Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. I started the week being kind of pissed off. I knew why. My mother for the second Thanksgiving couldn't talk to me because her senile dementia has taken her away from me. I visited her recently. There was only vacancy in her eyes. The volunteer spooned food into her mouth but there was no one present even to look at. I walked away numb.

I knew my son would try to have Thanksgiving with extended family. We would drive four hours and he would only have to drive 3 hours to be with us. Traffic was okay I think because gas, even regular was about $3.50 a gallon. Since my lexus gets about 19 miles per gallon you can figure out what 4 hours driving about 75mph would cost(each way)

Since my son is in medical school he now has to study at least 12 hours a day. But since he is 33 he enjoys this kind of challenge. Besides, it appears he has a new girlfriend, a 21 year old nursing student. Since we worried about him since he broke up with his wife permanently last spring, it is nice not to have to worry about him relationship wise for a while, at least.

On Friday, was sailed past the Queen Mary and a Cruise liner docked nearby out the breakwater on the White Eagle with my Cousin and his wife. It was a rental boat as they had finally sold their sailboat after 40 years. My cousin and I had started sailing his Columbia 22 to Catalina in 1968 before he got married and had a family. His kids now are 33 to 37 years old and married with their own kids.

I had to use the head down below and got a little barfy from all the bouncing below, so after I came above I stood next to the mainmast and leaned against the mainmast while supporting myself with the wire lines that support the mast. Eventually I realized as we jumped the waves with a good wind that something was coming up soon. So I went to the side closest to the water and threw up a couple of times into the ocean next to the boat. Amazingly, I felt great after that and greatly enjoyed the rest of the sail.

We noticed a Hanjin Container ship coming in with a pilot at about 8 to 10 knots so we didn't want to be run over so we got out of the way and followed the huge ship into Long Beach Harbor.

The next day my 11 year old daughter rode one of my cousin's horses for a while. However, a horse nearby must have thrown a rider and when it ran by at about 30 mph riderless it spooked her horse and my cousin had to grab the halter so he didn't jump the fence with my daughter. That same horse had spooked recently and put a female adult rider in the hospital. I could see that my cousin was seriously considering getting rid of the horse my daughter was riding.

Saturday, the Santa Ana winds had spawned a fire in Malibu. On our way north we stopped on Las Virgens Canyon Road to get gas and I drove a little further down the road to take pictures of the black smoke rising and all the air tankers dropping fire retardant including one DC-10. So that was interesting to watch even though I felt sad for the owners of the multimillion dollar homes that burned. I think they lost about 50 totally and another 30 partly burned.

We then went to a barbeque with extended family in Santa Barbara. I think there were about 50 of us with at least 5 or more new babies which is always nice energy especially for someone like me whose mother is dying with no grandkids yet to shower my attention towards.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend. However, I realized that life will never be what it once was again. But maybe that's a good thing?