Linkage

In honor of Australia Day, and for those of you who would like to see some more pictures from my 2009 Australia trip, I am listing some links below.  There are a few random, and very short posts in October 2009, posted while I was still there but the ones below are the longer ones with a lot of pictures.

Melbourne

Queen Victoria Market– Melbourne

Parliament–Melbourne

Street Art–Melbourne

Wrong Side Driving–Australia

Shades Of Blue

Twelve Apostles–Port Campbell–AUS

Split Point Lighthouse

Apollo Bay

St. Kilda

Cairns

Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef 2

A Lot Of Croc

Bird’s Eye View 

Kangas

Kuranda

Kuranda–One More Look

Sydney

Sydney Sights

Lord Nelson Brewery

Taronga Zoo

Taronga Zoo 2

Australia Day

In honor of Australia Day (celebrated on January 26, which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788), I am posting a few of my Sydney pictures that I don’t believe I posted previously.  These are from my October 2009 trip to Sydney.  Please bear with me, I’m having a bit of a problem formatting the text and the pictures and editing this post.

On the first night we were in Sydney, we took a walk to find some dinner.  We didn’t know where we were going but needed to eat soon so we decided to take a short walk.  We found a small Italian restaurant and ate outside, although it was very, very windy.  After dinner, we decided to continue the walk a bit and see where it would take us.  We walked right around a bit of a curve in the path and saw colorful flags and a lot more light than where we were so we headed that way.  Literally one block from where we had eaten dinner, we found the Sydney Bridge!  We had no idea we were staying less than a mile away from this historic area!  In Sydney Harbor, right across from the bridge, is the Sydney Opera House.  The photos are a bit fuzzy because it was so incredibly windy!

The next day, we took a much longer walk and accidentally stumbled upon the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, which in some accounts is named as the first pub in Sydney. We had read about it prior to our trip but we didn't realize we were going to be so close to it so we didn't think we would get to go, especially by foot! Had we known we were so close the previous night, we would have held out for this place to have dinner. We ended up have a bowl of chowder and a couple of beers each. The food was delicious and the beer, well that goes without saying! If I ever go back to Sydney, I will book one of the hotel rooms that are a part of this brewery/pub. The fourth shot down was taken after our overnight stay at the Taronga Zoo. You get to spend the night and early the next morning you get a behind the scenes tour. We got to pet and feed the giraffes! And the last shot was taken from the waiting area at our Qantas gate as we waited for our flight back home. Although we were ready to come home after two weeks in Australia, we weren't ready to say goodbye to our wonderful host country!

Waiting for our plane to come home

Well Then Don’t Wander Off!

Years after getting lost, when Tony was a young teenager and thought he didn’t have to stay near me in the store, I often had a problem keeping track of him when we went to ToysRUs.  He was pretty good though, asking if he could go play with the video games.  I usually said yes or would ask him to first help me find something or pick something out then he could go play video games.  That worked.  However, as he got used to this, he’d go off to the video game section and when I came there to find him, he wasn’t there.

This was in the early 90′s when there was a lot of press about teens getting nabbed and never seen alive again, some of which had disappeared from toy stores or pizza places.  So when I couldn’t find him, his sisters and I would go looking all over the store until we found him.  Usually, it was a matter of him having been side-tracked on his way to find us.  But this was still upsetting to me because you just don’t know when it will be YOUR child on the news or YOUR family in those Amber Alerts (well, this was actually pre-Amber alerts and pre-Code Adam), but get the idea.  Once found, I would ask him to please not wander off again.  Sometimes it would take the girls and I more than ten minutes to find him and that is ten minutes too long for a mom to be worried about her son!

One day, when he was about fourteen, he asked if he could go look at the video game demos.  I said yes but please don’t wander off.  Stay in the video game section.  He said he would.  The girls and I went about our business finding what we had gone to find and then we headed for the video game section.  Tony wasn’t there.  I checked up and down the aisles in the video game area and adjacent to it, just to make sure.  No sign of Tony.

