And She's Buying the Stairway....

Who among us, who grew up in a 60's era ranch-style home, didn't think living in a two-story house would be the coolest? If you've never lived in one, a multi-story house and it's stairways, is a thing of wonderment. A banister down which children can slide. A landing on top where small children in sitcoms lurk to listen to adult conversations below. Teens stomp UP them and things tumble down them. People crash and die, their necks and limbs tweaked at unusual angles...in black and white. Banisters to decorate for the holidays! I was fascinated with the stair lift that was used on The Farmer's Daughter.....*sigh*. And my godparents, Wynn and Royce Krilonavich's house, was huge and seemed to go on forever....

Those who have lived in two-story know the reality is far more tedious. Dirty laundry is carried down only to be washed and carted back up the stairs. Running to your room is a climb, not a simple run down the hall. But the real joy of stairs isn't realized until large items are purchased...beds and desks....and must be moved up those stairs. And when you have a 100-year-old house with stairs built long before building codes, the thrill fades quickly. Our house had, at one time included a second unit which was absorbed into the main house more than thirty years ago and includes not one but TWO sets of stairs. The rear steps are less radical but have a turn halfway up, making them difficult for moving large items. The front steps are direct but steep and narrow. I'm relatively sure we have been black-listed for delivery by most all local furniture stores, their drivers have begun to recognize the address. Hope's high school graduation present was a three-piece desk that was initially ordered wrong and had to be moved twice which did NOT endear her to the burly moving people. My big oak teachers desk, I've been told, will NOT be moved from this house. We may move but the desk will be included whether a buyer wants it or not.
The latest episode of "Stair Wars" started when Mark went to the plumbing store to buy a few supplies for the bathroom project from hell. He returned only to get the trailer to pick up a tub/shower he bought. We're not ready for the shower... but it was a deal! Mark was not blessed with sons - luckily his wife and daughters are a tough lot and, while the shower is not heavy, it IS bulky and cumbersome. We got it up the porch steps and pondered the situation. It would likely clear the ceiling but the banister railing would have to come off. Once that was done, Mark's plan was that we would "just lift the stall up on to the steps". Yeah, right.....So we tried that. The railing came right off but the newel post remained. We tried the lift but, with the post there, it wouldn't clear so we set it down again. That left Hope trapped in the corner for the time it took for Mark to pull the newel post but, once the post was out, we managed to boost the stall onto the steps at which point I had to run up the back stairs to access the top of the stall to continue it's move.

Some bashing and yelling and luckily some laughing came with with trip up. Another door and piece of wall were removed to clear the opening and the stall was home, for the time being.
There is still more work to be done in the bathroom so the shower will have to be moved in and out as the project progresses but now our front stairs are off limits. The total lack of railing is even more dangerous than the crappy railing was before. The newel post was battered and didn't really suit the style of the house so Mark decided that, rather than reassembling it to it's former tattered glory, it is now time to fix the front entry. Nothing so simple as paint since the walls, like those throughout the house, are covered in layers of wallpaper and paint - it's gotta go!
We now have begun this new, additional project by removing the wallboard from the lathe and plaster framework and we're at the point of no return, all because he ran for plumbing supplies. I DID say I wanted a house with character.....

Under the Boardwalk....

As my youngest continues to apply and hunt for her first job, I've been thinking about my first job. Many who grew up in Santa Cruz, had their first work experience at the Boardwalk or maybe the Soquel Car Wash - places we could easily get to on foot or bicycle. Kids who lived in Scotts Valley, started at Santa's Village for the same reason. These were places that needed a lot of employees so could afford to take the chance on whoever they got. Some lasted some didn't. Mark, being a car guy, did the gas station route, pretty typical in the days before self-service pumps.

