Disneyland break!

Charlotte with her new best friend, Mickey. She hugged him, imitated him (Hoo hooo!), high-fived him, and gave him a sweet kiss on the tip of the nose. I think the mouse was smitten.

Disneyland with toddlers is nothing more than a really expensive photo op. The above picture, and the accompanying video (not yet posted) was worth the considerable cost. Charlotte's dad taught her weeks ago to imitate Mickey, and we've been saying "What does Mickey say?" since.

We had no way of knowing whether she would remember when she actually met the international star, or if she would freeze. But in the video, Charlotte turns back to her mom after greeting Mickey, and said "Hoo hoo!" like "Isn't that right, Mom?"

So this was why I couldn't post. We got to the hotel on Saturday night and I realized that I had no computer. So look for a new post late Saturday night. Oh, yeah, I'm getting married that day. Maybe I'll post Friday. But definitely by Sunday!

In not-so-hot water

Want a fun workout that is easy on the knees? Try aqua aerobics. This is about the age range in our water class.
http://blog.ultimatefitnessgear.com/

Cue the dramatic opening notes of Strauss' "Thus Sprach Zarathustra" for an important announcement: for the first time in my life, I have been going to the gym regularly for months.

Of course, I've been paying gym membership for years. Actually, since 24 Hour Fitness was Family Fitness, and they opened the facility on Palmdale Blvd. Hope always sprang eternal, and I knew I would get serious someday. Who knew it would take 20 years?

That's a sweet racket they have going. It's like insurance; I pay money in case the unexpected happens and I want to work out. I got a good introductory rate, and it seems cheaper to pay the amount to keep my options open. In addition to my $29 a month, I was paying $9 a month for my two daughters and their father to not go, also.

Inspired by an extremely fit coworker, I went for a spell in Lancaster during the late 90s. At 4:30 a.m. Ladies, if you can drag yourselves out of bed at that hour, you find gaggles of firefighters.

But a knee operation put the kibosh on those trips. I tried hobbling in on my crutches for a while to lift weights, but the logistics became too much.

After I had the heart scare, I decided that I should get serious. Besides, the wedding was coming up, so I thought I might take off few pounds. I don't know about the actual numbers, but I lost enough inches that the seamstress is having to alter my gown.

My crappy knees left me precious few choices when it came to cardio, so I headed for the pool. My older daughter went for a few sessions, and she was the youngest person there. You can tell how old people are by how they react to the music.

Our leader, Malyn, has a iPod stuffed with variety. I'm digging the OutKast, the boomers are singing along to "Rock the Boat" by the Hues Corporation, the Latina ladies sigh when Julio Iglesias comes on, and at the first strains of Sinatra's arrangement of "Something's Gotta Give," the over-70 ladies swoon, "Ooooh, Frankie!"

The pool is next to the steam room and the whirlpool, and the whole area is like a Margaret Mead study of suburban culture. If you're looking for hardbodies, try the free weight room. Around the spa looks more like an Alma-Tadema Orientalism painting of a seraglio, only the women aren't as good-looking or young.

The only fit people are inside the steam room. Young, cocky males with bulging biceps and tattoos use the window to watch themselves flex, insuring that those sitting in the spa see every muscle ripple, and every grimace.

The rest of us are all pretty much in the same leaky boat physically, except for the 20-something Suicide Girl who sashays back and forth from the steam room to the drinking fountain to make sure we all get a good look at her purple string bikini and myriad tattoos.

So, foam water-weights in hand, we do our jumping jacks, jack-knives, and snowboards in the water, thrashing around so the foaming water looks like it's full of piranha.

This image from amazon.com shows the water weights we use (only ours are all blue...).

I love being in the water, and I love the way I feel afterward. Now, when I don't go, I feel the difference. It's helped my knee, too.

Buy you know what I don't love? Zumba! And for some reason, the club keeps replacing our regular classes with this trendy blend of belly-dancing, cumbia, and aerobics set to world music.

That might be fun on land, but it doesn't translate in the water. Also, you don't use weights and it does nothing for your upper body or abs.

I could dance around at home, and I wouldn't have to endure the preternaturally cheerful young woman who leads this class. Sweating like a pig because she's doing the moves OUT of the water, she grins like a Cheshire cat the whole time. That ain't right.

I need to write a letter to 24 Hour telling them how much I like Malyn, and her calm, drill-instructor-like persona. I don't want to lose anymore classes to this fluff.

On the road again....

The MG is back and better than ever!

Man, I wish my dad were here to see the MG now.

After a month in the shop and an outrageous amount of money, I can actually drive the thing with a certain amount of confidence. Of course, it is still British, so anything could happen.

I still have the Lucas, Prince of Darkness wiring that means my headlights just shut themselves off when they feel like it, and I have to wiggle the on/off switch to get them back. But overall, things are looking pretty good.

The MG had been sitting in a garage for some time when I bought it, and anyone who knows anything about British cars will tell you that they loooove to be driven.

Driving down the new, improved Lancaster Boulevard.

But it seemed like every time I did drive it, something happened. My muffler fell off (you can read that story here), the cookie sheet-cum-oil drip catcher came off, my fuel pump crapped out, my carburetor needed to be rebuilt, and the poor little thing overheated and blew the heat sensor right out of the radiator.

