Memory Lane Friday - New Year's

This week's Memory Lane Friday theme is, appropriately, "New Year's."

You know, I can't think of a time when I was out late, partying, on New Year's Eve. Actually, there may have been one time, but I think I'm going to leave that "Animal House" type of story for another time.  ;)

Instead, there were two mild, laid back New Year's Eve nights that I remember enjoying.

The first was New Year's Eve, 1999, on the eve of 2000. I was at my first duty assignment in the Air Force, stationed just north of Santa Barbara, CA.

I'd only been there about a month (since the very end of November), and I had yet to receive my household goods (the delivery of my furniture, boxes of clothing and other items, etc).

So I was in my apartment, with a futon (basically an air mattress on the floor), a set of plates, glasses, flatware, and cooking items borrowed from a place on base that stocks this type of stuff for just such a use. You could sign out this stuff for a certain period of time while waiting for your stuff to be delivered by moving truck.

Anyway, a friend of mine from Chicago had come out to spend Christmas and New Year's with me, flying out of L.A. back to Chicago on January 2, 2000.

I'd gotten a second futon for her use while she stayed with me. So we were basically "camping on the floor" in my apartment this whole time. My stuff had been scheduled to arrive a few days before Christmas, but had been rescheduled for the beginning of January, after my friend left.

Well, for New Year's Eve, the last night before 2K, we decided to "splurge" and we went to a hotel for the night, so we could sleep on actual beds.

We ended up getting some champagne for a toast at midnight. But we were so tired, we only stayed up until midnight Eastern time (remember, we were Pacific time, being in California), and went to bed at 9 PM local time!

I think it was our having our own bed for the night, instead of an air mattress on the floor, that made us so sleepy. But it was such a nice "treat," especially since I'd been sleeping on the floor for a month.

The next time was while I was still in the Air Force, this time in New Mexico, New Year's Eve, 2006.

Andrew and I had a 10-month-old at the time. We were both working full time (with my having to get up at 4:15 AM every weekday morning). We were tired parents, basically.

So when New Year's Eve rolled around, we had no plans to stay up til Midnight. Instead, we got Livie to bed at her usual time. Andrew and I had eaten lentil tacos for dinner after she had gone to bed. (Click here for the lentil taco recipe.)

And then we hung out in the living room watching TV; we had satellite TV, so we must've been watching a movie or hockey or something.We played Scrabble at the same time, my hoping this would be our new New Year's Eve tradition. (I think I won, by the way. Andrew said it's because I read a lot more than he does, so my vocabulary's better. At least that's what he said.)

Now, since we were tired parents of a child under 1-year-old, we were NOT going to make it til Midnight, like I mentioned. So at 10:00 PM, which was Midnight Eastern time, we opened a bottle of New Mexican sparkling wine and toasted the New Year, since the U.S. already had a time zone in 2007.

It was a really nice evening, just the two of us spending quality time together.

Somehow, ever since that night, we've intended on playing Scrabble on New Year's Eve, but somehow we've been pooped and haven't gotten around to starting a game. Maybe tonight . . .

Happy  New Year's, everyone!

Please check back next week when it's another "No Theme" week.

Memory Lane Friday is hosted by Two Bears Farm and the Three Cubs. Please click on the button below to read her post for this week, as well as this week's other entries.

It's time for the rest of the story . . .

After last week's Memory Lane Friday post about A Time I Was Scared, and having also spent last weekend at my parents' place, I decided to ask my mom if she remembered the incident . . . the one where she and I (as a 4-year-old) got separated in a crowded place in Solvang, CA.

Needless to say, when I asked her, "Do you remember when I got lost in Solvang?" the answer was "Well, of course I remember! I was panicked!"

Hahaha! I should've expected that answer.

Anyway, when I asked her for details, she confirmed that yes, I was about 4-years-old, and yes, she remembers a red British-styled telephone box nearby.

Then she filled me in on some stuff I hadn't remembered.

