Winter Ramble

Years ago, when I participated in WordPress’ Post-A-Day, I would occasionally wake with no inspiration for the day’s post.   On those days, I would post what I came to call a Ramble, a post that starts with no place to go and often stays that way.   Here we are on the sixth day of January 2023, a year in which one of my (unwritten) resolutions is to post more often.   In 2023, I have posted exactly once.   If I go back and look at my list of posts for 2022, I find that I posted fifty-five times last year, which means I posted on average, every 6.6 days … so six days into the 2023, I find myself on the verge of breaking my resolution to post more.  Therefore, dear readers, you get a Ramble.

Texas. Utah. Home.

My wife, Muri and I moved here to Utah late in 2019. We had found a beautiful house we could buy outright in the community of Daybreak but the real incentive was the presence of our Grandkids a few miles away. We had lived in Orange County California for over fifty years in a beautiful house in the hills that I thought we’d never leave. Especially for Utah. The first year was a nightmare … COVID descended upon us and my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don’t know if we’d have made it without family close by. By the end of 2020, cancer treatment was successful, and vaccines had brought the pandemic under control. We set to enjoying having our grandkids nearby and getting to know the people in our over-55 community. And we began to enjoy the natural beauty around us. Still, every once in a while, we’d look at each other and say, Really? Utah?

Sweet Home Utah Part 2

When we decided to move from Orange County California to South Jordan Utah, we expected a culture change.  In 50 years, we’d become used to the mostly wonderful climate, the plethora of entertainment venues and eateries, the gorgeous beaches and regional parks.  We’d also adapted to the somewhat frenetic lifestyle, freeways so crowded we planned our life around rush hours and the sometimes overwhelming materialism of the wealthy.  What we got was an introduction to living in a beautiful new house during a pandemic, a pandemic during which my wife Muri dealt with breast cancer.  Without face-to-face contact with anyone but our daughter’s family and one couple next door.  We shopped in masks and ordered restaurant food from curbside pickup.   My wife’s cancer treatment was grueling but effective and we didn’t catch COVID (until two months ago).  We emerged from 2020 ready to learn what it was like to live unrestricted in Utah.  Here’s what we found.

Sweet Home Utah – Pt. 1

Yeah, I know … Lynard Skynard says its Alabama but I want to talk about Utah.   In 75 years on this planet, I never imagined I would live in Utah.   But here we are, living in the lovely community of Daybreak, Utah, and I guess it’s home.  If you been following along with my whining over the last several posts, you know that we moved here to be near our grandkids three years ago but their parents are taking them to a new life in Texas.  But Utah will likely remain our home … we don’t have another move in us.  So I thought I ought to say a few words about living in Utah. First off, let me say it is a beautiful state.  We can see the Wasatch Mountains from our front windows and whether they are topped with snow in the winter or illuminated by the setting sun in summer, they are almost enough to make me forget how much I love the oceans.  There are national parks and preserves all around us,  And Daybreak is a modern community with varied housing of many colors and frequent community events, like concerts in Downtown Daybreak.  We love our brand new house in the over 55 community of Springhouse Village and we own it outright because our California house had so much equity.

(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.

(Coming to) California

Forty-eight years ago, my wife and I loaded our suitcases into our boxy-but-comfortable gray Volvo and set out for California. We told our parents we just wanted to try it for a few years and I think we tried believe it ourselves. Even though we’d visited friends there a few years earlier and loved the place. Even though our best friends had moved to San Diego and we’d get to see them again. Truth: we were just kidding ourselves to make the goodbyes easier.

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.

(Old) Year, (New) Year

Last night, over the dinner that never came (more on that later*), I asked my wife Muri if she thought 2018 was a good year.  She surprised me when … without hesitation … said, No.  It is a characteristic of my wife that I love, except when it bugs me: she doesn’t mince words.  Me?  I can be a word-mincer when it comes to quality of life.  Twenty-five years sitting in 12-Step meetings have instilled in me a tendency to look for the positive and to practice gratitude, even in difficult times.  It’s not that I don’t see the bad things that happened in 2018, believe me.   We lost one of our dearest friends.  Our son made no progress toward self-sufficiency.   My business went into hibernation.  I have had more than my share of aches and pains, culminating with sciatic pain that has me limping around for the first two hours of the day.  But we have a small cadre of friends who accompany us on this journey, some from afar.   And we may ache and groan but we have an active life, not by car-commercial standards but theater and movies and concerts that make perfect dates.  We have the cutest grandkids in the world (yes, I’m biased).  A few business opportunities may still blossom and if they don’t, we’ll be OK.  And we have each other.  If I were to give 2018 a letter-grade, I would give it a B.

The Glass Man

I have never liked to use the phone. Conversations and transactions, whether personal or business, that I easily conduct in person become loathesome by phone.   I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because I come from a family of phonophobes.  I don’t think I have ever had a conversation of more than five minutes with either my father or my brother, and while my mother and sister were more that willing to converse on the on the phone, neither seemed to know that it was a device that could both place and receive calls.   On the other hand, perhaps it is a characteristic of most men. In my Thursday Night Men’s Group, calling the guys, whether it is for help with a problem or just to talk, is part of the program.   Whether it is the dislike of using of the phone or of asking for help, most of the men refer to the phone as too heavy to pick up.  Having lots of company doesn’t make being a phonophobe any more acceptable at home.

Friday Favorites 8/29/2014

Our First House in Yorba Linda

This is probably a peculiar post, so let me explain how it happened.  I decided I would like to post about all the places I’ve lived … with pictures … on my Dad’s Legacy Blog that I’m building for my kids and grandkids.   I decided I wanted to post a picture of every apartment, dorm, room and house I’d lived it.   My wife Muri will tell you I can get a bit obsessive when I take on such a project.  The places that were truly home were easy … I had pictures already scanned.   I found an old picture that shows my dorm at the University of Connecticut and I found a picture of my freshman year dorm on the Stevens Tech website.  That left Google Maps Street View to find the rest.  In some cases, I didn’t remember the exact address and had to eyeball my choices.  One apartment has been torn down and another, I haven’t a clue where it was in Newton, MA.  Anyway, by the time I finished, I didn’t feel like starting on a Friday Favorites, so this is it.   I’ll understand if you decide to skip it.

I was thinking this morning about how many places I have lived in my seven decades.   I was born in New Haven, Connecticut and spent the first couple years of my life living with my Mom’s parents.   There are a few pictures of me and some relatives in that neighborhood but no memories.  When my Dad came home from service in WWII, we moved to a small apartment on The Boulevard in New Haven.  It was a neighborhood full of young families, so there were lots of kids to play with, many of whom I still remember with a little assistance from some old photos from my Dad’s house.  I had my first best friend there, Roy Winchester.  In the summer before I started fourth grade, we moved to small ranch house in East Haven, Connecticut.  They say that home is where the heart is, but some places have more heart than others … I would call 650 Bradley Street home for nineteen more years, even though I went away to college after 13 years and off to work after 17.  For college, I spent a year in the dorms at Stevens Tech, in Hoboken, NJ, a year in an apartment in Waterbury (while I attended a branch of the University of Connecticut), and two years in the dorms at the main campus in Storrs, CT.   When I took my first engineering job in 1966, I first rented a room in Brookline, Massachusetts then moved to an apartment that I shared with a UConn classmate in Newton, MA, not far from where the shootout with the Bostan Marathon bombers took place.  I would take a room in Newport, RI when I changed jobs until Muri and I got married.