It started in January 2012, when my sister forwarded me a Groupon: $165 for a two-night stay in an ocean view room in Mendocino, plus a bottle of wine.
“This is a great deal,” my sister said. “We should do it.” She did not have to do a lot to talk my husband into it. We bought the Groupon and set about trying to find a date that would work for the four of us. The problem is that the coastal town of Mendocino is a four-hour drive from my sister’s home in the Sacramento area — which is a six-hour drive from our house. This would make it tough to do over a weekend. We needed to identify a school holiday and then arrange for my husband to take a couple of days off work to accommodate the travel time.
We decided on the first weekend of Spring Break. But a funny thing happened on our way up to Sacramento in March of 2012: my niece got home from school feeling sick, and her parents did not feel comfortable leaving her home alone (albeit with her cousin and older siblings). My sister suggested that Gareth and I go alone — but we did not want to do that, either.
So we re-scheduled for the next holiday on the calendar where all the pieces might fall into place for a getaway: Thanksgiving Weekend. But by the time November rolled around, we realized that this was not going to work, either: Linda always hosts a huge dinner with lots of guests, and we were not the only ones coming in from out of town. There was no way to graciously leave town the next day. So we rescheduled again — for Spring Break of this year…
…and once again, we found ourselves unable to make it.
By this time, we had lost the “deal” part of our Groupon: We each had our $165 on account, which we could redeem whenever we actually showed up to stay. We reduced our time from two nights to one at $200 per night. So by the time we actually got in the car and made the drive to Mendocino, we were determined to make sure our money did not go to waste. We were also pretty sure that the staff had started a pool to bet on whether or not we’d actually show up this time.
I was relieved not to be greeted with sarcasm upon check-in. In fact, everyone we met at the Hill House Inn was friendly and pleasant. Our rooms were spacious and clean. The furnishings were a little bit dated (which you can get away with in a historic hotel) and the televisions were older models — but we had free wi-fi, which I really appreciated since my phone didn’t work so well up there.
And as my sister had promised, the town of Mendocino is absolutely charming:
My youngest niece graduated from high school last week, and so we packed up our things and drove up to Sacramento to celebrate — just as we did when her older brother and sister reached that milestone.
But this year, we did something different: we stayed a while. My sister and I have been trying to arrange a couples’ trip up to Mendocino for the longest time, but between the restraints of work and school, it’s been hard to coordinate. With the start of summer and all of us in the same place, we were finally able to make that happen.
And as it’s just silly to rush back home so you can get back to work mid-week, we extended our holiday until Friday, and made a pit stop in one of our state’s natural wonders: Yosemite National Park.
It was our first real vacation – not just an extended weekend – in three years.
As you all know, I’m not the outdoors type – but I still found plenty of ways to enjoy the beauty of Yosemite, including a morning art class that had me wielding a paintbrush for the first time since I was a kid. The resulting watercolor wasn’t great – but it didn’t totally suck, either. And I got in touch with a part of myself that’s been dormant for a long, long time.
My first attempt at painting in something like 40 years.
In fact, I think just the fact of being on vacation – without the usual workday stress – allowed each of us to be our authentic selves again. You know, the people we were before we became parents and homeowners and had to act like responsible adults. For one week, we were relaxed. For one week, we weren’t bickering with one another. For one week, I felt at peace.
Now that I am back, I am trying to figure out how to hold on to that authentic self I got to meet again while on vacation. I may make some time to do more painting, if only for myself.
And start planning my next vacation. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait as long.
You know how yesterday, I confessed that I spent the entire holiday weekend playing instead of working?
Yeah, well that has certainly caught up with me.
Last week, I was once again a guest of CBS Television’s daytime show, The Talk, where I had the opportunity to meet and lunch with that day’s guests: Jeff Foxworthy and Marcella Vallodolid of the network’s new reality show, The American Baking Competition, which premieres tonight.
I have tons and tons of video to edit. Have I even started?
