Am I the only driver in California that can do this? I have a pet peeve about one teensy einsy little thing about driving on California streets.

RIGHT TO RIGHT, LEFT TO LEFT

When I went through drivers' training back in the 80s, we were taught that when making turns, you turn from the right lane into the corresponding right lane, and from the left lane into the corresponding left lane.

Numerous times in the last few weeks, I have been practically run off the road by people turning wide on a left turn, or hit head on as I'm approaching a stop sign and someone cuts their left turn across my lane, and almost every day a woman swings her big SUV wide on her right turn almost mashing my little car. Every day she gives ME the same dirty look that says "how dare you get in my way," when in fact it'd HER fault if we were ever to collide. Granted, things may have changed since I took my last drivers' test, but I just checked the California DMV handbook and it still says to turn this way for the most part. There's even some cute little pictures!

Okay, I had to draw on the arrows because the image files from the DMV handbook are layered. And with my limited resources, this is amazingly good!

So there it is. Carry on.

But don't carry on turning wide or cutting corners.

You know what I mean.

i can't seem to keep up, life is just flying by at the speed of toddler! We are quickly winding down January and getting ready for Melody's (gulp!) third birthday. Wow!!

Yesterday, we stopped at the grocery store after work for some sundries and milk. There was a lady there handing out tastes of the cookies the bakery had just made. She likes Melody and gave her several tastes in a little cup to enjoy as we finished our shopping. On the way home, Melody and I discussed this.

Melody: The cookie lady is nice.

Mom: Yes, she gave you some treats.

Melody: She likes to give out the cookies.

Mom: I'm sure she does when sweet little girls say 'thank you.'

Melody: She likes to be the cookie lady.

Mom: Mmmhmm

Melody: I like to be the cookie eater.

Mom: Uncontrollable laughter

First let me preface this with "I am not writing about some so-called housewives who have a TV show and purport themselves to be real by any definition of the word."

So, one of my new favorite TV shows is called Criminal Minds. Those of you who know me well will be surprised because I usually eschew "fake" crime shows. I'm more of a First 48 girl, myself, but this show is somehow enjoyable. I also used to love Profiler, which was basically the same premise. Criminal Minds is about a team of FBI Behavior Analisis Unit (BAU) profilers who save the day almost every episode. The writers are smart enough to have them win almost all the time, but still have room for humility. I record the show on our DVR and watch three or four in a row whenever I can.

During a recent marathon, one episode made me laugh right out loud for it's complete lack of understanding of Orange County and just how we do things here. The storyline went like this "normal middle aged father of three completely loses his mind after the death of his child and starts shooting blond women driving luxury cars, at random locations on Orange County freeways." Now, wanting to annihilate a snooty lady in her luxury car cutting me off on a freeway is something I can totally relate to, but here's where it got really funny.

The guy would drive around looking for construction zones on the freeway, and drive through them repeatedly until someone meeting his requirements (snooty blonde in a luxury car), cut him off. He would then follow her and blast her with a sawed off through the window, resulting in her death. Anyone who has lived in Orange County for more than thirty seconds knows there are far too many snooty blonde women in luxury cars out there to necessitate driving through a construction zone repeatedly before one cuts you off. That's just a result of the socio-economic make up of the OC. Secondly, have they seen the back-up created by these merged lanes?  It would take him hours and hours to drive through repeadtedly and anyone in OC knows that is almost more annoying than getting cut off.  Finally, in order to catch this guy, they closed down all the construction areas that required a lane merge except one. In all of OC. Really? Have they even noticed that construction in OC is occurring on almost every freeway and highway and major thoroughfare in existence in our fair county? AND, how could they have gotten CalTrans to respond in record time, pulling crews and rearranging traffic patterns in a matter of hours? Realizing this is just a TV show with fake FBI members and even with suspension of disbelief, I just cannot buy CalTrans doing anything in a matter of hours, as opposed to the standard matter of weeks.

As testimony to how messed up OC freeways are, the freeway chase scenes were actually shot in Long Beach. Obviously, LA County must have a better relationship with film makers, and also the ability to close down lanes of traffic quickly to facilitate filming, and aprehension of violent but normal looking serial freeway shooters.

However, I'll grant that this scenario is more interesting than "normal middle aged father of three completely loses his mind driving in OC rush hour on the 405 creeping along at 10 mph" and yeah, that chase scene would be pretty boring, although I'd love to see some CHiPs running along side a car in rush hour to catch the bad guy. But that's a story for Reno 911.

I can only hope that when I have been married to John for 62 years we will be in as good of shape physically and mentally! The way the story goes, this is Francis and Marlow Cowan, who on a visit to the Mayo Clinic, found a piano in the atrium and busted out this impromptu duet of The Old Gray Bonnet. Oh, and he turned 90 in February 2008!

A couple months later, one of their friends told them he had seen the clip on YouTube and that it was very popular! Francis and Marlow then recorded this clip explaining how the original clip had come to be. They are a really sweet couple, you gotta love 'em!

Christmas is definitely the time for memories!

Back in 1939, my Grammie Hennie was just a relatively new mom with three small kids. She went down to Montgomery Wards one day, and they were giving away copies of their new Christmas story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Being who she was, she surely took a few copies, because our family motto of "if one is good, two is better" had to start somewhere. She might have read this new story to her own three kids.

Years later, she gave a copy of this story to my parents. Being fond of tradition, it became a ritual that every year my mom would read us the story of Rudolph before bed on Christmas Eve. I can not remember now if the hanging of stockings came before or after the reading. As the years wore on, the little book became more and more fragile. I can recall one year my sister carrying the book on a fancy pillow, partly in mock ceremony and partly in reverence, I'm sure.

My mother worked for a large company with numerous resources available to her, and she made a good quality photo copy of the book. Granted, it was black & white. Color copies were not around until 1990. We were each given a photo copy to color and I remember it being tedious work, because of course, I was a perfectionist and I wanted it to look as close to the original as possible.

Now the book has found its way to my home, and though I won't be using the original, I plan to read the real story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to Melody on Christmas Eve. I made high quality scans of the book, and I will have to put it away in archival quality storage. The old paper is terribly yellowed, brown in some respects, and the pictures of facing pages have created ghost-images of themselves on their opposite page from the high acid in the inks used way back when.

Since it will be a long time before this book finds a new family home, I took the liberty of sending a copy on to the Hall family, our closest friends. Burke and Cassidy are just the right age to begin enjoying the story of Rudolph, and I hope they find a tradition in there for their family too.

Happy 70th birthday, Rudolph. You are still bringing Christmas joy to every girl and boy!