The house is silent save for the sounds of the dog as she re-positions her weary old bones on her bed.  There is nothing I have to do today – at least until sundown.  A bowl of candy perched by the front door, not as full as it once was, stands ready.  I know what day it is -it’s Halloween.  AKA : my Dad’s birthday and the birthday of a few other friends of mine.

My very evangelical, protestant upbringing doesn’t bode well for what I’m feeling today but I’m not about to entertain any kind of discussion about the matter so kindly keep dissenting comments to yourself – thank you very much.  The day in August (3 years ago) that Billy’s soul passed through the roof of that hospice facility doesn’t do much for me.  I have to stop and think about what date that actually happened.  In contrast, on the day he was ushered into the world some 89 years ago today- I am surrounded by his presence.

Maybe since the house is so quiet and I have no one to attend to – nothing pressing to do except clean up a half dozen shows stored on my dvr – maybe that is why I’ve been surprised by tears today.  Then I stood at the kitchen sink rinsing out my coffee cup and looked up, only to be met again by his gaze as it stared back at me via that silly cat.

There was no such thing as “take your daughter to work” back in the 50′s and early ’60s but I know of at least a time or two that I was inside theNipsco building in downtown Gary.  I remember a central staircase that was very ornate that stretched up through the center, floor after floor , like the spine keeping the building erect.  Somewhere on the first floor, toward the back of the building was an open space where it seemed to me that our basement was replicated.  Work benches piled with tools – the space smelling of grease and hot metal.  Over his “bench” was hung this little photo of “Smile! Kitty.”  There was great irony in that since I remember him to be distinctly vocal about his dislike of cats.  Nonetheless, it seemed that his whole life long was driven by that juxtaposition – something he disliked reminding him of something that he should do – and eventually something that would become a hallmark of his life.

Joy.  Laughter.  Joker.  An avid whistler.  Friendly.  Outgoing to strangers.  Generally a very pleasant guy to be around regardless of the circumstances.  Cool under pressure.  Not prone to lose his temper except when watching a Cubs game.

It is fitting that Jack-o-lanterns sport silly grins as he did most of his life.  Happy Birthday, Billy!  We miss you more than words can express but we know what to do to really honor you – we’ll smile instead.

p.s.  Picked the King of Pop to honor our ‘hood.  Here’s to Gary / Westside!!

]]> http://1eyedmonkee.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/somethin-to-smile-about/feed/ 1 1eyedmonkee billyskitty http://1eyedmonkee.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/the-browning/ http://1eyedmonkee.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/the-browning/#comments Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:33:11 +0000 1eyedmonkee http://1eyedmonkee.wordpress.com/?p=3687 ]]>

Things.  Lots and lots of things.  Her things.

Going…going…gone.  Sold to the highest bidder.

Sister Sib’s benevolent Nascar Guy comes from a place much like Butcher Holler where family ties are unbreakable bonds.  So when an elderly aunt was being moved in with her only son who lives in CA to be cared for through yet another round of chemo – Nascar Guy raised his hand.  He’d be the one to sort through her belongings…things she’d collected since forever…things held on to since her husband’s death some 16 years ago… You get the picture.  Two weeks working full-time sorting, tossing, donating – they were finally ready for the auction.  The vultures swooped in – left their dollar droppings and flew away with their prey.  Now the empty nest of a house stands picked clean and ready for it’s next flock to begin padding it with feathers,twigs and mud.

Hearing how someone had to come in and paw through a life-time of possessions, assigning values to each and every thing, got me thinking about the “stuff” of my life.  Until you’ve had to do a job like that, I’m not sure you can appreciate the emotions that bubble up regardless of whether or not the items are yours, a family friend’s or a family member’s.

It seems like things come in and take up residence in our homes alot easier than they go out.  Memories put a patina on things like layered years of fingerprints.  We sentimental types have a hard time sending our souls out the door with no one to voice the journey of how this thing came to be part of our story. Presently, my offspring seem to have very little interest in the stuff that has served as set decoration for our collective lives up until this point.  Frankly, I admire that about both of them.  They hold things loosely.  Maybe it was because in the chaos of our gypsy caravan lifestyle, we knew we HAD certain things – but we’d be hard pressed to know WHERE they were.  They are on their own adventures now, collecting trinkets that speak to their particular journeys.  So I feel like I want to strike while the iron is hot.  I want to send things out of this house like smoke being belched up through the chimney.  There’s plenty of tchotchke to use as kindling.