No. And that’s a shame, because Foxworthy and Vallodolid are as charming as you would expect from their TV appearances – but also refreshingly down to earth and real. What you see is really what you get here, and I really want to share some of our conversation with you.
But that will have to wait until I get to editing the video. And I’m at a breakfast meeting, so won’t be able to start until this afternoon.
This wouldn’t be so bad, except that the program debuts tonight, and it really sounds like one worth watching. True, the only reality shows I enjoy are the ones that involve cooking, so I was predisposed to Iike this one. And it’s based on a successful British show (and you know how much I love my Brit TV), so it’s a no-brainer for me.
So all I can do right now is ask you to watch this spot for my video. And take a peek at the show tonight on CBS tonight at 8 pm. I know I will be.
This post was NOT sponsored by anyone. I just enjoyed my meeting with the stars and want to write about the show.
We spent the holiday weekend accomplishing something that’s been rare for us these last several years.
We played.
My husband did not bring work home, I did not blog, we barely glanced at social media or much of anything on the Internet. I did not catch up on housework and he did not fix the sprinklers or any of the other jobs that have to be done around the house.
Instead, we went to the movies (Star Trek: Into Darkness, if you must know). We shopped and enjoyed delicious produce at a farmer’s market. We dined out. We took in the natural beauty of the Hollywood Hills. And we paid a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Even our daughter took a break from studying by spending a day in the canyon for the annual Topanga Days festival, which means I had the pleasure of driving into the bucolic community to transport her and her friend home.
OK, I was a little less than thrilled when she called and asked if we could pick them up, have dinner at our favorite pub in Sherman Oaks and then drive her friend back to Woodland Hills.
“She has no concept of distance,” my husband muttered. I nodded. Some day, when she is paying for her own gas, she’ll figure that out. I told her we would do the pub with her friend another time, and she was OK with that. The point is, once I knew I would have to make the trek out to Topanga, I enjoyed it because it is one of my favorite drives in the city.
That was Saturday. Sunday began with a visit to the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, then we zipped up into the hills for breakfast at the Beachwood Cafe, nestled into the original Hollywoodland development. We had not been there for something like 20 years, so it was like being someplace new. It’s the kind of place where you can get kale salad instead of breakfast potatoes with your eggs, and it was good.
We followed up with a walk around Lake Hollywood, a location that’s not generally on the tourist map. In fact, I don’t believe many native Angelenos knew that it was there until this weekend, when the LA Times published an article announcing that it was re-opening after a 7-year restoration. The lake is actually a reservoir resulting from a dam designed by William Mulholland and built by the DWP in 1923-24 to contain water imported from the Owens Valley, and it may look familiar to you if you ever saw the movie Chinatown. There’s some fascinating archival material about it on the DWP Museum website.
With mild weather and cool breezes, it was a pleasurable 3.5 mile walk around the lake.
We were still basking in the glow of that walk yesterday morning, when I suggested we take another one: inside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which has been the forgotten step-museum in our family lately. I mean, we visit the Getty two or three times a year — and I have not ventured inside LACMA since the King Tut exhibit returned there in 2005. This is sad, because when I was young (and had disposable income), I was a LACMA member. There were certain paintings and sculptures I wanted to see again. In a way, I was there to visit some old friends.
And it turned out to be a great day to visit: It was a “free admission holiday Monday,” part of a program underwritten by Target. This is the kind of corporate sponsorship I like, because it really benefits the community. The next one is Labor Day in September. In the meantime, here’s a small representation of what we saw:
I celebrated another birthday on Monday. Well, “celebrate” may not be the right word, as it was the most “meh” kind of birthday ever: As I’m still trying to succeed at my latest attempt to diet, I nixed all of my family’s suggestions for taking me to dinner or any other activity where I might have to stray from my current nitrate-free, non-soy, non-dairy regimen.
