or treating in a friendly neighborhood that lets the teens keep up the good work. His professional status is still intact. Daughter is in a play and after rehearsals they are having a party. My husband has to work. I have the night to myself, but I’m being a Halloween Homebody and have decided I don’t want to answer the door and give away candy by myself. So I turn the porch light off and all the downstairs lights too. I go upstairs and treat myself to an aromatherapy bath with candles. As leave the bath I pause to look at myself in the candlelit mirror and contemplate the effects of the last few months. I’m still officially bald, but the first soft down of baby soft fuzz can be felt more than seen. My radiation treatments, finished just two weeks before, have left a thickening of red welts under my left arm. But it’s not as bad as they said it would be. The aloe must have really helped. My scars are still fairly new and jagged and my skin still has the sallowness of all that chemo. But I made it. I’m done with the treatments and have returned to work. I walk to the upstairs window and peek through the blinds to see the families on the sidewalks with their ballerinas and spidermen. I don’t feel the least bit sad to be by myself. I had insisted my kids not stay home for me; I want to make up for all those days and nights they had hung out with me in my room the previous summer. I curl up in bed with a book, grateful that the worst is over. Happy that life is moving forward and back to normal.

Update 2011
In March of this year I made my five year mark as a survivor. Yea. This is huge and I am so grateful to be here.

Looking back at this older post I cannot but help notice how it ended, "happy that life is moving forward and back to normal."

Hm...

After nearly two unbloggable years, with life events I found much more challenging than even cancer itself, I am flabbergasted at my naivete.

I have no idea what I will be doing this year for Halloween. I do know I will dress up as something so my homeroom students get the extra spirit point. Other than that, I am still grateful to be here, more so with each passing day. Taking the good with the bad and one day at a time.

For more spins on Halloween, head on over to Jen at Sprite's Keeper. She puts the list up on Friday.

TTT: Ventura County

When I said in a previous post that my trip home was amazingly perfect, I wasn't even using hyperbole (one of my fave literary devices).

My mom was well - physically, mentally, and emotionally. She has not only adjusted to living in assisted living, she has thrived.

Thank-you God.

The day that my younger sister and her husband met up with me (all the way from Florida), and the three of us took Mom out for the day played out to be what might be tallied as one of the best days of my year.

Come along and I'll show you how to have a great day in Ventura County - featuring our family's favorite haunts.
On the Ventura County line of the PCH is Neptune's Net. It has been there forever as far as I know. Back in the day it was quite the dive, but has been updated and the menu looked awesome. We even were tempted to eat there, but had just had In and Out burgers, fries, and shakes; so we only went in for beers and iced teas for a picnic.

Neptune's Net is also a favorite stop for the bikers on a weekend and then you would find more like 40 or 50 bikes outside. We were there on a weekday so you only get two cool bikes in the photo.


We had to pass Sycamore Canyon to head to Neptune's Net for the cold ones, and while we were driving down PCH, a school of dolphins were swimming parallel to us.

Beautiful, clear, no winds, fall day.

Frolicking dolphins.

Auspicious, yes?
This Sycamore Canyon day park is where our mobile home park used to be in the late 60's and early 70's. That's grannie and my little sis there. My sister does not blog nor even use facebook, and when I asked her if it was OK if I put her photo up here, she said, "blog away!"

Behind Mom and Sis is the old clubhouse. The rangers use it now and it is a bit run down, but it used to be the center of the park, both physically and socially. The upstairs was a party room for the adults, but the manager let my friends and I have sleepovers up there sometimes.

Good times.

After a couple beers and a picnic, you can take a nice walk on our little beach. That's Castle Rock down there and my friends and I climbed all over it like indigenous crabs back in the day.


Between the rocks the waves rush in and flow back out to the ocean. Like rapids. We used to jump off the rocks and let ourselves get flushed out to sea. Again and again.

I would never have let my kids do anything half that dangerous, but we were not watched quite as over protectively back in those days.

After a few hours at Sycamore Park, head on up the coast to Oxnard. You will be following my old school bus route.

Out at the beach in Oxnard, right on the marina, I recommend you head on over to the Whale's Tail. I used to hang out there with my BFF and I am pretty sure it was with a fake ID. That's how long ago it was.

It is still a happening happy hour spot.

Here's sis showing off our "cucumber Bloody Marys." Sis used to work as a bartender at the Whale's Tail in the '80's. I was already living in Hawaii.

After happy hour head straight into Oxnard itself to Cabo's for some of the most real deal Mexican food to be had. I am ready to leave my computer right now and go make myself something to eat just thinking about our dinner that night.

When you walk into Cabo's there is a woman making hand made tortillas right there in the center of the restaurant.

Oh. My. God.

Best tortillas ever.

Can you tell we have MEH Mexican food over here? I was so ready for this meal.

Cabo's also does the best table side guacamole I've ever had. My BIL was talking about it all day.

Some beers, some chips (also made from their home made tortillas)....



We had tacos to die for. I was too busy inhaling them to get a photo for you all. My favorite is the Taco Dorados de Picadillo. It is pork, beef, and potato; all cooked down together and served in a crispy, fresh, hand-made minutes before tortilla.

We also ordered the Carne Asada and Carnitas tacos, which are served in soft tortillas with cilantro, onion, and lime.

Then we all shared so we could have one of each.

Cabo also does a Bloody Mary with cocktail shrimp inside. Which we also ate too fast to take photos.

There you have it. Ventura County a la Pseudo.

Got a favorite haunt where you live? Where you grew up? Link on up!