Me and the Muppets

I actually wanted to title this post "Blurred Lines" because I knew it would get a ton of hits, but not necessarily the ones I wanted.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it.

That cord you see in the blurry image above is my link to Japan for my classes.  This weekend I held my two Saturday morning classes away from home as I was dogsitting for four nights.  In order to get proper lighting for my glorious image I needed to move to the kitchen of the house I was staying in and the owner provided me with a super long cord for my necessary hard wire link. 

And I, of course, DID look glorious.

The muppets, oops, dogs I was watching were quiet as mice in the background.

You can see why I came up with the muppet reference.

Two sweet Wheaton Terriers, the second one quite old and needing daily meds, hence my overnight stays.

Hardly a hardship.

An appropriate staircase for my glorious self to ascend each night to a comfy bed.

A gorgeous backyard view

Beautiful sunsets each night

I was excited to see a friend from home. Staghorn fern. Several of them, just like my big old one, "Bananas".  If I had known they could survive in this climate I might have risked an encounter with the state border police.

The muppets did a lot of this..

...so it was not a hard gig at all.

There's my cord again!

Such sweet dogs.

Yep.

Muppets.

Happy Thanksgiving to Our Friends and Family!

We are thankful for you all!

From Google Images

Happy Thanksgiving from our house to yours. Please click here!

From 1969 to 2013

Today is a date that people look back on with dismay, horror and sadness.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F Kennedy.

In our family, 

today's date marks an important day in the life of one our family's most important members, my father.  This year he would have been 95!  

A large coincidence has occured in my life lately.  I am living in an area that my father, my mother and I visited in 1969.  My father had his own small airplane and in the "Summer of 69" he decided he and I would make a cross-country trip from Toronto, Canada to Fullerton, California.  My mother, not a fan of the small plane, opted to go by train and met us there.

Fullerton? 

 The name of that town has always stuck in my head since that trip when I was 10 years old. It was to that town's airport that we landed after passing by the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, Las Vegas and Arizona after several days of flying.

Fullerton?

Well, it happens to be quite close to the "Happiest Place on Earth", the place I had dancing around in my head the entire trip. 

Disneyland!

The coincidence?  Well, our new home happens to be about 15 minutes away from Disneyland and Fullerton is just another 10 minutes up the road.  All these years I never really understood why we landed and stayed in Fullerton.  In fact it wasn't until yesterday that I realized that we landed at the Fullerton airport - or that they had one.

Mr. Tennis called me from the road and said, "when you and your dad flew here, did you land at Fullerton Airport?"  Well, it hadn't occurred to me, but of course we must have since we stayed in Fullerton during our California visit.

So, in between puppies today I drove to Fullerton to see for myself where we most likely landed 44 years ago.

My dad loved that plane and called it "Romeo"  after the first letter in it's call sign.

  RGE - Romeo Gulf Echo.

Seeing the small airport didn't stir any particular memories about that trip, but I admit to getting misty-eyed looking at the small planes on the tarmac.  Surely that's where we parked Romeo and tied him down.

Surely that windsock has been replaced overtime, but it's one of the things I always look for at a small airport as my dad was always consulting them for wind direction.

Surely my father was smiling today as he saw his daughter return to what must be where we left Romeo while we visited with Mickey and the gang, went swimming in the Pacific at Long Beach, drove up to Hollywood and toured Universal Studios.

I could only find these prices from 1967, but my haven't times changed?

I know I'm smiling as I remember being 10 years old and experiencing the magic of Disney for the first time with my late parents.

I need to return to Disneyland for the second time, now that we live here. When I go, I will try to hear my dad's laughter as he too enjoyed "The Happiest Place on Earth" for the first time with his daughter.

The daughter for whom he flew his little plane all the way across this massive country so she could see some magic.

 Now that's an E-ticket ride!

Happy Birthday to my father, Richard S. Hughes!

Blog Break Almost Over!

I've been taking an unannounced blogging break, but I plan to be up and running again later this week.  I've missed catching up with the latest news with all my friends out there in blogland, but like Stanley the greyhound below, I needed a break and some time to figure out my new schedule (as if there is one!) and how I can fit in all the things I like to do in a week.

As you can see Stan is enjoying his new, comfy bed at The Writer and Sammy's house.

I hope everyone is well and as Arnold liked to say:

I'll be back...

Red Sky at Night....

...Sailor's Delight.