I was one of the Boardwalk kids, working at Hodgie's under the Jet Star, across the main entrance from the Merry-G0-Round. My parents knew Hodgie, actually Howard Wetzel, as a teen growing up around the corner from our house on Santa Cruz's east side. Networking was as much the way to job hunt then as it is now - it's who you know. Hodgie was actually a motor cop for Santa Cruz PD before his retirement and purchase of the restaurant. I mostly worked back in the fry corner, hand-dipping corn dogs and deep-fried artichokes, going home at the end of the day reeking of fry oil. On breaks, we would occasionally walk among the tourists but more often, would head to the basement, in the coolness away from the noise of the crowds or better, above the crowds by finagling a ride on the SkyGlider from one of the Seaside Company kids in exchange for a corn dog snuck out the window when they passed by on their breaks. Riding up high, the car gliding along a cable swinging in the warm air. From up there, you could see the beach and the tiny people and for that brief expanse of time, not have to worry about filling the oil or Hodgie barking at us to quick goofin' off when one of the cooks would toss an ice cube into the vats of oil, causing the oil to burble and us to squeal.

The Boardwalk was eerie in the morning, before the crowds arrived. No lights. No ringing bells or yelling kids or carousel calliope. Just the workers, carrying supplies to the restaurants and preparing for the day. More eerie, however, is the Boardwalk at night, without lights but with thousands of people, including the obligatory screaming girls. I was working on the Fourth of July 1974 when the lights went out. At some point, in the midst of the fireworks., a blown transformer. In the panic, there was a stabbing somewhere on the Boardwalk and tourists ran for their cars. The ensuing traffic jam filled Beach Street and all roads leading from beach flats, making it impossible for the ambulance to get to Beach Street. Hodgie, gruff as he was during the work day, turned fatherly and would not allow us to leave. Initially we pulled the windows closed then relented when there was some money to be made - working from coffee cans full of change, we sold coffee, hot chocolate and any food we had already cooked. Then the windows came down and we all sat in the dark of the dining room watching the lights of the refugees disappear over the bridge. When the traffic finally dissipated around one in the morning, he let us walk together to our cars and head home. I still remember laying in bed that night, the excitement and the sore feet after fourteen hours keeping me wide awake till nearly dawn. The panic was not forgotten and the fireworks were gone from the Boardwalk until 2007.

All that excitement and that was my first job. So, where does a kid get their first job experience around here? How does my 18-year-old, with a good brain, no criminal history, a diploma AND a two-year degree, get a job when she has no work experience? Would it be easier if she were fifteen? Now that she's 18, prospective employers seem to expect her to have job experience and won't take that chance. Yet we go in stores regularly where we nearly beg for service from unpleasant kids with no social skills.

This was a problem we hadn't considered when we discouraged her from getting a job when she was in high school - we thought she needed to focus on her studies since she was taking all college classes. How does she convince an employer that she's worth the risk when she has no work references. When so many are looking for jobs, how do you make yourself stand out? How do you prove you have skills and network in a town without a Boardwalk or a Santa's Village? She's thinking she'd like to wait tables....or stock shelves....whatever it takes. When the corporate stores require on-line applications then don't allow for calling in to check on your application. what's the procedure? How does THAT work? Should she go back to school and get MORE education without a particular goal in mind? Or just keep pounding the pavement, filling out applications and wincing when an interviewer asks the inevitable question about her work history? My child is looking to start making those first-job memories.

TOSSIN' AND TURNIN'

...splashin..
... and churnin...
.... blowin'...
.... and goin'....

how I love a good storm.

Highway To the Danger Zone

I was spoken to. Beckoned to the water as if by Sirens. The words...."high...surf...advisory" flashed on my Weather Channel Desktop, calling me to the sea with that mysterious force. The afternoon had turned gorgeous, at least in this piece of the world, at this moment. I had to take my lunch break at the water.

