Hodgepodge post

A Little is Good, A Lot Must Be Better

As is often the case, I took what was a lovely time. (a quiet BBQ evening with one other family) and rationalized that multiplying that would logically increase the loveliness.

Don't get me wrong, I did indeed have a lovely time and am so fortunate to have so many friends that don't mind the lateness or pot-luckness of mine, but I definetly pay the price. This was my Facebook Update (a rare thing for me) on Sunday morning.


Jon Danniells had a lovely almost last day of summer BBQ last night and is in full rehab mode,already missing caffeine. After getting most of the kitchen cleaned up from last night's festivities. Skye and friends made pancakes from scratch and scrambled eggs. A second wave of cleaning up and now desperately missing caffeine. Put away Bloody Mary mix with sweet sadness.

Within 20 minutes of the post, the mother of one of the young chefs upon coming to pick her up presented me with the wonderful gift of 2 energy drinks, which like the bloody Mary was put away with sweet sadness.

Later on that day, friends who couldn't make it by the night before, asked about dropping by to catch up. Of course, was the answer, we had so much food from the night before jamming up the fridge. So I fired up the grill again, sans caffeine and booze and had another wonderful evening with food and friends.

Biking in Los Angeles

I have tried commutting around Los Angeles in the past with varying levels of success. It doesn't help living on top of a hill, surrounded by arterial streets that are almost like highways.

But regardless I was bound and determined to kill a few birds with one big stone. We would be saving gas, cutting down on pollution and getting some exercise, especially with our big hill, there not called the Baldwin Hills for nothing.

The ride to the Marina where we were doing a P/E Movement class with a bunch of our homeschool friends, was a little hairy at times. But it was mostly downhill and there was a marine level fog that made for a cool ride.

Coming back....



Not the most welcoming entrance(in our case exit) to a bike path.

We took a different route back, the bike path along the LA River. At some point signs said it was closed for construction. We forged ahead. We would deal with getting out of the "closed" bike path when we had to. What followed was like a ride through Escape from LA or something equally post-apocalyptic. Debris and clutter was strewn all over the place and the every inch of concrete seemed to have graffiti on it and unfortunately the cool artsy stuff.


And we were east of the Marine layer by now, baking under the hot August sun and running late.

We survived and were actually on time to Skye's class.


No Caffeine !!!!!!!!!!!!

Going cold turkey with the caffeine and alcohol has been a pain. This healthy stuff sucks. Actually cutting out the beers and cocktails has been nice, but the caffeine......

I had no idea how reliant my body had become on this innocent, readily available, many varied means of consuming, DRUG. I do love caffeine and we will someday reunite, but it has been an eye-opener (bad choice of words) as to how much I need the shit to be ok.

It has been a battle to keep moving.



Hanging out up in a tree at our local park day. Being anti-social, but also it was incredible to climb up in a tree and be able to lounge about, even reading 12 ft above everyone else. I thought it might bring out the kid in me, particularly some of that kid energy. Rather it brought on dangerous waves of nostalgic memories.