The City Of Queens, Kings, and Angels

First and foremost, we are doing just fine. Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to come over with their own hammers and elbow grease and put our Humpty Dumpty the Double Wide back together again. We will be sure to keep y'all posted on the New Roof ETA! Secondly we fled the scene of the crime last week, and here's the scoop...

Since the insurance man couldn't deign to make it out to our house, The Hub and I got to attend the final farewell for The Hub Family Ruling Matriarch. Yes sadly the Grande Dame Hub-Gramma decided to make her final exit the morning after Christmas, drifting off in her sleep. I won't assume that any death is pleasant, but if you have to go, doing so at the age of 98 while napping sounds like the best possible way for it to happen. On an awkward side note, don't you find it a little more than creepy that the funeral home was so booked they couldn't get her in until two weeks later? I do, ick. Regardless, the service was lovely, The Hub's family is lovely (literally too!) and we had gorgeous weather. So, I think Gramma was sent off in the style she was well known for, simple yet elegant. Now, moving on from this rather dour subject...

The rest of the week/weekend was surprisingly pleasant. One of the cousins gave us his tickets to see the LA hockey team (the Kings, for those of you who aren't yet familiar) and we CREAMED the Coyotes. Yay! I have been quite distressed this winter since I haven't been able to play any hockey (due to the budding critter in my body) so it was a nice, safe way to experience the thrill, at least vicariously. Now, if only it had been a women's hockey team!

The rest of the days were a pleasant blur of sunny beach walking, fresh farmers' market lunches, some light shopping and mellow family dinners. Unfortunately somewhere in there TH came down with the cranial cavity creeping crud, and sounded like a dying walrus gargling motor oil. Poor Hub. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the two straight days he spent on the roof in the driving wind and rain. Can you hear that? I'm playing the violin, just for him. Listen.

The weekend was capped off with a Catholic mass in Gramma's name at the Hungarian Catholic Church (St. Stephen's, again for the uninitiated). This was an entire mass, spoken in a foreign language that I had no hope of following. Wow. The cool thing about the church though, is that it has its own attached restaurant/bar. Unfortunately something in the air disagreed with The Hub-Dad's underlings, and we didn't make it that far. One by one all three of us (Hub, Hub-Sis, and myself) became light headed and dizzy and had to leave the church. Ah well, embarrassing, but I can pretty much blame everything on the gherkin these days. Lucky me. And the poor gargling walrus didn't stand a snowball's chance.

So on the agenda for the coming weekend? I thought I'd take a stab at Christmas presents. Ha ha ha hahahahaaahahaha And perhaps clearing some of the detritus from the front lawn. Big. Detritus. Happy MLK day!