It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like...Uh...

Today while driving home from the doctor's office, I spotted a small green pickup truck headed towards me...with what looked like three large penguin heads poking out over the top of the cab. I got a chuckle at the optical illusion...until it drove by and I could see that it was, indeed, three large, paper mache penguins riding serenely in the bed of the truck, regally facing forward. I gotta start carrying a camera with me for stuff like that, southern California is a lush weirdness habitat.

Too Many Irons In The Fire...

Medically speaking. Between myself, my husband and the kid, it's been the Summer Of Medical Issues at our house, continuing it's wildly popular sold-out run into the Fall!

yay.

And, southern California is burning. Again.

It's County Fair Time! And That Can Only Mean ONE Thing...

...vomitous, deep-fried fair food!

Every year over the last few years, the Orange Country Fair in Costa Mesa, CA has introduced some new, weird, deep-fried food.

It's a bare-faced, shameless celebration of FOOD THAT IS BAD FOR YOU. First they take some commonly known junk food such as Twinkies, Oreos, and Coke--and then just to twist the knife a little they deep fry that sucker. Top it off with oh, say, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar and you're good to go. And if they can ram that sucker on a stick, and even better!

The problem is, now every year they have to come up with some new exotic treat, eternally forced to one-up themselves. So we've done the deep fried Oreos...Snickers bars...Twinkies...cheesecake...heck, even Coke, last year. What could POSSIBLY BE LEFT?

Here ya go.

Yeah, baby,
A Chicken & Krispy Kreme Doughnut sandwich!!!

But wait, stop those dry heaves, because that's not all!

Naturally, simply a hunk of chicken on a glazed doughnut isn't vile enough. We need MORE. Add raspberry jelly AND honey!!! Perfection!

As you can see from Chicken Charlie's menu, sadly, health food is not their forte.

Hell, even the promised 'Fresh Veggie Combo' on the far right, initially seeming an oasis of sane food in a freakish sea of grease...has the words, 'Deep Fried!' under it, cruelly yanking away any chance of escaping your arteries hardening. Under that, they laughingly list the innocent vegetables being tortured: asparagus, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and zucchini (Ok, I can actually get behind torturing zucchini). It's scary that the broasted chicken is the healthiest thing on the menu.

At any rate, J. decided to try one. Here it is, in all it's nasty glory.

They missed the 'deep frying' step here, but still, a more unholy union of foods I cannot imagine.

Here he is, trying gamely to swallow the bite he took.

All in all, J.'s verdict was, 'it wasn't bad'. N. opted for the deep fried cheese balls, but we took one look at this one and tried to convince her they were really deep fried slugs. Antennae, ahoy!

I just watched in horrified fascination.

Is Childhood Disappearing?

An uncomfortable thought occured to me last night...was my generation the last to see a true 'childhood'?

When I was a kid we couldn't wait until after school to get outside and play with our friends. We'd roam freely to each other's yards to play (actually going into the house required parental permission and/or notification), roller skate, ride bikes, climb trees, play in playhouses. If we wanted to go down to the elementary school (back when the schools would never THINK of locking up their playgrounds), a friends' house or park to play, we'd just stick our heads in the door in passing and yell out to our parents where we were going. In Summer, we could basically leave the house in the morning and not return until nightfall and our parents wouldn't worry. We could even make an impromptu trip to the drugstore for ice cream with our friends' parent via car without concern. On holidays such as the Fourth of July, we'd have neigborhood block parties where we'd set up sawhorses to block off the street and everyone would bring out pot luck dishes to share and the kids would play. We could wander through orange groves and investigate now housing developments (collecting bits of discarded kitchen tile scraps, brightly colored bits of telephone wire and metal 'slugs' from electrical boxes). We could roam the outdoor halls of the school, peering through the windows of empty classrooms and playing baseball--or even tetherball or foursquare if we found a stray ball laying on the playground. Beyond the basic warning of 'don't talk to strangers' and 'don't get into cars with strangers', there was never a concern.

Things are different today.

Child predators, razor blades on playgrounds, evil neighbors, drugs or drive-by shootings. Terrorism. There are security cameras, metal detectors, lockdowns and metal detectors. Sirens scream and helicopters circle the neigborhood almost daily.

