Sorry, it's taken me so long...

Happy May, everybody. I'm finally back to the daily grind of earning my paycheck which is fun and exciting. The cats are happy as clams at high tide to see me. They will not leave me alone. I sat down on the couch Tuesday and thought I might write out a pattern for Beth only to have Boris in my lap in a millisecond. Now, I have to confess that if it had been Igor, I probably would have moved him to one side since he is ALWAYS in my lap. Boris, however, doesn't even attempt to sit on my lap that often, so I let him be. Of course, once Igor, who up to that moment was perfectly content sitting on the couch back behind my head, sees Boris on my lap, he decides he needs to be on my lap as well. Oy vey. I have to protect Boris then because Igor will push Boris completely off and just take over. I tell them all the time to share, but they are little brats when it comes to that. ;-) And Boris is usually the pushover, which is why I protect him.

I wrote out the pattern for Beth last night and sent it to her, so that's done! ;-)

As requested: A GRANDMA UPDATE

Grandma is doing really well. I can't remember what I last told you, but she decided to pay the $300 a day to stay at the rehab place, but then she wasn't having physical or occupational therapy, which I'm pretty sure was the reason she decided to stay there (as opposed to paying $170 for assisted living), but when I talked to her Tuesday she said that the doctor had given her another prescription for the therapy so she should have been back at it yesterday. The good news is that Tuesday she went all the way to the dining room (she's in the last room in the hallway, so it's a heckuva an accomplishment) using the walker. And I think she said she can get out of bed and use the walker all by herself, too! She has been sounding absolutely great for the last week or so. And she thinks she's going to be out of rehab in a couple of weeks. I'm assuming they're going to teach her in therapy how to negotiate stairs since her condo doesn't have a bedroom or full bathroom on the ground floor. I do know that my California/West Coast aunts (there are four of them) are planning on coming out in shifts to stay with her as they all have Family Leave once she gets out of rehab and is back home.

She's been making friends all over the place and is rarely in her room anymore as she's always off gallivanting somewhere (okay, usually the dining room, although last Monday the rehab place loaded up 10 wheelchair-bound oldsters and took them to the race track for some horse racing). From all accounts, everybody had fun. Grandma's a little bummed because her buddies Norma and Pat have gone home, and Norma was just a fun person. I quite liked her myself. She's the one who told us about Grandma refusing to bake in OT because she had seven kids and did her baking back in the day.

The vacations were mostly good. The first weekend away was hard. Even though I knew in my heart that it was my last race, it was harder saying good-bye to people than I had thought. All of us (C&C, Roadrunner, HRH and me) arrived Wednesday (C&C in the morning, the rest of around 8:30 p.m.). Thursday we headed up to LA to go to the Petersen Automotive Museum. I had been wanting to go there since it opened, but have only been to LA once since then and my brother wanted to go to Disneyland that time. Turns out that the Petersen is not nearly as extensive or fascinating as the National Automobile Museum in Reno, so we went through the whole thing in a matter of a couple of hours. I spent an entire at the car museum in Reno.

I did see some very cool cars, and if I would have downloaded my pics by now, you could see them, too. They have a Steve McQueen Jaguar in BRG – nice. They also have two Ford GTs – one of the original ones (technically a GT40) which had been owned by the classical conductor Herbert von Karajan and never driven in the rain – GORGEOUS. And one of the new ones, which is beautiful, but I'm a purist. The old one is just too sweet for words. And they also have a Bugatti Veyron. Holy cow! As HRH pointed out, it's really not a beautiful car, but hell, if you're a Top Gear fan, you know how cool and fast that sucker is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, go to youtube and type in Top Gear and Bugatti. Bloody amazing!

C of C&C really wanted to get to the Hollywood sign so that was next on the agenda. I have been to LA a fair number of times and have never made the foray to the sign – although I did go to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, so I did see it from there. This time, though, the goal was to get as close to the sign as we could. We got some cool pictures and then bailed, in an extremely unsuccessful effort to avoid LA rush hour traffic. I think it took us close to a year to get to the freaking freeway. And I have to say that the middle position of the back seat of a Magnum station wagon is not comfortable for HOURS at a time. My back was killing me!

We had to stop in Long Beach on our way back to Huntington Beach (as close as we could get to Long Beach, which wasn't bad considering we didn't even plan the trip until late February/early March) to pick copies of the Long Beach Press Telegram as they had coupons for free admission to the track on Friday. The ALMS guys were on track when we got there, so I got to flip the bird to the Penske Porsches, and the Andretti & Fernandez Acuras whenever they'd go past. It was mature and satisfying.

We ate at this restaurant called Island Burgers which was supposed to be fabulous. The burgers made from beef might have been, but their version of a veggie burger sucked. Why can't restaurants just have Boca burgers in the freezer and not waste their time (and my taste buds) creating their own veggie pattie? They almost always are horrible. HRH wanted a bite and I told her no, I didn't want that nastiness coloring her opinion of veggie burgers. Even sautéed mushrooms and swiss cheese couldn't hide how awful it was.

We wandered a bit around the race track, figuring out where we were and where our seats were. After that we just headed back to HB as we knew we had an early morning scheduled and a long day at the race track. When we got back to our hotel, though, C&C brought out a present for all of us. They had had t-shirts made expressing our feelings toward the "merger" and gave one to each of us and had a few left for some other racing friends we would see at the track. Pictures will be downloaded soon.

And I'll finish telling you all about my two trips to CA soon...I promise!!