Caught this sunset off of Balboa Pier, which is about 25 minutes from Boston Manor.

Mr. Tennis and I walked along the pier and watched as the sun dipped low, then lit up the sky with some beautiful orange and red colors.

 (or Orange and Blue, as we Florida Gators like to think the sunsets are for us - so egocentric are we!)

And indeed, the weather has been delightful here.

Hope you are having wonderful weather and that the week ahead is a delight for all my friends and family out there!

A beautiful sunset always makes me think of my mother who always used to love to say 

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight"!

I miss her.

Hello! I'm as Healthy as a Horse! (well, kind of)

I'm still here!

I promise!

I've been spending a lot of time on the computer, just not looking at blogs or writing my own.

I miss it, but right now I have to use my computer time to teach my Japanese students.

I learn something new everyday from them.  Such dedicated students  learning English for various reasons. Some travel a lot for business and want to be able to speak easily with their international clients/customers/co-workers.  Others want to expand their English vocabularies so they may apply for better or more interesting jobs.  

One woman is a homemaker and she simply wants to learn English as a challenge for herself. And she always takes the business classes because she finds them more interesting and challenging. She is one of my best students!

This week we covered illness and injuries and how to describe your symptoms to a doctor, if necessary, overseas.  Imagine how difficult some of the words and terms were for these students.

I have lost my appetite.

I am running a fever.

Heartburn 

Opthalmologist (try explaining how to pronounce that one!)

Healthy as a horse (just how healthy are these horses?)

Osteoporosis

Cardiac Arrest

Caught a cold

Lots of idioms and phrases that we don't think twice about saying.

We had some fun with some of them, but sheesh, I'm glad this particular lesson is over, it was the hardest one I have taught yet.

Speaking of being Healthy as a Horse...

How about Healthy as a Dexter?

Sitting in the Plumeria tree in our side yard last week during his stay with us.  If I let him he would have stayed out there 24/7.

My new favorite picture of him:

.

The Maven is glad to be back home and have her kittehs with her again.

She arrived back safe and sound.

We had one of those, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moments yesterday when the tragic news broke about the shooting at LAX.  Two days earlier she had been in Terminal 3, walking the same hallways that were in such chaos yesterday.

Appreciate each day, I say.

And have a great weekend!

Let's Catch Up!

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here and I find I have less time to browse through my favorite blogs lately.  Since it is something I enjoy doing so much, I am going to make time for it because I need to catch up with what's been going on with all my blog friends!

I feel like I'm wearing a lot of different hats these days.

One of my favorite books when I was little!

I get up early most days, grab a cup of coffee, fire up my computer, get my lesson plans ready and do two classes with my Japanese students.  For me it is 6am, for them it is 10pm at night.  I say "good evening" to them, and I'm not mixed up because it's still dark outside here.

I'm loving teaching these classes!  Because these students are adults and motivated, the classes are fun and interesting for me as well as for them.  I learn something new everyday too.  For instance, I didn't know that they drive on the left side of the road in Japan!

Yep.  They do!

After my classes I will somedays have to rush off to take care of a morning client, such as this guy, a sweet terrier mix.

"I didn't like TBL at first, but she won me over with all those treats and her squeaky voice"

His "parents" were gone on vacation for a week so I would visit him twice a day.  The first day I showed up he was standing on top of their bed, teeth bared, barking and growling at me.  I knew he was supposed to be wary of strangers, but I did not expect that.  Fortunately the owners had left some of his favorite treats and I was able to coax him outside.  I worked with him all week, each day getting closer to my goal of being able to scratch his tummy.  Did I reach that goal?

  Yes!  

By day seven, we were on good terms.  He would come down stairs, go outside, let me pet him, take the treat from my hand, lay down, roll over and let me scratch his belly.

I felt really good about that!

Most weekdays I have two puppies I visit for mid-day breaks while their owners are at work.

You've already seen my stress therapist, the golden-doodle.  He a little bundle of fluffy energy, but I did manage to catch him in a pensive moment this week.

"I wanna play with the big kids, TBL!"

My other puppy is a female Rhodesian Ridgeback, who is just a sweetheart.  I have an hour visit with her while her dad works, so we go for walks and learn things such as "sit", "come", "leave it".

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful - I'm also a funny goofball!"

She lives in a very nice neighborhood not too far from us and when I first arrived I saw house-filled hills behind her house. 

 I knew I'd have to go up there and take a look one day and this week I did. 

