Memories: Our trip to CA

I went clothes shopping the other day. It's very different during COVID. I didn't try on clothes at the store because the fitting rooms were closed. Didn't ask but it looked like the deal was "take home to try on, bring back here if you don't like it," because people were in line with one or two items. Fortunately the clothes I got all fit pretty well.

As soon as I saw one shirt I knew it was for me, because it reminded me of one I wore a lot in high school. (I probably ought to iron it first before posting a picture though.)

Wish I remembered what the photographer had said. We all thought it was really funny, as you can tell from Matthew's expression. Think this was taken at a church near where we lived in VA, where Andrew had a band with friends in our neighborhood. The photo made it into my yearbook along with a quote from 2 Peter. 

A year or two before we moved, we memorized Hebrews & 1, 2 Peter in Bible Quiz. I used to recite verses to the time on the clock. The chapter I got to know most that way was Hebrews 11 (when I had trouble getting to sleep), the Faith chapter and one of my favorites, but also to some extent Hebrews 7 (when I woke up). That year I made it to Nationals as an individual, which I think was new at the time. You had to be a high-scorer at Regionals (ours was KS, NM, OK, & TX), which was around mid-May. That year, Nationals (around the 4th of July) was in Palm Springs, CA.

Seems like individuals had a day or two of events, while the main team-based competition ran the whole week. One event I remember was a quoting bee, like a spelling bee except given a reference you had to recite its verse before time ran out. I found our stash of pictures from that trip and I think this was an individual quiz competition, like the team-based one except every quizzer for themselves:

Seems like the National event coordinators did what they could to help book everyone in the same hotel, whose conference rooms we used for quizzing, to make it easier for everyone to be ready to go. (40 teams total, I think, and given a minimum of 2-3 quizzers, 1 coach, and 1 official per team, we're talking about a lot of people! All other tournaments including regionals tended to be fewer days and fewer people, so in those cases everyone would find nearby hotels and drive to the venue, usually a church.) I think our resort was called the Esmeralda. Very classy! Don't remember if I was in the picture with all attendees on its staircase, but I did find one with just me...

I used to get nervous before/during events and would carry things with me to settle my stomach, like over-the-counter medicines or mints. I still sometimes carry breathmints or gum but they aren't always mint-flavored anymore. I think around that time I consulted a doctor who suggested (but not prescribed?) something for anxiety, but I think we ultimately decided not to. 

Individually, I didn't do too well that Nationals, but that was ok because we made a vacation out of it, and drove over with our mom's parents. Mom's mom Judy grew up in CA (further north I think), and says that her family moved there with the Joads in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. We met one of her cousins on this trip too. Later, I think she and Mom's dad Don split off to see other family. Here she is with Mom and Matthew, who had saved up to buy a camcorder and is to this day into animation.

Think that was the Joshua Tree National Park. Matthew's shirt (themed after the TV show Survivor) was from a year or two before, when we all competed in a swim team. Speaking of swimming we all stopped by the coast (the album says Carlsbad) to swim in the Pacific. Normally when I hear beach I'm reminded of sandy ones we'd go to. Think this one was a little more pebbly. I also seem to remember a surfer with a white swimsuit and board kindly helping us figure out how to use rinse-off showers near the streets.

We tend to avoid traffic but I'd swear we drove near San Diego just to see it. We also went to a water park. Think it was Knott's (like the jam) Soak City. I made bad clothing decisions that trip. Don't think I packed flip flops because I remember the ground being hot! We may all have had tennis shoes like Matthew has in the middle one.

    

Looks like it might be Andrew, then me, then Haley in the bobsled.

I also decided to wear black. Should have taken cues from Mom and Grandma! Grandma also drove a white car, which was a good idea when its engine overheated once on our trip. Don't remember when I got that shirt but it's my yardwork (raking, in VA) shirt, and I still wear it. It's a little dated though; says Pluto is a planet.😉 This is us at San Juan Capistrano. 

This is the first trip I remember that we did a lot of sightseeing on. Later, when we moved out east, and especially when Dad got bit by the geocaching bug, we did even more. The next time we made it to Nationals, held in AZ my last eligible year (high school senior), was over Acts as a team in VA. Having a very dedicated teammate who could think and quote really fast helped a lot! A strong team could go much further more easily than an individual, I think. Both CA and AZ were really neat places to visit to top off all the hard work those quiz years!

