Goodbye To A Golden Girl

The most difficult and painful part of being a dog lover is when your beloved pet’s all-too-short lifespan comes to an end. That awful time came (again) for my family last Friday afternoon when one of our two dogs – a beautiful golden retriever, Sierra, barely just ten years-old – took her last breath and was finally at rest.

She led a pampered life, to be sure. Dogs at my house lack for nothing and are not spared even the smallest amount of attention and affection. But being a purebred, she was prone to numerous health issues. My wife and I have often remarked that between our two purebreds (our other fur-kid is Darby, a goof-ball of a yellow lab) with all of their vet bills and numerous surgeries, we’ve spent more on them during the past decade than we have raising four human children combined. C’est la vie.

I am such a dog person that I can’t bear to read a book or watch a movie in which someone’s dog dies. I was traumatized seeing the Disney film, Old Yeller as a young boy. I’ve caught snippets of scenes from this classic many times while flipping through TV channels, and quickly switch to something else. I just can’t go there. I resolutely refused to read the mega-hit memoir, Marley & Me. After all, it’s about the author’s life with his yellow lab who, as I’m told, ultimately dies. Sorry. Not gonna read it. Not to say that the book isn’t on our shelf at home. My wife read it, loved it, and promised that I would relate to every word on every page of the book. I have no doubt. And no thank you.

A writer I deeply respect, Dean Koontz, might possibly be more of a dog lover than even yours truly. Last year, Koontz sent me an autographed copy of his 2009 best-seller (A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog) about his own beloved golden retriever, Trixie. Breaking my rule not to read a book about the death of a pet, I read it. And I’m so glad I did. In the book, Koontz asserts that she was not a dog but an earthbound angel. I absolutely believe it. I would often catch our Sierra looking at me, or listening to a family conversation and know instinctively that there was an intelligence – a “presence” there beyond that of any mere animal.

Then again, at times she could seen as dumb as a bag of dog chow. For example, she would often get half way through our dog door from the back yard and seemingly forget where she was. She’d stand there with her front half in the kitchen and her tail end still outside, just looking around like she didn’t have a clue. What I would give to see her do that again.

To be painfully honest, I’d give so much just to have her here to do all those quirky and/or “annoying” things she used to do. Things like her tendency to bark incessantly in her high-pitched “girlie” woof when anyone would come up our driveway. She would run back and forth across the balcony outside my office barking her brains out and letting the entire zip code know that somebody’s coming! Somebody’s coming, Dad! Or letting out an even higher-pitched yip whenever our adult daughter, Amanda, would come to visit – almost always ending up by very gently and carefully taking Amanda’s entire hand in her mouth and leading her around the family room several times as if wanting to be sure to hang onto her and make sure Amanda didn’t leave the house. That dog certainly loved her family in a fierce, yet often funny way.

She also seriously loved the water hose. If she was anywhere in the yard when you turned the water on, she would come running at full speed to stand in front of the nozzle, making sure her muzzle was directly in the path of the stream. With an intensity you had to see to believe, Sierra would “bite” at the water coming out, only stopping to sneeze when too much of it went up her beautiful nose. And yet, take her to a lake or a stream in the mountains and she’d do everything possible to avoid getting wet above her knees. While her brother, Darby, would joyfully swim as far out as he had to in order to retrieve a thrown stick or tennis ball, Sierra would stand on the shore, excitedly barking to him and dashing back and forth along the water’s edge until he swam back close enough for her to steal the prize from his mouth without getting too wet. Go figure.

At dinnertime, she would devour every morsel of her food and then walk over to Darby’s bowl and stare intensely at him while he ate – slowly edging closer and closer, trying her best to intimidate her much bigger brother into walking away and leaving part of his dinner for her to eat. She would eat so fast and furiously, we even had to buy a special bowl that had three plastic posts imbedded inside to make it harder to get to the food and force her to slow down when she ate. She didn’t earn the nickname “hog dog” for nothing.

We also often called her “frog dog” (yes, we lean towards rhyming nicknames around here) due to her penchant to flop onto the floor with all four legs splayed out to the four corners of the compass. We thought it was hilarious. But comfort was always one of her biggest priorities. Which is why she was often being scolded for sneaking up onto the family room couch when no one was looking. Or why you would often find her sitting right at your side at the dinner table, or while watching TV or while I was working at my desk – and having her push her cold, wet nose under your elbow and keep at it until you finally started petting her beautiful, bony little head.

Speaking of comfort, Sierra had several favorite spots around our house that we always went to first whenever we were looking for her. One in particular was the tile entryway by our back door into the family room from our garage. She loved the coolness of the tile and would lay perfectly still, without moving even when someone tried to enter or leave through the door – having to be slid along the tile by pushing her out of the way with the door just to open it far enough to go through it.

Another favorite place of hers was the ridiculously narrow space under one of the benches in our kitchen breakfast nook. Whenever even one of us would sit at the table, Sierra would push her way in past the chairs and squeeze her body under the bench – often taking several minutes of scootching and scrunching and wriggling away, using her paws on the slippery hard wood floor until she was at long last in just the right position for her liking. It would take almost as long to extricate herself after everyone left the table after a meal. From other rooms of the house, you could hear her toenails scraping on the kitchen floor and the chairs being pushed around as she made her way out into the open once more. What a nut.

Sierra had been a “co-worker” of mine for the past ten years. Five or six mornings a week I’d walk into my home office, sit down at my desk and within minutes, Sierra would pad in and head straight for the leg well under my desk – perhaps the one place she loved to be most of all. She’d nudge her way in past my knees, circle around and around until she had just the right spot to curl up in, and then collapse – usually on top of my feet – to sleep without budging for hours to come. I’m writing these words at that desk, sitting in that chair. The space around my feet feels as cold and vacant as my heart.

