Category Archives: Life With Superman

If You Love Mid-Century Modern …

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037… you must visit Palm Springs! For Chris’ birthday, we took a quick road trip to P.S. and had an awesome time. Here’s how we experienced the four things I wanted to give him for his birthday:

0211950s tiki culture: We experienced this at our hotel! We stayed at the very-retro Caliente Tropics (at the end of East Palm Canyon Drive), which was originally built in 1964  in classic Polynesian and tiki style (which was very cool and postwar-exotic at the time). The motel-style digs have since been redone and brought into the modern era with things like marble tubs and in-room fridges, but the motor-car-style place still retains its uber-vintage vibe, with tiki torches, bamboo plants, lots of palm trees, and even private cabana “huts” for two. There was a family-friendly pool surrounded by green lawn and barbecues. You half expected some pearl-wearing housewife and a bowling-shirt-clad daddy-o to step out with a tray of grillin’s and Jell-O.

Midcentury-modern architecture. Well, Palm Springs is the epicenter of midcentury-modern everything now. Embracing its roots, which sprung forth in the middle years of the century with the unique “desert modernism,” the town has turned its attention to renovating its modern-movement buildings. The deep overhangs, flat rooflines, great use of glass, and desert landscaping create an environment that looks right out of a vintage postcard. Continue reading →

Pageant of the Masters 2009

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1920s actorsLast weekend, Superman and I got to attend one of our favorite summer events – Orange County’s Pageant of the Masters.

We always reserve our seats early – sometimes in even in December of the previous year – so we can be sure to get good seats for next year’s show.

The Pageant is a 75-plus year tradition here in OC. It began in 1933 – tucked on a little stage in the Laguna canyons, which had already come to be known as an artists’ colony.

Artists (and movie stars, incidentally), began coming to Laguna in the 1920s – the movie stars sipped cognacs and watched the sunsets from the famous Victor Hugo Inn on Pacific Coast Highway (today it is Las Brisas), while the artists flocked to the cliffs and coves to paint the beautiful beach settings and lived in bungalows in the eucalyptus canyons. As more and more artists continued spilling into the seaside town, they began an annual art show. They had to throw sawdust on the ground to keep the dirt from rising and ruining their paintings, and eventually this show became the Laguna Sawdust Festival, which is still growing strong more than 75 years later. Laguna also became home to the county’s first art museum, which is still there, on an ocean cliff overlooking the Pacific.

The Pageant was created shortly after the Sawdust Festival. Back then it was called “Tableaux Vivant,” which means “living pictures.” Continue reading →

30 Reasons I Love My Man

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Here, on this Father’s Day, are 30 of the many reasons I love my husband Superman:

  1. He has the most fabulous arms.
  2. He never leaves the house without saying “I love you” to each of us. He will walk up and down the stairs to make sure he accomplishes this.
  3. He makes me laugh every day.
  4. He snuggles with each of the kids on the couch anytime they ask. (Which is pretty much every night.)
  5. He loves that our teenage son still hugs him in public.
  6. He makes the Most. Amazing. Salsa. Ev-ah.
  7. He writes me e-mails in the middle of the day just to say he loves me.
  8. He has a great body.
  9. He loves all manly things: football, motorcycles, golf, surfing, beer, gadgets, women and blue jeans.
  10. He looks great in his blue jeans.
  11. He makes me and the kids Sunday brunch every week (usually egg burritos and salsa — yum).
  12. He pulls over if he sees a car stranded in the middle of the road and helps push it like some kind of superhero.
  13. He calls my mom just to talk to her.
  14. He instituted a Saturday night sleepover for the kids when they were small, and it’s a tradition we continue to this day.
  15. He loves traditions.
  16. He’s very generous and helps me be more so.
  17. He has interesting interests and follows them with a passion. They change over the years, but I love that he has them. Examples: tikis, midcentury modern design, presidents, WWII, football, baseball.
  18. He knows an outrageous amount of trivia about tikis, midcentury modern design, presidents, WWII, football and baseball.
  19. He does crossword puzzles every day.
  20. He takes each of our kids on a “10-year-old’s road trip,” which is a weekend road trip of their choice with just dad. Child 1 went to Oregon to see a Ducks game. Child 2 went to the coastal city of Carmel and to the aquarium there. And here’s the trip with Child 3.
  21. He keeps a “Happiness Book” of the kids’ drawings and named it such because it brings him joy.
  22. He had to bury a brother and his mom, and, perhaps consequently, loves his family like there’s no tomorrow.
  23. He hates to fly, but will.
  24. He loves Tahoe and Yosemite as much as I do.
  25. He holds my hand over the console in the car.
  26. He encourages me to do things that make me happy, whether it’s walking up to the book store or scrapbooking until midnight.
  27. He still gets nervous about buying me presents.
  28. He taught our daughter how to throw a football.
  29. He shows our kids every day how to treat a woman with respect.
  30. He is quite possibly the best father on earth.

BeachHouse-1

Happy Father’s Day, babe!

Life Lesson No. 1: People Are Important

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My former editor Dixie taught me a ton of things, but one of them was this: Life is short. Spend it on the people you love.

I was reminded of the lesson the other day when I read this post by Ruth Pennebaker at The Fabulous Geezersisters’ Weblog: The Trip I Almost Didn’t Take. I read Ruth’s tale and nodded my head through the whole thing. She’s so right. And it’s a lesson I, too, seem to need to learn over and over again.

But Dixie did a lot to get it into my head.

Dixie was one of those really great bosses who truly “got” life. She’s a cancer survivor, and was always eager to help other people understand what she now understood: Life is short. People are important. She always encouraged us to spend time with our kids, go to their school plays, stop working on the weekend so we could be with them. She knew that those things would make a difference in the long run — not silly details like whether or not we added that second “m” to “accommodate.”

While I was on her staff, my husband’s grandfather passed away in Texas, and he and I bit our lips about attending the funeral. Continue reading →

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