Grandmother Celeste

My dad's mom, Celeste, lives in TX and had a birthday today. (By convention -- due in large part to yours truly; I was a stickler for that sort of thing -- our family refers to her as Grandmother; our maternal grandmother Judy is known as Grandma.) The whole time I've known her she's lived in TX, but she has moved from city to city. 

She's very good at bridge, but I've never learned to play. She is also an avid puzzle solver, just like Dad. Especially crosswords in the newspaper, which she would cut out Jumbles (anagrams) from for me to solve. She and Dad have also had similar reading tastes: Mysteries (Sue Grafton and The Cat Who... series) and Tom Clancy. And history like David McCullough. She used to email me facts from history books she'd read or lists of facts in general since I was into that sort of thing.

She's very active. When we were little, she would wake up early to go to the gym first thing. (I used to be a late riser, so I tended to miss those trips.) When I did go, I remember doing aerobics with her like bikes and treadmills. 

Water exercises especially. When she didn't have a pool, there was usually one nearby. If I remember the tile correctly, this may have been her pool in Austin. When I was young I'm told I nearly drowned in that pool, but my brother Andrew saved me. I think I remember trying to swim over The Deep End (13 ft!) and getting side stitches and him diving in after me. It's always reminded me of the stories of heroism we'd read in the back of Boys' Life magazines and of the film It's a Wonderful Life. When we (cough cough I) got better at swimming we would compete at touching the pool floor.

There was a long, steep hill just outside of that house. Andrew and I had always talked about biking down it (it was already pretty fun riding it in a car!) and one time I had a bike and tried it. The bike went out of control but fortunately I only scraped my knee.

We visited her mostly in the summer. A lot of our travel was by car so we would wake up early in the morning and drive all day to get to her place, where we would stay for a week or so and then maybe head over to the beach (a shorter drive from there) for another week. 

One summer, Andrew and I stayed at her place. May have been around the time of Matthew's heart surgery. I think that's when we saw our first PG-13 movie, but I don't remember if it was Dr Doolittle with Eddie Murphy, Small Soldiers, or Armageddon. Seems like Dr Doolittle we saw with Grandma Judy.

She's always on the move, not just physically active. I think she's been involved in drafting, interior design, real estate, stocks, and something with an oil company where she met my grandfather Jim. 

She has a sweet tooth. The most classic example of this is that her fridge usually has packaged ice cream cones, but some other sweets I've seen at her place are praline/pistachio ice cream, pirouette cookies, and white chocolate pretzels. When Haley (whose name comes from Grandmother's) was little, she and Grandmother would joke about how they both had a "second stomach" especially for desserts.

She likes to travel. I have postcards from her from when she went to Europe. And we went on some of her trips with her. In my early teens she, Andrew, and I went on a road trip through Yellowstone Park and Mount Rushmore. Mom noticed that most of the pictures we took didn't have people in them, especially our Yellowstone gallery of mostly geysers, and attributed it to how we learned to read from Pathway readers, whose illustrations didn't have people in them either. 

She helped spruce up our bedrooms one time. Mine was a racecar theme and Andrew's was space, which turned out really neat because it had glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall! Space and sci-fi were topics many family members were very excited about, except for me and Mom (and maybe Haley), who also enjoyed it but not as much. 

One time she got us neon lamps. Andrew got a flamingo and I had a palm tree. Mine broke when we moved back from VA. I keep meaning to pick another one up when I see them while shopping, I liked that one so much. 

Grandmother also has a green thumb. In Austin (and maybe later) she had plastic frogs around the pool that would ribbit when something got too close to spook the deer from eating the plants. One time I visited her in Waco and she and her boyfriend Harvey were putting plants away when it was getting cold out.

I think the only alcoholic drinks I've ever had were at/around her place, although not always with her. In general I'm a teetotaler. When we were younger Mom would say that she and Dad had come from alcoholic families and that's why they didn't drink alcohol much. I abstain for that sort of reason. But one time after I chopped wood over there, and Harvey said something like "If you work like a man, you can drink like a man" so I had a celebratory beer.

Harvey's pretty cool too. Got me into Reuben sandwiches! And one time when we were out there he recommended a boating place that we all had a lot of fun at!

A while back Grandmother came down with cancer. It takes a lot out of her but thankfully she's still as upbeat and active as ever. This is from my last visit. Planning my next.