(Moving to) Utah

I didn’t wake up one morning and say, Hey, let’s move to Utah. In fact, when our daughter and her family moved from Arizona to Utah … leaving us to sell a second home we’d bought there to spend more time with the grandkids … I said, We’re not following them again. And for 5 years we didn’t. But two weeks ago, we loaded up our two cars and left our California house (which, by the way was still in escrow) and set out for St. George, Utah, our overnight stop. Passing through Las Vegas, someone rear ended me then fled the scene, but my car was able to continue. And now we are staying in our daughter’s house in Herriman until our new house there is ready. So properly speaking, we haven’t (Moved to) Utah (particularly since our belongings are stored in a warehouse in California awaiting our move-in date). Hence the title of this post.

(Leaving) California

A week ago, we packed both our cars and drove down Weir Canyon Rd. from our empty house at the top of the hill. Even though California has been our home for over fifty years, there were no tears, at least for me. Id been saying goodbye to people and places for weeks and I haven’t teared up yet. Selling our house, getting rid of stuff we no longer need, then packing and moving the rest has been an incredibly stressful process. The way I am, I tend to get through stressful times by putting emotions on hold and toughing my way through. The way I am, I know that once we are settled into our new house, I will have sit down, put on some sad music, and melt down.

TBT – Looking Like Dad

This is a Throwback Thursday repost of a post about my Dad I that first posted in April of 2011 with the title Family Resemblance.   I miss my Dad every time I read it.

For most of my life, I thought I looked like my mother but as I aged and people saw me with my Dad, they began to say we looked alike.   This picture, taken at my daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner, was the first time I ever really saw it.   But I had evidence of the family resemblance much earlier.

Friend for a Year

Almost a year ago, a big tuxedo cat sauntered out of his crate at the Yorba Linda – Cats in Need rescue as I was doing my weekly stint caring for the kitties. He strolled right up to me purring and climbed on my lap. The tag on his crate said his name was Claude, so named because one of his previous owners had declawed him. It was almost as if he knew I was looking for an adult cat to rescue. Claude was a double-rescue who’d been rescued then returned by his supposed forever family. I liked him, a lot, but I’d been looking foe a glamour-cat like a Siamese or Himalayan. The next week he greeted me the same way and I made a mental note that if he was still at the rescue one more week, I’d bring him home. He was and I did.

Throwback Thursday – The Negotiator

This is a post from 10 years ago and includes one of my favorite stories about my oldest grandson, Reed.

I grew up in the middle-class suburban town of East Haven, Connecticut. The first home I remember was an apartment in a converted Army barracks but when I was in third grade, we moved to a small ranch style house in East Haven where my father lived until he went into assisted living eight years ago. We would probably have been classified as a lower middle class family but I don’t remember lacking for anything, at least until high school, and even then the the things I wanted were more wishes than needs.  One was clothes. Oh, I had enough clothes but they all came from Anderson-Little. Anderson-Little was a New England factory direct retailer of men’s clothing and while their products were reasonably priced and decently made, they definitely weren’t cool (neither was I but that’s another story for another post). The cool guys bought their clothes at the small men’s shops around Yale University where the price of a single sweater could send my father into who-would-pay-that much-for-a-sweater paroxysms.

Movin’ On

It is May 22nd, two days after my 75th birthday.  It was a lovely birthday.  My daughter, Amy, turned up by surprise from Utah on Sunday night just before we were leaving to see one of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center (tickets also a gift from Amy and her husband, Lars).   We went to the movies and had a very nice dinner on my birthday at the Cedar Creek Inn and on Tuesday, Amy took me to Disneyland (I can be a big kid still).  Now, she’s back in Utah and I’m still 75 (well, technically 75.005479).   One day of Yikes-I’m-75-Blues and its time for Movin’ On.  In our case, literally.

Franked

Last week, I was driving down the hill on a Target run, and as I was trying to adjust the GPS unit on the windshield, my wife, Muri, asked if I’d turn down the air conditioning. At 74, doing two things at once is my limit, so I said … in that certain tone of voice … Hold your horses. She gave knowing look and I said, Yes, you’ve been Franked. Frank is, of course, my Dad, and Hold your horses was his favorite response to being told to do something when he was otherwise occupied. For some reason, horses figured prominently in our family’s repertoire of sayings. If you were being a bit uppity to my Mom, she’d offer, Let me hold your high horse while you get off, and if she was tired, she’d say, The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be. But this post is about being Franked, so we’ll leave Mom’s cliches for another day.

From the Heart

Whether you are a romantic or not, whether you have a Valentine in your life or hate the day as 45% of Americans do, unless you lock yourself in your room today with the television off, you will see hearts everywhere. And odds are that somewhere during the day, you will hear someone say, I love you with all my heart. Now I think most people who know me would say I am a romantic, but I am also a scientist, a scientist who has within the past few years had a thorough evaluation of his heart by a

cardiologist. I assure you, he was not checking to see if I could love my Valentine, my wife Muri, in the way she deserves. No, he was making sure that a cardiac misfire hadn’t caused a blackout I experienced while riding my bike. It hadn’t and I’m fine, by the way, but having peered at my heart valves on the ultrasound machine, I know that my heart is a muscle, albeit a very sophisticated one. So what’s with all this Love from the Heart nonsense?

Almost Eric

My love of music goes back as far as I can remember (and that, my friends, is a stretch of time). But as much as I love listening to music, I have never been proficient at making music. Oh, yes I’ve dabbled with guitars since high school and got to the point where I could play well enough to accompany myself singing popular songs. Singing wasn’t my strong suit either. Twenty or so years ago we bought a piano and the whole family started taking lessons. I lasted the longest and could play a dozen or so of my favorite songs before, inexplicably, I gave it up. Now, the piano sits quietly (and out of tune) in our living room. The same can be said for the three guitars I accumulated in my guitar dabbling days. On the shelf in my office is a native American flute that hasn’t uttered a note since the last time my grandkids were here and just had to try it.

On the Nose

Checking the main page of my blog today, I found that I haven’t posted since January 11. Such absences are all that uncommon during the past few years, during which my posting has probably best described as intermittent. Perhaps sporadic. Or spasmodic. Anyway, I am prone to postless periods of increasing duration. You probably get the point by now. There are reasons besides literary laziness or poster’s block. For example, we are in the process of going through the stuff we’ve accumulated over 17 years in our current house, discarding the stuff that is junk and donating the stuff that is still useful to charity. George Carlin, commenting on the stuff we all keep, said, Have you noticed that their stuff is junk and your junk is stuff? Except he didn’t say junk. Or course, sorting though my stuff takes time that could be spent posting and inevitably, I come across old pictures. Who can resist sitting down to leaf through a pile of memories, which means no posting or sorting.