Posts tagged ‘CE’
Yes, we have some cabanas.
Take my word for it – it’s nothing but work, work, work here in these Hawaiian isles.
For instance, the CE is up at dawn every day to snag prime beach chairs for us.
My cabana boys
Then there’s the walk – there’s a nice little path that goes all the way from the Fairmont Kea Lani at one end past the Marriott on the other end.
View of our beach from path
And, of course, every single day we have to decide where to eat dinner. Will it be Spago or Ferraro’s?
Lobster Linguini at Ferraro's
And the ever-present decision, beach or pool?
Pool at the Four Seasons Maui
Two of the specks in the water are Taylor and Easton on their boogie boards
There are medical emergencies:
Easton inadvertently made the acquaintance of a stray jellyfish tentacle
And there are field trips:
The boys went on a snorkeling adventure over to Molokini
There are explorations to the other resorts:
Reclining Botero figure at the Grand Wailea next door
And wildlife sightings:
We encountered this very friendly pretzel-loving spotted dove (Streptopelia chinensis)
Speaking of doves, the German word for dove is taub. And guess who sat next to us at breakfast several days in a row – none other than Peter Jacobson, who plays Taub on House. We think he’s following us, since we also saw him recently in a crosswalk in NYC.
He was much more tan when we saw him here.
We try to keep up with the local culture:
Hawaiian quilt painting
Children are apparently encouraged to run after the torchlighter at sunset. Taylor and Easton declined to participate.
And, of course, there’s time to spend together, too.
T and the CE
Three guys and a head
Are you feeling sorry for us yet?
Four Seasons fountains at night
Gotta run…the CE can’t hold down those cabana seats much longer all by himself.
Aloha!
San Diego Salute
Nick and PG at meal #1: Sat am breakfast
This particular weekend, however, was dedicated, more than less, to the art of fine dining. It was impressive to see a trained military professional do battle with a knife and fork. I am here to tell you he took no prisoners!
Meal #2: At Cowboy Steak in downtown San Diego, you can order a side scallop or two to top your side of beef
I know, you’re thinking we did nothing but eat. That’s almost true. But we did manage to sneak in a trip to the San Diego Zoo, where instead we watched a young Giant Panda eat. That little guy – 23 months old, they told us, has grown rather portly on a diet of bamboo. Leads me to believe that vegetables must be caloric and we should strictly limit our choices to steak, lobster and chocolate desserts.
This young Giant Panda was the fifth born at the San Diego Zoo. He loves his bamboo!
Nick with a giraffe in the background. No, he did not eat the giraffe for lunch.
A python skeleton on display at the zoo, which looked positively inviting compared with the ginormous Albino Burmese Python we saw lurking nearby.
An impressive Harpy Eagle. My chickens would have a heart attack at the sight of him!
View from our hotel
By Sunday morning, we worked up quite an appetite from the effort of eating at Cowboy Star on Saturday night, so we went to brunch at the Westgate Hotel for meal #3. Recommended!
At the Westgate Hotel
After brunch, we caught the ferry over to Coronado Island. PG has fond memories of the Hotel Del Coronado, so we stopped there for a glass of iced tea, then headed back to the ferry because, of course, we didn’t want to be late for our dinner reservation.
On the ferry
The venerable "Hotel Del" as PG calls it
Sunday night dinner (meal #4 ) was at Bertrand at Mister A’s. I don’t quite understand why the restaurant needs two names, but we were too busy enjoying the view to ask questions. Perched on the top floor of a bank building in downtown San Diego, the restaurant affords views of just about everything in the area, including the steady stream of airplanes landing at the San Diego airport. The food and service were as top-notch as the view.
image from www.bertrandatmisteras.com
Our midshipman had to be back on base by midnight Sunday, which brought our weekend – and the food binge – to a reluctant close. I would like to know if the Navy has a strategy for fighting the battle of the restaurant-induced bulge for those of us who are not 20 years old and in fighting trim. I could use a little help.
After his summer posting in San Diego and a little R & R back home in Florida, Nick will return for his junior year at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. We hope to visit him there sometime soon and see how the East Coast restaurateurs measure up.
Best of luck and Godspeed to Nicholas and all the others dedicated to protecting our country!
The CE, PG and Nick
It may be summer, but here’s an Autumn update
Miss Autumn’s day so far: early morning poke-about in the Chicken Kingdom, attended by humans bearing liberal handouts of scratch, a nap on the hallway Oriental carpet, brief altercation with sister Hope, who interprets any move in her direction as an assault on the chicks, lengthy cuddles with the Chicken Emperor in his office and a few Cheerio snacks here and there.
Just a normal day in our world...