Driving out Table Bluff, dipping into then climbing out of Tsunami Hazard Zones would not normally be a concern but, after Saturday's 6.5 quake followed by news of the morning 7.0 in Haiti, I felt a bit squeamish. Funny how such things make us so aware of our mortality. As I reached the bottom of Hookton Road, at the far south end of the spit, I reconsidered the drive out to the end. It's only a couple miles out but I found myself calculating that I could get back to high ground in about three minutes if I ripped along at 60. Truthfully, the jagged potholes at the far end of the spit would probably rip the suspension from my low-lying car at that pace but, right or wrong, I decided I could save myself in a pinch.
To witness the larger waves - and size DOES matter - at the south spit, waves would have to come from the South and these were from the west. But what the surf lacked in heighth was offset by quantity. I walked the beach briefly, enjoying the pounding layers of surf, crashing on top of each other and the foam, tumbling happily up the sand. Nice fat juicy waves in the channel rose above the level of the jetty though they clung to the north side of the channel with few splashes to deter the fisherpeople on the side I walked.

No rocks. No big waves. But a winter lunch break spent on the beach with small waves is better than a lunch anywhere else.

She Was Shakin'....Earthquake 2010

Take heed when next you notice these signs in the window at BonBonnier, the Works and Old Town Coffee and Chocolates although these bricks were in the alley from the building next door.

Yesterday's 6.5 quake was the worst I've been through, and still, once my hands had stopped shaking, I realized we fared pretty well. I headed out on my morning walk and aimed for Old Town to inspect the damage I heard about. I was not the only one. The big guys were on duty.Crumbled bricks and boarded windows were apparent. Contents of some stores were tossed about.Looking through the glass, I saw books had tumbled from their shelves in Eureka Books, and spools of yarn and ribbon had jumped from their racks at the Fabric Shop.In some of the local second-hand stores, it was apparently that items had been lost but, truthfully, I suspect the decor had not been changed much.

There will be cleanup today, stores around town will be sweeping up glass, mopping up alcohol and taking inventory of their losses but, we're all still alive. No buildings collapsed. I did hear there were injuries when ceiling tiles fell at the mall. I'm SO glad I wasn't at Costco...aren't you.
The Eureka Fire house has been yellow-tagged, for structural damage, I was told. Homeless firefighters?!

But I realized that the most damage was done to those that stood hard, fast and unyeilding. That which was more open to the movement, like the hanging lights in the Old Town lighting store and the nautilus shells in stained glass hanging in Shorelines gallery survived.

As for my house, she was shakin', but her pier-and-post construction has allowed her to sway through many an earthquake in her more than a century of existence. I was just building a fire when the house started moving...things were crashing off the mantle. Pictures jumped from the walls. My regret is that I was so busy covering my eyes that I didn't SEE what was happening. I didn't see the walls moving. Maybe that's better. My inventory showed a bathroom that looked a bit like it threw up....cabinet doors open and items laying in the sinks....my neti pot was truly the only lost item a tragic loss I will have to replace .
I got through to Mark, who was at the shop with the girls. Motorcycles swayed and danced and made for a frantic run for the door for all of them but, gratefully, no major damage to bikes or family.

Pictures are rehung. Broken glass swept.We lost no windows. We lost only tchochkes ..the jar can be replaced, the shells survived. When the shaking stopped, he only things left on the mantle were my dad's clock and Sid's ashes...my big ol' cat that we lost this year. Truthfully, those were the only really important things that were there anyway.

There are Places I Remember ...

New Years Day at the Breakers, the sheer volume of water contained by the waves coming up the channel was amazing.

Breathe deep the salt air.....

The ocean warms the soul, even on the cloudiest of days.

BRING A TORCH

So the fa-la-las are done....the tree still stands but she bears no gifts at her feet (well, one until an errant boyfriend stops by), the thank yous are being written (yes, Glo, I know yours are done) and I'm just happy to be burning all the ribbon and tissue paper and have the mess cleaned up. It wasn't a bad Christmas but it was somehow lacking.