I don't live in a really bad area. I live on a typical southern California residential street, with many families with kids of various ages, some houses have older folks with kids grown and gone.

But rarely do we see any kids playing outdoors. It's almost as if they are trapped indoors. Kids here never skate, ride bikes, jump rope, play hopscotch or do anything else out front. Or out back, for that matter. My next-door neighbors only allow their kids to play out front when one of the parents is present, because of child predators, drug dealers and the like. And I hate to admit it, but I am the same way. There simply aren't enough neighbors out in their yards during the day, I can't count on the typical neighborly folk that might help warn off anyone cruising for kids.

So my neighbor and I have kind of formed an agreement to try and help get the kids out of the house and playing safely. She shoos her kids outdoors as I do mine, so they can interact with each other. Our daughter has an array of outdoor toys such as badminton racquets (we got 8 cheap ones at the dollar store so the neighborhood kids could join in), a jump rope, Frisbees, a bat, ball & mitt and a pair of roller skates. The skates she just got at Christmas, because I remember how much I LOVED skating with my siblings and friends when I was a kid--we would lace up our steel-wheeled skates as fast as we could, then zoom up and down the street for hours...until the street lights came on, that was our signal to go home.

Such fond memories, and knowing how fun it was, we got N. skates. I have been walking up and down the street with her, helping her to learn to skate, balance and fall. What's downright creepy is that there are never any other kids out there playing in any way. It's been almost a month now. Quite frankly we have been hoping that if we ventured out more often and played, the other kids would naturally emerge and join in...maybe we could get something started. There IS hope, today the next door neighbors bought their son (same age as N.) a skateboard, and several other little boys have been around on bikes and skateboards.

I realize that most kids nowadays spend their time playing video games. We didn't own any until recently, when my sister in law gave my husband her sons' old PS2. He now has three different games, but as they are adult games, N. doesn't play them. And I can't say that I want her to get started on video games, I've heard nothing but horror stories from other parents whose kids are addicted to them.

Kids today, out of necessity, are warned early on about the dangers they face. My daughter learned the slogan 'Just Say No To Drugs!' in Kindergarten. I nearly cried when the school held Red Ribbon Week (an anti-drug campaign) and she came home educated on the dangers of drugs and alchohol. She was FIVE. FIVE! I've had to have discussions with her on what to do if someone tries to hurt her or abduct her. Good Touch and Bad Touch. How to deal with bullying, racism, what to do in an emergency and whom she likely can and cannot trust. Good God, it gives me the willies and breaks my heart to think about how different her childhood is from mine, and how SHORT childhood is today.

I'm going to give her the best childhood I can, with simple fun and good times, and make it last as long as possible. She's got the rest of her life to be an adult with worries and issues. That'll come on soon enough without rushing at it headlong.

Hopefully we can spread it to some of the other kids, too.

T'was A Fine, Soft Day In The Spring, It Was...

...and I do believe that this time it might stick! We've had several false starts before now, single days of 75 degree, clear weather...then back to slashing rain, howling wind, cold and mud.

Today was beautiful.

Even the nectarine tree has finally been coaxed into bloom, albeit late.

Today was the kind of day that brings people to California to stay. The kind that makes you want to lie down in the grass and inhale. The sky was brilliant blue, the air clear, the day warm and the breezes soft. The songbirds are out in force, madly building nests, chasing potential mates and singing.

 The sage plant in the herb garden with it's snapdragon-like blooms.

I made a quick stop at the market so that this afternoon after school N. and I could have the first squirt gun fight of the season, along with blowing bubbles which quickly floated throughout the neighborhood. Mostly we lazed in the sun and pointed out the budding and blooming trees and plants to each other.

The blood orange tree, which we harvested just a couple of weeks ago, is beginning to bloom, but most of the buds are still closed up tight. I don't think they really believe that Spring is here to stay yet, either.

We did finally find one brave bloom fully opened, it will be another few days before that heady orange blossom scent pervades the air though.

Our little hot rod male mockingbird was sitting on the power lines above us, running through his song catalog. He still does the gang of crows cawing in the distance, to my endless amusement. We have more Phoebes this year, a cute little grey and black insect-eating crested bird that has a very sweet song. N. did teach herself one important childhood skill, with no prompting from me: learning to drink from a squirt gun.

