California miscellaneous

I guess this is going to be a miscellaneous post. 

Apropos of nothing, the city of West Covina (the South Hills County Club being a block from my brother's house) is hosting the Japanese delegation for the Special Olympics this year.  I tried to figure out how we might see the athletes practice or compete but I guess the games are being held in Los Angeles.

One morning I happened to park next to a very odd car.  It looked like it had scales.  It DID have scales!  And the license plate said Iguana so I guess it is an iguana car.

There was even a stuffed iguana on the dashboard.  The things we see in California!

Tetsu and I had a short but pleasant get together with Leiya's host family from when she was in high school.  They were passing through the city on their way home to Arizona and so we met in front of a local hamburger joint for an hour of catching up.

At one of the local malls...  Colin always gets stuck in the middle (in conversation and activities) when the girl cousins are together.

Not a great picture of Grandma but it accurately depicts how she spends her days.  She doesn't get all that much done on her jig-saw puzzles, instead other family members add a few pieces for her when we sit down for a few minutes with her.  Grandma is always surprised at how quickly her puzzles get done.

Grandma also likes to watch me tatting or sewing or whatever.  The endless questions sometimes makes me question my projects.

"But WHY are you tatting?  What is it going to become?"

"It's a cross Mother.  A bookmark cross for a Bible or something."

"Why does anyone need a tatted cross?"

"Well, someone MIGHT!"

She asks the same things about my quilt sewing.

"But WHY does anyone need a quilt?"

Sometimes I wonder too...

By the way...  Both Takumi and Leiya took home a tatting shuttle and thread last weekend.  They too were fascinated by the tatting process and I gave them some quick lessons.

Someone asked me the name of the pattern I'm using to make Mark's quilt.  It is called Giddy Gridlock and I found it in the Fons and Porter magazine at JoAnn's checkout line...

The pattern just caught my eye as I was frantically trying to think of a quilt I could make that would go together quickly.  Jo-Ann's had the fat quarters and a variety of blacks and greys (and 30% off).  M and L's had the quilt backing.

And here we have Leiya giving Grandma a good-bye hug.

I'm hoping to get Mark's quilt to flimsy stage today.  I'd better get sewing!

A visit to M and L's

Let's see...  What else is going on in California...

While Leiya was here, she and Marcy and I made a trip to M and L's.  I had a project in mind and wanted to find fabrics for that.

M and L's is THE place to go when I need quilt backings (and I ALWAYS need quilt backings!)

Look at all that gorgeous fabric!  My Japanese friends are going to be envious seeing this photo.  Our local fabric store holds 4 people at a time! Honestly!  Maybe a whole four shelves of fabric? 

All those folds of fabric were only $2.99 a yard.  Quilt backing heaven!

So, what is my new quilting project?

Every year Marcy's brother Mark, jokingly asks me when I 'm going to make him a quilt to cover his 6' 2" body frame.  That's probably why...  If someone wants a baby quilt, well I can do that in a matter of days.  But a major full size quilt?  That gets put on my someday to-do list and then forgotten.

But Mark is persistent so I've purchased fabric at Jo-Anns and M and Ls and once Grandma's casita living room was only occupied by Grandma and me, I got started cutting and sewing.  All this sewing is confusing to Grandma.

"What are you making, Tani?"

"A quilt.  For Mark."

"What's he going to do with a quilt?"

It is a bit exasperating to answer the same question numerous times while I sit at the sewing machine but there is no where else to go with all my sewing paraphernalia.  I suppose Grandma enjoys watching even if she doesn't understand what the final product will be.

Tuesday night after Leiya left for the airport, I got all the pieces cut out.  And yesterday I started in sewing and finished the easy large blocks.  Today I'm going to have to see how far I can get the rows put together as it is hard for Grandma to tippy-toe around the layout with it spread out all over her floor.

Whether this quilt is going to be finished by the end of the summer or not, who knows.  At least I've started, Mark!
 

Awesome!

I have a family photo overload today...

Because Tetsu only gets to the States every three or four years, we wanted to make sure we got family pictures again.  This has become sort of a tradition for us...  Grandma surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

The first formal family picture we took was in 2004 and we asked a professional photographer to come take photos of us at the local park.  That was nice.  The photos were good.  We got different shots of each family and children, and brother and sister photos.  We coordinated ourselves in white shirts, jeans and bare feet.  Let's see...  Tetsu was 50, I was 48, Takumi was 18 and Leiya was 14.  Grandma was 82 at this taking.

Then three years ago when Tetsu was visiting we ended up having an impromptu photo shoot.  Marcy was especially anti-camera that year but the evening before Tetsu left to return to Japan, she relented and I handed my Olympus to a friend and asked her to photograph our family out in the front yard. We weren't very coordinated for this photo but at least we got a picture!