I had a nice chat with the vet, who seems optimistic about Autumn’s chance to survive and even heal. She said that the material she drained from Autumn’s abdominal cavity was fresh, which indicates we caught the problem early on. She likened Autumn’s condition to an ectopic pregnancy and said that due to the early intervention, it “hopefully won’t be a chronic thing”. The antibiotics will stem the infection and the Lupron shots will keep her from ovulating while her fallopian tubes heal. While I had read that a hysterectomy could cure the condition, the vet said she doesn’t perform those surgeries because the stress is too much and the chickens “don’t make it”.
When I asked about the cause of internal egglaying/egg yolk peritonitis, the vet sighed and said, “Well, the problem is that chickens only have one hole”. The urethra, the intestines and the oviduct all use the same exit path in a chicken, and that exit path can easily become an entry path for bacteria to enter the shell gland.
image from swampyacresfarm.com
I asked her if the condition was more common in hatchery birds and her response was that ”it’s more common in heavy laying breeds”. I’m no expert on poultry breeding but I’m guessing that hatcheries put a much higher premium on breeding for increased laying than they do on breeding for longevity. The largest consumers of hatchery birds prize hens for a season or two of prodigious egg laying and then discard them. The vet said this condition is not frequently seen in the exotic breeds which tend to be sporadic layers.
Victoria stopped by to say hello to Autumn this afternoon
What I know for sure is that Autumn has made a 180 degree turnaround since Saturday, so all is well – for the moment – in the Chicken Kingdom!
The little ones aren't so little anymore.
So much to celebrate!
Alexandra may be the only person who can claim her birthday was upstaged by chickens. Her birthday was last week and we celebrated with a lovely lunch:
Chelsea, Claire, Alexandra and Victoria
Pamela and Alexandra
Alexandra drove south to celebrate her birthday with a hot-air balloon ride, but the rest of us gathered here on Saturday afternoon for what turned into a Chick-Naming-Party. I’m going to try to post a poll with the names in contention, but for the moment, you’ll have to be content with pictures from the event:
Ashleigh made some amazing treats for our guests!
Victoria created the chick-naming materials
The Chicken Kingdom is looking good
Hope marched her babies out from the coop right on cue as the guests began to arrive
Pamela visits with the little Black Copper Marans chick
Phyllis enjoys the Silkie
Ashleigh holds the little Easter Egger
Katherine makes sure that Autumn doesn't feel left out
Pamela and Kirk re-define chicken coop attire (they were on their way to another party, actually...one that didn't involve pine shavings)
Soho the scaredy cat: "If I don't look at it will it go away?"
Our neighbor, Jo, dropped by to welcome the baby chicks
So did Chadd and his friend, James
Lori and Victoria
Birdie even joined us for some outdoor time
Julia, Victoria and I enjoyed a little late-afternoon sunshine when the fog finally lifted a bit
Somehow I missed getting a photo of Marie-Christine. Maybe that means we need to name a chick after her…
Yesterday was Father’s Day, and, in addition to being splashed all over the blog (thanks for all the nice comments!) the CE enjoyed a lovely brunch and reveled in the phone calls from all the far-flung kids. Julia brought fresh-baked banana bread and Victoria made a pie and some amazing artwork, so it was a very sweet day.
King for the Day, and Emperor forever!
PG and the CE
Trying our hardest here to make every day a holiday!
Re-wind Pt 3 of 3: They say it’s your birthday!
Just a run-of-the-mill birthday, or so I thought. As they stack up, they seem less like a collection and more like, well, old age, I guess. I was planning to be happy with the gift of tyrannical tv remote appropriation (anyone up for an NCIS marathon?) but someone (not naming names, but Victoria comes to mind…with assistance from Ashleigh and the CE) stopped just a chicken feather short of declaring it a national holiday. And now, with not one, but two, birthday dinners and innumerable gifts later, I stand before you, another year older and woefully behind on writing thank-you notes.
From birthday dinner #1: Alexandra, PG and the Diz
The CE and VIctoria with the best birthday dessert ever: Trifle!
Beautiful flowers from Katherine
Be still my heart! The CE gave me a signed album cover of Joni Mitchell's "Wild Things Run Fast". Best gift ever from the best husband ever!
The table is set for dinner #2
Victoria and Ashleigh worked for hours and hours and hours on the second birthday dinner. The food was so amazing I want to go back and have it all over again!
Ah, popovers and prime rib! Heavenly!
Julia brought these breathtaking peonies
I didn’t know the guest list, so I was holding out a shred of hope that Hugh Laurie might knock on the door, but the next best thing to a House heartthrob has got to be Michael in his dapper James Bondesque jacket:
Michael and an admiring Birdie
Karen and Julia
Pamela, Soho and moi
The one, the only, CE!
