How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Yes, vacations are wonderful things!

Aside from joy of being around family, the accommodations were first rate. This picture above is the view out of our bedroom window which was a guest room at my sister's house. What a view to wake up to! It even made up for having to listen to the coyotes howling at night and the roosters crowing in the morning. The view outside of my bedroom window here in Ohio is nothing like this.

I am not a good house guest in return, that's for sure. Poor Cathie's household was in an uproar the entire time I was there. First of all, I recently found out that I am allergic to cats. Cathie and Dan have two cats. They did their absolute best to keep a couple of rooms cat free for me. Poor cats were locked out of a few rooms and for that I'm sorry. I'm sure now that I'm gone, they don't miss me in the least! As for the allergy problem, I did well the entire time there, except for Christmas Eve night. After dinner, we all gathered in the dining room to exchange presents and for some reason, Cathie and Phil exchanged gifts of stuffed cats that looked like they were sleeping in cute little cat beds. I did check the tags on these cats and there was no real cat fur used in these fake pets. It was all man made material. However, after playing with the fake cats, my eyes swelled almost shut. Go figure! Cathie hurried Benedryl into me and I went and shut myself in my room for the rest of the night. By morning, I was fine. So, the real cats didn't get me but the fake ones did. That's what I call realistic!

Another uproar in the Feeney household because of me was poor Franky. Franky is the family dog that thank heavens is an outside dog. However, his chain had to be shortened up so that the dog couldn't reach the steps meaning I could get in and out of the house without coming in contact with Franky. I tried the entire time I was there to gather up my courage to go and pet Franky but it was a no go. Ron, however, became Franky's new best friend! Ron played with him every time he went outside for a cigarette. In case anyone was wondering, I was not the one taking the picture of the dog. I couldn't get this close even with a zoom lens! Picture is courtesy of Cathie. The picture doesn't do him justice though. He is a beautiful dog, but he is also well over 100 pounds.





We did have a great time while we were there. There was a little sight seeing but mostly just family time. As evidenced by the rest of the photos here.

Christmas eve had all of us together enjoying the California tradition of potato pancakes for dinner. Here are Philip and Ron doing spud duty, Philip grating and Ron peeling. Ron, Cathie and I then took turns on the frying of the potato pancakes so that everyone could have a turn eating a warm dinner.

Life doesn't get much better than this! It was because of good cooks, even though we had a bunch of them stirring the pot.

I have a few pictures of interest to go along with this story.

It may be out of season, but here is a pomegranate tree! I've posted before that Cathie picks me a bunch of pomegranates when they are in season and ships them out to us. Who knew they didn't just come from the produce section at Giant Eagle! What a concept.

You can see the old pomegranates still hanging off of the tree on the right. These trees line the whole drive way up from the main road. I'm guessing there are about 10 of these trees. That's a lot of pomegranates!

Aside from pomegranates, there is also a lemon tree in the yard! I picked a few lemons off of the tree and that was a first for me.




I actually saw a lot of new sights in California. I saw cilantro fields. Again, the only place I've seen cilantro is in a Mexican restaurant. Who knew they came from field in California?!

There are also these windmill contraptions that run on electricity (I didn't get pictures) that are in the orange tree orchards. For some reason, when the temperature drops, and there is danger of frost, these windmills turn on and somehow, instead of cooling the crop, they actually warm the crop a few degrees and can help prevent damage from frost. Only in California does this makes sense. But, it works, so what do I know.


The last picture I have to post here are the cypress trees at Cathie's house. These are gorgeous trees that have to be every bit of 40 feet high. The only bad thing was that during the Santa Ana winds the one night, I was seriously wondering if these trees were going to bend straight over and onto the roof over my head or even all the way to the ground! Santa Ana winds aside, the trees are beautiful.




Now all I have are stories about the flight home.


Cathie and Philip both took us to the Oxnard airport. Gotta love small town life, especially when it extends to small town airports. You were to show up one hour before your flight, not the two to three that bigger airports recommend. Just before we were summoned to board, Ron and I went through security and into a glass room while Cathie and Philip walked beside us and ended up in another room on the other side of the glass. I am an emotional wreck, especially at good byes and basically stood there hand to hand with Cathie with the glass between us and crying. Some jerk on my side of the glass thought this was a funny sight that I was a crying wreck and proceeded to tell whomever he was talking to on his cell phone about me as if I couldn't hear. Oh well. It takes all kinds.

We got on our little puddle jumper with propellers to head to LA. The ride into Oxnard was actually very pleasant, especially since the scenery was so spectacular. However, the trip back to LA was more than a little bumpy. Ok, it was extremely bumpy. I have to admit that this was the longest 15 minute flight you can imagine. I was white knuckling it all the way, hoping that we wouldn't plummet to the ground from our lofty height of 5,000 feet. Somehow, we made it into LA still in one piece.


This time, we caught an electric cart ride the 10 miles from our incoming gate over to our outgoing gate heading to Chicago. That was much better than the run through the airport on our last trip. We found our gate, and headed to the closest food court, just around the corner. We grabbed a fast sandwich and then on to the plane.

This plane was actually pretty cool. I don't know what the plane was but it had two seats, an aisle, three seats, and aisle and two seats. We had the right two seats, way in the back of the plane. The best part is that the seat in front of you had a screen on the back of their seats. We could watch a myriad of programming once in the air. One option was one of about three or four in flight movies, or some programming from the A & E Network, a handful of music channels and my favorite, the map channel.


The map channel (obviously as I call it) showed a map of the USA with a little plane icon showing where we are at any given moment. We had a slide show presentation during the entire flight. The screens showed our height, speed, outside air temperature, miles traveled, miles to go, time in flight, and estimated time of arrival. Couple that with being able to listen in to the flight deck, it was an enlightening flight. I gave up on the flight deck talk, but did enjoy watching us cross the United States. One map would be a total overview, then the next map would be of one or two states on the screen, so it was much more detailed. I thought it was a fascinating and entertaining way to spend the flight in between my naps.


We did get delayed in Chicago for longer than we anticipated. There was severe weather in Denver that had us all delayed. Our plane that was to take us from Chicago to Cleveland originated in Denver then it went on to Dallas before coming to Chicago. So, we sat. And sat. And sat. By the way, if anyone out there has ever had to spend a long stretch of time with a smoker than can't smoke, it's no fun! (HI, Ron!!) Luckily, as soon as we finally got to Cleveland after 1:00 am, I sent him directly outside while I went to baggage claim before one of us killed the other one. Five minutes later, he was back to his old self. Thank goodness!

We got home very late, and once home, we woke the fish and counted them to make sure everyone was still there. We did have someone come in to feed the fish a couple of times while we were gone, but unfortunately, no one noticed that seafood pizza on the counter. Yeah, that was still waiting for us when we got back.


I seem to be having a few issues with the time change on this side as well, but once I get that licked, I should be ok. Actually, I was talking to my sister in law Friday afternoon and she thought I was absolutely out of my mind! She wanted to talk to Ron to find out what happened to me.


But, that will be a story for the next blog.