Ketchup, part 2: Trip to California, subpart B.

And shortly the All Hallows Eve, full of sugar and expensively-suited small people running up your steps, was upon us.

Halloween-y at Joosh's mom's place. Nephew Liam, being the damn cutest giraffe you'll ever see. Except that his outfit was a tiny bit too tight and he kept trying to yank the crotch free. Technically he was a bit of a skeevy giraffe, I guess.



And still later in the week I drove through parts of LA previously unknown to me (Irvine, Santa Ana, godforsaken places one and all) to see El Jefe, with whom I'd been working on the aforementioned ridiculous project for the last few months. We were supposed to go the Oceanography center, but when I arrived at about 1, there was a police blockade, so we renegotiated our plan to involve mediocre pizza and a park for some fun times.

The kids were along for the ride, and if you know Jefferey and his lovely wife, you'll know at first glance that these two are literal chips off the old blocks. May I present Mini-JLG and Mini-CSH:


They are incredibly funny and absurdly smart. And it's probably a good thing they are home-schooled, because they are the kinds of adorable precocious who would get their hilarious butts kicked and their brains shrunk in public schools (yes, even the snotty la la schools in So. Cal!).

Here I asked them to make their kookiest craziest grossiest faces. This is what they came up with:

With a smidge more prompting (grosser! crazier! C'mon!):



Ash conquers the rings:



Autum(nal) conquers the rock wall:















El Jefe conquers Dana Point (while rocking the ever-sweet 'Refugee Facial Hair' look, apparently grown during the wildfire evacuation the previous week):




The entire family (sans CSH who did not join, but was surely wearing them within a hundred miles of us all the same) wore Crocs. I found this funny.



Hipster parents and their hipster spawn, taking over the world one dress-over-jeans or punked-out-hoodie outfit at a time:

(Please note the evidence of California's real estate market shining on the hilltop in the background, just above jeans/dress girls head).

I didn't get a good shot of the possibly older women dressed youngisher (so of indeterminable age) in tight leopardy-slash militantish yoga wear who Jefe insisted were a lesbian couple. I had hoped you might weigh in on the subject. They were wearing Neimen Marcus versions of ghetto caszh, basically. And I disagreed about the couple thing. But Jefe also thinks that JK Rowling outed Dumbledore (who is CLEARLY not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that) in order to make the actress who plays Hermione feel better about the fact that she is, in fact, a total lesbian. So take his assessments with a grain (or several) of salt.


Prior to the arrival of the other kids in the photo above, I had a total "That kid is STILL on the ESCALATOR" moment with this aging skater punk dad and the daredevil egg-onment of his progeny.

It might be too small to see without enlarging the photo to full size, but man, I could practically hear the bones breaking, precognitive echoes playing over the voice of Brodyman in Mallrats in my head. A few minutes later they busted out a skateboard and went to town. No, no helmut. (God help me, I'm an old old old lady).

So that's about it. There were many other activities on the California trip, of which I did not manage to photo document any further. Visits with grandparents, brothers, mom, dad, step-brother and fam (where I broke the news about the fact that one of their Halloween pumpkins was covered in the recalled "Aqua Dots" beads, you know, the ones that turn into the frickin date rape drug when ingested? Thank you, China, you piece of shit, and thanks all you nutjob USA consumers so desperate for cheaper and cheaper crap that you don't give a rat's ass about where it comes from, how it gets here, what the impact is, etc, until your own spawn are threatened with immediate comas or a case of lead poisoning. Grrrrrr. Though I should offer the caveat that the Aqua Dots were not at all cheap, they are absurdly expensive, actually - I guess you have to pay extra for a drug in your toys that some people actually want and pay good money to procure on or before date night).

Hmmm, I seem to be getting bitter and crankypants. Perhaps I should leave off about now. I meant to end with a tribute to my love and yours, Mr. Ben Harper, who graced us in Portland with his harmonious presence last week, but my account of the lovefest, it will have to wait.

Congrats to Bexy on her last day of classes for the first semester!!! Crazy fast, this semester flew by. I've yet to try the New Year's Drink contender recipe yet, but I will do so soon. There's always the sweet Saphire nectar to fall back on come 29 December, right? Congrats, honey. You are totally rocking the school of law.

Ketchup, part 2: Trip to California, subpart A.

