Rachel and Mike found a cool, two-story cabin on the Russian River in Healdsburg. Why? So they could treat Mike's folks, who were visiting from Chicago, to a California experience in the Sonoma Wine Country. They invited us to tag along for a couple of days. Dylan and Emi came for awhile, too. I call that a party.
It's just the right kind of river for throwing stones. You can see Dylan and Emi looking for just the right ones (though Dylan is holding a small football, there). Small, flat, round. Mostly folks stayed up on the great deck overlooking said river--That's Bob and Jean (Mike's parents) and Rachel and Emi soaking up rays. What amazing weather for February! The place has a hot tub, a sauna, a BBQ, kayaks, etc., and this sweet lounge-y thing.
Sunday afternoon was wine-tour time. I am the perpetual DD, so no worries. Altogether, we hit four, I think. All quite different; all quite lovely. But, there must be hundreds of them, all trying to be unique in some way. There's our group tasting in the first one--Spanish/contemporary, airy, bright, up on a hill. Mike and Bob hanging out. Munching our picnic at the tables. Outside view of That One (can't remember any of their names).
The vineyards truly are beautiful, and, the weather being extra springy, the hills all around are bright green. Here's a nice shot of Bob and Jean in front of the Next Place (aren't they the cutest?). It is stone and cave-ish, set into the hill. You walk through the barrels to the tasting room. Tom found his favorite wine. We saw Stanford (Emi) and Cal Poly (Dylan) as well.
The third winery was hip and cool and glass and concrete and stylish. There's our little party at the counter.
Later, we were lured into another tasting room by a cute dog (doing his job) as we were walking along the street of Geyserville. Nice folks. No actual geysers, to speak of. Everybody speaks Wine, which I mostly don't understand, but it was a very friendly establishment and we hung out there awhile.
Back at the cabin, we're eating wonderful veggies made by Rachel and Jean. There is a crazy-enormous dining table--we could barely deal cards across it. Both evenings, we played Oh Hell. Jean cleaned our clocks.
We loved having the opportunity to become acquainted with Jean and Bob. Interesting and funny and, well, I could go on and on, couldn't I? Gifted and accomplished. One sees where Mike comes from, that's for sure.
Tom and I had Somewhere To Be on Monday, so we had to leave, alas. But we could make a habit of hanging out on the River.
...no, we don't live in the same pod. Not for the last 44 years, anyway. And there are significant differences between us, for sure. But it certainly feels like we are more alike than not when we get together, which we did for a couple of days last week.
Terry drove up from Fresno (four hours, or so, south of here) last Thursday and stayed til Saturday. It's rare that we get to share that kind of time. She has a very busy life, what with her full-time work caring for, and enabling others to care for, medically fragile children distributed between three different homey residential facilities. And then there are her 10 grandchildren, all of whom live nearby. Of course, she juggles even more than that, but I'm too tired to think about it...
We're happy just sitting with our knitting and chatting away. Yeah, I know. Let me also quickly add, however, that, although we haven't done it in quite awhile, we could also be happy hopping from roller coaster to roller coaster at Six Flags. But this time we took the slower road. Munching chocolate chip bar cookies along the way. We laugh a lot.
Wrenching ourselves from the frenzy of flying yarn, we took strolls in both Nevada City and Grass Valley for excitement on Friday afternoon. Whew!
I forgot to take any pictures until she was ready to leave on Saturday. This was the only one in which we both had our eyes open.
Usually, about every six weeks, or so, when I drive to Fresno, Terry can join mom and I for lunch. But it really is great to have more time to just hang out like we just did. It had been about three years since we'd last done it. The problem is that we're very alike in our lack of urgency about such things and we let time roll by and roll by...
But I'll try harder to make it happen more often from now on, I really will. I'm serious. Because, for one thing, she remembers stuff better than I do. I can do a brain-sync with her and, voila, I can remember stuff, too!
Am I a lucky girl, or what?