I'm not sure where the problem was. On Christmas Day, there was a nice gathering of family and a few orphans that stopped by to share the joy (maybe a cookie and cocktail). The gifts were nice and everyone seemed pleased. But, tomorrow I will return to work happy just to have had a week off. The greetings of "how was your Christmas" will be met with "fine, and yours?" but that's about it. Now that the girls are grown and two of three are out of the house, I think the pre-Christmas prep to will need some tweaking.

After our fast and furious drive to southern Washington for Thanksgiving, we returned to a lack of leftovers and no family hike with which to start the annual slide show. And it never really did get off to a start. Mark got the lights up when we got back and the house looks nice but, the cheap lights that are being made, didn't make it through even one year of storage which left him frustrated with bad bulbs. The weekend following Thanksgiving, the family went together to hunt for a Christmas Tree and took home two - one for our house as well as Hope's first tree for her apartment. Mark worked on the lights, (which is the worst part of decorating the tree, I think) then left it to us to finish. The hanging of the garland and such has always been a fun precursor to the hanging of the ornaments but, with just three of us at home, it was done with the television on rather than Christmas carols. After it sat for a few days without ornaments, I busted out the boxes and hung our special decorations on my own. Even the ceremonial placement of Angie on the "highest bough" lost it's sparkle. Her triumphant location at the top of a completely decorated tree has always been special, alternating each year between the girls with the dates written on the box top to remind us whose turn it would be. With only one child left in the house, there was no interest on Gloria's part to teeter on the ladder and shove the tree up Angie's skirt - until I did it in her absence. *sigh* I can't win. I think that next year we will decorate the tree again "as a family, DAMMIT" while Sunday dinner cooks, so we can all take part, perhaps with a glass of wine to liven up the procedure.

The whole "Jesus is the reason for the season" was also a big issue for me this year. My Catholic roots still miss going to mass but, every time we go, it seems we are met with a priest who feels compelled to welcome "those of you who we don't see very often". Yeah, Catholic guilt..... way to make me feel good about being here three hours past my bedtime, Father. So we've stopped walking the few blocks to St. Bernard's for Midnight Mass and I think we all miss it, even the agnostics in the bunch enjoy the singing and praying and smell of incense as well as the chilly walk through town. Maybe next year, we'll drive to a different service. Maybe "Our Lady of Perpetual Talk" which, I'm told, can be found across town.

There are the people who feel compelled to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS with such force and anger, it takes the warmth and sincerity from the greeting, people. "It's OK to say Merry Christmas". You're right and I do. But I also wish the Jews and Pagans a Happy Holiday.... just because they don't celebrate Christmas, doesn't mean they don't celebrate. As for the atheists, too bad, so sad. Your choice. Dealing with God not your cup of tea? Do you need to be so pissy about it that those who DO believe in a higher being, a divinity of any sort must be so defensive? No need to be angry if someone greets you happily during the season. Did anyone else on Facebook receive the Christian challenges? Friends and relations dared me to claim Christ as my Savior while taunting me that 93% of people don't have the guts. Pssh....makes me ALL warm. I found myself wishing people a Merry Christmas but bracing for the attack that might follow. It seemed as if I was somehow being defiant. Christmas shouldn't be that way. And next year it won't be.

Even without Midnight Mass, we had our traditional Christmas Eve clam chowder by candlelight, using the good silver. This year also brought us a few extra bodies that passed through on Christmas Day and that was just fine. We had turkey to nosh and cookies out the wazoo. We stocked the liquor cabinet. We had an elderly friend of Nana's who was without family for the first time so she joined us. A few of Monica's friends whose families are elsewhere came by. I liked it and think next year we will formally issue an OPEN HOUSE invitation. We'll bump us some Christmas carols including Dar Williams doing "The Christians and the Pagans" and hit the hot toddies with a double shot of brandy. Until I have grandbabies' eyes to twinkle, we will adjust our holidays to fit what we have to work with.