Californ-I-A

I went out to Los Angeles this weekend for a super quick visit with my friend Carla. Carla has been fighting cancer for a while now. And while she is still fighting very hard and we are hoping and praying every day for her, the doctor's pronouncement that her cancer is incurable and that she will need to be on chemo for the rest of her life scared the crap out of me. I hadn't seen Carla since her wedding and hadn't met either of her two children yet. Clearly this needed to be remedied sooner rather than later. So away I went.


Craig was really nice about letting me ditch him and the three kiddos all weekend. And I missed them all like CRAZY the whole time I was there. (Especially when I was driving around, which surprised me. I thought I'd enjoy the peace and quiet, but instead I was just totally bored. Boo for California's no-driving-while-talking-on-the-phone laws and boo for not having my kids to entertain me!) But it was SO good to finally see Carla again! I also had the added bonus of staying with my cousin Anne and her husband Simon, and getting to meet their three children (for the first time for all three of them!), and I managed to squeeze in a quick visit with my buddy Shaun from BYU, so that was also great.

Some highlights, lowlights, and general thoughts from the trip:

-Everyone has totally cute kids! And somehow I managed to not take a single picture of any of them-- gah! But trust me, there are oodles of adorable children in LA these days. It is worth going to LA just so you can see their cute kids!

-I like California drivers way better than Virginia drivers. Any time I needed to change lanes, I would signal, and people would just let me in! It was like magic! In Virginia, if you signal, they usually speed up so you can't get in. It's really awesome. It's led to me developing a technique of driving wherein you look for a really nice car (like a BMW or a Mercedes; a Lexus will do in a pinch) and then cut them off. In a game of chicken, you know that the beemer is going to brake before the 10-year-old minivan will.

-I learned that if you are prone to motion sickness, you shouldn't fly into the Windy City when they're having a particularly windy day. And you especially shouldn't do it with a crazy early flight which makes it impossible for you to eat breakfast. And if you're dumb enough to ignore that advice, then make sure you have an air sickness bag in your seat pocket. Otherwise you'll have nowhere to throw up but all over yourself. Which is really, really gross. (Good thing I hadn't checked my bag and was able to change clothes in the airport before the next leg of my journey. Ugh.)

-I like the California freeway system. Even though they have 500 times as many people as DC, their traffic isn't any worse. (Really, I just looked up the population of each and did the math. That's no exaggeration). Clearly, they're doing something better than we are. Maybe DC should try making the freeway get wider the closer you to the city, instead of narrower. And stop wasting all the room at the shoulder for cops to sit on and give you tickets, and just use that space for cars to drive on. Just a thought. (I never saw a cop on the freeway the entire time I was there. And consequently you didn't have people slamming on their brakes to look at the police. I think there's a cause and effect relationship going on there that needs to be explored.)

-It's hard to be a lot of help to someone who's so sick, so I was kind of proud of myself for any little thing I found to do. Carla was sweet about acting like I was a big help (instead of, say, getting angry when I offered to push her wheelchair super fast through the parking lot). Things I found to do: get cough drops as needed, give leg massages, talk so much that she didn't have a chance to nap (she said that was a good thing because then she slept well that night. I'm not sure if that was just her being charitable or not), push the wheelchair (at a normal speed), open bottles of water. I had this idea in my head that I could help out with her kids some, but they're just at that age where you have to know them to understand what they're saying, so I mostly ended up trying to keep out of the way so their Grandma and Daddy could get them what they needed. Ah, well.

-Speaking of kids, it's good for me to miss my own kids so much. It's good for me to remember just how much I really do love them. But I felt bad for how much they missed me. Craig took this picture to illustrate their sorrow at my absence:
It's hard to see, but Bentley is wrapped in a blanket under the table. Apparently he spent 45 minutes moping there. And this was while Daddy was making sugar cookies with them!

-A really great way to introduce yourself to the couple you'll be sitting in the middle of (apparently she likes a window seat and he likes an aisle seat?) is by asking the flight attendant for a sick bag the second you sit down. They'll be so excited you chose to sit with them! (I managed to not be ill on that leg of the journey, thank goodness. I think the couple was quite relieved. I was, too, actually.)

-I drove on Sunset Boulevard for about 150 feet. It's kind of embarrassing how excited I got over that. Same thing when my friend Shaun showed me the view of the Hollywood sign at the retirement home he manages. I've spent just enough time going to California as a kid that I think I should be immune to the touristy stuff. But I guess I'm not! (Just for the record, I don't include Disneyland with the touristy stuff that I should be over; you can never be too excited about going there!)

-One last thing about how great California is: the weather. It's to die for. It really is perfect all year round! If the whole rest of the world didn't know about that and hadn't already moved there, I would definitely be pushing to move there myself. As it is, I think it's probably too crowded for me to ever take the plunge. But I do love California.

-I certainly wasn't the only one anxious to visit Carla. A few of her roommates from when she lived in St. George came on Saturday to see her, too. It turns out that the Cheesecake Factory is a great place to eat on a Saturday afternoon with a whole gang of girls. We had a blast. And ate so much I nearly exploded. But in a good way.



-With all the people clamoring for Carla's attention, I was very pleased to get an hour of just the two of us. It was nice to be able to talk freely about how she's feeling about this whole ordeal. We cried a lot, we laughed a lot. But even with the added tears (and the lack of hair, and the screws she's been sporting in her head-- which come out today!), it was nice to be reminded that through it all, Carla is still Carla. She's still-- and always will be-- my best friend. Even cancer can't take that away.



Love you, Carla!