*credit to Bob for this title. Also credit to him for the fact that it’s late. I couldn’t bear to spend a moment of our dwindling time together to write the following blog. He’s safely ensconced on the plane back home, so I can now write.
Sunday, December 17th was one of the nicest days of the holiday season, including a visit with my friend Steph and her husband Steve (kids floating in and out) and our mutual friend Mary Joan. It was so great to spend relaxing time catching up and eating a beautiful spread of quiche and bagels while basking in the glow of their Christmas tree and fireplace. Steph and I have had a long and fruitful collaboration in production at USC and the bonds we formed during our time there are strong and committed. I adore Steph’s brain and creativity. Same with Mary Joan, whose spectacular husband, Norman Snow was friends with my husband, James Greene. The two of them were in a play called “One Crack-Out” back in New York, in 1978, while I was in college, before Jimmie and I met. What a stellar cast, including Christine Baranski, Teri Garr, Jerry Zaks and Kenneth Welsh. Had I realized the close proximity of Mary Joan to my sphere nearly thirty years earlier, I’d have done some better curating of Jimmie’s and my friendships in NY. Anyhow, fate intervened and we met even without any extra efforts. Beings gravitate to like beings, I am coming to realize.
One of the charming holiday gifts that Steph treated me to was a lovely miniature set of children’s blocks, with the letters spelling Merry Christmas out with a few spare holly cubes. More about these later.
This Christmas, my other Bestie planned to come to be my chemo buddy on the previously scheduled 12/20 Chemo, five days before Christmas, and after making his travel plans to come on 12/18-12/26, the chemo dates shifted to Jan. 3rd, leaving me the blissful stretch of 7 days of good health and good cheer in Los Angeles with Bob.
After a late night arrival the night before, our proper visit began with a jam-packed day on 12/19 with a trip to the Bagel store, followed by coffee with my nibling and supremely talented artist Niki Ford downtown at my condo.
The interview with Niki in the link above reveals the extremely eclectic artistic life they’ve had; Bob and I have the good fortune of owning Niki’s beautiful paintings on paper, and we have avidly followed her work and the news of 2024’s upcoming five 5!!!! gallery openings, so we had a lot to catch up on. After some of this catchup, I got up to adjust the ornaments on my sadly artificial tree – there was a big gaping hole in one section of the tree that I had to correct – OCD much? When I returned to sit down on the couch, Bob turned to me and handed me a little square package, wrapped in beautiful fabric and tied with a string. (apparently thrown to him by Niki when I got up to fix the tree) He said, “Susan and I commissioned your Christmas present from Niki.” My heart started to flutter with genuine excitement, and when I opened it, there was a little plastic case, nestled within which were two pairs of earrings, made of clay and wood and metal, one pair black, and one terracotta-colored with turquoise centers. The backs of the black pair shimmered with a red color reminiscent of Christian Laboutin heels which, like the shoes, reveal themselves when I walk. I haven’t taken them off yet, ricocheting between the two pairs for holiday outings. Niki described their considerable efforts at R & D to ensure that the earrings weren’t too heavy to wear and hung away from the cheekbone. They described using the stones outside their bungalow to shape the turquoise shape that graces the center of the earring, and learning how to embed the wires into the clay before firing, a technique we can expect to see (perhaps) in their upcoming ceramic work. You can see from my expressions in the photos below how genuinely pleased I am to have these beautiful objects in my jewelry box and life. As well as Susan and Bob’s thoughtfulness in creating such an extraordinary opportunity for me! Best presents ever!
The rest of Tuesday afternoon was relaxing until we departed for dinner and a show with our friend Norma B. Dinner at Kendall’s at the Music Center and my second viewing of Alex Edelman at the Mark Taper Forum.
I’ve raved about Alex’s performance, but particularly nice was our dinner with Norma, and coincidentally meeting Steph at the theatre because she also had a ticket.
The next morning, we got up early for a walk at the Reservoir with my brother Don, and chatted as we circled the water. It felt like kismet to have two of the most important people in my life meeting.
Bob, true to his original plan to support me on my medical journey, attended two doctor’s appointments with me, one where he performed the very useful medical scribe function (cardiologist) and one where he was banished from the room (dermatologist full body scan). In both cases, having him along made the appointments less onerous and since they both delivered very good news, were causes for celebration.
In addition to accompanying me to medical appointments, we took a walk up to the Broad Museum, completed a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Venice (shared history there), visited the Farmer’s Market, tasted pickles, completed an intricate lego set of wild flowers, watched an entire Norwegian Netflix Rom Com series (highly recommend) and competed daily on the wordle (with Susan as we always do) and Spelling Bee. We have a fairly acute competitive streak and Bob as a gifted graphic designer is particularly gifted at word puzzles and routinely bested me by reaching genius status by at least 10-15 minutes every day. But how could I possibly be bitter?
We had multiple visits with friends in addition to puzzling. Back to Steph’s thoughtful gift. We couldn’t help ourselves but had to Spelling Bee the Christmas cubes. Here are a few of our solutions (Reaader, be generous about the shortage of vowels in this combination of letters!) Feel free to share any additional solutions in the comments!
Christmas Eve we took a walk to the Intercontinental Hotel, which was decorated within an inch of it’s life. Christmas Eve was cheery and festive at an old friend’s house seeing some folks I hadn’t seen in about thirty years and basking by the warmth of the fire below. Talk about fast forward. Bob and I prepared roasted veggies to take along to contribute to the table. At the same time, we constructed two spinach quiches which we ate on Christmas morning with fresh Latkes, which we/Bob also prepared.
Cooking and puzzling, spending time in the car together, all of these individual moments were spectacular, moments comprising a rich life that I in no way take for granted.
Here’s to an equally rich, healthy, and eventful 2024 for all of us. Celebrate each moment with friends and family.
And that’s my Yule (B)Log. Here are a few others to salivate over. Happy holidays!
lifeinthethe8tre 