calherewecome

Today we attended the birthday for Sophie, Sophie turned two. She is the grand-daughter of our friends John and Chris Coil who live up in Davis, CA. The party was held at a nice park up in Santa Monica.
For my east coast friends, Santa Monica is a community about 10-20 miles west of downtown LA. We get there by taking the 405 north and then the 10 west. It is about a 45-60 minute drive from San Pedro. No big deal on a Sunday morning. Traffic was light and no delays. More about the party later.
So we had talked about meeting our friend Roberta at the Long Beach Greyhound station. I screwed up in not looking at text message detail from the previous night. Roberta had decided no to come. So no big deal, we would continue on to Santa Monica.
We were up early this morning to get ready. Of all the Sundays that Mary K didn’t go to church, she decided that she had to go to church today. We had told her about the party weeks ago. Of course, she didn’t remember anything about the conversation. She never remembers. So she tells us that she would call a cab. We ask do have money for that? Do you have phone number for cab company? So we decide to take her to church and drop her off. We called one of her friends to ask her to give her a ride home. I made sure that Mary had her cell phone and her house keys. So far, so good. I reminded her how to call me. I have speed dial set up on her phone. All she has to do is push the number 2 for 5 seconds.
Okay back to Santa Monica. Santa Monica has been in the news back in Boston over the last few days. Dunkin Donuts will be opening new restaurants on the West Coast. The first one was opened this past Tuesday in Santa Monica. So we think great, we’ll stop by and get an iced coffee and a donut. I load up the address on my GPS on my iPhone and off we go. We arrive at the address on Wilshire Blvd. Line is out the door and around the block. No DD iced coffee today. I reset the GPS to the park address and we continue on to the party. We’ll eventually get to a DD out here once the hoopla dies down. For the time being however, there’s Starbucks.
Santa Monica is also famous for being the location where Whitey Bulger hung out while on the lamb from the FBI for many years. By the way the unit went on the market recently.
Sasha and Zach (Sophie’s parents) had provided us with bagels and coffee and other treats. I found out that little Sophie likes cream cheese but doesn’t care for the bagel. So she had licked all of the cream cheese off of the bagel and didn’t eat the bagel. Good for a laugh.
There were lots of little kids at the party, the oldest probably about three or so. Lots of infants too.
So at about noon, I get a phone call from Mary. She had arrived home from church. She had gotten inside the perimeter door but couldn’t find the key for the condo door or couldn’t open the door. Now I know for sure that the key is on that key ring. Paula and I try to describe it to her. Eventually one of our neighbors helped her open the door. So we now have a couple of action items. Get some graphite to lubricate the lock and mark the key with some finger nail polish.
We never seem to be able to predict what kind of predicament that Mary can manage to get herself in. All of our best efforts to prepare for any eventuality are fraught with peril.
Here are a few pictures from the party.

This entry was posted on September 7, 2014 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Aging, California, Family. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Aging, Mary, Santa Monica