 Lots of winding roads and no pullovers, so I will have to rely on Mr. T to drive me up there so I can take some pictures of the lovely homes and the views.

This week also brought some Hollywood glamour to my day as I found out they were filming a home-improvement show across the street from the Rhodesian Ridgeback.  I leashed her up thinking the crew would be charmed enough to tell me which show.

They were charmed, but not enough to give me any juicy details.  This trailer is still parked there so we will be investigating further during walks next week.

After my mid-day dog duties I usually come home and teach one or two more classes to my Japanese people.  By then it is early morning for them, so they are the ones sipping coffee and trying to wake up.  This week they had an earthquake in Japan with Tsunami warnings.  I always try to have something to chat with the students with at the beginning of the class and I was excited to find out about this earthquake.  None of them even knew about it!!  I told them it was on the evening national news here in the US. "We get them all the time" I was told. They seemed amused that it had made it to our news here.

Look who's visiting!  Dexter!  And there's blurry Bumby trying to look blase in the background.

If I have canines, such as the terrier I mentioned above whose people are on vacation, I start to get ready to go back for my evening visit and tuck them in for the night, usually around 7-8pm.

Of course, with Dexter comes Darcy with her own brand of blase.

And that's been my typical day for the last couple of weeks!  If it is spaced out nicely, it is no problem, but one day I had five dogs to tend to and four classes - that kept me running!

So, I'm enjoying this new phase of life.  It's a big change for me, but a good change that I am finally adapting to.

The Maven is in Orlando visiting her college friends and look who she also saw while she was there:

Reunited again.  Orlando Grandma and The Maven.  

It's good to see that picture of them together.

(I hope one of you ate tuna in my memory!)

And my final thought is about this:

Brussel Sprouts on the stalk.  They are very popular here in Cali. I didn't like them as a kid, but I'm thinking there must be a new, delicious way to cook them that I am just not aware of.  Anyone have any good Brussel Sprout recipes??

Share away please!

Hope your weekend is great!

Three Amigos

Occasionally we have a small flock of parrots arrive in the courtyard here at Boston Manor, but today we had a very large flock and a very loud one.

They are almost impossible to see amongst the green leaves, but I was able to get some pictures of three friends perched together.

These three seemed to be interested in me as I took some pictures of them.

Sitting together, squawking and cleaning each other.

They have been outside making the biggest racket for a few hours now.

These are Magnolia trees (I believe) and they love the seeds - I must get a picture of them, they are bright red, no wonder they attract these funny birds.

Of course I must share with you, my friends....

Apparently we are living in a jungle!!

Happy week ahead!

Best Stress Therapist Ever!

It's been a week of stress for us at Boston Manor.

But each day I met with a great therapist who would greet me enthusiastically, 

go outside, pee and  poop, exactly where he should

 and then come inside and attack me with licks and wags.

And I'm the one who gets paid!

Happy weekend to everyone. 

 I hope to have some time to visit my favorite blogging buddies...

Thursday Thoughts: Computers, Canines, Craziness and Glasses

Here's one of my latest "clients".  A Doxie/Beagle mix.

We spent last weekend in each other's company and had lots of fun.

Three month old puppy kind of fun.

After the weekend things really started popping around Boston Manor.

On the not-so-good side, 

The Maven is back in the hospital with a bad stomach ailment.  Doc said she was very dehydrated and needed to have some tests done.

On the it-gets-better side, 

she is doing better and didn't have appendicitis as they suspected she might. One more night and they should release her on Thursday.

Fortunately I did not have canine commitments on Monday and Tuesday so I drove up to LA with my computer.  It was my first experiment in running my Japanese/English classroom from a remote location - The Writer and Sammy's house.  I stayed there so I could dash to the hospital and dash back to their house to hold my classes.  Went off without a hitch.

Which brings me to glasses....

The ones I lost in the move last year.

The ones that I searched for EVERYWHERE.

Including the computer case I packed my computer in when I was up in LA this week.

And no.

I did not find them.

Mr. T did.

When he unpacked said computer case last night when I came back home to Boston Manor.

Do you know how many times I looked in that computer case after the move?

Millions!

Trillions! 

BaZillions!

Well.

At least I have them back now.

And a spare pair.

And it's only Wednesday as I write this.

Five canines in the next week starting today.

And my classes.

And all my glasses.

And The Maven. Who I hope will be back in ship shape!