The day after we took her to the vet for the last time, I was in my office with the shop-vac, on my hands and knees, getting rid of the many clumps of her butterscotch-colored fur that had accumulated in the casters of my chair and far back under my desk, under the sub-woofer, the floor mat – seemingly everywhere. As I vacuumed up her hair, I felt like I was somehow betraying her memory. What a strange sight I must have been – a grown man on my hands and knees, shoving the shop-vac nozzle everywhere under a massive wooden desk. Crying my eyes out. And yet, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit at my desk during the coming week if I kept seeing reminders of her every time I sat down to work. I’m so sorry, Sierra. That beautiful fur was such a part of you, girl.

While my theology may admittedly not be airtight, I’ll end this tribute by telling you my greatest solace this past week has been the hope that I will now have another cherished dog waiting for my arrival in heaven. I dream that I’ll be ushered in to the promised land to find Misty, Rusty, Banjo, Dorian and Boomer all racing towards me across the soft green grass of the new earth – leaping and playing and barking with joyous delight. Out in front of the wonderful, welcoming pack will be my golden girl, Sierra. Goodbye dear, sweet friend. I know someday we will play together again.

Thank you for allowing me to publicly remember a wonderful dog. I’ll see you ‘round town.

[Please note: This is a much longer version of my column published in yesterday’s CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com)]

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Name You Can Bank On

Once again, I’ve changed banks. More accurately, I stayed put – it was my bank who changed it’s name this past week. If you haven’t noticed around town lately (and all over the country, for that matter) Washington Mutual Bank is now “Chase.” That’s it, just Chase. Yawn.

I’m sure many people couldn’t care less – the money inside is the same whatever the name on the outside of the bank might be. But this one I’m taking personally. I liked banking at “WaMu” as the now-defunct bank was affectionately called.

You see, my wife and I were longtime account holders at another large bank with a local branch in Montrose – one that I won’t name out of courtesy for the fine people I’m sure must work there. Sure, I liked the not-to-be-named bank’s clever logo featuring a stagecoach and horses. They never ran out of deposit slips. And their parking lot had really straight white lines. But the banking experience? Not so great. Then again, maybe I was just a bad customer.  

Anywho, after years of frustration we moved our vast horde of cash (my wife is rolling on the floor laughing as I write this) to Washington Mutual. We had heard friends say how much they appreciated the WaMu way of doing business, so we gave it a shot. That was six or so years ago and we’ve been more than happy ever since. Instead of feeling like we were in an increasingly adversarial relationship as with our former bank (Seriously? You want two forms of ID even if I’m just depositing money to my own account!?), our new bank actually seemed to want our business, no matter how miniscule our resources might be. Imagine that.

You’ve also gotta love bankers who are comfortable calling themselves by a nickname like WaMu. As an advertising person, I appreciated the bank’s unique brand character always evident in its in-branch posters promoting savings accounts, home loans and other banking products. Trust me, having presented ad concepts to way too many stuffy financial-type clients over the course of my career, I can testify that it’s rare for bankers to even seem human, much less friendly and personable.

Okay, so I did find WaMu’s TV spots with the black spokesguy making fun of the gaggle of pompous and pasty white male bankers to be ridiculously insulting and stereotypical. However, being of the white male persuasion myself, I realize I’m not allowed to complain. But I digress, as I often do.

To be fair, I realize the building on the northeast corner of Foothill and Ramsdell hasn’t always been a WaMu branch. In fact, I remember it as a Security Pacific branch when I attended nearby CV high in the 70s. (And yes, we used U.S. currency back then, not gold nuggets. Or salt.) I also seem to remember the building was once a Crocker Bank – or maybe that was just a really boring dream I had once.

Still, I’m waiting for the bank’s new management to crack down on the small town, friendly atmosphere that we’ve come to appreciate. In other words, to make it just like every other bank.

So far, so good, however. The same efficient yet friendly tellers still smile out from behind the thick plexi-glass barrier. (Can you believe we used to bank face-to-face with nothing but a cheap ballpoint pen on a chain between us? I don’t know why we even need such safety barriers – these days bank robbers fly across the country in corporate jets and testify in front of the US Congress. Correction – today they get ELECTED to Congress.)

For now, I’m willing to give my “new” bank a chance and hope that the new owners don’t change too many things. And who knows, the eternal optimist in me wonders if,  now that my bank and I share the same name, they’ll be quick to cut me some serious slack the next time I need a low interest, fixed-rate, cash-out refi home loan. Y’think?

See you ‘round town.

[Note: This is a repost of a column first published on March 19, 2009 in the former Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper – an LA Times-owned publication.]

Driving Ourselves Crazy

Is my memory already failing me, or were the streets of the Crescenta Valley much wider 30 or so years ago? Then again, maybe it’s all of the vehicles lining both sides of most of the streets in these fair foothills. I mean, drive through any neighborhood either above or below Foothill Blvd. today and you’ll find very few linear feet of curb space that isn’t occupied by cars, trucks, dumpsters, trash cans and an odd assortment of other wheeled vehicles or objects.

It’s gotten so that many local streets are in danger of becoming impassible (impossible?) at certain times of the day. As evidence, your Honor, the people introduce Exhibit A: Orange Avenue between Pennsylvania and Ramsdell. I challenge anyone driving anything wider than a Razor scooter to maneuver that particular section of Orange Ave. on a school morning or any late afternoon without feeling like they’re a contestant on an episode of American Gladiator on Wheels.

Long gone is the time when a car going west and one going east could pass each other without slowing down dramatically, or worse, pulling over into a gap between parked cars to let an oncoming driver squeeze by. I’ve even seen drivers heading opposite directions on Orange approach each other, stop, roll down the drivers window to fold in their side mirrors. They then proceed cautiously ahead. This delicate dance reminds me of our family’s often harrowing off-road adventures on steep, bolder-strewn terrain where the rules of the rocky road dictate that the 4X4 going uphill has the right of way in any tight spot. The driver going downhill must back up until finding a wide enough spot in the trail to let the uphill driver pass by. I fear we’re getting close to needing this sort of motoring etiquette on our own residential streets.