You know this is serious. I haven’t had a cup of coffee since my bout in the hospital last month. For the most part, this hasn’t affected my ability to get up every school day morning at 5:30 AM… but after 40 years of caffeinated living, my brain feels fuzzy. And as much as I miss writing, I have not been able to muster enough focus to finish anything.
At last, I join the 21st Century.
Maybe it’s the caffeine. Or maybe it’s the fact that I got a new toy over the weekend…………..
I used to be something of an early adopter. In fact, one of the reasons I signed up with T-mobile over 10 years ago was because I fell in love with the idea of owning a cameraphone, and they offered one that didn’t cost a small fortune. This device featured a small camera that attached to the bottom of the handset (the camera part was not yet integrated). It did not take wonderful pictures, but I loved it anyway.
My husband and I considered switching when the first iPhone debuted exclusive to AT&T… but our entire family (including my sister’s brood and my parents) are on T-mobile and leaving would mean losing free calls to one another. So I waited. T-mobile uses the same GSM system as AT&T, so I figured that when their exclusive deal with Apple expired, we would be next.
Obviously, that was a bad call. I watched as iPhone was rolled out to Verizon and Sprint and even pay-as-you-go Virgin Mobile, while I tracked every rumor of a deal between T-mobile and Apple. At one point last year, it looked like AT&T would buy T-mobile and I would have access to iPhone by merger. But that one fell through and so I continued to make do with a sputtering Blackberry that was now crashing on me several times a day. Even my husband was tired of my decrepit old cell phone: His Chrismukah gift to me was a new one, my choice.
I came close to choosing a Samsung Galaxy. But then I tried to place a call with my husband’s Android and I realized I didn’t have the energy to learn another new operating system. I decided to wait.
My iPhone 5 arrived last Friday and I love it. I’ve been busy setting it up and figuring out how to integrate it with my other electronics. And I am finally able to use apps and social networks that were either not available to me or were just clunky to use with my iPad.
Like PTCH: the video-editing social network I wrote about last week. I have been aiming for creating a new PTCH a day, but it’s been more like one every two or three days. Here’s one I made yesterday for my blog:
So that’s what I’ve been up to this week.
As for the holiday weekend: While I do not want to lose sight of the fact that Memorial Day is a somber event honoring those who died for our country, I am looking forward to three days where my husband and daughter can both relax a little. Not to mention the new episodes of Arrested Development debuting on Netflix on Monday.
Samantha Ettus of MomPulse. Photo copyright 2013 Donna Schwartz Mills
I kicked off the month by attending another conference on May 1.
No, not Mom 2.0, even though its Laguna Beach location this year made it a bit more affordable. Alas, I am still not in the position to have a budget to attend a blog conference. Fortunately, the Women in Video workshop (sponsored by MomPulse and Sony) was free to attend — and it was held in the same gorgeous hotel that all my friends enjoyed last weekend for Mom 2.0.
Sony already gifted me a couple of years ago with a fabulous Handycam, which had become such a large part of my work process that I went into mourning back in December when I lost it. I spent six weeks looking through every cluttered pile, box, bag, cabinet and closet in my house (plus the few hiding places in my car) before I finally ‘fessed up to my husband that I had, indeed, lost a device that retails for over $500.
I have always been absentminded, and I seem to get worse every year. This trait drives my husband crazy.
I don’t like it much, either. I waste a good deal of time hunting down items like my car keys and cell phone (and don’t get me started on things like iPod cables, sweaters and the like).
Anyway, I knew that telling him the camcorder was gone would result in a big, bad rant about how terrible I am with anything of value. And the sad thing is that I agree with that assessment.
So I soldiered on for the first part of 2013 without my beloved Sony camcorder. I attended a Food and Wine festival and attempted to take video with my iPad. That was kind of a bust: the quality was nothing to write home about and I didn’t capture enough of the right moments to even glean out any good tidbits to write about. I reverted back to trying to take fast notes at events, which works – but I end up missing a lot, especially when I have to switch from note taking to photography. The Handycam is rather elegant, because it has a button that allows you to take a still photo even while you are recording video. It has other features I love too — so even though I toyed with the idea of buying a less fancy model, I had my heart set on replacing the camcorder I lost with one that had all the same features. And those all cost way more than I was willing to spend.
