SoCal Christmas: Palm Springs

Family, Travel,

Last year I blogged that I was afraid we’d never again celebrate Christmas in our house on Christmas day. That post caused Alex’s mom, Lisa, to call me and we had a nice chat about how to share Andrew and Alex for Christmas. We speculated that there would probably be a time when Andrew and Alex would want to spend Christmas at their own place. We also joked that maybe the parents (John, Lisa, Dean and I) would go to a warm beach somewhere.

That happened… Sort of. Since Dean and I spent Christmas with Andrew and Alex in Atlanta last year, we decided to spend this Christmas with Clare — but not in chilly Olympia. Somewhere warm, we thought. We decided on San Diego because we heard the weather was perfect much of the year. Then I read a book that mostly took place in Palm Springs and thought it seemed like a fun, quirky town, so suggested that to Clare. She liked the idea, especially since it was close to both Joshua Tree National Park and the Salton Sea, places she was interested in visiting.

When Andrew and Alex heard our plans they hinted they might like to go too. Then Alex’s folks and brother thought it might be fun. So, on December 22, the eight of us converged in Palm Springs.

Our Airbnb was nice. Not in Palm Springs proper, but about a half hour north, in Desert Hot Springs. The house (marked with a red star in the image below) was half a block from several mountain trails.

map of the area where our Airbnb was located

The Airbnb had a pool and connected hot tub. The view from the nearby cabana was spectacular.

Palm Springs was fun. We took a long hike at Tahquitz Canyon, paid our respects to Marilyn, and walked around downtown.

Clare, Dean, Dona, and Andrew pose in Tahquitz Canyon
Clare and Andrew pose in Tahquitz Canyon
Looking out over the canynon
hiking in the canyon
Statue of Marilyn Monroe by Seward Johnson
Rupert and Chum pose on Marilyn's toes

Christmas Eve was spent exploring Joshua Tree and visiting Pioneer town where we found a lively bar that was built by Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers! After that we relaxed in the hot tub at our Airbnb.

Christmas Day was spent preparing a festive dinner, and of course hanging out in the hot tub.

Lisa, Alex’s mom, made her traditional wassail, Eric, Alex’s brother, made two delicious pies. Andrew and Alex played Santa and filled our [clean] socks with fun treats after making a vegetarian lasagna — the centerpiece of our dinner.

Retirement so far

Musings

I’ve been retired for over two years and I’ve not done much to show for those two years. I’d expected, by now, to have been finished with my to-do list, or at least well underway with it. Instead I can hardly manage the day-to-day mini to-do lists.

There are still boxes under the guest bed full of things I brought back from my mom’s. By now I should have sorted them.

By now I should have at least learned how to use the 8mm and Super 8 Film Reel Converter Scanner and transferred all the Green/Patrick videos to YouTube and shared them with family. I’ve not even opened its box that I bought in 2018.

What have I done? I’ve read a lot. I’ve played a lot of games on my phone (and more recently Nintendo Switch Lite). I’ve baked a lot of bread. I’ve worried about oh so many things. I’ve not slept well.

Sometimes I think I should not have retired. I got more done when I was working. But I knew that was going to happen, didn’t I?

So many people ask me how retirement is going — it’s not going. It’s at a standstill in a rut at a dead end.

Sad farewells

Memories, Things,

Back when the kids were tiny we visited the shop at Woodend, at the National Audubon Society. I found a teal sweatshirt on sale that I thought was fun. It was too big for me, but sweatshirts can be, right?

What I liked about it was that it had animal paw prints on the front and a legend on the back. Whenever I wore it I got fun comments. When Andrew was young he once tried to figure out real animal prints using the shirt and guide.

Another time, I think Andrew was trying to see if a pair of scissors worked and he cut a hole in the front of the sweatshirt. After that I only wore it in the house. In the several few years, as it began fraying at the neckline and getting holes in the cuffs of the sleeves, I only wore it to keep warm when I got up in the morning.

Dean’s made some disparaging remarks about that sweatshirt and a couple of other tops lately, so when I found a couple of Amazon Basics sweatshirts that looked cozy on Amazon during Prime Days I decided to buy those and planned on tossing two sweatshirts, including the teal animal paw print one.

The morning after my new sweatshirts arrived, I donned one of them, then held a goodbye ceremony for the old sweatshirt.

I also threw my hand-me-down-from-Dean Carnegie Tech sweatshirt and my old Moosewood tee-shirt away. Dean bought me the Moosewood tee-shirt for my birthday when we visited the restaurant when the kids were very young. It had seen its day and was probably 30 years old.