I’m thinking that I’d like to “shop” my own home this year for gift-giving.  Brown is my new favorite Christmas color.  Recycle, reuse, repurpose, re-gift – all wrapped in thick, rough brown Kraft paper.  Maybe I’ll host a Swap Party.   Set things out on the table – invite people in – and let them take what they please but it only goes one way. OUT.

A couple of members of Shop Girl’s backing band recently got married.  Being young hippie types, they mandated that all wedding gifts had to be used and/ or purchased from a resale shop.  I could single-handedly outfit their entire house and mine would NOT look bare at all.  I thought about an old oak table leaning against the chimney down in the basement.  It had grown too small and was replaced by a larger second-hand purchase.  I gladly bequethed it to a new nest where their kids would grow up laughing around meals, spilling milk, fighting over games and doing homework.  That table has no soul but stories?  Yes.

The table can’t tell those stories.  Those memories aren’t erased just because I’m not looking at the table.  I hadn’t actually looked at the table for years and I’d still not forgotten the times we shared around it’s gently rounded edges.  So I’m determining to spend the long days/nights of winter digging through more stuff.  It’s my stuff.  It’s my job.

My brain was scrambling.  I knew what I knew…it was a recipe for disaster but I couldn’t tell him that – he had to learn the lesson the hard way.  We stepped into the entry way and I could immediately see him questioning his impulsive request.  It didn’t look anything like he remembered.  Of course not, I thought.  The first order of business 10 years ago when we moved in was to remove a disaster of a “re-muddling” they’d made of the livingroom / entry hall.  Lucky for us, we found most of the solid oak trim hidden behind the sheet rock they’d put up.  We had gone to great lengths to take it back to the original floor plan.

We moved through the rooms on the first floor then wandered out to the deck.  “I thought this was a lot bigger…”  It usually is in our memory, I explained.  Chatting for a few more minutes till there was really no more point, we moved back to the front porch.  Had his visit been two months ago, he would have at least recognized the color scheme on the outside.  But since we’ve had the trim painted, all the landscaping done, the ugly old pine tree removed from the front yard, etc. even good friends drive by the house – not recognizing the place.  And frankly – I couldn’t be happier.

That’s the thing about change…sometimes it makes us feel sad that things aren’t as they always were.  But for every person that feels sad – there is someone who was longing for their version of a home improvement.  The universe must just get used to living with that tension.

It’s been two years now that Billy has been gone.  I don’t think I’d want to answer the door at the Mrs. place if he stopped by to say he’d like to have a look around since he used to live there.  We just had two massive 40 year old half-dead pine trees  removed from the front yard. He’d be mad that his imagined bird santuary of an overgrown disgusting invasive Honeysuckle bush has been gone those two years…but not the birds.  He’d be complaining long and loud about the color of the TV room that the Mrs. picked out that was graciously painted by Sister Sib and her Nascar Guy.  And don’t get me started on the arguments we would have about the basement clean-out / drain system install / new plumbing / and paint job.

But there it is.  All those changes.  All those things that weren’t worth fighting you over.  Like I heard you say a million times, “It ain’t like it used to was…”  It’s not.  One thing hasn’t changed…we miss you.  The “you” that we remember from lots of years ago when you felt good and whistled all the time.  Truth is – you’re a changed house now too.  I’m sure you like the improvements and would have a hard time explaining all the process you’ve been through.

¹²We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

The Message / Eugene Peterson / 1 Corinthians 13

Squinting in a fog.  I grew up hearing it “peering through a glass, darkly.”

After a Friday night wedding the Dr. and I had attended a few weeks ago, I decided to light the candles that reside in the fireplace during the warmer months and just sit quietly for a bit before pretending to sleep.  At the back of the grouping is a mirror and when I grabbed my camera just for fun, I toyed with capturing some reflections in that dark glass.