I could be hallucinating from breathing too many exhaust fumes while waiting in local traffic, but it seems as though nearly every address on that long, very heavily trafficked block is home to at least five or more vehicles – all parked on the street.  Doesn’t anybody use their own garage or even their driveway any more? I can remember the ballet of Buicks we’d do at my humble childhood home whenever one of my brothers or parents wanted to run an errand. Our driveway looked like a railroad switching yard as first one car and then another was backed out and into a temporary spot on the street. Finally, when the car to be driven was moved out, the others cars were moved back into position in the garage and driveway, leaving the streetside curb open for guests, neighbors, etc. Somehow, even with a few cars and a couple of motorcycles in our family of six, we managed to park all of them on our property, not in the street.

That certainly has changed. Increasingly, residential garages today are merely mini-storage facilities in which to keep all that have-to-have stuff we’ve all bought with our two-income families (most of it almost never used, but that’s a topic for another column). Another contributing factor is certainly all the kids who already have their own cars at the ripe-old age of sixteen. When they were in high school, there wasn’t a week that one of my kids didn’t come home with a tragic tale of yet another friend whose parents care so much about their happiness and well-being (unlike yours truly, of course) that said Wonder Parent went out and bought their oh-so-deserving child a brand new car as soon as they were licensed.

Or worse. The other day while grocery shopping, for instance, I spoke briefly with an acquaintance who casually mentioned that he had just bought his daughter a brand new, showroom shiny, bright red Mustang. “Wow,” I said. “I had no idea she was already driving age!” He gave me a puzzled look and said, “Oh, she’s not. But she’ll be driving in the next year or two and her mom and I wanted to be sure she had a new car of her own car when it’s time.”

Well of course. Silly me. Because what this town really needs is another car on the road – parked, driving or otherwise. I tell ya, it’s driving me crazy.

[NOTE: A version of this column was originally published in the April 10, 2008 edition of the former Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper, an LA Times-owned publication.]

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The Adventurers Next Door

Writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau once observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Being self-employed for the past 14-plus years (not to mention raising four kids, two of whom are still in college), I know intimately about being in a state of quiet desperation. Trust me.

And yet, I tend to think that the flip side of that condition is the life led in quiet adventure. I got to thinking about that recently when a friend (and CV Weekly reader) emailed to comment on my column and new blog. In the course of her email, she casually mentioned that her husband was away in Nepal in his first bid to scale Mt. Everest.

Say what?

I vaguely remember hearing some time ago that my friend’s husband had set a long-term goal of summiting the fourteen tallest mountains in the world (give or take a legendary peak or two). I had no clue that he was as accomplished or as dedicated as to actually wind up in the foothills of the Himalayas on what arguably is the adventure of anyone’s lifetime. To think that living right here in La Crescenta we have our own American version of Sir Edmond Hillary.

Then again, another local friend and frequent subject of CV Weekly articles, Mike Leum, is the kind of guy who competes in triathlons and physical feats of daring-do like the rest of us trek to the mailbox. I mean, talk about adventurers among us – Mike relaxes by climbing hundreds of vertical feet up frozen waterfalls in the winter – that is, when he’s not saving lives in the wilderness and rappelling off hovering helicopters with the Montrose Search & Rescue team. As if that isn’t hair raising enough, Mike and his wife, Nancy are also raising two teenage boys. Oh, my!

While in no way have I ever done anything that rates as high on the adventure scale as climbing icy waterfalls, much less Mt. Everest, I have been known to do some things that might raise the eyebrows of more safe and sedate folks out there – or at least my mother. For example, many years ago I backpacked the entire 219 mile length of the John Muir trail through the great Sierra Nevada wilderness. The last day of this three-week adventure featured an oxygen-deprived trek to the 14,505 foot high summit of Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States. Granted, it’s not even as high as even some of the acclimation camps on Everest, but, it’s certainly enough for me.

I also spent most of one summer at sea as a crewmember of a 45-foot commercial fishing boat, once not seeing land for six weeks straight (I couldn’t eat a tuna sandwich for years afterward). That particular adventure included having to transfer myself, a backpack and my guitar in a teeny tiny plastic dinghy one hundred yards across open water with 15-foot swells to another heaving and pitching trawler while two hundred miles off the coast of Astoria, Oregon. Despite having drifted under the outflow of the ship’s bilge pump and nearly being swamped by its rolling, barnacle-covered hull, I somehow survived that experience, although it didn’t do a whole lot to decrease my lifelong fear of deep, dark water. To this day, I can’t watch an episode of the Deadliest Catch without reliving that summer at sea.

That was all years ago, of course. These days I find more than enough adventure in hiking and biking with my wife, in watching our adult kids chart their own careers and lives, and – most enjoyably – in watching our four (for now, at least) grandkids growing up right before the reading glasses on my nose.

My question is, what do you do for adventure? If we have neighbors who climb the world’s highest mountains or save lives as a hobby, what other adventurous and not-so-desperate lives are being led out there? Let me know.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

[Note: This is a re-post of my column first published in yesterday's (4.21.11) CV Weekly newspaper, www.cvweekly.com] 

The year Easter stayed in the attic

Because we added well over a thousand square feet onto our house somewhere during the last century, we have two separate attics. In our original attic, stacks of boxes reach to the rafters in places, filled with accumulated family history that archeologists from the future are sure to go through with collective awe and reverence. Or not. You enter this attic (on the rare occasion anyone needs something that was thrown away … er, carefully placed in storage up there) through a trap door in the ceiling of a hallway. It’s hot, it’s stuffy, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that a colony of bug-eyed North American house trolls lived in the far corners of its darkness. I hope they’re happy up there.

The newer attic is a different animal entirely. Due to odd architectural features of the addition to our home, there was considerable unused space above what had been our old garage roof and alongside one wall of our new second story. When beginning the project, I had foolishly decided to be the general contractor, so it was easy to make last minute construction decisions. As such, we decided to frame out a utility hatch door into the wall of the stairway leading up to our second story to access this dead space. Voila, a second attic.

Even though we had to build a special access ladder with offset legs to match the angle of the stairway, or that getting into the space has always seemed like the birthing process in reverse, we use this newer attic much more than the original one.