This year, at the very start I asked that we arrange for a photographer to come to take photos of the family.  Grandma isn't able to get out and about and the schedule had to be flexible as some days she's with it and some days she isn't.

"Maybe I can get Janney to take photographs.  She's Kiana's friend from high school and she's been playing around with cameras and equipment for a couple of years now."

Okay...  I only know Janney as a fun-loving, be-bopping extroverted teenager but let's see what she can do.

Marcy wanted us to wear jeans and black this year.  Grandma kept complaining that black was so depressing but we convinced her that it was "slenderizing".

"Pucker up Grandma.  And don't eat your lipstick."

 Okay.  This is the best that we can do!

We loaded up the patio bench into the van and headed for the park across the street.  (Same place that we'd taken the pictures 12 years ago).  We had so much fun!!!!  I had my camera set on a tripod (tipped a little), Tetsu was running around with his new camera, there were iPhones whipped out of pockets and of course Janney with her super-duper Canon equipment.

"Great!  Great!  Just awesome.  You are guys are good.  Smile.  Let's all make a funny face.  Awesome!"

Most everything was awesome for Janney, and better yet, she made us feel awesome!

Takumi had brought some velum butterflies and the girls had fun modeling with those.

There was much hilarity involved with some of the photos.  This one was priceless with my brother and Marcy kissing and the two kids looking on in disgust.  You wouldn't get Tetsu and me taking a photo like that in a million years!

 I love the way Takumi always hugs his Grandma.

A portrait with a butterfly.

Unfortunately NONE of these photos posted are the ones taken by Janney as she gave us all the files in a humongous tif. file so that we can get them printed out for the wall, and thus they are too large to upload to the blog.  These are my amateur attempts with my tipsy tripod.  Even those are nice and the memories we made in the short 45 minutes make these special.  But Janney's photos?  They are awesome!!!

Photographer Janney with the gang. 

If you want to see her real photos you'll have to come to my house and look at what goes up on the wall!
 

A matter of seconds

Another quicky post as we are off again to LAX so that Leiya can fly home to Ohio today.

Yesterday morning I started off on my morning walk at 5:45 as I always do.  My brother's home is sort of in a hilly area but crossing a main avenue will take me into flat residential neighborhoods for an easy walk (with only one uphill jaunt at the end of the walk again.)  It takes about 50 minutes to walk over to the local high school along one road, and back home along another road.

Just after leaving the house there is the intersection to cross at the end of a very long hill.  Even when I was a child, there were numerous horrendous accidents as the college kids barreled down the hill at full speed.  Weekly there is a policeman with a radar gun at the corner and residents of the area know he will be there and we shake our heads at the number of people he catches daily.

So yesterday morning I went out and walked towards the intersection.  There is no sidewalk along the road and the bushes are growing over the roadside meaning that pedestrians (they are few and far between) have to step into the road.  I checked before I stepped out and even the few cars out at that time of morning were flying down the hill so I stepped back into the bushes while they passed.

"A bush is sure not going to be much safety if a car goes out of control and comes at me."

I hurried to the intersection and then hurried across the street and walked a few yards on the sidewalked side street. 

Crash, bang, boom boom boom.

I heard the van hitting the curbs as it lost control and as I whipped around, a car skidded sideways at a fantastic speed through the intersection, spun around and then hit the tree in the center divider.  A few seconds before I had been standing there thinking about out of control cars.

I ran back to the intersection but without at cell phone there was nothing I could do.  The van's alarm was going, and I was standing there waving my arms at passing cars on the side street but since no one had seen the accident except for me they probably thought I was a mad woman.  A couple cars coming down the hill stopped and on-coming cars also, so pretty soon there were people coming to the rescue.  The neighbor boy came out and started pulling debris from the road and he verified that the driver was okay and that the police had been called.  That was when Kiana and Leiya and Colin showed up in their car to see if I was okay...  They all were awakened by the accident and pictured me at that intersection.  Actually that had been one of MY first thoughts too.  Was Leiya okay?  She sometimes comes out after me when I head out on my walks and I was frantic that SHE had been at that intersection at the time of the accident.

So...  Everyone's okay, the driver, no other cars involved.  This morning I contemplated whether I was really going to cross that intersection to go on my walk again.  But if I didn't then, I'd probably never be able to take a walk around here again.  Off I went skirting through that intersection as quickly as possible.

I took my camera with me this morning (I didn't have it yesterday... which I'm sort of happy about.  I always wonder how ethical it is to be photographing accidents).  The hill, the bushes and the skid-marks.

All's well that ends well.

Breakfasts out

Sunday morning and everyone in my family (except for the dogs whom I've already let out) is still asleep.  While I've got the chance I'll do some blogging.

I did finally get in touch with Tetsu yesterday.  We waited for the usual phone call saying that he'd made it home but no communication.  I sent him an e-mail asking if he'd gotten home...  no communication.  Finally last night I called because I was getting worried about his long drive back to Nikko.

