Steampunk deluxe!

The first wedding on the BLVD! We kiss in front of Vijay Patel's 41 Pontiac the night of the wedding. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

I plopped the filthy wedding dress on the counter of the dry cleaners and smiled sheepishly.

"I hope you can get this out," I said sweetly, pointing out the hem. "It's motor oil."

The look on her face was priceless. She stared at me incredulously and sighed in a disgusted manner. I shrugged, saying "I got married in a parking lot."

Which was the truth in a sense, but how could I explain to her the wonderland that the Lemon Leaf Lot became the night of my wedding?

I found the magical transformation difficult to believe myself.

A few days before the wedding I was getting mysterious phone calls from my friend Maria Elena, the owner of the Lemon Leaf, where she would enthuse about how awesome my wedding was going to be. She never provided any details; she would just gush and say, "I can't wait until Saturday!"

Little did I know that she was watching my friends Barbara Letson and Dan Venturoli creating the elements of a steampunk wonderland in the Leaf Room, next to the parking lot.

A detail of the amazing decorations at the wedding. The wedding couple's initials and a candelabra are wrapped with wire and a variety of gears in steampunk fashion.Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

There were brass lanterns atop vines twinkling with tiny lights in the middle of each table. Everything was swathed in chocolate brown taffeta, gold sparkly tulle, ivory linens, brown tulle, and lit with a profusion of candles. Each place had a tiny wooden steamer trunk filled with dark-chocolate covered expresso beans.

All the steampunk iconography was there: huge clocks, gears, brass, and copper. Everything but the goggles. Our friend Tim Kirk brought his, just in case we'd like to have the officiant wear them. Tim and his wife Linda Lee added to the ambience by bringing in a case of wine they had relabeled with a custom "Steampunk Merlot" label which featured a caricature of Jim and me.

A detail from the wine label done by artist and friend Tim Kirk. He and his wife Linda pasted the labels on a case of wine and transformed it into Steampunk Merlot with our caricatures on it.

The napkin rings were lengths of wire wrapped around the napkins, and hung with tiny gears. Guests were turning them into bracelets and wearing them.

The ceremony itself was drama-free. I hesitated dropping my gown's train onto the cement of the lot, but it had to be done, so I tried to not think about what was becoming of it. That taffeta confection cost more than my hand-me-down Saturn is worth; I hated dragging it around.

The flower girls made it down the aisle under their own steam, presumably. I couldn't see them. Poor flower girl Tori — she had practiced strewing silk autumn leaves in my path, then was told to hold Charlotte's hand instead.

So, ultimately, no one threw leaves; the flower girls held hands on one side, and carried their baskets in the other hand. By all accounts, Charlotte clambered up on the stage all by herself. She made up for her good behavior by refusing to pose for photos on the girl's side of the stage, because she wanted her daddy.

I was rather glad I had bought her dress, when I say the state of it the next day. Charlotte took more than one face plant that night, and the front of the gown was filthy.

Valerie Estrada, of Little Blue World Photography was our wedding photographer and she grabbed Jim and me and took us out on the BLVD to pose for pictures. She had spotted Vijay Patel's 1941 Pontiac at the curb, and thought it would make a great backdrop, and it did.

My crazy sister thought we had hired Vijay's car for the evening, and sometime during the reception started filling the back seat with balloons. Eventually, she figured it out, and instead tied balloons to the luggage rack of the MG, and wired an empty can of Mike's Hard Lemonade underneath.

That was a particularly cruel joke to play on the owner of a classic car. When Jim and I made our getaway, I heard that god-awful noise and thought I was dragging my muffler. Again.

Crap is always falling off that car; who knew?

I'm still piecing the details of wedding, Rashomon-like, now that a week has passed. But so far it looks like everyone had a good time. My friend Ed Harbour did an amazing job as a DJ, and he kept the floor filled by playing 1980s New Wave.

Jim and I got to show off our hours of ballroom dancing practice, even though the tango was a little difficult with that much dress between us.

I will show more photos when I get them, but now I have to pack for my honeymoon to New York City, and I'm falling asleep. Sorry, there are no Charlotte photos. You'll have to wait until next week.

Those dance lessons with Iris really paid off. The groom is treading on my gown, but how could he not? There's so much of it. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

Getting to the altar

By the time you read this, I will be a married woman.

We’re praying that the rain, thunder, and lightning give Lancaster a pass, but one never knows.

The wedding venue has undergone considerable weather-related adjustment, because the open sky lit by hundreds of lights envisioned by our hostess, Maria Elena, is threatened by the unseasonable storm.

We already gave up the dance floor, because we couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t get rained on.

I read in the paper that this is a down year for weddings, that because of the recession, people are forgoing tying the knot. Leave it to me to buck a trend, any trend.

We have been running our own private economic stimulus program for about a year now. I wanted to postpone until things picked up, but my beloved was so anxious to close the deal, he convinced me.

At first, we wanted to get married at Union Station, in the long-shuttered Fred Harvey restaurant. Its marriage of art deco and Southwest décor, along with its unique layout would have been perfect.

The now-closed Fred Harvey restaurant at Union Station, taken during an L.A. Conservancy tour.

We are L.A. Conservancy members and the idea of getting married in the romantic old train station that has been seen in so many movies was irresistible. I pictured myself walking down the staircase on my wedding day. Alas, the cost was prohibitive.

The company wanted $5,000 for the restaurant alone.