Trip to California: The Cemetery Visit.

My favorite Un-Niece, Hedrita. Joosh's older brother's daughter. She let's me call her "Cookie" just like the Jewish Tante I've always wanted to be.

She and my youngest brother are the same age, and went to the same High School and according to what I have gathered on Facebook (The MyFace, I call it), they refer to each other as cousins. But if Joosh and I actually did get married, she'd be my niece (by marriage, but still) and my brother would be... her uncle-in-law? My brother would be Joosh's Brother-in-Law, and Joosh is her uncle, so wouldn't that be it? Uncle-in-Law? Maybe they'll have to stick with cousins. It'll be much more fitting for the day when they get drunk at a party and make out and I have to tease them incessantly by calling them "Kissing Cousins". God, I hope they don't find this blog. They will kill me.



On Sunday, the day after we arrived, I went with the not-in-laws to visit the family cemetery plots. Our friend ML here in Portland has been doing some Geneology research (she LOVES it, apparently - ask her about the Royal Family line, go ahead, I dare you), and Joosh's mom is in that sort of family reckoning stage of life, so armed with two notebooks and some vague plot numbers, off we went to the most beautiful, most glamorous, possibly the most would-be-expensive-land/ currently-occupied-only-by-dead-people-not-able-to-enjoy-the-million-dollar-view I have ever seen. Right on the bluffs at the edge of Santa Barbara, this no doubt used to be the outskirts of town. No longer. It is smack dab in the middle of Oprah territory, huge swaths of gravestone-dotted prime-ass real estate, totally gorgeous. Breathtaking.

First we went to the park where Jojo got married and had ourselves an old-fashioned picnic full of mayo and cookies and lunchmeat, etc. Char made fabulous hummus for her (shockingly) vegetarian brother (meat family, very very meat family) and the jackass refused to eat it. I found out later it was because he thought the roasted peppers were tomatoes, but that may or may not be the full truth of it, one never knows.

At the park, we totally annoyed some hippie dippie group of Food-Not-Bomb'ers having some sort of free-out in the center by the turtle pond. Apparently we sat down too close to their food collection area or something, and they kept looking at us with decidedly un-peaceful expressions. Peace and love kids, peace and love. Hopefully we redeemed ourselves when several homeless looking dudes came over and asked for food, saying they'd been told there was food to be had by the tree (all I saw were sacks of uncooked potatoes, by the way, and a fuck-off HUGE clear hefty sack of hard-tack looking bagels with a double knot at the top that people kept picking up and putting back down again). We gave them food, and they were excited.

Best moment by the tree: An adorably overeager college student came over and dropped a brown bag off on the other side of the tree (where the bagels and potatoes and oh oh, I forgot to mention the rotten looking bell peppers! were) and turned to us with a jaunty little informational sing song: "Butternut squash! From my garden! Organic! Tra la la!" Oh Peace and Conflict Studies peeps, how I miss you.

So up to the Ritz Carlton of cemeteries. It took us a while to find the right plots. In fact we had to flag down a groundskeeper. It was a Sunday, so the main office wasn't open, but there was a tour of some kind being led around the grounds. I was exceedingly annoyed by a super disrespectful woman wearing a green and black striped witches hat throughout the tour. Show some respect, lady, jesus. I seriously wanted to yell at her, but settled for sneering whenever she passed. I'm not sure if she noticed or not. It was sunny and there was lots of squinting, so I highly doubt it.

Here, for your amazement, are more cemetery photos (I'm obviously having trouble getting images to rotate, but it's too late at night for me to bother with it, so apologies for the neck cramp in case you care to turn sideways for viewing).











Bury me here please. Oh wait, I want to be cremated, or neptuned or something. So scatter me here, or in that beautiful sea off the bluffs from here. Or just think of me fondly when you pass by.

We managed to find both family plots, but there's a bit of a mystery about the Sprouls because there are 5 people listed on the records as buried in the plot, but only 3 names appear on the newer looking headstone, and the dates of birth and death appear to be off slightly. Hmmmmm.

At some point when I am feeling less "What am I going to do with the rest of my life" and more "Nancy Drew" I may attempt to get to the bottom of this like the super sleuth I know I can be in my heart of hearts. I suspect it will be a nice chunk of a novel one of these days, from all the stories I've heard so far. (And you thought YOUR family was bad?!?).