More than anything else, we store holiday decorations in this bonus attic. Okay, we keep empty gift boxes up there too. And suitcases. And sleeping bags. But by far, most of this attic space is filled with boxes, basins and bins of decorations. This attic is full. As in, fifteen pounds of fertilizer in a ten pound bag, full.

In previous columns I’ve written about the big deal we make of Christmas when it comes to decorations, so it should be no surprise that a majority of the decorations are for the Christmas season. Having said that, however, our family’s almost as crazy about other holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, our dogs’ birthdays, trash pickup day, ladies hot wax day at the car wash. You get the idea.

Because of the limited storage space, our boxed decorations are labeled so they can be stacked, stored and organized according to the calendar. Which means that a month ago, the hearts and cupids, bright red geegaws and dangly down thingies of Valentine’s Day should have been put farthest away from the attic door. So, in a perfect world with perfect teenage boys to help their perfect parents, that also should have meant that the Easter decorations (bunnies, baskets, plastic eggs, plastic grass, egg-dying paraphernalia, pastel-colored wrapping paper, tinted cellophane, more baskets, tacky rabbit-themed knic-knacks, geegaws and chotchkies, etc.) would have then been closest to the attic door when my wife and I went looking for them last week.

Not a chance.

In fact, after climbing up into the attic, with my feet dangling out into the void of the stairway, my wife and I pawed past box after box of Christmas paraphernalia, but didn’t see a single container with “Easter” written on it. Digging deeper into the crowded attic space, belly crawling under and through stacks of boxes, suitcases, and who-knows-what-else-is-stored-up-there, I felt a momentary wave of panic sweep over me and was sure I knew what it must be like to be a miner trapped by a cave in.

Somehow, we found our way back out to fresh air. We didn’t find the Easter decorations, but we were alive. And because crisis counselors don’t work on holidays, we decided to end our search and save our marriage. Somehow, our storage “system” had gotten screwed up.

With our luck, the Easter decorations will probably turn up when we go searching for our Fourth of July trimmings and trappings.   

And so, for the first time ever, last weekend we celebrated Easter without the usual seasonal bling adorning our home. The only decorations were bunches of gorgeous yellow daffodils and fresh pink tulips my wife bought to grace our dining table. No cute bunnies, plastic eggs or other distractions. Just a morning of heartfelt worship at church, then home for a great home-cooked meal and precious time well-spent with family around the table. All in all a simple, special day of faith, family and fellowship with those we love dearly.

Hopefully we can lose those boxes of decorations again next year. I’ll see you ‘round town.

[Note: A version of this essay was originally published in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on April 8, 2010].

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Clearing the path

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightening bug and the lightening.”  -- Mark Twain

One of several books I’m currently reading (I’m easily distracted by new releases and old friends and by many books bought but not yet read) is titled Unless It Moves The Human Heart  a newly published book by bestselling author and commentator, Roger Rosenblatt, about the craft of writing.

As I am prone to do, I often read what I hope will be inspirational, thought-provoking books when I go to bed – usually late at night just prior to midnight or sometimes even when a new day has officially begun on the calendar. Although there is danger in this late-night practice of mine (rarely do I read more than a page or two – and sometimes not more than two or three paragraphs! – before falling asleep myself and the book falling from my hands onto the floor beside my bed), there can also be wondrous times of inspiration. Often, when reading a Bible devotional or a superbly written book on the craft of writing such as Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, or The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, I will read a particularly inspiring passage just before falling asleep – and dream it’s message deep into my subconscious to have it surface in my waking thoughts time and time again in the ensuing weeks and months. I love when that happens.

Sometimes, not so much. And in my tiredness, I simply cannot focus either my eyes or my thoughts  -- drifting away from comprehension of what is written on the pages before me and into a deep sleep. So it has been with this particular book. Not that it isn’t written well, or that it doesn’t hold many useful bits of advice on writing – but for whatever reason, I have had the book a couple of weeks now and had only managed to read the first ten or fifteen pages. Its paperback cover is already creased and dimpled having hit my bedroom floor so often!

However, all it took was an anniversary getaway weekend away from my usual routine at home in Southern California and all its distractions to actually read nearly half of the book in one sitting. I should explain.

My wife and I drove 300-plus miles from home to our family’s vacation home high up on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It’s supposed to be in the 90s at home as I write this, but up here around 9,000 feet in elevation, it’s still winter – and the small resort town is still buried in as much as 15 feet of snow drifts. Nighttime temps are still down below freezing. Most of the windows on the ground floor of any home are still blocked by snowdrifts. Can you picture it? Now picture a wall of snow filling the entire front porch space leading from the driveway to the front door of our house. Arriving close to midnight in 30-degree temps and then having to shovel a path through heavy, rock-hard ice and snow the 15-foot distance just to get inside and turn on the heater so you can unpack the truck, put away food in the fridge, and eventually try to get some sleep. Yep, nothing like a relaxing getaway! But, I’m not complaining. Really, I’m not.

So, after getting maybe a few hours of sleep our first night in the cabin, I got up ridiculously early and read more of the above-mentioned book in a couple of hours than I have in a couple of weeks so far. Granted, I was reading as the sun was coming up – having been awakened from a too-short, deep sleep by my elderly yellow Lab, Darby, who thought he needed to go outside into the below-freezing darkness of pre-dawn in order to pee. He didn’t, by the way. He just wanted to go out and sniff the trails left behind by miscellaneous wildlife. He loves it up here, as do I. I just wish we had a fenced yard and a doggie door -- especially at 4 a.m.

Regardless, I was wide awake after the false-alarm bathroom break, so I dove into reading. In one of the early chapters of the book, writer/instructor Rosenblatt discusses the process of what he calls, ‘clearing your throat’ as a writer. He tells of  how the famous writer, E.L. Doctorow (of Ragtime & City of God fame) had once written 150 pages of his story, The Book of Daniel before realizing he had chosen the wrong person to tell the story. Doctorow ended up tossing every single word of all 150 pages and starting over with the story being told from an entirely different viewpoint and character. That’s discipline, my friends. I can honestly say that I don’t know if I could round file that many pages willingly – without being forced to do it by an editor under threat of not being published, that is.

