Fun With the Octogenarian

On Saturday, Oct. 13, the family got together and celebrated the impending 80th birthday of our matriach, Paula Blanchard McDougal (pictured in her reclining throne). It has taken me this long to actually get onto this damn blog site so I can upload the pictures, etc.

The soiree was held at the Spyglass Inn, Shell Beach, on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean, in the very same room where a similar bash was held for Mom's just-slightly-older-sister, Kit (not to be confused with my sister Kittie). The whole clan was there for a family dinner, with friends and associates of Mom's arriving later for hors d'oeuvres, champagne and a really smashing cake.

I took the 7:30 a.m. train up to Grover Beach from Union Station on Friday, which meant getting up at 5:15 to make the Gold Line connection. I had loaded a couple movies onto my iPhone, so I wasn't totally bored. Just north of Santa Barbara, I took some pictures through the dirty train windows (the best of which is shown here) of the trek up the coast.

I arrived in Grover Beach around 12:45, just in time to interrupt lunch for my sister Kittie and brother Steve (with his family, wife Pam and daughters Amanda and Emily) who were scheduled to retrieve me from the train station. Family members gathered (Kittie's husband Dave, brother Jim with his wife Carla and offspring Chance joining in) at the moms' house in Arroyo Grande that afternoon. I finally checked in to my motel around 5 p.m., returning to the moms' for delivery pizza and more conversation. I can't remember who dropped me off at the motel, but I hit the sack Friday at around 11:30.

Saturday I got a ride back to the moms' around 10 a.m. from Dave and Kittie. Steve (my Steve, not my brother Steve) was driving up that morning and showed up around 11:30. While brothers Steve and Jim and families went off to explore Morro Bay, Kittie and David worked feverishly on the party preparations while my Steve and I went to take in the wonders of Pismo Beach (pictured).

While eating lunch, I got a call on my cell from Evan (with camera here), creator of the DVD mentioned earlier in this blog. He was FREAKING OUT. Evan is one cool and collected dude, so it was obvious something wasn't right. He was in Santa Barbara (halfway between L.A. and Pismo Beach) and had forgotten the DVDs on his desk at home. He wanted to know if I had some of the original scans still on my flashstick drive (I carry it on my keychain) but I had dumped them off to make room for the Europe photos. He said he had his computer with him and could put together a quickie slideshow if we could retrieve some pictures.

"You've got two choices," I said. "You can turn around and drive back down to L.A. and get here late, or you can accept this, release it into the universe and come up and have a good time." He chose the latter, (the wiser choice) and we all had a great time even without the DVD which I only mentioned once that evening and is lovely I'm sure but I haven't gotten a copy and that's the last I'm going to mention it here.

We all returned in the late afternoon to the moms'. Steve (my brother) and his crew were bunking there, so they were set. Steve and I were housed at the motel and Jim and company had a short-term house rental, so we had to make an exit in order to prepare for the dinner.

We got to the Spyglass Inn just before sunset. Dinner was really nice, because we ordered off the menu, not some preset choice. This picture is a view out the windows of the party room just after dinner and just before the guests arrived for the party. During dinner, nonfamily folks in on the plan went to the moms' place and brought their two reclining chairs to the party room. Mom's was bedecked with a fan of peacock plumes and she was given a bouquet, tiara and sceptre in order to lord it over the party (see photo at top of entry). She did an excellent job.

There were several speeches (including one by yours truly, which I'm not so sure was very good), and then, as the liquor kicked in, the tone deaf began singing with the karaoke machine. Also with abandon; that's about the time I split with Steve...my Steve, not brother Steve...and the evening was pretty much over.

Sunday, we got up and went over to the moms'. They had asked us to get bagels on the way, but all the places where there had been supermarkets before were now something else (I was working with a 10-year-old mental map of the area), and the one bagel store had a drive-thru line around the building and all the parking spaces were taken. We decided to go next door to Dolly's Donuts and get a DeLuxe Assortment dozen and brought those over instead.

We got there to find that Kittie and David were coming over with eclairs, so no one was at a loss for refined sugar nor saturated fats.

All of Steve's crew (brother Steve, that is) except Amanda had left at 6 a.m. to fly back to Wisconsin. Steve (my Steve) and I headed back to L.A. at noon, giving my nephew CJ (or Christopher or Chris) a ride down as far as Union Station, where he caught the Amtrak back to Anaheim, where he's at college studying game coding.

It was a memorable party. A joy. A good time was had by all and if you've made it this far in this entry, you probably don't have a very exciting life. GO DO SOMETHING FUN!