PG, the ubiquitous Soho, and Dave
Beethoven thoughtfully dressed up for the occasion
The cooks and their muse: Ashleigh, Marie-Christine and Victoria
It’s much easier to age when you’re lucky enough to have such wonderful friends and family around. I think my college roommate, Anne, summed it up best with this card:
Inside it says: "You're no spring chicken, but you're still a tasty dish!"
"Can we move on now? May is SO over. Yawn!"
More proof that chickens rule the earth.
Herodotus and Ovid wrote of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Fast-forward a few millenia and we’ve got feral chickens ruling the roost after Hurricane Katrina.
An 18th century depiction of the phoenix (image from Wikipedia)
The Times-Picayune reported last week that in post-Katrina New Orleans, feral chickens are dancing in the streets. It is surmised that these flocks are the descendants of once-domestic birds released from their coops during the hurricane. Like the chickens that have roamed the Hawaiian island of Kauai since Hurricane Iniki, these resourceful chickens now thrive in the 7th, 8th and 9th wards of the Big Easy.
Chickens on the island of Kauai (photo from Google images)
Why does the chicken cross the road? Ask the folks in New Orleans.
Barbara Young, who feeds the chickens that roam the 9th ward, remembers visiting the area in late 2005, where she saw flood-ravaged houses and felt an “eerie quiet”. Then she saw a hen and a rooster and “that gave me hope”, she says. “We’re going to have life. We’re going to be able to go back home.”
According to the Times-Picayune article, animal control officers in New Orleans note that capturing the wild chickens is “extremely hard” and often requires the efforts of several officers. I think I see a career opportunity for a certain unemployed Chicken Emperor…
What could be easier than catching chickens? And yes, they ARE in the master bedroom...
The opportunities are apparently extensive. The Times-Picayune article cites recent chicken-catching challenges in Philadelphia, Miami and Phoenix . And a few years ago, Key West, Fla., hired a municipal chicken wrangler to keep its bird populations under control. I don’t know how much the job pays, but think of the prestige!
Everywhere a chick chick!
You can see photos and read about the Raptor Resource Project at http://anniekatec.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-reality-show-millions-watch-bald.html
photo from imagekind.com
Sloane Tanen (image from mommytracked.com)
Final Gifts
My father died yesterday. He was 89 years old and lived a full, happy life. We were not especially close; a product of the “Greatest Generation”, he provided faithfully for his family, and considered the little time he had left over after working ten-hour days, six days a week, to be his own. He was in his element on the golf course and in his public life, where he delighted in the attention he received as a small town celebrity, dispensing gardening advice over the radio waves and to packed audiences of gray-haired ladies at local garden clubs.
You don’t miss what you don’t know, so it was never of great concern to me that I didn’t have much of a relationship with my father. The distance was a comfortable one; he was always cheerful, never mean, rarely angry – he just wasn’t generally present.
This arrangement worked well until about ten years ago, when my mother died and Dad was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer a few months later. Perhaps he re-evaluated his life. Perhaps he was lonely at the loss of my mother. Whatever the catalyst, suddenly my father was interested in me. He asked about my children. He actively sought a relationship with my husband.
This was annoying, to say the least. I don’t do well with change.
Now I was having to make room in my life for someone who had never been part of it and I, being the deeply flawed person I am, resented the imposition. Where had he been during my childhood? Where had he been during the early years of my children’s childhoods? My thoughts ran along the lines of an uptight theatre usher: “No late seating allowed!”
Fortunately, my father was patient and persistent, and my husband provided gentle reminders around the theme of “better late than never”. I slowly adjusted to sharing a bit more of my life with my father and hearing about his. He liked to talk, by the way. His stories were many and long. He savored his life, especially now that he’d had a cancer scare which had been barely beaten into remission through an intense course of radiation that left him with nerve damage in his legs and a panoply of other side effects. He never complained. He always smiled.
At one point, I happened to mention I had just read Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, which is widely touted as a modern-day parallel to the Confessions of Saint Augustine. He expressed interest; I sent him a copy of the book. Soon after, he paid a visit to his parish priest and asked if he might renew his acquaintance at church. He was heartily welcomed, of course, because God is a much more gracious being than stubborn and resentful adult daughters. God understands “better late than never”, and it is never too late with Him. In his last years, my father attended mass often, sometimes daily, and he became close pals with Father Sullivan.
Dad on our last trip to Las Vegas; March 2010.
The cancer, inevitably, returned. The last year and a half of his life was a blur of ups and downs. He began to end all of our phone conversations with “I love you”, another change that called me deep consternation. In our family, no one ever, ever said I love you (a failing that I may have over-corrected in my own parenting, since my constant declarations of adoration for my children have led them to consider themselves, if anything, somewhat over-loved.) Responding in kind was a tough order. I stumbled over the words; the awkwardness of this new intimacy made me hesitate and stammer. Did I mention that I am deeply flawed?
A final, cruel run of chemotherapy last spring took more out of him than he could bear, and he finally said “enough”. The doctors told him he should probably make the acquaintance of the local Hospice folks, but, characteristically for him, he never wanted to trouble anyone so he managed to the very end without engaging their services. He nearly died before Thanksgiving, but rallied for the holidays and celebrated his 89th birthday in January with a visit to a nearby casino.
He never, ever complained. Not once. He demonstrated a courage and a grace that astounded me and everyone around him. During our last visit in December, he took my husband aside, as he had many times before, to tell him how much he admired him for both success as a businessman and his devotion to me and our children. I often joked that my father had a “man-crush” on the CE. What was probably more accurate was that he saw and admired in the CE was a dedication and fulfillment in marriage and fatherhood that he wistfully wished he could have shared.
The CE and my father - Dad loved having his picture taken with his "man-crush"
A few weeks after his birthday in January, he returned to the hospital with complications from the cancer, which was now on a crash-course, attacking organs throughout his abdominal cavity. The doctors suggested he might have two to three months to live. Working around our scheduled trip to the East coast, the CE and I tried to decide if we should stop through the Midwest to visit Dad on our way to New York or the way home. We chose the latter, thinking he would be in better shape after a chance to rally from the latest surgery. He had begun physical therapy and was hopeful of being released from the hospital soon.
I spoke with Dad almost every day in the past few weeks. With long practice, I was finally improving at our parting “I love you’s”. On Monday, I told him I had stepped into St. Patrick’s Cathedral to light a candle for him and say a prayer. He was deeply emotional and wept with gratitude at this simple indulgence, thanking me profusely. I did not tell him that my prayer was that he not be asked to suffer unduly. On Tuesday, he told me again how grateful he was that I had lit a candle for him. He cried again. “I’ll see you soon, Dad”, I said. “I love you, too.”
On Wednesday morning, I received a call that Dad had gone into renal failure and slipped into unconsciousness. That night, I lay awake, wondering if I should catch a plane in the morning. I drifted into sleep around 6 am and was awakened by a call at 9 – Dad had passed away a half hour before. In the end, it was not him that waited too long, but me. But thanks to his concerted and persistent efforts over the past several years to salvage our relationship, there was nothing left unsaid and no unfinished business to be conducted. He was at peace with God and with his family; a final gift for us all.
Dad was a “celebrity” to the end; his passing was announced as “breaking news” on the Elkhart Truth’s web-site, where a story about him is posted today: http://www.etruth.com/Know/News/Story.aspx?ID=535427
39 again!
Not sure how he does it, but the CE sailed through another birthday with his youthful good looks intact, if not his ankle. The foot continues to be problematic – lots of pain and not much sleep, but all cares were cast aside for a day of celebration on Wednesday.
The day began with Victoria and Alexandra so very thoughtfully stopping by to prepare a sumptuous CE-worthy breakfast – Eggs Benedict (one of Autumn’s eggs went into the Hollandaise sauce), potatoes and fruit.
Prepping the birthday breakfast
A celebration fit for a king - or an emperor!
Victoria found a most appropriate balloon - and yes, that's the birthday boy doing his gimp version of the Chicken Dance
That evening, dear friends Dave and Karen took us and Phyllis out for a lovely dinner.
The CE and Dave
It was a truly happy occasion with so much to celebrate, including the very exciting news that Dave and his very special friend, Karen, are ENGAGED! We are so happy for them!
The happy couple!
Das Boot and Das Molt
Expect the unexpected. After seven weeks, the hard cast finally came off and the CE is now sporting the latest in Robo-Cop fashion.
Pain and swelling included!
As pleased as he was to be freed from the confines of the cast, he wasn’t too happy the next day when his foot swelled up like a balloon. Just part of the healing process, he was told. He is now walking without crutches, but not very far. Someone told him that at the four-month post-surgery mark he can expect things to be just about where they were pre-surgery – this is a long and S-L-O-W recovery!
"Maybe your next book should be 'Chicken Soup for the Foot'"
Soaking the dogs with the dog
Hope is having to make some adjustments this week, as well – she is in full molt! I opened the door to the pen one morning and there were feathers EVERYWHERE! The fall molt is an annual rite for chickens and can last anywhere from two to eight weeks. Autumn has apparently not gotten the memo yet – she’s as feathered as ever. But poor Hope is walking around with her last remaining tail feather pointed askew and bare patches on her neck and breast.
She's horrified!
But it could be so much worse: here are some photos of molting chickens posted on BackyardChickens.com
Sad!
Sadder!
Saddest!
Some folks say that an intense molt signals an especially cold winter. The naked chicken above must mean sub-Arctic temperatures are on the way!
This is marathon weekend for Victoria and Angie – Victoria just finished her first half-marathon this morning, and Angie runs the New York Marathon tomorrow. Congrats and good luck!
Looking good!