I regularly slash and burn whole paragraphs of passages I’ve labored over for hours or sometimes days at a time. More often than not it’s because a piece has to come in at a specific, inflexible word count – not because I realized that a line, paragraph or thought was only included because I thought it was particularly clever or observant and didn’t really make the piece any stronger. One of the most difficult things to do as a writer is to “kill your darlings” as they say in this business. I have to say, however, that I’m getting more and more ruthless these days. All in the name of experience, I guess.

But I like the idea of having to clear your throat as a writer before you get to the really worthwhile stuff that you want to get down digitally. It’s almost like having to clear away all that snow and ice before we could get in the front door of our mountain getaway home. So much “stuff” piles up in between using the place (and my writing chops) that it takes some effort and energy to get past it all and on to the good stuff. I know, you’re still waiting for the good stuff.

Maybe posts like this one are simply clearing my throat or shoveling snow. Shoveling something, at least. You’ll be the judge, anyway.

Thanks for reading.

My Wife, Moammar and Me

[Note: This is an expanded version of my column published yesterday in the CV Weekly newspaper http://www.cvweekly.com/.]

Pop question: What was happening in the world 25 years ago this week? Moammar Kadafi (for whatever reason his name is spelled “Gaddafi” today) was in the news for his involvement in the Berlin disco bombing (Will this evil madman Gaddafi ever go away?) and then President Reagan was considering a military strike on Libya.

Speaking of the former President, it was reported this week in April 1986 that he and Nancy would receive a $26,907 refund on their tax return having paid $122,703 in taxes on $394,492 in income the year before. I wonder if they went out and bought a new refrigerator with their refund?

Twenty five years ago this week, the Lakers played their last road game of the season against the Sacramento Kings without star player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who was out with a respiratory infection. The same week, the all-girl group, the Bangles were singing about a “Manic Monday,” while Robert Palmer was “Addicted to Love” and the Stones were doing the “Harlem Shuffle.” MGM released the comedy, “Wise Guys,” while the sword & sorcerer film, “Legend” wowed audiences from Glendale, California to Gardiner, Maine.

To be honest with you (aren’t I always?), I don’t remember the above trivia and had to look it up online. You see, I was a little distracted that week by what was happening in my own little world. I was getting married.

Wow, was I a nervous wreck! Having been married once before, you’d think I would have been a bit more calm about the whole process, but quite the opposite was true. The very fact that I’d done it all before and had ultimately failed in the attempt hung over my head like an ominous cloud. What if it happened again? I had a four-year-old daughter whom I’d sworn would never have a broken family. And yet, it happened. I couldn’t imagine going through that heartbreak all over again, much less putting my precious daughter through that emotional stress another time. Second marriages have a bad enough track record, after all. So-called “blended families” are the most difficult to make work, said all the experts. What was I thinking?

But my God is one of second chances, and miraculously, undeservedly, He blessed me with the gift of a wonderful, beautiful, funny, forgiving, caring, patient, loving and gracious woman who came into my life with her own amazing young son in tow. 

Against all odds and common sense, on April 12, 1986, we became an instant family of four. Over the next few years we brought two more awesome boys into the family.

Flash forward to today and I can truthfully say that I feel even more blessed, more loved and happier than I did twenty five years ago. So much so that I felt compelled to acknowledge the fact for the whole world (or at least the entire Crescenta Valley) to know.

Well, that and the fact that  I had promised my dear wife that – upon reaching the milestone of a quarter century together – I would take her on a far flung exotic European vacation to celebrate our many years of wedded bliss. Let me tell you, it sure sounded like a great idea at the time. And certainly do-able. But that was then. The economic reality of now has added that promise to  Then again, having the ability to roll with the rocks that are thrown at you by circumstances, children, parents, health, careers, the economy, friends, the ravages of time, evil foreign dictators and aliens among us is one of the hallmarks of a healthy, happy and ultimately successful marriage.

Still, I wanted to do something more than simply the usual flowers and a card. That’s just SO expected, you know. So, now thousands of people will know of my wife’s plight in putting up with a husband such as me for all these many years. I’m still trying to figure out how to put a gift bow on all the newspapers that are delivered throughout the Crescenta Valley this morning, but at least she won’t have to work off any candy calories this year. Are you overwhelmed by my thoughtfulness yet? Yeah, thought so.

My wife has never, ever so much as hinted that she’s disappointed that we can’t even think about going on such a trip in the foreseeable future – telling me she’ll take a rain check for the romantic getaway … some day … somehow … when my writing career finally takes off. Or when I grow up and get a real job, like working for the government. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to indulge in a personal shout out to my wife: Honey, having put up with me for twenty five years, it should come as no surprise at all that I wrote you an anniversary column and somehow managed to mention Moammar Gaddafi, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Bangles. Am I the incurable romantic, or what?

Thankfully, ya gotta love me. I’ve got a wedding contract that says so. 

I’ll see you ‘round town.

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The 411 on 818

[Note: This column originally appeared in a shorter version in the April 16, 2009 edition of the former Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper – a Times-owned publication.]

This Saturday, April 18, the way we make calls from the 818 area code is changing. Yep, because life already isn’t complicated enough, starting tomorrow, every number we dial will require at least ten digits. I’m not kidding, from Saturday on, any and all phone numbers we call from this area code – from your next door neighbor to the gleaming global headquarters of the Crescenta Valley Sun – will require ten digits or more.

What chucklehead thought this was a good idea, anyway?

Actually, the new mandatory use of our own 818 area code in dialing is due to the California Public Utilities Commission’s approval to add a new area code overlay, 747, to the same geographic area covered by the 818 area code. Confused? Join the club.

According to the telecommunications technocrats, we’re close to running out of unassigned 818 phone numbers due to the ever-growing number of new cell phones, fax machines, security systems, pagers, land lines and internet connections coming online every day. (The fact that hundreds of thousands of unused phone numbers are kept “off the market” for possible future sale to specialized groups/companies, etc. doesn’t seem to matter to the bureaucrats who never met an ordinance they didn’t want to pass.)