Then I got mad.  I decided then and there that I was not going to play this game again.  Fourteen is just too old to get lost in a store.  So instead of going up and down all of the aisles at this huge Toys R Us store and wasting ten or fifteen minutes, I walked up to the Customer Service desk and told them I could not find my son and could they please page him for me.  They took his name and paged him over the loud speaker:  “Tony, your mom is waiting for you at the Customer Service desk.  Please meet her there, Tony.” And of course, they also added his last name.  I thanked the woman and waited about twenty seconds and around the corner comes Tony with this look-that-could-have-killed-me on his face!  He walked up to me and tersely said, “Mom, that’s really embarrassing.  Please don’t have me paged again.”  So I said, “Well, not finding you where you are supposed to be is really upsetting to me so if you don’t wander off again, I won’t have to page you again.”   He mumbled what I think was probably an agreement but I’m not sure because I couldn’t hear it.  We paid for our stuff and off we went.

Tony NEVER wandered off in stores again.  He made sure he was where he said he would be when I came looking for him!  And I never had to page him again, either.  We both kept our word.

 

Lost

I’m in the middle (well, my Kindle says I’m at 39% so not the middle) of a novel in which one of the main characters recalls a time when she was lost at a shopping mall and it sparked a memory that I’ve not yet written about.

Many years ago, in 1984 actually,  I was pregnant with my second child.  I wasn’t “very pregnant” yet but I did need to get a bigger size of clothing.  This was difficult because I would have to try on the garments to see which would fit my changing body and with a two year old, going shopping was not an easy thing, especially because I would have to try things on.  So I waited for just the right time, thinking that I might get to go shopping when I visited my mother, leaving my son with her to watch.

Then my sister-in-law, who was about 18 or 19 at the time, came to visit for a week.  Perfect!  I would take her when I went shopping and she could watch Tony for me while I tried on clothes!  So that’s what I did.  One day, we got in the car and ran out to do a whole bunch of things, including the park and lunch and shopping.   We went to K-Mart and I looked through the racks of maternity clothes, trying to find something that would fit me for a good part of my pregnancy.  All the while, my sister-in-law also shopped in the clothing department with me and Tony sat in the shopping cart like a good little boy.  I finally decided on which things I would try on and found my sister-in-law.  I told her I needed to try on some things and asked her if she would watch Tony.   She was great with Tony and she gladly agreed.  However, she said she would just take him out of the shopping cart so she wouldn’t have to push the cart around.  I asked if she was sure she wanted to do it that way and she said yes.  So out of the shopping cart came Tony and off I went into the dressing room.

It didn’t take very long for me to walk the twenty-five feet to the dressing room and get a number from the attendant.  I found a dressing room and hung the items, only about five things, complete with hangers on the back of the dressing room door.  I have a thing about dressing rooms.   I hate them.  Since I was  a child, I have hated dressing rooms and public bathrooms.  Hate.  Hate.  Hate.  So as quickly as I could, I undressed and just as I was about to put the first item on to try it, I heard an announcement come on the loud speaker:  “Attention K-Mart Shoppers.  We have a lost little boy at the Service Desk.  His name is Tony Martinez and he is 2 years old.  Will Tony’s mommy please come to the Service Desk?”

Lost little boy?  Tony?  MY Tony?  He had been out of my sight for all of four minutes and he’s lost?  As quickly as I could, I put my own clothes back on and ran out of the dressing room and headed for the Service Desk where I saw not only Tony sitting on the counter with a balloon and a big smile, but my sister-in-law standing next to him looking really, really embarrassed!  Apparently,  she went back to looking at clothes and let go of his hand and he wandered off, only to be found by one of the employees who took him to the Service Desk.  Great!  And they would not let my sister-in-law take him from the Service Desk because she was not his mommy.  I was glad that she had appeared though because at least the store employees knew that I had not left my child to wander throughout the store.  They knew I had left him with a presumably capable adult who was supposed to take care of him!

We left the store without me trying on any clothes and without buying anything.

He wasn’t embarrassed that time.  He was happy that he’d gotten a balloon and his mommy back.  Now there is another story about him getting lost in a store when he was much older;  a story that I’ll save for another day.

 

A Favorite For Friday

I’ve been trying to think of something to blog about.  When I am out of ideas, I tend to try alliteration.  For example, I’ve done Memoir Monday and posted a piece of memoir.  So today Friday took me to Favorite.

A favorite author.  That’s what I’ll blog about today and should I need to, I will have many things to post on Fridays as I can go to favorite authors, books, songs, places, etc.  An endless supply of favorites.