That was for four walls and a security guard to keep out wedding crashers. No chairs, decorations, food, nothing.

Still, I clung to this idea for a long time. Then, we decided that the important thing was to throw a really fun party for our family and friends, and that five grand could be put to better use buying beer, so why not Oktoberfest?

Sure, we could hire the oompah band Anton Schnitzel and the Merry Makers to be our wedding singers, get multiple kegs of beer, and blue checkered tablecloths, but about the time my German friend Barbara (aka the Mad Psychic) started talking about dirndls and lederhosen, I got cold feet.

Those ideas rather clashed with the elegant wedding gown and suave tux I had in my head. I’m all for kitsch, but on my wedding day? Not so much.

So, sitting in the Lemon Leaf with the owner, Maria Elena, the beer-bash turned into an elegant wedding under an October sky and strings of fairy lights. Which morphed again, when I decided to have a steampunk themed wedding.

Every wedding has to have a theme which drives the color palette, decorations, and favors. It can be as simple as a spring garden wedding, or, like my daughter’s February nuptials: a winter wonderland.

I started with autumn leaves, Which frankly, was boring. I liked the colors, but it didn’t reflect my rather flamboyant personality. Then I ordered a steampunk necklace from etsy.com, where artists sell their handmade works.

Steampunk is the marriage of Victoriana and science fiction: think of the future as imagined by Jules Verne, or the old 60s television series "Wild, Wild West." The iconography is brass, copper, goggles, dirigibles, clocks, keys, exposed gears, and advanced technology powered by steam, instead of solid state circuits.

My necklace had gears, airships and keys on it, and I seized on that as my theme. I found steampunk jewelry on etsy for my attendants, and arranged to have a custom necklace made for me.

But when it came to dressing steampunk, it started all falling apart. Extending the theme to your wedding clothes is impossible to do without having it look like a costume. And I was resigned to making my dress: a Victorian gown with a removable bustle. But getting bridesmaid's dresses was proving difficult, and I didn't have time to make them all.

In the end, we went with touches of steampunk and traditional taffeta dresses. The only sewing I did was for the older flowergirl. I had intended to make both dresses, hers and Charlotte's, but I ran out of time.

I was trying to teach, grade papers for four classes, plan a wedding, stain 100 little wooden boxes for favors, and sew. Something had to give, and it was C's dress. I bought it from that adorable cart in the mall.

This is the ridiculously messy state of my tiny living room while I was sewing the flower girl dress.

This is the front and back of the flower girl dress I made in my ridiculously messy living room.

There were times when it felt like we were never going to get it all done. We were still working on the boxes of chocolate-covered expresso beans the day of the wedding. But eventually, we crossed the finish line. Next week, I will tell story of the wedding itself, and how my friends turned a parking lot next to the Lemon Leaf into a steampunk wonderland.

This is a gratuitous photo of Charlotte, just because she's so damn cute! Next week, you will see her in her flower girl dress.

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.

A new beginning!

So, I'm not sure why the paper dropped my column, but I did hear rumblings that they thought I wrote about my upcoming wedding too much (three times in nine weeks!), and that Charlotte appears too much.

Frankly, everywhere I go, people in the community tell me how much they love to hear about my granddaughter (OK, maybe they are grannies themselves, I don't know), and the best part is that here on the internet, you can see the most maddening child in the world for yourself. Like the photo above. See the ornery expression? That's Charlotte.

Last weekend we went to Napa to celebrate my youngest daughter's engagement. She's marrying an assistant winemaker who, despite the fact that he works at Cade, a beautiful winery in the mecca of California wine country, took a job with a winery on Long Island. Did YOU know they made wine in New York? Yeah, me neither.

So my daughter is moving 3,000 miles away, immediately after my wedding, and I'm kinda heartbroken. The happy couple points out that I only see her half a dozen times a year anyway, and she can fly from N.Y. just as easily as she can from San Francisco, but I point out that it's not as cheap from there.

So we all flew up to the Bay Area and had a party in a vineyard where my future son-in-law lives. His landlord is a retired doctor who lives in S.F. during the week and comes home on weekends to his little spot of heaven, where the rows of grapevines come right up to the patio.

If I were a wine-lover, it would have been even more amazing, because fellow vintners came to the party bearing bottles of reserve and estate wines from their own bottlings, and everyone seemed to be very happy. Me, I was drinking gin and tonic.

You can get wine everywhere in Napa; it's insane. We went to a hamburger joint that's obviously very popular, judging by the lines. You order at a Dairy Queen-like window, then take your food to picnic tables out back. And they have a wine list that would put many Antelope Valley restaurants to shame.

The next day, we toured Cade, and it is a marvel of design. They built the wine cave themselves, and it's difficult to believe that a hole in the side of a hill could be so stylish. My photos don't do it justice.

My daughter's fiance tapped a cask of wine that goes for about $200 a bottle. I gave mine to my kid. It was wasted on me. I can't tell the difference between the good stuff and Two-Buck Chuck. I can tell fine wine from Ripple or Annie Green Springs, but that's about it.

So we got to meet the prospective in-laws, who are lovely people, and my daughter's friends, who are sad to see her go.

Charlotte's mother, brave soul that she is, undertook this journey sans husband, and her blog about it is here. Charlotte liked the winery fine, although, like me, she never drinks wine. And she got to stay up at the party so long she had to put on her PJs.

I'm still getting the hang of this blogging stuff: I had to call the mommy-blogger for advice, but let me know how you like the new space. See you next week....