My favorite month. Usually quiet, laid--back. Cold. A good time to regroup.
This January, however, we hit the ground after the holidays by spending several days in LaVerne (east of LA) helping to move Tom's mom, Ruth, into an assisted-living apartment at her retirement community. Diana had done a great deal to prepare, already, but we all, then, spent three busy days sorting, packing, unpacking and arranging everything in her new place. I took only one photo--that of the kids and their mom in her cute, bright living room.
By the time we had driven back home, however, we learned that Ruth had been stricken by a stomach flu (ack), which quarantined the whole facility for the next week. Nice welcome. Tom, meanwhile brought a bit of it home in his system. My simple cold cranked up to sinus infection, so most of the second week of January was spent shaking it all off. It really felt as the New Year for us began around the 15th.
Oh, yeah, and my birthday is in January. Near the end. Last Saturday, specifically.
After a lovely Thai meal Friday evening, Saturday morning we drove to SF to connect with the kids. We found Dylan and Emi, first, and we all headed over to the Saturday farmer's market held at the Ferry Building. Wow. A mind-boggling array of fresh produce, and other foods, prepared and otherwise. Did I mention that it was a fabulous day to be outside?
We (predictably, since it was my birthday, after all) ended up inside at Cowgirl Creamery to stuff ourselves with lovely cheeses of many sorts. I had a melted-cheese sandwich of their Wagon Wheel cheese, melted while the cheese was still a part of the big cheese wheel, then scraped off onto the bread (see the poor pic of the process). Well. We shared several other tasty dishes, as well. See how happy we are?
Afterward, we made our way over to Golden Gate Park (one of my favorite places on earth). Rachel and Mike had biked over from their place. We chatted in the sunshine, for awhile, then checked out the view from the tower of the DeYoung. Did I mention that it was a superlative day?
Upon leaving the DeYoung, we crossed paths with Kanga-guy. He was hopping around on this interesting footwear. Special pants, too. We intersected with him twice more in our short time in the park. He might have been showing off just a little. Still, I have to admit that I would love to try those things...
Over at the Conservatory (which had, alas, just closed as we arrived), Rachel and I showed off our own footwear, which happened to match perfectly. That's because I had admired her boots at Christmas and she bought me a pair for my birthday. Cute, or what?
Mike had to peel off from the group to do some "stuff", but the rest of us made our way back to Emi's to eat more cheese. And Dylan's famous guacamole, at which he is hard at work here.
Here are a few cute people enjoying the fruits of his labors. And then, there's a pic of the 5 of us, taken by Amber, who was visiting Rachel from Boston and of whom I somehow neglected to snap a shot. But she's cute, too, take my word.
What comes after cheese? Chocolate, of course. Emi had made a wonderful layer cake for my birthday!! So rich and moist!! Candles, even.
We drove home, full and happy. Lucky lucky me!!!
Next day (Sunday), we topped off the weekend by driving to Modesto with the endlessly entertaining Browns (Karen and Terry) to see The Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan). Why? Because our choral director, Ryan Murphy, is the principal director and we wanted to support him. It was fabulous fun! The long drive (2 1/2 hours, one way) felt short because of the great company. The production was amazing. It included singers on Segways, a motor scooter and a golf cart. The Gallo Center for the Arts is a wonderful facility! We wrapped up the trip with Pho in Sacramento on the way back home.
So. That's plenty for now. My sister arrives today for a short visit. More soon...
I am not keeping up any more. And I have only 20 minutes to write this...here goes:
Starting with the fact that we found the prettiest Christmas tree (I think) of all time and space, though I think I'm about done with evil unreliable incandescent mini lights (did I mention unreliable and EVIL?), Dylan and Emi flew to Colorado to spend some quality Christmas time with her family, though Dylan flew back to Sacramento on Christmas Eve because he wanted to get started with us (mostly Tom) who were going to help him with his website for a few days so we had a nice fish taco Christmas Eve dinner with just the three of us--can you see our traditional miniature leg lamp on the table?--and Christmas morning we had fruit and sweet bread and such though I was somehow and inexplicably out of eggs (it had been a crazy week) after which we opened fun gifts one of which was another gorgeous teapot for my collection from Tom--it's a traditional Japanese iron kind--and both Tom and Dylan got waffle irons, don't ask me why, well, actually, Tom is always hinting about waffles and, well, we have one, but, well, too many words, and I'm pretty sure there were things Dylan needed more, but oh well, and we spent the rest of the day dodging the little RC helicopter we also gave to Dylan for fun and of course I'm always giving socks to everyone, as well, and, even though I have a standing rule for, lo, these many years, of no cooking on Christmas, I decided to break it just this once to prepare make-your-own pizzas for us, and Dylan's was actually four pizzas in one and I had made a Chocolate pecan pie, among other things, and have since come to the conclusion, albeit a shocking one, that the chocolate in this case is a bridge too far so we took refuge in the plain shortbread cookies, which are Tom's fave and, oh, I made peppermint bark for the first time, too, which, well, take my advice and don't eat some after chocolate pecan pie, and since there were so few of us, I didn't fuss about a bit of football going on in the background and for the next couple of days or so we tried to help Dylan revamp his website so as to be a better marketing tool for him and fortunately, Tom is becoming an absolute wizard of websites and "we" (including myself in just the smallest of advisory positions) made quite a lot of progress (and hope to unveil it in this next week sometime) after which, Wed afternoon, we took him to the train station in Sacto to get back home then we had a day (Thurs) when I had to spend most of the day at the shelter because lots of folks are gone (after doing regular shift on Monday), but Rachel and Mike, who spent Christmas with his family in Chicago this year, had flown home by now and, around 9am Friday, started out for our house, but the Jeep broke down in Vallejo, and, in a goofy, confusing and crazy train of events, had to leave the car in Rodeo, California, where it is at this very moment, at the fourth garage they visited after which, around 3:30pm, they still wanted to come on out to Grass Valley, so they took a bus to Richmond and hopped an eastbound train and we picked them up that evening in Sacramento and by the time we got them to our house (and some seafood stew) they had been "on their way" to our house for about 12 hours--quite a commitment--and still had some energy for a gift exchange, and, whoa, another RC helicopter flying randomly around and some other really fun gifts like a sweatshirt dress (cool!) and super-high-tech hair dryer as well as a very stylin' straw hat for Tom, which he will wear a little more later in the year, then we all collapsed and they took one of our cars the next day (New Year's Eve) back to SF because the Jeep won't be ready for a few days and that's the end of the Christmas of 2011 which was one of the best of course and now, here are the photos in more or less chronological order:
This is yet another category of "things that fascinate me". All these photos (except one, taken a week earlier) were snapped on the day after Thanksgiving when the kids and I went hunting on our property for mushrooms. It had rained on T-Day, so conditions were perfect.
Some are so tiny (like pinheads so I couldn't get good shots) and then you'll see one of the monster mushes we found with Rachel's hand in the picture for scale. Those grow next to the house every year under an oak. It's great fun to go looking for them all. So many kinds!! I didn't count the number of varieties, but there were more than a dozen, for sure. There are new discoveries each season, so far.
As I mentioned in the T-Day post, we have a big mushroom-ID book, but it's still almost impossible to be sure which are which--too much similarity. There are some that, we were pretty sure, were edible, even delicious ("choice" in the book), but were not brave (or dumb) enough to put them to the ultimate test. The huge ones were labeled as "choice", we think. A few days later, they were completely gone--eaten by deer. My guess is that they were, indeed, quite delicious, since I found not one sick deer anywhere in the yard.
The winds have dried many of them out, now, and the big season is over until late spring, when it warms up enough. Still, I walk slowly, eyes to the ground, scanning for more more more. I think it will take a big snow event to break my little obsession.
Wish I was a better photographer, but here's the best I could do with these marvelous little fungi (mag up on these to get the best view)...