If it weren't for my dad, I wouldn't have the car. I was short about $3,000 of the asking price, so I called him from work and asked for a loan. When I told him the details, he not only said yes, he added, "Tell him if he sells it to anyone else, we'll kill him."

Dad was also my mechanic. I worked alongside him and tried to learn everything I could. I was aware that his health was not good, and he was slowing down from his former workaholic pace. His back gave him a lot of pain, and he couldn't do everything he used to, which drove him crazy.

So I savored the time we had together, and was thankful that he managed to keep it running as long as he did. When he died, the car wasn't running, and it sat in my mother's front yard for a couple of years.

One of the reasons it sat so long was the lack of funds to fix it, but another, bigger reason was my association of the MG with Dad. I couldn't really imagine owning the car without him. Cars and airplanes were his passion, and he passed that love on to me. Someone asked me why I didn't sell the car, if I was going to let it sit in the side yard.

That sort of woke me up, and I realized that I needed to get the car repaired and drive it, if only to honor how much my dad loved it, and how much work he had already put into it.

Al and Barbara Smith sharing a laugh after his glider ride in 2007

Dad always had car restoration projects planned that never really panned out. He was forever buying things that needed fixing, but he never got around to them. He was busy, he was traveling for work, or something else needed repair.

The projects that did get complete to the point where you could drive them were his classic Ford Mustangs. He drove those as daily drivers, but every time he loaned me one, something went wrong.

Believe me, driving this car every day is no picnic. It takes 10 minutes to coax the seatbelt out of the retractor, you cook if the day is hot, there's no room to put anything because the car cover is in the trunk, it takes forever to warm up, and it idles at an obscenely high RPM until it warms up.

But damn, it is a lot of fun. It makes running errands feel like an adventure.

Yeah, it is a lot of fun. No wonder I'm smiling!

Use your freedom from choice!

My fruit bowl filled with goodies.

How is it possible that I gave birth to vegetarians?

Actually, Charlotte’s mother will tell you that she’s not a vegetarian, she’s organic, and there just aren't that many free-range, grass-fed, organic cows, pigs and chickens out there, and even if there were, she couldn't afford them.

And that's why she eats legumes.

But the budding cartographer tried to go vegetarian at about age 10, at which time I told her I wasn’t making two meals, and asked if she wasn’t going to get tired of peanut butter and jelly?
She is backsliding now, a result of keeping company with a culinary school alumnus. But for years, she avoided meat.

It seems that every generation in my family is getting better about eating their vegetables.
As one friend put it, Charlotte will probably turn out to be a militant vegan.

My mother refuses to eat any green food except green beans. I give her credit; she made us vegetables, even though the idea made her gag. But they were never fresh.
We ate broccoli because Green Giant made a boil-in-bag with cheese sauce.

To illustrate, my mom came home from the market one day when I was a teenager, and asked me to go to the store and buy two zucchini. “Mom! You just came from the store!” was my typically smart-ass teenage reply.

“I know,” she said, “But I have this zucchini bread recipe I want to try, and I don’t know what they look like and I was too embarrassed to ask.”
At that point, I’m not sure I could identify them either, but I was willing to ask someone.

I eat lots of fresh vegetables now, but I’m terrible at picking them out. I get stuff that ripens too fast, or never comes close to ripe. So it causes me great grief. I want to have a produce manager on retainer just to take the decision out of my hands.

So I was thrilled to find Abundant Harvest Organics, a co-op that takes the guesswork out of produce. My daughter, the mommyblogger, found out about it first, now I've been doing it for about a month. My friend's father calls it freedom from choice.

The box full of goodness from Abundant Harvest Organics

I went on the website and signed up to get a collapsible box filled with ripe vegetables and fruit from a variety of Southern California farms. It's environmentally more sound, too. When that egg recall went down, all I could think was "why the hell are we buying eggs from Iowa with all the egg farms in our own state?"

Lemon Leaf kitchen manager Helen picks up a box of vegetables and fruit from Kathryn Juybari-Johnson, area coordinator.

My friend Brenna found Abundant Organics in a parenting magazine, and she says it has completely transformed the way her family eats.

"We were worried that maybe this was going to be another expense that we really didn't need, but it has cut our grocery bill by 75%."

"And absolutely everything we've gotten is stellar."

Especially the tomatoes. I'm from New Jersey, where the tomatoes are sweet and succulent, and these are a close second.

Me, I still don't eat everything that shows up in the box. I think figs are disgusting, and eggplant gritty, so I pass that stuff along. My kids think I'm nuts, because they regard figs as manna from heaven. Thank heaven for the newsletter that gives you recipes and explains how to store things. Like this week we got fresh lemon basil.

It really forces you to cook, or throw stuff out, so if you are cheap at all (and I am) you'll make the most of it. I made fresh tomato sauce to put over my spaghetti squash a few weeks ago. But the produce ignorance was passed down, apparently, because I had to send a photo of green round things to the mommyblogger to find out that they were Asian pears.

I thought pears were, well, pear-shaped.

Patrons line up to pick up their cases of produce in front of Lemon Leaf restaurant on Lancaster Blvd.