Those words quoted above are at the end of one of the most used portions of the Bible spoken at wedding ceremonies and this June and July between the Mrs.’ social calendar and ours – I’ve heard it in a couple of different recitations.  We all know those words so well that even the most casual knowledge of the sacred texts would be able to do a fair job quoting it.  The whole, “Love is this, love is that, love isn’t this and love isn’t that…,” is what  everyone knows.  But the words that come a little further down the page have caught my attention.  “We don’t see things clearly yet…”

Seated with the Mrs. at a banquet table last month, I must have explained a half a dozen times that the little fork nestled at the top of the dinner plate would be used for our cake later that evening.  With each time she asked the same question in a little different way, I felt the others around the circle squirming in their seats.  I know there are those who wonder if I am aware of how she seems to be “slipping”.  Oh, I’m aware that you are NOT aware of the following:

The statistics are sobering:

• More than 5 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease today.
• Alzheimer’s Disease is the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. and the 5th leading cause for those 55 and older.
• One out of every eight people 65 and older has the disease. And for those over the age of 85, this number jumps to almost one out of every two.
• One fourth of all home care involves care for an Alzheimer’s patient.
• Those with Alzheimer’s Disease are three times more likely to face hospitalization and eight times more likely to need skilled nursing care.
• 75% of care is provided by family caregivers.
• When baby boomers reach 65 in 2011, these numbers will skyrocket and an epidemic will be upon us.

That’s right…seated at our table of 8, the majority of whom were my age, more than one of us will be in the same boat in the blink of an eye.

Squinting in a fog…is she squinting or am I?  I feel like we need to get a bit of a grip on some of the basics so that we can teach our children how we want to be treated.  Many of us in this present boat are just beginning to enjoy the new role of grandparenting.  Seeing the world through new eyes can be so entertaining – so delightful – and so tiring all at once.

I find infinite stores of patience to wrap my hands around Donny Diva’s as he’s learning to stack blocks, or grasp a spoon, but do I sigh too much when I have to bend over to help her tie her shoes or open that pesky little milk carton so she can have her lunch?  He’s not talking yet – but before I turn around twice we’ll be having conversations about any number of things.  People aren’t generally reserved when talking to pre-schoolers and usually just let the conversation flow where it might.  But I see how easily the elderly, especially those who are known to have “issues” with their memories,  get sidelined from social conversations.

Why can’t that same rule apply?  Just go with the flow.  If she wants to talk about the same thing over and over again – she really doesn’t mind because she’s not remembering it.  If time-machine memory takes her back to her own wedding – let her go there.  If she mixes up the names of the father of the groom with the grandfather of the groom with the groom, just patiently retrace the family tree for her.  It’s just conversation people, it’s not brain surgery.

In the end  – we are all squinting in the fog…thinking we have a handle on life, we have it figured out, we have our course laid out before us and we just have to get down to the business of putting our noses to the grind stone.  Reality is – that we are all squinting to see our own reflections in that dark glass.  To God, Alzheimer’s or not, none of us has a clue as to what we’re talking about.  We do not know what our futures hold.  So while I’m here trying to navigate the pea soup (that’s what Billy used to call fog), I’m going to just do what that sacred text suggests:  while I’m waiting for the completeness, I’m going to trust steadily, hope unswervingly and love extravagantly…even if it means going to more weddings.

Oh, and here’s a great article to help with your next social gathering…and you might want to put a copy on your fridge for your kids to see before you forget!

How did he know that just between the houses on our side of the street there would be over 2 dozen kids?  Granted, most of the Ortiz bunch was older and not playing in the street by that time but with my brother and the youngest 3 boys, there was always a street baseball game going on or some other schnenigans.  All I knew about the heavily German-accented Mr. Richter was it seemed he hated kids and our very “wichious” dog.

Our yards were relatively small patches of green on the far westside of Gary and ours was the smallest house on the block.  But when you’re small, even if the kingdom is small, it swells in your mind’s eye.  My parents worked hard to own a home and keep it up, just like the other blue collar workers that surrounded us in the Steel City.  All Mr. Richter wanted was nice grass and he had to do battle with brats and baseballs and bikes day in and day out, summer after summer.

I got an email from my cousin who runs the service department at a large car dealership near where the Mrs. lives now some 25 miles away from where she and Billy first started out.  “Does the name Emil Richter ring a bell?,” he asked. He and his wife had been in to service their car and recognized my cousin’s last name and made the connection to their old neighborhood.  Oh yeah…I was teleported back 50 years with just the mention of his name.