First, I guess my dad had been with us, and not off somewhere else (the men's room or a different store, as I recently speculated). I hadn't remembered him being with us in the minutes leading up to the separation, nor did I remember him being with us in the moments following my mom's finding me.

But apparently he'd been there, and when my mom panicked, he was calm, and nonchalantly said to her with a sigh, "Don't worry about it; we'll find her." That is seriously so like him!

And second, my Aunt Marie (my dad's older, only surviving sibling) was with us, too. She was an Italian immigrant, having come to North America as a young girl, ultimately spending a majority of her adult life in California. (I'll have to tell you more about her sometime in the future.)

Anyway, she was a good talker. She could really keep a conversation going, and keep it entertaining. This is one of a number of things I miss about her (she passed away back in the mid-'90s).

So of course, while my mom was recalling the incident, she was telling me "You know how Marie enjoyed a good conversation, right? Well, I was doing my best to pay attention to her because I didn't want to seem rude. And that's when I realized I'd been so wrapped up in my conversation with her, I'd ended up losing you! . . . And then your dad wasn't even worried about it! Can you believe that?"

Yes! . . . because that's how Marie was with conversations, and that's how my dad is - never one to panic or get worried about anything.

So there you have it . . . the rest of the story about that time I was scared. 

Here is Marie (on the right) with my maternal grandmother, Oma, waiting for my graduation from Culver to start:

June 4, 1989, Culver, IN (My dad took this photo.)

One more thing while I'm thinking about "the rest of the story . . . "

In a different Memory Lane Friday post about A Family Heirloom, I briefly mentioned that I had wanted to talk about an item that had been in my Oma's kitchen in El Paso for years. But since I didn't have that item in my possession, nor did I have any photos of it, I decided to talk about something else instead (a blue topaz ring). 

Well, now I have it. 

It's this cast-iron "warming plate" thing that had been passed along to her by her mother. My mother remembers it from her grandmother's kitchen, having spent a lot of time at her grandmother's house when she was little (they actually lived next door to each other when my mother was growing up).

This "warming plate" thing would be on one of the stove's gas burners, and would be used to warm up tortillas (and probably other tasty things). Well, one day my Oma asked Cacá (pronounced ka-KA, which is what my Uncle Ralph began calling her when he was young), where she got this thing.

Instead of saying "Oh, I got it at __________," she just handed it over to my Oma, saying, "You can have it."

And my Oma began using it at her house ever since, first in the kitchen at the Blue Ridge Circle house, and then at the Mountain Walk Drive house.

I always loved how tortillas ended up after being warmed up on that thing. Not only did I like my tortillas warmed up before eating them with huevos con chorizo, I liked my tortillas (the flour ones) just on the verge of being toasty, when they'd have a hint of crispiness on the outside, but were still soft and easily wrapped around some delish huevos con chorizo.

Anyway, when my grandmother finally moved into my parents' house, my Uncle Ralph spent a lot of time and effort packing up items of value and making sure these items were dispersed among family members. I had asked him to find this "warming plate" thing in the kitchen and set it aside for me.

He did. Last weekend at my parents' house, I went through a few of the boxes, and finally found it, bringing it home with me.

Sadly, I can't use it on the electric stovetop that I have. When Andrew and I finally get a chance to switch it out to a gas stove, the very first thing I make for breakfast will be huevos con chorizo, and I can guarantee I'll be warming up the flour tortillas on this thing!

Here it is. I put it on a silicone pad because it has some heft to it, and I didn't want to scratch the glass cook-top, nor did I want to accidentally crack it when I put the cast-iron "warmer" thingy on it.

Here's the bottom of it. Note the bump at the 12 o'clock position; this is why it doesn't work on a flat glass cook-top. It sits just right on a gas burner.