John Steinbeck.  The first thing I read by Steinbeck was a novella called Tortilla Flat.  We had to read it in class in sophomore English.  I loved it.  I loved the characters.  I loved the writing.  I loved the plot.  But what I really loved was that it took place in the Salinas valley which was a place I had been to often, having been born and raised in San Jose, not far from Salinas.  I could identify with the places, with some of the characters, and with the Spanish in the novel.

That’s when John Steinbeck became my favorite author.  After Tortilla Flat, I read my sister’s copy of  The Pearl and when I got to my junior year of high school, I chose to read The Grapes of Wrath for a book report and then later I picked up Of Mice And Men, also for a book report.  I loved them all.  I still love Steinbeck.  I’ve added a number of his other novels to my “books I’ve read” list throughout my life.  Probably my favorite Steinbeck novel is East Of Eden.  That one has it all.  It’s full of fully developed characters, plot, sub-plots, location, and so much more.  It’s a book I can pick up again and again and never grow tired of it.  Each time I pick it up, I get more out of it.

One day, I will go to visit the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.  I think it will only add to my enjoyment and appreciation of one of the most wonderful American writers.  I’ve been to Monterey, another place that figured prominently in his works and I’ve been to Cannery Row.  However, I’ve not yet been able to visit the National Steinbeck Center.  Now that I live so far away, it will be more difficult but I’ll just have to make a point of reserving my ticket and actually visiting the only museum devoted to a single author, on one of my trips to the south.

Then I picked up Hemingway and he became a favorite but I’ll leave him for another Friday!

Let Me Count the Ways…

Just a couple of days ago, I read a blog post titled “Twelve Reasons Why I Don’t Use An E-Reader” and it reminded me of how I felt before I got my e-reader.

I did not want to pay cover price for a new or recent release and not have a physical copy of it.  I wouldn’t be able to lend it out.  I didn’t want to read on anything like a computer screen because computer monitors make my eyes hurt and water which causes me to not be able to read for very long.  I also didn’t want to read on a “cold” piece of electronic hardware.  And I didn’t want to pay the high price of the fragile hardware.

Then, for Christmas two years ago, I was visiting my son and he asked if, while he was at work, I could go to his apartment to wait for a couple of packages that were arriving vía Fed-Ex and would require a signature.  I agreed to do it.  When the packages arrived, one was definitely from Amazon.com and the size of a small-ish hardback book.  I signed for it.  Then I thought about it and wondered if perhaps it might be a Kindle, which my son had mentioned months before that I might want to get one day because of my love for reading.  I felt really bad because I don’t ever tell my kids that what they got for me was not what I wanted.  I don’t even tell them if it doesn’t fit.  I just smile, and thank them and deal with it.  I also knew that a Kindle was, at that time, $260.  That was a lot of money for any of my kids, or even for all three of them together, to spend on me and I was sure it was not something I would use.  I thought I was going to have to smile and accept it and then let it sit without using it.  I almost cried.  I was really upset and the next day was Christmas so I didn’t have a lot of time to adjust to the situation or to figure out a way to solve the problem.

On Christmas morning, the package indeed turned out to be a Kindle from all three of my kids.  My son sat with me and explained how it worked and how simple it would be for me to order a book straight from the device.  He also explained that all Kindle books were priced at no more than $9.99 (this was true at that time but the “Big 6″ publishers have changed that even though Amazon.com fought for the consumer) with many being a lot less as the price went down once the book was no longer a new release or a bestseller.  He also showed me how the capacity of the Kindle was about 1500 books (at least of the Kindle 2 which is what that model was) My son set up the device for me with my email address and my Amazon.com account information.  The kids had also gotten me a $30 gift certificate to use on Kindle books.  He showed me how to search the Kindle Store directly from my Kindle device.  He also showed me how the Kindle does not have a back-lit screen which means that it does not cause eyestrain.  We bought my first Kindle book at that time (Edward Kennedy’s True Compass: A Memoir).

I felt a little bit better after he went through it with me and I felt better about the price of the books.  Before getting my Kindle I only bought used new releases and those were always at least $6 for a used physical copy.  I would not have to have more and more bookshelves to fit my new books.  I started to get used to the idea but thought I would only use it for special books, not for every day reading.   That night I started reading my book on my Kindle and lo and behold I read for about three hours straight without eye strain. Reading in bed, holding the Kindle in one hand was so easy and so comfortable.  The e-ink display was wonderful for my weak eyes.  I will still a little iffy about the whole thing but I breathed easier after that first Kindle reading session.

