Sunday, December 26, 2004

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has always been the bigger holiday than Christmas for my family. We usually drive up to Redding to have an early dinner with the Mathis side of the family, then back to Grandma Dittner's to open all our family presents.

It was an extremely small Christmas on the Mathis side this year. We all fit around one table. Granda and her sister Aunt Ardie, her three children, Dawn, Gary, and Jon (Dad), and then Dawn's son, Clint, and the four others of my family. So if you can follow all those commas, it was 10. Usually we have around 20.

They're talking about lunch... so I'll be back with further details after getting dressed.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Sock Puppets

Now the last thing I expected my sisters to do when they woke up after they arrived late on Wednesday was start making sock puppets. Yes, they asked Grandma to raid their closets to make puppets... and this was not a spur of the moment decision. Nikki came prepared with felt, cardboard, hot glue and a myriad of accessories. I was delegating to crocheting a hat and a scarf for Tricia's snowboarding puppet. I then made a hat for my southern creation. She's a redheaded old lady with a pearl necklace and earrings.

So after our creations were cleaned up (we've made 6 in all) we headed into town for a trip to Gaumer's. Now Gaumer's is the town jewelry place that has a stone museum and makes and sets a lot of its own pieces. Dad started a tradition a few years back that we can all pick something out from Gaumer's for Christmas. Last year I chose a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings and this year I saw a ring that matched perfectly. It was really more expensive than I thought Dad would have liked and would have taken six weeks to size and reset, so I went with a gold and garnet pendant and earrings... they go with the rest of my USC wear.

Now as we were meandering Gaumer's, suddenly a voice says over my shoulder, "What am I getting?" My cousin Stacy had seen our truck in the parking lot and had stopped by to visit. She was having lunch with her mom and aunts from her Dad's side. A little later, Aunt Karen came for a visit. Then in came Burney, a guy who works for my Uncle. He was looking for something for the wife. Yet another example of how you can't go anywhere without bumping into someone, or several someones in Tehama County.

We then ate lunch at a grill that overlooked the Sacramento River. The place had changed ownership several times after the original owner had announced their would be no cowboy hats allowed. Bad for business apparently. The new grill had a boot scraper on the outside and a large sign over the door proclaiming cowboy hats welcome.

We went to visit Uncle Chris at his new house, but he wasn't home. Then we headed off to visit Grandma Mathis. Aunt Ardie had gone to Redding so we just visited for a bit before heading off to a quick trip to Walmart before going home.

Dinner was fried chicken followed by a game called American History. I kept hitting the random Uncle Sam slot that told me to go back one space. I think I came in a respectable 3rd or 4th out of seven. Man, board games take and exceptionally long time with seven players.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Shopping and Small Town Living

On Monday Grandma, Mom and I headed to "The Mall" to finish some last minute shopping. We drove the thirty miles into Chico and stopped at Target before heading off to Blockbuster and Barnes and Nobles to finish off. We stopped at The Hacienda. Only in Gerber would all the waitresses be non Latino in a Mexican restaurant. The food was pretty good.

In the evening, we headed over to Aunt Karen's for a birthday party where my little cousins Zach, 9, and Jasmine, 6, conned me into playing Crazy 8's after dinner. There's two little card sharks in the making. Maci, 9 months, was cute crawling around and pulling herself up into a standing position. She even danced a bit when they turned on the musical dancing flower.

I had fun tickling Zach and hanging Jasmine upside down... you know all the fun things that older cousins do to young ones. I was apparently so entertaining, that when they came to visit me on Tuesday, they wanted me to come home with them.

I chased them around Grandma's house, hiding in a closet to scare Zacharie. I even showed them the secret door. In the game room, there's a bathroom on one end that has a door that leads to the second attached garage. On the other end of the room is a camouflaged door without a handle that leads to a closet that also has a door to the garage. Because it has no handle, once you're in, it's impossible to open from the other side if you hold the handle on the other side. That door always used to capture my imagination when I was a kid. I played some hide and seek with them until I got yelled at for running in the house.

Uncle Chris, the kids, Dad and I headed to Los Molinos for lunch at a place where the waitress called you dear, and knew Uncle Chris's order down pat. They gave us some crayons and coloring mats that must have been left over from Halloween. I colored in my pumpkin and ghost. Zach turned his over and started playing tic tac toe with me. Man, I was out of practice. He kept winning. I felt like an idiot.

Back at Grandma's they tried to keep me with them, but I didn't have a ride back from their house to Grandma's if I wanted to go. I promised to see them later. They were apparently over today, and I smiled when I heard that they'd asked after me.