This has been happening locally since 1957 when the 805 area code was assigned to Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Bakersfield, all formerly in the 213 area code. In 1984, the Crescenta Valley, Glendale and Burbank lost our 213 exchange and – along with the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys – have comprised the 818 area code ever since.

However, unlike in 1984, this time we all get to keep our existing phone numbers. So, address books, business cards, stationary – all stay the same. However, since there will soon be new local phone numbers with the 747 area code, we “818”ers need to actually dial 818 to call each other. Whew, it sure is getting complicated to communicate.

Then again, I’m old enough to remember – barely – rotary dial phones, too. I also remember when my maternal grandparents moved away from their beloved but increasingly congested Glendale to the rural south San Diego county town of Escondido, where at the time, avocado groves outnumbered residents.

To visit Grandma and Grandpa required a three hour drive. Calling between our two homes was considered “long distance,” which meant whoever initiated the call was charged extra by the minute. Both my grandparents and parents would do just about anything not to pay that extra cost, so upon arrival home after a visit, instead of calling and saying a hurried, “stop worrying, we made it home!” my mom or grandma would call the other’s home number, let it ring twice – only twice – and then hang up. This was code that they were safely home. And because the other party didn’t pick up the ringing phone, it was not a completed call and therefore, wasn’t charged to the calling party. Can you say, “cheap?” Or, excuse me … frugal.

Considering this, it’s quite ironic that each of my kids had their own personal cell phone before they were out of elementary school. Okay, now can you say, “spoiled”? Then again, social and technological developments like this are precisely why so many phone numbers across this great gadget-loving land are already used up. Guilty as charged, your honor.

Heck, today even my dear mother – the same one for whom a 1-minute “we’re-home-safely” call to Escondido was too expensive – has her own cell phone. The truth is, my wife and I added a line for mom onto our own family cell plan so she could stay in touch when traveling, or if she has car trouble, or whatever. And yet, even though it doesn’t cost her a nickel to use, she doesn’t use it. The thing almost never leaves her purse for fear of spending a few cents that don’t need to be spent.

No matter how often I try to explain to her that her use of the phone is already paid for, whether or not she uses it, doesn’t seem to register. And so the phone stays in her purse, turned off. I guess if old habits die hard, frugal ones are downright immortal. Of course, the other consequence of her inability to take advantage of the technology is that – inevitably – the few times in the past several years that she actually has had a need and/or desire to make a call on her cell phone, it hasn’t worked because the battery was dead when she turned it on. Sigh.

When it comes to communications technology, like many things, I guess change is inevitable. So the fact that we will now have to dial ten numbers to make even local calls should be no big deal. However, I can’t help but think Ma Bell is turning over in her deregulated grave at the thought of neighbors needing to dial a marathon of digits to talk to each other.

I’d call somebody to complain, but … I don’t have time to dial all those numbers.  See you ‘round town.

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Springing to life

Even being the cold weather, dark clouds, rainstorm addict that I am, I admit to having a special appreciation for this time of year. Spring, especially after a winter that brought such impressive rains to the Southland, often takes my breath away, quite literally. Of course, I’m partially referring to the curtain of yellow-green pollen that blows across our driveway (especially if we’ve just washed a car) from the highly productive pine trees in our neighbor’s yard and engages my life-long battle with asthma like a cheap cigar in a small elevator.

However, this time of year I also regularly catch myself holding my breath while watching one of many small springtime miracles unfold before my eyes in honor of the new season.

For example, we have two sycamore trees – a towering, older one in our front yard and a smaller, younger one in back of our house. Not two weeks ago, I looked at the bare branches and thought to myself that it wouldn’t be long until the trees would be covered in green, leafy foliage that would provide cooling shade to our house and yards.

Sure enough, both of these sycamores are now dotted with green measles of small leafy shoots emerging from all across their gray bark skin. The new leaves are growing so fast, I swear sometimes if I stare long enough at the same branch, I can see the leaves grow as I watch. It’s amazing to behold.

A few years ago, about this same time of year and while looking out our living room window, we noticed a couple of small birds (maybe sparrows, or finches?) that were flying from the bare branches of the older sycamore in our front yard to the eaves along the front of our house. They had pine needles, twigs and other organic debris in their mouths and were obviously trying to find a place to build a nest – flying back and forth along the eaves without much success.

The next thing I knew, our middle son (being an exceptionally resourceful craftsman) disappeared into our garage. When he reappeared a short while later, he carried with him a small wooden shelf that he proceeded to attach with brass brackets high up in the eaves above our front porch – creating a simple, safe perch for the little birds to build their nest and keep away from neighborhood cats, raccoons, and other predators. Soon after our son climbed down off the ladder and come back into the house, the birds flew directly to his newly installed avian apartment to begin setting up housekeeping.

Every Spring now, as our trees burst forth with new life, we watch the building of yet a new nest – and eventually – witness a mother bird protecting her tiny eggs while the father bird flies back and forth providing bits of food and – from his nearby perch on the sycamore – protection for his family. Like I said, it takes my breath away.  

Then again, this sort of internal, deeply imbedded programming so readily found throughout all of creation is – to me at least – just another reminder that we do not inhabit a world of randomness and chaos. Rather, we live in a deliberately designed and painstakingly created place of beauty and purpose. 

Whether it’s the vividly colorful flower that pushes up through the last monochromatic snows of winter, or the sudden explosion of bugs just in time to feed all of those new upturned baby bird mouths emerging from nests all across the land – every once in a while, it registers somewhere inside this thick head of mine, that this season of growth and renewal and of life itself is no accident.

No matter how the harsh realities of everyday life may darken my optimism, no matter what injustice, pain and suffering may yet exist throughout a fallen world, Spring – more specifically, Easter – reminds me to believe in a bigger, better, grander plan. And I do. I’ll see you ‘round town.

[Author’s note: An edited version of this essay was originally published in the April 1, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper.]