Now, a little more than two years later, I carry my Kindle with me wherever I go.  I have a special cover that I made for it and it travels safely in my purse wherever I go.  I have over 800 titles on it.  I get most of them for free or with gift cards that I earn from taking surveys online or using swagbucks.com.  In the past two years I have spent less than $100 on these  800+ books.  And the bonus is that my mother and my sisters, all avid readers, each have their own Kindle which we registered to my account so we all have access to the same books.  That’s better than lending them the physical copy.  If we want, the four of us can read the same title at the  same time!

There are so many reasons for loving my Kindle.  I can’t name them all here.  However, not a day goes by without using my Kindle!  And because it does not cause eyes strain, I can read it for hours and hours, unlike a physical book which I can read only for a half hour at a time due to the eye strain.  Oh and one of the best things…you can change the size of the font very easily which means that I can read a book with the font size set at the third from the largest size which is comfortable for me and my sister reads it at one size smaller than I do and my mom at the largest size (which is two sizes larger than I need).  Talk about a fit for everyone!

So this is my answer to the post I read the other day.  I’m sure there are lots more reasons why I cannot let go of my Kindle but these are the ones that readily come to mind as I take a few minutes to write this between chapters of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which is the title I am currently reading.  I cannot imagine not having my Kindle!

Waiting

Waiting.  It’s a game I don’t like.  It doesn’t matter what it is that I am waiting for, I don’t like waiting.

Today we are waiting for snow.  The weather guys all swear my area will get as much as 3 inches of sticking snow.  First they said it would begin on Sunday and continue to Monday then be over.  Now they are saying it will begin by 6 this evening and continue through Tuesday with more at the end of the week.

I guess they could be wrong.  They’ve been wrong with previous forecasts this year.  I should prepare.  But it is sooo cold.  I’ve been wrapped in a sherpa lined blanket for three days.  I cannot even think of leaving the house.  But I guess I should make a list of what I absolutely have to have should it begin to snow and not stop for a couple of days.  I’ll be okay if it is just today and tomorrow but beyond that, not so much.

Waiting isn’t fun.

If it snows and sticks, maybe I can post a picture or two.  Maybe.  If I can find my boot.  I have one pair of warm boots.  Somehow the pair has become separated…I remember the baby running off with one a while back.  I cannot find it.  So I have only one boot that I can wear in the snow, should it actually snow.

Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.

Tina~Part 2

Yesterday’s post about Tina’s birthday reminded me of one of the really sweet, at least in my opinion, things she has said.

Awhile back, while Tina was a junior college student, she went to England on a study abroad program with a large group from the school.  They took classes at Oxford University.  They had only three days of classes each week.  Friday’s were for field trips and on Mondays, most Mondays anyway, there were no classes.  That left a lot  of time for traveling around Europe.

In the three months she was there, she visited Ireland twice, Scotland, twice, Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples, Paris, Amsterdam, and I don’t know how many other places.  In fact when she was there was when Pope John Paul II died and her visit to Rome and Vatican City coincided with the period when there was no Pope.  If I remember correctly, the Papal Conclave reached consensus the day after Tina was in Vatican City.

Long distance to Europe is very expensive.  She had limited internet access because she had to go to cafés for that and that too was expensive.  I did get occasional emails either from her or from friends traveling with her that would relay the messages.  I spoke to her on the phone three times when she was there.  In fact, I called her within minutes of the announcement of the Pope’s death.  That’s how she heard it.  She was in Scotland visiting family friends and the word had not yet reached them, yet it had reached me in California!

When she returned, she said she had taken over 2500 pictures and she would go through them with me and we could talk about the trip because she had so much to tell me about.  She knew that I’ve always wanted to go to Europe but haven’t made it there.  (Now not so much.  I am somewhat resigned to the fact that I will probably not ever see Europe.)  That day, of sitting down to look at her pictures and have that talk, has never arrived.  I’ve caught little bits and pieces here and there but never have we sat down to look at the pictures and let her tell me about them.