For the record, I dislike cooking with electricity. Gas is much better. It's easy to control temperature during cooking, and a gas stove-top is easier to maintain. The glass cook-top seems to be hard to keep clean, and it has to cool down completely (which takes forever) before you can clean up any spills. Plus, the glass cook-top likes to scratch easily. I think it sucks. This is the first and last time I will have a kitchen with an electric stove/oven. And Andrew knows this for the next time we need to look for a new house . . . whenever that may be.

Memory Lane Friday - A Time I Was Scared

This week's Memory Lane Friday topic is "A Time I Was Scared." I've been trying to think of a time I was actually scared, and not just nervous, jittery, startled, or something else that's milder than scared.

The one time I can think of being really, truly scared is when I was very young. I must've been around 4 or so, and my parents and I lived in California.

Well, one day we were visiting touristy Solvang, CA for the day. Solvang is this Danish village near Santa Barbara and Buellton, CA and seems very cute, touristy, quaint. I remember a lot of walking around, and being out in the sunshine. It was nice when we went into a store because of the air conditioning. Not that I minded being outside a lot when I was young . . . I just remember the stark difference between the bright California sun's heat and light, and the coolness and momentary darkness upon first walking into a store.

At some point as I followed my mom into a store, I suddenly became overwhelmed with the number of people heading into the store at the same time. It was like I was in a stampede. I was surrounded by adults, all strangers.

Panicking, I didn't know what to do because my mom was not in sight anymore. Well, in a 4-year-old's brain, logic obviously doesn't function in a common-sense manner. Why would it, right?

Now, I don't know why I hadn't been holding my mom's hand . . . maybe I had been, or maybe, as 4-year-olds sometimes do, I'd wrangled my hand from hers.

But the point was that I was not holding her hand at the moment, and I found myself separated from her, in a crowd of strangers.

So what did I do? I turned around and walked right out of the store. Made sense at the time. Well, it made sense to ME, okay?

I found myself out in the open, strangers walking up and down the sidewalk, window shopping, busy. I looked around, hoping to spot my mom . . . of course she was already inside, so I wouldn't have seen her outside. But how would I have known I wouldn't see her outside, but because I was LOST and she would be the only one who could save me, I expected to see her.

And . . . I didn't see her.

So what did I do next? I went to the first thing that caught my eye. Wanna know what it was?

(Photo by Kevin Law, 13 Sep 2007, Covent Garden, London, England.)

Yep, it was a red British-style telephone box not too far away from the store entrance where my mom got lost. I saw it and being red and big, it was appealing to me as a 4-year-old.

I walked into it, and stood there. I watched people going by, wondering if I would see my dad walk past. (He had gone to some other store, or maybe he had gone to find a men's room, so that's why my mom and I were temporarily alone together.)

I vaguely remember walking out and looking around wondering where my mother was, and what took her so long to come get me. You know, because I assumed she knew exactly where I was. Why wouldn't she? was my reasoning!

As each minute ticked, I became more and more worried, thinking, I'm hungry. Who will feed me? Where will I sleep? I'm tired.

Finally, I see her coming toward me. She was fighting hysterics, so of course I was confused. *I* was scared because I didn't know where she was, but why was she acting scared? I wouldn't have understood at that age, right?

Well, we were reunited, and my fear was immediately forgotten. I know my mom remembers this incident; I remember talking to her about it within the past few months. But if I asked for details, I wonder if it was actually Solvang? I have distinct memories of what the town looked like - and it was very old-world looking.

Now, I don't have any photos of me or my family during our trip to Solvang.

But I do have photos of one of my last visits there as an adult. I was stationed in California while I was in the Air Force. I lived there from late autumn 1999 to June 2000. From where I lived, Solvang was oh, maybe about a 45 minute drive. I'd estimate it was about 40 miles away.

Here are a few photos from the Solvang area from late 1999:

And here is the California coast, somewhere between Lompoc and L.A.:

That's it for this week. Please check back next week, when the Memory Lane Friday topic is "My Dad." I have it tough, because I have to wade through a lot of great stories!

Before you go, please click on the button to check out this week's other "Memory Lane Friday" posts: