Mother's Day

Sunday May 10, 1992 Mothers Day

We're up, feeling good and ready at 9:45 when Gary and Maria and the boys arrive to take us to brunch at Marie Callendar. Maria gives me a pretty bell from Avon. Gary gives me a blown-glass hummingbird. They all give me nice cards. Very nice. We have a great brunch with lots of good food. Later we go looking at furniture for Gary and Maria's new home. Then we go by their house for a bit.

When we get home at 1:30 we relax and take a short nap. At 2:30 we leave for Frank's folks house in West Los Angeles. We take them to the Olive Garden for dinner. My dinner is superb! I really enjoy it. We stay to visit til 9 p.m. We're really tired. I sleep on the way home.

Chris and Justin call. They went to Reno and Tahoe for the weekend and had a real good time. We have a good long visit.

When Mom passed away she left two collections, one of bells and one of hummingbirds. Maria got the bells, and I got the hummingbirds. The blown-glass hummingbird that Gary gave Mom is pictured above. It sounds like a perfect Mother's Day. She got a call from her daughter and lunch with her son, then dinner with Frank's parents. Marie Callendars and Olive Garden are two of my favorite restaurants.

Off To San Diego

Saturday November 9, 1991

Best night this week. Only 4 hot flashes last night. I feel really good this morning. I'm awake at 6:45 and ready to rise and shine. By 9 a.m. we're packed and ready to go to San Diego. The traffic around Los Angeles is "stop and go". Awful! But we finally do arrive about 2 p.m. We stopped for a nice lunch at Marie Callendar's in Capistrano.

The kids are glad to see us. We get the grand tour of their new house. It's really a neat little house. We will sleep in the trundle bed in what will be the baby's room someday.

We go to Old Town for dinner but all the restaurants have long waits. We end up at Acapulco where the kids don't care for their dinners. Steve buys dinner.

At home we eat the key lime pie we brought from Marie Callendar's. I call and talk to Yvonne but it's hard. She's doing customers' nails while we talk.

Wow, 5 hours to travel 160 miles from Simi Valley to San Diego, and this is on a Saturday, when traffic should be much lighter! Several years ago, when our two teenage boys were very young, we took them to Legoland which is in Carlsbad, north of San Diego, and I remember the traffic coming north to Simi Valley through the Los Angeles basin, including the Long Beach area. It was 8 lanes of traffic on Interstate 5, all crawling along at 5 mph. We have not been back since. The horrendous traffic is one of the many reasons I left Southern California after graduating from college in 1974.

I remember mom talking about how small Dolores and Steve's house was in San Diego, where prices were so expensive for housing. Dolores is Frank's daughter, who went to college at San Diego State, met her husband there, and stayed in the area after graduating with a teaching degree.

I am so touched that Mom called Yvonne who lived in San Diego (and perhaps still does?) Yvonne was my brother's girlfriend 35 years ago. That's one thing I admire about mom. Once a friend, always a friend.