One day, shortly after she returned, she said to me that one day she is going to take me to Venice which, to her, is the most beautiful city of all the places she visited.  Then she went on to say that while there, she had seen a palace that she wanted to take me to but, because there are so many steps to get up to the palace and she knows that my knee cannot handle steps, she had told her friends that were with her that she was going to take her mother there and hire men to carry me up and down the steps so that I can see the palace and do all of my sightseeing with hired men to carry me where I could not go on my own!  One of her friends was with us and she said, “That’s what I told you guys, remember?” And he nodded.

THAT’S what I think is special about Tina.  How many twenty year olds go off to explore the world with their friends and think of their mother while they are off with their friends?  How many of these twenty year olds would even admit to their friends that they were thinking about their mom and planning on taking their mom to see those places that they were seeing?  I don’t know but I don’t think the number is too big.

I am blessed to have each of my three children.  Each one of them is their own person and I have a special relationship with each one.  But this is about Tina.  I am blessed to have Tina as my daughter, for many reasons but I do remember, often, the feeling I had when she told me about the palace in Italy that she wanted to take me too and how she had put enough thought into it to tell her friends that she would need to hire someone to carry me up and down the many steps.  I remember the lump in my throat that I felt then and the tears that threatened to spill when I realized that all those miles away from me, my Tina was thinking about me.

I feel both that lump and the tears now and it’s not just about Italy; it’s about my Tina.

Tina

Tina is my oldest daughter.  Today is her birthday.  She’s 27.

It’s hard to believe that it has been that long since I held her in my arms, completely in awe of her tiny-ness.  And even more in awe of the fact that I had a daughter!  A “psychic” had told her father that I was carrying a boy.  I didn’t have a strong feeling one way or another as I had with my son, so when the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” I was glad I was in bed or I would have passed out!

She was a beautiful little baby.  Her skin was plump and not wrinkly.  She had a beautiful color.  In fact, she looked more like a C-section baby, not one that had pushed her way out!

The doctor held up the placenta so I could see it…he wanted me to see that she had a heart-shaped placenta.  He said she was going to be a sweetheart.  And she is.  IF she wants to be, that is.

I also remember that her shoulders were very broad when she was born.  Her brother, born three years before, had not had those broad shoulders.  She was very long.  She measured 23 inches and weighed 7 lbs., 7 oz.  She was also 20 days post-mature and I lost weight during the last two weeks so it’s very likely that she would have been another pound heavier had she been born earlier.

She was due on the 21st of December!  I remember being on baby watch since before Christmas and all through Christmas.  For a while we thought she would be born on Christmas, which is my birthday, but even then she had a mind of her own!

There is so much I can say about Tina but I think I’ll just go on and sit with my coffee and think about my girl.

Orchestrated By Harry

Harry Bosch.

I didn’t discover him until last year.  Now I can’t get enough of him or of his half-brother, Mickey Haller.  I’ve been reading him out of order just because I’m reading what I can get for free or next to free before spending money on those things I can’t get without spending money.  Not that Harry isn’t worth money.  It’s just that I’ve learned that some things I can get for free and I don’t mind reading Harry out of order.  It keeps me on my toes.

One of the things that I like about Harry is that the reader knows so much more about him than the characters in any of the novels.  They aren’t privy to Harry’s history as we are.  They don’t know some of his preferences or the things he enjoys when he’s off the job.  I like that while reading Harry, I often find myself putting my Kindle into sleep mode so I can go off and find something that Harry has led me to.  Like today.  I have been busy finding some of the music in The Drop.  Harry, you see, loves jazz.  He loves vintage jazz.  I often know who Harry is listening to just by reading the name, as I’ve a small collection of vintage jazz, but not so today.  As Maddie listened to one of Harry’s CDs, I was introduced to Chet Baker, and to Night Bird in particular.  It’s great music.  And downloading it and playing it as I read about Harry, adds to the experience and to my music library.  Today I also learned a little about poet, John Harvey.

The Drop also finds me thinking about the origin of evil.  It’s one of the themes in the novel and Harry has a lot of thoughts about evil and the source of it.  Is it nature?  Or is it nurture?  Harry is unsure.  He can see it both ways.  It gives the reader a lot to think about as we read and digest.

Harry isn’t just another literary character.  He is a source, or should I say a resource?  He leads us to discover a lot we didn’t know.  He leads us to remember some things and some places that we already know but hadn’t thought about in a while.  He makes us think.  Thinking is good.

Okay, Harry is calling me back.