Eventually, my husband located an exact duplicate of the Sony I had lost: it was a demo model at the Burbank Fry’s, and as it’s been discontinued, it was probably the last one for sale in Los Angeles County. It was a little bit beat up, but probably no different from my old one, which got jostled a lot in my handbag.
So I was well-armed and ready to shoot at the Women in Video event on May 1. And I walked away from the workshop inspired to do more with video.
I also walked away with another gift from Sony: A nice, new copy of Vegas Movie Studio — which is finally giving me the tools I need to do a decent job of editing my video clips.
And I’ve been kind of obsessed with learning how to use the software.
A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I launched a new video series for our InQuestOf lifestyle website, based on a new book called the Fast Metabolism Diet. Since then, I’ve learned that the publishers of the book engaged several bloggers I know to try the program out and write about it. I am not a part of that program: My sister learned about the book independently and thought it was something that would help me… as you can see from the first video in the series:
See the rest of this video series at InQuestOf Videos on YouTube.
DISCLOSURE: Not a sponsored post. Products mentioned were paid for by the author, except where indicated in the text of the post.
The baby birds nesting just outside my front door are growing by leaps and bounds. Here’s how they looked on Sunday:
In fact, I remarked to my husband that they are looking big enough to fly away. Sure enough, when I ventured outside on Monday morning, I discovered this little guy:
The next time I looked up at the nest, there were only three birdies left.
SoCal Mom on the set of DWTS. Copyright 2007-2013 Donna Schwartz Mills
SoCal Mom on the set of DWTS. Copyright 2007-2013 Donna Schwartz Mills
Dancing With the Stars sponsor AT&T invited me to attend tonight’s show taping. I have attended tapings before (thanks to my friend, Mary Ellen, who works on the program). They’re fun, they’re free, and if you are lucky enough to score a VIP ticket, they’re a great excuse to get dressed up (because the show’s producers want the audience to look classy). AT&T wants everyone to know about their DWTS Facebook event and digital pre-show.
I RSVP’d to the company’s invitation about a month ago, and both my husband and I had been looking forward to it as something we could enjoy together without breaking our budget. All right, I did go out and buy myself a new dress last night because I’ve gained so much weight that the old one doesn’t fit any longer (and that one was purchased five years ago, after I LOST 56 pounds).
And this is why I jump on events like the DWTS invitation: there was a time when I did not think twice about buying myself something nice to wear, and owned a wardrobe with multiple items to choose from. There was a time when my husband and I habitually dined out together and did things just for fun. There was a time when we lived our lives at a slower pace.
That was a good time. And I have to remind myself that my life was once like that, so maybe it can be that way again.
But not now. Now my mantra is “austerity,” and I’m sick of it. I’m tired of pinching pennies (unsuccessfully, because I’m not very good at it). I’m tired of living in t-shirts and jeans. And I’m really tired of trying to cram too many activities into too few hours, every single day. I never succeed in getting all of them done, and one item or another always needs to be postponed or canceled entirely.
I’m especially tired of being unable to predict how much I can reasonably accomplish.
I try only to accept invitations to events I will attend. And yet, I manage to flake out on about half of them.
It’s always something: Most often, it’s just me working slower than I expected and being in danger of missing a deadline. Sometimes it’s a scheduling conflict with another family member. That’s what happened today: my husband is swamped at work and could not really take the afternoon off to attend DWTS — and he was my ride to the show, as my daughter took my car today.
I will be returning the dress tonight, after the kid comes home with the car. I debated keeping it, because I really do need to own a dress that fits.