And I haven’t been able to get him off my mind as I stand, hose in hand – three times a day – nursing a fragile new lawn to life.  It is beginning to show signs of life – sprouting up here and there like whiskers on a 16 year old’s chin.  After the hydromulch was globbed on, we were handed a few sheets of paper instructing us how to baby this thing along.  The responsibility is now 100% ours.

I’ve been feeling very frustrated lately with my left hand all braced up and waiting for surgery a week from Friday.  I never realized how much I use the tendons in my thumb till I wince in pain with the slightest movement of my hand this last six weeks.  So, I feel like I’m biding my time…feeling depressed because I don’t feel like doing anything.  But then maybe all this has a rhyme and reason.  The Zen of Watering has become my daily friend.  Nurturing.  Coaxing something to life.  I need to be available and give it the proper attention.

Reminds me of the times when as a new mom, in a foreign country with two kids 18 months apart, feeling like I wasn’t making much of a difference.  Even today, glancing at Facebook status updates, I can ask myself why I’m not driven enough to be like her…or her…or her…or…

So here I am this summer, 50 years after cutting across Mr. Richter’s lawn one too many times, I just want to apologize to him.  It takes a slow, steady hand to grow a nice lawn.  It’s all you had and you made it really special.  It’s taken us 10 years of neglect and of being too busy to care less – to finally get to the point in our lives when it’s become “important”.  I’d like to stop and go back to that place in time but with these years under my belt and get to know Emil Richter.  What did that house mean to him?  Had he come from Germany after the war?  Was it a piece of heaven on earth to have a home in a “peaceful” neighborhood?

I need to quit.  It’s time to water again and time to watch Donny Diva while Shop Girl goes to the dentist.  If I get nothing else accomplished today, I will call it a good day.  Caring for living things ain’t all that bad even if it’s not worthy of a good status update.

Chaos is about to ensue.  The landscapers will start today or tomorrow.  The painter is moving his ladder to finish the north side of the second story.  There will be no yard to let the Beast out into for the better part of six weeks till we have grass.  It will need to be watered three times a day.  She will need to be walked a million times a day.  I will need medication every four to six hours for the rest of the summer.

Meanwhile, here I am.  I always have an imaginary list in my head of all the things I think I can accomplish with him gone.  It’s not that he’s all that much trouble when he is here – it’s just that he needs to eat a few times a day which means if I’m honest -  he’ll fix himself.  He’s become very self-reliant in these days of working from home and never quite sure when my schedule with the Mrs. will have me out-of-town for hours or overnight.  But there is still something that happens when I have the house to myself.

I dream of boundless energy and crews of invisible, off camera  helpers like those TV make-over shows that get done in 30 minutes some how???  Imagine me…no interruptions, moving around efficiently and swiftly, making as much noise as I want and staying up all night tackling project after project.

My list looks like this:

1. I could paint the bathroom
2. I could paint the living room
3. I could strip the 70′s wall paper off the kitchen walls
4. I could tear down the acoustical ceiling from hell that is also in the kitchen.
5. I could get every picture album, CD, raw film footage tapes, and any other kind of media that floats around here…organized and in one place.
6. I could do more of the great work I started in the basement back in February but stopped when there was enough room for the workman to install the  glass block windows
7. I could clean out 4 bedroom closets
8. I could re-organize and clean the kitchen cabinets
9. I could work on the 100-year-old plus double hung windows that don’t work because someone cut the sash cords
10. I could finish stripping the old linoleum tile off the kitchen floor (a job that has been in process for years and I can ignore until we have company then I die of embarrassment when I see the look on their faces.)

Let’s face it – I have options.  That list could easily double if I wanted to type more.  Time will tell if anything gets done or not.

One of the first things I knew I needed to do was to decide when to go down to the Mrs.’ place.  When I called her the evening that the Dr. left, I was just about to open my mouth and tell her that the Weather channel would surely be talking about the earthquake felt here in MI and the impending tornados headed her way.  Before I could get any of that out of my mouth, she apologetically whimpered, “I hate to trouble you…but I seem to have messed up the TV and I can’t get it to turn on.”   Right then and there I decided that no news was good news – she’d NOT hear about the trembler and she’d slept through the storm warnings a half a dozen other times this season – so what the heck…we’d play the Toto Lotto. So yesterday, my first day of Bliss Week, I went down to the Mrs.’ place – 1 week and 1 day after hooking up the new Comcast digital box.  I wondered just how long it would take before the remote got so screwed up that her TV wouldn’t work.  I may have found her Christmas gift already.  Check it out.