"Yes, I got home fine.  I sent you an e-mail too from the iPad."  (which he took back with him to Japan.)

Well, the e-mail didn't get to me and I can't find hide nor hair of it in the inbox or in the trash or in the spam nor anywhere else it might have gone to.  We are trying to e-mail each other on the SAME gmail account and address using the iPad from Japan and my laptop here in California.  I didn't think Tetsu would be able to get into ANOTHER gmail address so we had just planned to send emails to ourselves in Japanese... which at least would have been obvious in the inbox as I rarely get Japanese email from friends and Tetsu doesn't get email at all!  I guess that plan didn't work.  With computer technology our plans rarely work.

Anyway...  Tetsu is home and the animals have survived though he says the heat and humidity is so horrendous that he isn't sure if the animals are lethargic and dull just because of the heat or because they are ill (it's the heat).  He left the air-conditioning on for the animals and himself all day Saturday.

So what else did we do while Tetsu was in California?  I seem to have practically an album of food shots at different restaurants.  It's no wonder we gain weight while in the States.  We eat out every single day, sometimes twice a day!  And Tetsu absolutely reveled in breakfasts out so though I'd bought a bag of granola the first day here we hardly broke into it at all and instead went from one breakfast place to another.

 Big country breakfasts at small family run restaurants, with biscuits and gravy,

German pancakes with fruit (I splurged this day and dug in whole heartedly!) at the famous Flappy Jack's Pancake restaurant.

And endless cups of coffee!  Tetsu was most impressed with the cheerfulness of the morning waitresses and how they almost never stopped moving, balancing trays of food in one hand while pouring coffee with the other and all the time carrying on a friendly conversation.

 The Flappy Jack's restaurant is on Route 66 and sort of an icon of the area.

And the reason for all those cups of coffee is that Leiya, Tetsu and I would sit in the restaurant long after we'd finished eating and chat and chat and chat.  And if I'm going to chat I need to keep my hands busy so I'd just bring my tatting along and get in some handwork time.  Please excuse Tetsu's hard rocker look.  He bought some sunglasses while he was here and thought they matched the late 60's atmosphere of the restaurant.

"Tetsu, please take off your sunglasses when the food comes."

An evening of a lifetime

Well, Tetsu had to go back to Japan yesterday.   No word as to whether he's gotten home yet, though he probably should have made it by now.  (Three hour drive).  The 10 day vacation went way too fast for all of us with lots of good food and lots of good conversation.  Tetsu loved his new camera and he kept photographing the kids like they were some sort of magazine models.  (That got a little tiring... some nice photos of Leiya though....)  Let's see...  In 10 days like 1200 photos on Tetsu camera card.  THAT'S going to be a job to go through!

 On Sunday evening Takumi arranged another surprise for us and he asked us to "dress-up" for the occasion.  We ended up in Beverly Hills (WOW!) at a Social House of Chinese and Japanese cuisine.  Let me tell you.  There will never be another time in my life when I have a chance to be in such an elegant, ritzy, expensive restaurant.  TRULY!  Think celebrity stars, VIP patrons, invitation only dining experiences.  And how did my son manage to get his family into this very elite and social house?  Because he has been long time friends with the former manager of the restaurant.  Without sounding too boastful/country bumpkin our full course dinner for eight probably could have run more than what Tetsu brought to spend on his California vacation.  Special, special, special!

 I can't even begin to describe the multi-multi course dinner that we had.  Crab h'ordeuvres...

 ...sashimi (notice that gold leaf on the cubes of tuna)...

 ...tempura...

 goodness, I think this was lobster in mango sauce...

 ...skewered delicacies...

 ...broiled salmon wrapped in avocado!

And there were a few other dishes that I'm skipping over too!

Just making a trip to the ladies room was an experience as we explored the amazing building that was shipped from Japan piece by piece and reconstructed the traditional Japanese way without using nails

The private dining areas guaranteed privacy and elegance, the high ceiling almost made it seem as if even the indoor part of the restaurant was outside under an inky black sky. 

 The restaurant had a very high class sushi bar...

 ...and dark hallways that beckoned to be explored.

Takumi's friend explained how the restaurant is a replica of the building used in the movie Kill Bill (which I did not see) and it has been used in filming other scenes when Hollywood needs a nearly authentic Japanese scene. 

A fantastic experience for those of us who already know Japan (Tetsu, Leiya and myself) and for my brother's family who usually gets excited by the fast food sushi place set in the corner of the local Japanese supermarket.

 I was most proud of Kiana who is the least experimental about her food choices.  She did an excellent job of trying everything and enjoying most.

I think Takumi felt very content that he could sponsor such a glamorous evening for his normally frugal family.  What an evening!