But on Monday, I’ll be starting yet another new diet. And if it’s successful, I may be able to slip into the old one again.
DISCLOSURE: I did not receive any compensation of any kind in exchange for writing this post.
The chicks which hatched last week are growing and they let Mama Bird and Daddy Bird know they’re hungry several times a day… as you can see (and hear) below:
After spending Wednesday and Thursday picking up the pieces from my delayed trip back from Denver, I was finally set to work on Friday. You would think that all the notes I take would make it easy to write up a report on the conference I attended… but I’m an excruciatingly slow writer and I was only about a third of the way through at noon, when the pain hit.
The attacks began when I was in high school: A vague feeling of discomfort would turn into an intense, unrelenting ache deep inside my mid-section, and there was no escape. Laying in a fetal position would alleviate it for short bursts of time before it would come back in strength and I would have to try something else. The pain would usually hit late at night and last for hours, until I finally got to sleep… and when I’d wake up, it would be gone.
The stomach aches came with increasing frequency when I was at UCLA, and I took advantage of the student health services to get completely checked out. Test after test after test turned up no physical source of the pain. I came to the conclusion that they were related to stress (even though I could never pinpoint any one thing that served as a trigger; in fact, they usually occurred at times when I was not overly anxious about anything). After I transferred back to CSUN and was living at home and the pain would hit, my mom would slip me one of her Valiums, which would put me to sleep and make the pain go away.
I gradually stopped having these attacks, and by the time I got married, they had stopped entirely.
Until two weeks ago, when that familiar, awful pain hit me on a Saturday night and kept me awake into the wee hours of the morning. In desperation, I popped a Vicodin left over from last year’s broken toe episode.
And then it hit me again on Friday. And there was something different about it.
The pain wasn’t just in my belly. I felt it in my back, my left shoulder and arm… and in my chest.
Now, any of these pains could be just normal wear and tear on my middle-aged body; the difference could just be because I’m not 17 any more. But because I’m not 17 any more, it actually could have been something way more serious, according to the American Heart Association:
Heart Attack Signs in Women
Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of your chest. It lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.
Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.
Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
Other signs such as breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.
As with men, women’s most common heart attack symptom is chest pain or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain.
If you have any of these signs, don’t wait more than five minutes before calling for help. Call 9-1-1 and get to a hospital right away.
Something similar happened to one of the other bloggers who attended the Lifesavers Conference in Denver. I commented on her post. I wondered if the pain I was feeling was just the power of suggestion. But I also remembered my grandmother, who had her first heart attack at 50 and a stroke at 55. I lost a lot of weight a few years ago and since menopause, have gained a lot of it back very rapidly. That’s not good for your heart.
I decided to get myself checked out and drove myself to the ER. In hindsight, that was a stupid thing to do, because there were moments during the drive when the pain was so bad I thought about pulling over and calling 9-1-1 after all.
When you check into an emergency room complaining of chest pain, they don’t mess around. It did not take long to get me on a gurney and hooked up to monitors. I was given nitroglycerin. They took a lot of tests, including an ultrasound of my chest. The technician thought it looked good. I was relieved and expected to be released.
And I felt foolish, for wasting everyone’s time and scaring my family.
“You did the right thing in coming here,” the ER doctor assured me.
In fact, there was one test that came up negative, indicating a possible blood clot in my lung. I was admitted overnight for observation, and I underwent a cardiac stress test the next morning.
The cardiologist’s conclusion was that the chest pain was heartburn (also common for overweight people my age). He prescribed Prilosec and told me to reduce my caffeine intake. I was released late Saturday and am following orders and am seeing how much I can get done without my coffee fix. In the meantime, I now know my heart is strong and I can stop worrying about inheriting my grandmother’s cardiovascular problem — and focus on doing all I can to keep myself from developing one. I started a daily walking regime last month; I am going to step that up.
As for the weight: I’m at my wit’s end. But as long as I stick with food that is heart healthy, I should be OK.