Summer, here we come!

Another Ticky Tack Landmark Gone...

...and southern California is the sadder for it.

Movieland Wax Museum, which opened in 1962, closed forever on Halloween 2005. On March 11 of this year, they will auction off EVERYTHING in the building, and I do mean everything! Check out the auction catalog here:

http://www.icollector.com/viewAuctionSessionInfo.aspx?auctionSessionid=10798

Movieland was one of those kinda creepy touristy places where you would wander around and wonder how anything like this ever got started. The figures were badly done and nearly always damaged somehow...wigs askew, spitwads decorating the faces, fingers and noses chipped off, etc. But it was kinda cool because it wasn't big time, if that makes sense.

So anyway, if you want you can even buy the huge, glitteringly lit sign that runs along the top of the building. Or employees uniforms. Or wax, molds and wax figure making equipment (open your own wax museum!). Wax figures. Sets. Boxes of postcards. It goes on and on.

As I was looking through the auction catalog, it got sadder and sadder. The last time I went was back in 1978, and it only got more forlorn and abandoned-looking after that.

Movieland Wax Museum joins the rest of long-gone southern California theme parks such as the Japanese Deer Park and the Alligator Farm, which were nearby. I have a wonderfully tacky tin California souvenir plate that includes the big places like Disneyland, but also features Movieland, The Japanese Deer Park, The Alligator Farm, Marineland, Graumanns Chinese Theater, The Pike...

All the good stuff is gone.

Chew Your Air Thoroughly Before Breathing It, Please...

...it's brush fire season, bleah.

For the last few days a very worrisome fire has been persistently burning uncomfortably close to both one of my sisters' house and of an extended family member. We don't miss out here though, it's raining large chunks of greasy (why?) ash here at my house. The air is horrid and smelly, and the chickens are coated with ash and miserable. I go out from time to time and mist them and the yard and plants with the garden hose, which seems to be appreciated by all. All three of us here have developed the same lovely hacking cough, and tonight the sunset was beautiful, but the sun was literally blood red through the smoke. No good photo ops unfortunately...

I called my sister yesterday but only got her answering machine, and she hasn't returned my call yet. I'm sure she's OK but it's still bothering me, in that nasty, nagging at the back of your mind way...

I'm all Natural-Disastered-Out. The last 12 months have been too much of a whupping from Ma Nature all around.

Earthquake Weather!

I used to have a boss who would practically foam at the mouth whenever someone used this phrase, which since we worked in a dental office in southern California, was pretty darned frequently. For some reason patients would figure that since he was a doctor, he MUST KNOW about all things scientific, or even pseudoscience--of which there is a multitude, as everyone knows.

Be that as it may, every time we have this strange, still, hot-during-the-day-and-cool-at-night weather, it summons up the spectre of 'Earthquake Weather'. Everyone tosses off the phrase lightly, but still with a nervous laugh. Today was a perfect example, and tonight it suddenly got VERY foggy, but still with not the slightest breeze. It's as if southern California is holding it's breath in anticipation. I've noticed it makes people decidedly on-edge and jumpy. To make matters worse, yesterday and today we DID have a couple of minor tremors, somewhere between 2.1 and 2.9 on the Richter scale, pretty much right under us. Not much if you aren't right there at the epicenter, but when you are it gets your attention. We used them to practice our family earthquake drill and N. got into the designated doorway quickly and without the usual dawdling when asked to do something. Afterwards we discussed again what to do in an earthquake, etc. Good practice.

I really like fog, as long as I can stay home and enjoy it--driving in it sucks. I do wish there was a bit of a breeze though, as the air is very still and dead. Uck.

Did I Miss A Memo...?

Apparantly tonight was "Run Like An Idiot From The Cops" night in our neighborhood. Three seperate episodes of howling sirens going round and round plus the inevitable helicopter. One event merited the fire department getting in on the fun. We sat in the back yard petting the chickens and betting how quickly the cops would tire of the same four blocks over and over again and end it.

Heck, If I'd known in advance I would have set up a lemonade stand!

Ain't full moons fun.