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Sunday Quote

While working on my column for next week's paper, I was researching some of the writings of philosopher Henry David Thoreau and found a quote I hadn't heard before: "How vain it is to sit down and write, when you have not stood up to live."  Ouch. Reminds me to get away from my desk more often. 

The beast within

If you’re a fan of scary movies, you’ve likely hunkered down in your seat as a familiar scene plays out on the screen. You know the one; where unsuspecting merchant seamen or long-haul truckers are transporting a huge and not nearly secure-enough enclosure with some unknown “thing” inside. They only know that something live – and very large – inside wants to get out. As these doomed workers move the crate, jostling whatever is trapped (for the moment at least) within, an occasional grunt or bellow or even primal scream emerges from within. Cut to extreme close ups of frightened peasant eyes, nervously glancing at the suddenly flimsy plywood – the only barrier between their very lives and the gnashing, snarling, slobbering beast within.

What does this cinematic cliché have to do with this column? I thought you’d never ask. During my recent two month-long, self-imposed hiatus from writing the column, “My Thoughts, Exactly”, I’ve had many recurring instances where ideas for possible columns would “grunt and growl” at me from deep within the dark and mysterious recesses of my mind, wanting desperately to get out and roam among the unsuspecting populace of these foothills. Occasionally, column topics would loudly shake their confines, roaring for release. (While not a life-threatening condition, it can be a noisy and raucous one for sure – just ask my longsuffering wife.)

Every time something happened at my house, or a news story would be reported that I digested with more than the usual amazement, I would feel the beast of a column stir within. For example, a voter’s guide arrived last month printed in Korean, Farsi, Spanish and, oh yeah – English, wasting who knows how much money and paper. Why not Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian or Egyptian? After all, I know local residents who are fluent in those languages, too. Growl, scratch, thump.

Also in March, a once-in-eighteen-years opportunity to witness a overly large “perigee moon” in our nighttime skies was wasted due to unseasonably thick cloud cover. Snarl, slobber, bump.

Charlie Sheen made frequent moronic, sad and tragic pronouncements in his downward rush towards obscurity and has-been status. Winning! Even worse, the media covered it ad nauseam while simultaneously obscuring our nation’s continued loss of credibility and relevance throughout Europe and the Middle East. Roar, slash, crash!

Repeated and very much unwanted calls to my unlisted home phone were made by “retired Glendale area school teachers” virtually demanding to know if I will or will not vote in favor of school bond Measure “S” on the April 5 ballot. The only way they could have gotten my number is by poaching it from the emergency phone forms filled out when I still had kids in the local public school system. Whether or not the particular ballot measure is worthy of support, the tactics used to pressure voters into supporting it were annoying if not borderline intimidating. Howl, bellow, shatter!

I even felt compelled to discuss the media-induced hysteria about the possible likelihood of potentially detecting trace amounts of Japanese nuke dust in our west coast air, dairy cows and vegetable crops. No wait, maybe that was the fugitive New York Zoo cobra I should’ve been panicked about. I’m easily confused, you know.

Thankfully (for my sake, at least), after two months away from writing a weekly column, I’m back! So I no longer need to keep my most dangerous thoughts harmless and confined. Be afraid. Be very afraid.  

I can’t wrap up my first column back without thanking the many valued readers of the CV Weekly newspaper for the notes you’ve sent to both myself and to editor/publisher Robin Goldsworthy. Your kind words were encouraging in ways I can’t begin to express. By the nature of the profession, writers tend to work in deep solitude – which makes it even more reassuring to know that so many of you missed my weekly musings and mutterings enough to say as much and to ask when I would be returning to these pages.

It’s good to be back. And once again, I’ll see you ‘round town.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is a revised version of a column first published in the 4.7.11 edition of the CV Weekly newspaper.)

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Face(book)d with Finding Friends

[NOTE: the column published in today’s print edition of the CV Weekly will be posted here tomorrow morning.]

Did you see the movie, “The Social Network”? It’s the highly dramatized, brilliantly written (by the way-far-left Aaron Sorkin), based-on-sketchy-facts story of the beginning of the cultural phenomenon known as Faceboook. It’s also a lesson in great moviemaking and myth-creation. I don’t do movie reviews, so I'll say no more.

All this is to say that, with today’s growing options for social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, et al)  being “connected” in multiple online ways is not just important in our personal lives, it’s becoming increasingly necessary for survival in our professional lives.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post – namely, to invite those of you with a Facebook account (you DO have one, don’t you?) to “friend” the brand new, freshly unwrapped My Thoughts, Exactly on Facebook.  Without further ado (whatever an ado is), here’s the link to my FB page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Thoughts-Exactly/208646979162044

Mark Zuckerberg (and I) thank you.

Tech Time

I spent the better part of two hours a couple of weeks ago waiting for my wife’s delayed flight to come in to LAX. At least I think it was two hours. Few builders of public spaces seem to bother installing clocks on the walls these days. And like a majority of people, I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago. Who needs one? Every cell phone I’ve owned as far back as I can remember has been able to give me the precise time whenever I need it. It’s just one of the amazing benefits of ever-improving wireless technology – when I can find the clock/time function, that is.

Let me explain. Last month, it was time for our entire family to upgrade our wireless phones to newer models (which not surprisingly always seems to “upgrade” our monthly bill, too).

And therein lies the problem. Because, every time I get a new phone, the learning curve to make a simple call seems to get steeper and steeper. Heaven forbid I should want to check emails, send a text, check a voicemail, or any of the 63,452 more advanced things the phone will do. We all know about the dangers of texting and driving. But sheez, I’m not even sure I should breathe and use my phone at the same time – I might suck in a low flying finch while I’m so distracted.  

In my defense, it’s not like I’m some technological mouth-breather or anything. As a once serious musician/songwriter, I could record songs using state-of-the-art, multi-track reel-to-reel tape machines. I wouldn’t bat an eye doing sound-on-sound recordings, ping-ponging tracks and running a wall full of outboard gear including parametric equalizers, or compression and noise reduction hardware. In other words, I’m not afraid of – nor am I in any way a stranger to – the use of bleeding edge technology.