I really am happy that the Dr. has been unchained from his computer screen and gets to breathe real fresh air and enjoy being surrounded by nature these days.  It will refresh his soul.

And I know it would do my soul a world of good to get a bunch of things crossed off that nagging list.  With the fresh motivation that Best Boy and Mimi are headed to town next week – I might just get them all done…that, or I’ll be watching all five seasons of Six Feet Under.  After all, I am also the General Contractor / Supervisor on two projects that will be continuing next week – the painting of the house trim and the landscapers start their three day make-over.  Would you care to place any bets about my making it off the couch?  It would be my version of “Gone Fishin’”.  Oh wait, I can’t fly fish right now coz…

While I did my usual duties around the house and running out to get groceries, etc., they just visited.  I don’t know who was more entertained by the whole thing – the Mrs. or Donny Diva.  The giggles and laughs were about equal when it was all said and done.  It reminded me of some of the similarities that Billy and Tractor Baby shared two years ago (you can read about that here).  Before we wrapped up our visit, Shop Girl sat down at the piano with Donny Diva on her lap.  It took him just a minute or two to get the hang of the physics lesson of action-reaction.  Suddenly he was “twinklin’ ” on the piano – that’s what Billy used to call it when Shop Girl would play.

So I guess that alot of what happens in life is that we end up where we started from.  Sometimes our hands don’t work like we want them to.  We need more naps.  Our view of the world as a whole can be limited to what is happening in our house and our most immediate surroundings.  And more often than not, social gatherings can be intimidating.  When we went to a graduation open house the other day, the best Donny Diva could do was to bury his head in a cousin’s shoulder to help him cope with all the people that wanted to kiss on his face.  Eventually he warmed up and all was fine.  It just took a few minutes.

The Mrs. feels like that too – but there was no shoulder to share.   She was at an open house on the same day and told me later that it all made her feel very lonely.  She was very aware of feeling like the “odd man out” as she puts it.  Surrounded by couples, all old friends, feeling like she didn’t belong.  She missed Billy something fierce.

Hearing about how she felt made me defensive.  It gets my ire up when we routinely plow over the elderly but would never treat a toddler that way.  We are impatient with their inability to move like they used to, their lack of desire to do what they used to or just their general state of “winding down”.  A conversation with her can jump from the 1920′s to 2010 mid-sentence and takes all kinds of special abilities to maintain sanity.  I’ll be the first to admit that  I don’t have the stamina it takes to be Donny Diva’s full time caregiver and I get equally tired when I have to deal with the Mrs. for days on end.  But none of that is like  a friend of mine who is being taxed on a moment by moment basis as she is an only child dealing with her mom’s Alzheimer’s.

So all I ask is that when you are out and about running around in your world with all your fingers working just like they are supposed to and mentally juggling a million things at once – if you find yourself in line behind someone with more gray hair than is on your head – be kind.  Be patient.  Be personal.  You may be the only person that speaks to them all day and you’ll turn around twice in life and you will be that old person.  There is no escaping that reality.  There is a new generation stepping on your heels ready to sit down to take their turn twinklin’ on the piano.

The Mrs. had had a chunk of her calf surgically removed along with the erring basal cell carcinoma a few days prior to Shop Girl, Donny Diva and I heading for the open highway headed due South.  So today was stitch removal day…and a few other chores that had piled up.

As I drove up to her house, I noticed that she was headed into the garage with an empty bird feeder in hand.  We got that filled and re-hung and added the hummingbird feeder to the weekly chore chart. While she finished getting ready, I filled her pill boxes for the week, sorted through the huge stack of mail, and did a quick clean out of the sour milk from the fridge.  We left the house an hour or so before the appointment with her Devine Doctor (his name is Dr. Devine) in order to stop at Ace Hardware for a few things:  a flag to decorate Billy’s grave, various and sundry red, white and “blue” planty things for her container gardens, and two very important signs to post at her front door and back door…”No Solicitors”.  (She had been recently rattled by some “suspicious” people showing up at her door trying to sell things).