Today we went to see National Treasure in Chico. It was good, but not spectacular. I really enjoyed seeing all the bits of DC and Philly that we saw on our trip over the summer.

I swear that Aunt Karen knows everyone in town. Everywhere we went today, she found someone that she knew. At the movies, she knew two girls in the bathroom. In the fabric store, it was a lady, and in the CostPlus World Market parking lot, it was another lady. I mean we were 30 miles away from her house, and yet there were three! I guess that's what you get when you've lived in the same small town your whole life.

On the way home we stopped at got some Take and Bake Pizza, as you can't get pizza delivered in Gerber. Can you imagine? No pizza? They wanted to know why I didn't just go pick up my pizza rather than have it delivered. It was so much more expensive. Man, saving $3 is not worth getting into the car and driving somewhere and carting it back up the stairs.

So now I've got us all caught up. I'm sitting here typing away on Grandma's spiffy laptop with the 19.4 k speed modem, only half listening to the town gossip about people I have no idea existed before this point. They're watching Wheel of Fortune and I'm desperately craving a Diet Coke.

I totally forgot to mention the helicopter. Yes. They called Uncle Chris and said they had a search warrent and were going to search and if they found it, he could haul it away immediately. That was on Monday.

On Tuesday, they called and said they'd found it, but he couldn't have it. I think they said it was still in one piece... apparently it's never been flown either. Sigh. Uncle Chris was a bit miffed that they needed it for evidence, but hopefully he'll get it back soon. The guy was the known felon who stole it after all. Moral of the story: Never let a known felon rent the same storage space where you keep your helicopter.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

The Lost Weekend Part II

"This road must go somewhere... it has a line down the middle of it." Dad has some famous shortcuts... but Petty John Road turned out to be a doozy. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

When my dad announced that we were going to church with my grandmother on Sunday, I wasn't the only one that gave him a strange look. You see, my dad hasn't been to church for... well... maybe since Oklahoma was the answer. He thought he'd give my grandma a Christmas gift by going with her to the church that he helped build when he was about 14. His name was in the concrete somewhere.

The service included a Christmas pagaent that included two women reading a script of the Christmas story while about five people donned different costumes and pantomimed the script. They asked us to sing from the hymnal in order to facilitate costume changes.

After church Dad suggested we take a Sunday drive and Grandma wanted to see the new mansions that were going up outside of Red Bluff. We drove up to Adobe and stared at the houses that rivaled any of the mansions in Beverly Hills. We drove out past the new Home Depot about to open and Grandma mentioned that Red Bluff was about to get an In N Out Burgers. Yum...

Dad took us out past Red Bank Road and we wound our way through the countryside. It's quite breathtaking, actually, how empty and vast that part of the country is. Once we'd driven for about an hour, Dad thought we should try a road that he knew to cut across to Reed Creek Road. Petty John wasn't paved. It wound through a hunting reserve and we drove for about 45 minutes and saw only two houses. At the first house, there was a man outside, but typically of Dad, he didn't want to bother him so we kept on the road and it began to wind upwards in the wrong direction.

The second house we passed, I truly wished I'd had a camera. Blazened across the side were letters that proclaimed it "Da Ranch." On a structure that perhaps was once a mining cabin, but now was nearly a bunch of boards propped up against each other, was mounted a satellite dish. We continued past Da Ranch for another 15 minutes before Dad realized we were now in the pines. If we drove much further we'd head into the mountains that separated us from the coast.

Finally we turned around and headed back, giving up hope that we'd reach the road that we planned on. Back at Grandma's we looked at a map which showed that turning around was a good idea. There weren't any other crossroads until we reached the top of the mountain.

On our nice little Sunday drive we saw the following wildlife: one gray squirrel, doves, quail, a hawk, a huge flock of turkeys, goats, sheep, wild pigs, horses, mules, alpacas, and large group of surly cows who seemed annoyed as we drove up to them and wanted to use the road they were standing on.

We arrived back at Grandmas long enough to sit down for an hour before heading to Redding for dinner at the Hatchcover on the Sacramento River. When we arrived, Uncle Gary was already there, and as we debated about waiting for Aunt Dawn, the hostess announced haughtily, "We don't seat partial parties." Dad leaned over her little podium and said, "You might want to say that a bit nicer." Aunt Dawn walked through the front door a few moments later and the Haughty Hostess seated us. The waiter was entertaining and friendly. Dad managed to spill his wine onto the table and me. He blamed it on the wine menu falling over, but I didn't buy it.

Conversation at dinner.