Nevertheless, there I was at the airport, simply trying to figure out how get the #!*%&^! time/clock function visible on my cell phone screen. While currents of arriving travelers ebbed and flowed around me, I sat there on a hard plastic chair in the baggage carousel waiting area, staring at that stupid, mocking screen of my cell phone -- pushing buttons and opening and closing menus and trying to bring up the clock. I was so intently focused for so long I almost didn’t see my wife walking right past me on her way to the baggage carrousel. And she didn’t see me because I was looking down and engrossed in trying to decipher what should have been a straightforward function on my phone.  

The thing is, when making our recent upgrade, I had tried to choose the simplest phone available. Not wanting or needing the latest and greatest 4G touch-screen i-wonder (or its expense!), I looked for a phone that would merely survive the next two years in my presence. My last phone barely functioned after spending 30 minutes in the pocket of my board shorts while soaking in a very hot tub on the good ship Celebrity Millennium bound for Ketchikan, Alaska two years ago.

The replacement phone I chose was even listed in Verizon’s “simple phone” category. Little did I know that its manufacturer also assumed I would regularly be lost in the wilderness and need additional features like a digital compass, emergency lighting, GPS orienteering apps and many other bells, whistles and survival tools – all of which, it turns out – are much easier to find than the stupid clock. Sigh.

However, the same weekend I nearly chucked my phone onto a runway at LAX, my technologically advanced son – he who was born with a sterling silver flash drive in his mouth – was delightfully dumbfounded when we dragged out an old portable record player to hear what some of our old vinyl LPs sounded like after all of these years. With great hesitation, my young wizard of the web and all things digital, put a big round, black vinyl platter on the spindle of the turntable and turned on the power. As the disc turned at 33-1/3 rpm, he lifted the tone arm off the post and … was stumped. He looked at the slowly spinning LP, looked at me, looked back to the record, back at me and said, “You start this needle thingy at the center, right?”

The poor lad. Such blissful naiveté. Dear old dinosaur Dad was, of course, happy to instruct the boy in the old ways, although I must admit the most difficult part was not chuckling under my breath the entire time. Nearly an hour later, my son was still sitting in front of that turntable, listening with newfound appreciation to the scratchy sounds of my youth.

Sometime I’m going to ask him how to find the dang clock on my phone. But not yet. I’m enjoying this too much.

I’ll see you ‘round town. 

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is revised from a column first published in the March 11, 2010 edition of the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper -- www.cvweekly.com.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The Porta-Potties Are In Bloom

I know Spring has arrived in the foothills of Southern California not because of the clouds of yellow pollen that waft through the air with even the slightest breeze (or leaf blower), turning our cars a bright, powdery shade of saffron. It’s also not because our family pops antihistamines like Tic-Tacs during these days.

No. I know when Spring has sprung because of all the Porta-Potties popping up on neighborhood lawns from Sunland in the west to Flintridge in the east of our quaint suburban valley. Our all-too-brief rainy season is essentially over, with months of bone dry, hot-as-a-muffler weather just around the corner. Mortgage meltdown and shrinking home equity lines of credit be damned, homeowners everywhere seem to have pulled the trigger on long-awaited remodeling projects.

So, up go the Porta-Potties set far out by the curb. In come dumpsters to driveways like ships to berth. And out come the sledgehammers, crowbars, saws and enough power tools to dim the lights two counties over.

Homeowners who wait until Spring to begin remodeling are smart. Unlike my wife and me, who foolishly began our first, and last, major home remodel at the beginning of winter many years ago – a winter of near record rainfall. And cold. And wind. And what were we thinking?  

Within days after our contractor and his horde of hairy-handed helpers arrived, half of the roof and at least a third of the exterior walls in our house were gone, leaving most living areas exposed to the ravages of winter.

Our Christmas tree that year was on wheels. We had no undemolished corner of a living room in which to put a traditional tree, so we bought a small, live tree in a planter and sat it on a 4-wheeled moving dolly. Then, whenever rainwater breached a new location in the ceiling and threatened to short out the decorative lights festively strung on our tannenbaum like spiral slices on a holiday ham, we would simply roll the entire yuletide display to a less-damp location elsewhere in the house.

I spent the better part of the next four months waking up during the night to the sound of howling wind, flapping tarps and flowing water. I would jump out of bed, dash outside with a flashlight in one hand and hammer in the other, and climb up onto the remains of our roof to frantically refasten blue tarps that had become unfurled sails.

I have pictures of our then school-aged son and daughter, standing on a rough plywood subfloor in what would months later be a beautiful new kitchen. They are bundled up in their bathrobes, with a “hurry up and take the picture, Dad, it’s freezing in here” look on their faces. Behind them where a wall should be, is more half-inch plywood, temporarily nailed onto 2x4 studs – a laughable (yet in no way funny) imitation of walls to keep at least some of the wind and rain out of the “kitchen” until real stucco and wallboard versions could be installed. In the picture, rainwater can be seen pouring through the gaps in the plywood.

How we made it through that period without a visit from Child Protective Services, I’ll never know. Seeing the many blue and white plastic porta-potties dotting the streets around town today, reminds me all over again of that unforgettable time when the porta-potty in our front yard was the only place to go to get out of the rain. Ah, good times.

But then, really – aren’t Porta-Potties all about good times? I mean, what other industry (other than hair salons) has companies with so many clever names? You just gotta love “Happy Can Portable Toilets,” or “Best Seat In The House,” “Johnny On The Spot,” “Royal Throne,” “Gotta Go Potties,” “UrinBiz,” “Willy Make It?,” “Ameri-Can,” “Tanks Alot,” and my personal favorite, “Doodie Calls.” I’m not making these up, folks. Then again, if your business is Porta Potties (What did you do today, Daddy?), you find your fun where you can.

With that thought, I’ll officially welcome the new season by taking yet another walk through the neighborhood, where the scent of Spring – and other things – is in the air.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is an edited version of a column first published in the April 3, 2008 edition of the Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.