From there we quickly drove out to the cemetery to say “hey” to Billy and give him a hearty salute for Memorial Day.  That left us just the right amount of time to get to the Dr.’s office so that we could sit and wait for 40 minutes until he came in to clip the stitches.  Next was the weekly trek to Culver’s for her deluxe Butterburger value basket with onion rings substituted for fries.  She had been concerned with her diet and had just asked the Dr.’s advice. He asked, “What diet are you on?”  She answered, “The diet that I eat all my favorite things.”  He laughed and said that at her age – that was an appropriate diet.

Next we headed to the other cemetery to check out the other part of the fam leaving us just enough time to get back to the house for an appointment.  As soon as that was squared away, I sent her for a time out in her chair while I went back to other stores for other stuff.  She wanted her kitchen door window a little less exposed.  Those “visitors” really shook her – so I found a great little look thanks to Jaclyn Smith’s hip new designs for KMart (tell me you get the sarcasm…).  Another stop in the card aisle for a graduation card, two thank you cards and a bridal shower card.  A quick run through the ATM before stopping by the hearing aid dr.’s office to pick up more supplies she uses each week then back to the house for her to do her writing therapy filling out a two birthday cards, an anniversary card, a check for six month’s of auto insurance, the aforementioned thank you cards and the graduation card.

We filled out the calendar for the next important social gatherings of the summer.  Next it was time to deal with the two plus weeks of accounting I had to catch up with while she decided to play with some of her jewelry.  Being the total stoop that I am, I asked about one particular necklace that she’d gotten for Christmas…she had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!  So the search began…I put the calculator aside and had to go look.  Like a magpie, she had things stashed in a gazillion little boxes, satiny pouches, coin purses and every other little kind of container that catches her fancy.  Finally, I struck gold – not literally though and I figured that finding that necklace was more important to me than the fact that the check book was balanced give or take $60…it was getting late.

One quick check on the salt level of the water softener and I was getting closer and closer to being done. She usually starts a two-hour countdown clock when I leave expecting a call saying that I’m back home…but I told her to delay her start time since I had to run back into town before leaving.  Another stop at the post office to mail all those cards and bills, then a stop to fill my car up with gas and a much needed bath to wash off the dust and dirt from the last 1278 miles rolled in the last days.

A mere 14 hours after I’d left the house in the morning, I was back in my driveway.  Another week.  That’s what I get for taking so much time away…payback.  No, seriously – sometimes when more than a week goes by – things pile up but that is true for all of our lives.  I stand amazed that here we are coming up on the second anniversary of Billy’s leaving us high and dry and she is doing more than just surviving.

This is the stuff of life:  weddings, babies, chores and cemeteries.  There are days when I think I don’t have another ounce of energy to fit another thing in.  But there are also seasons.  Seasons when we do nothing but spin in circles running from one life event to the next – and eventually there will be a season of silence.

Our decade plus in Spain was marked by frequent visitors – some expected and loved, others complete strangers.  It took a while to figure out that the key to a successful vacation experience for people had everything to do with the what they were hoping to accomplish.  So regardless of how well I knew people, the early hours of their stay were marked by planning.

I started with a litany of questions to sort out their expectations.  Were they art lovers who would drool over The Prado? Were they kitsch shoppers that would buy cheap T-shirts and key chains and call it a day?  Were they open to real cultural experiences that they would allow ME to do all the planning?  Did they need to eat every few hours?  If I had the answers to these questions, then I could probably come up with itineraries that would keep them happy.

So now before we plan any trip for business or pleasure or a combo of both – we work out those details as best as we can.  There has never been as smashing a success as last year’s great escape.  Not every time away can be centered around cliffs, sun umbrellas and a suitcase of books to be devoured.

This trip was a last minute mental necessity – a need to reconnect and get some face time with Best Boy and Mimi.  There is something strangely wonderful about being in the Entertainment Capital of the World and not needing to go or do or see any of the sights…except for hanging with them.  I dare say that our future holds return trips with Donny Diva in tow where we’ll be back at Disneyland or Universal Studios or Legoland or the San Diego Zoo or – or – or…

Not this time around though.  There is nothing looming on today’s horizon except for the fact that I know we’ll eat more than once.