Uncle Gary: So Janyce, did your brother ever find out who stole the helicopter?
Mom: Someone stole Chris's helicopter?
Me: Uncle Chris has a helicopter?
Dad: It was probably that known felon he was renting to.
Me: Since when has he had a helicopter?
Gary: I read it in the paper. It was on all the news stations.
Me: So how does someone steal a helicopter?
Mom: Oh, he's never actually flown it. It's an experimental craft. It was cheap, so he bought it.

Yeah. So Uncle Chris became a minor celeb when someone stole his helicopter. Later we found out that the news media hounded my grandma for more details and she ended up "the grumpy old lady who answered phones at Dittner Melons" in some news article. Guess they didn't know that was Chris's mom.



Overall, it was an entertaining day.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

The Lost Weekend

Here begins the travel journal of Omouse.

I fell asleep Friday night before I could see the end of The Last Starfighter. When I was a kid, that was one of the ultimate movies. Now the special effects look like a cheap computer game. I felt a little guilty after leaving Liz leaning over the toilet after some bad seafood, but it was 11pm and I still hadn't finished packing.

We left at 6:00am on the dot and it wasn't until after we were on the road that I learned I'd been hijacked to Turlock. Where is Turlock you ask? Well, it's between Modesto and Merced on the 99. If you still don't have a clue, imagine the middle of California in the middle of nowhere... and that's Turlock. Apparently it's the home of the quilting place that Mom sends her quilts to in order to be quilted. She was picking one up and dropping one off.

On the way to Turlock we got lost in Bakersfield looking for breakfast. Now it wasn't exactly Dad's fault. The fog was so thick that we couldn't see the Rite Aid on the left side of the street until we'd turned around and gone the other way. We finally settled on the donut shop in plain sight on the corner. Finding the freeway was another adventure, but soon we were heading northbound first.

Once in Turlock, we dropped by the quilt shop and then headed to lunch at The Red Steer. Yeah. Buffet style French Dip and BBQ sandwiches. The guy behind the counter was loud brash and very male in a very efficient manner. The decore was early 80's and the food was okay, but bland. I'd had better sandwiches. Dad said the potato salad tasted like plain potatoes. He was almost tempted not to eat it... almost.

I called Liz on my cell as we got in the car and was laughing so hard that I could hardly talk to her. We managed to get lost on the way to the freeway. The title is beginning to make sense... huh?

We finally got to Grandma's at about 3:30 and Stacy and Karen came to visit. We had enchilada cassarole for dinner and then I went to bed a bit early. Riding around in a car all day is rather tiring work.

I did manage to get the rents to listen to my cd's all the way. I didn't have to listen to any talk radio, and totally got to hear some country cd's that I'd forgotten I'd had. I tried to talk Dad into some Scarlet Pimpernel or Chicago... but he wouldn't go for it.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

I'm so PO'd at myself right now

I had this really long post that I thought was really cool... And I lost it, while trying to save it. I thought I hit copy before I posted it. Instead I pushed paste and pasted a letter that I wrote to the parent of one of my problem children. Not happy at all. Grrr.

On the bright side, only three and a half more class days until Christmas.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Countdown

Ten Class Days until Christmas

Some people count down the days in December, I count school days.

Our choir concert on Saturday went very well, except for the few backhanded compliments from the mo that I have learned how to ignore.

It was the premiere of the Westminster Chamber Orchestra and we also hired some brass, keyboard and drums to play along with us. We seriously rocked. I decomposed my solo slightly, but I think by the grimace on his face, that David the Director was the only one to notice.

I had to miss the 4th quarter of The Game to book it from Westwood to Westminster in time for call time. Liz and I brought kebabs, couscous, and strawberries with angel food to Rob's. Yummy. Annelise was conspicuously absent after Ross and Ofe offered her an extra ticket to the game. Ken didn't seem to mind. Annelise kept calling, telling us that Ofe was going to get them beaten up as they were on the edge of the UCLA student section.

Sunday was The Day of the Vegetable. It rained... all day. Liz was sick so we just vegged and I worked on Christmas gifts while we watched movies with commentaries = Return of the Jedi, Princess Diaries. We also watched To Catch a Thief, Pillow Talk, and most of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. There was Nothing on TV yesterday. Sweeps must be over.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Getting in the Spirit

Played some of my new cd "Retro Christmas" that I picked up at Ralphs. The kids seemed to like it. I like it. It's got two songs by Ella, one Billie Holiday, and one Louis Armstrong with several others.

There's supposed to be a Walk Through today, but I've yet to recieve visitors... but there's still two periods to go. Usually they come in through 3 and 4, and 4 is next so we'll see.

I've got class tonight. Have to write a query letter. Oh Goody.