Sparkles and other things July

Yesterday, I held a young man as he kissed me. Later, we lay on a blanket and he took my arm and put it around him, and I willingly spooned him. He then turned and looked at me with large, gorgeous eyes and I noticed the freckles that dotted his flawless skin. Then he said, "Yee Yee! I want tickle!" Sigh. The only cute young dude who kisses me goodnight every day is my 4-year-old nephew Sean.

Last night, I realised what a bimbo I become whenever I'm here at my sister's. Some things I almost never do in Singapore that I do here:

- Read Us Weekly, a celebrity gossip mag, if only for the pretty dresses
- Watch chick flicks (I ordinarily find knawing off my shins preferable to watching chick flicks)
- Eat LOTS of ice cream. Lots.
- Sing loudly to Erasure covers of ABBA songs during long car rides
- Sun bathe
- *GASP* I sometimes even read one or two of her trash romance novels (but giggle most of the way through)

Conclusion: I leave my brains in Singapore whenever I fly over. Which is perfect right now.

I'm also getting a hyper-dose of Family Life, which has convinced me I'm nowhere near desiring life with kids. Someday perhaps, but certainly not now. But though it's tiring to look after them constantly, I do enjoy a lot of it. Baby Caitlyn is sooooo soft to hold, smells heavenly and smiles/chuckles so easily that you can't help but feel uplifted just being around her. Sean is a pain a lot of the time, but when he's being affectionate, he's irresistible.

Well, at least I still salvage a tiny bit of my brain by reading something fairly respectable (am halfway through The Alchemy of Love and Lust (it's non-fiction) and I jot down notes on things that occur to me as write-worthy - how nerdy is that?

Some memorable sights from the LA/Orange County trip (most which I didn't/couldn't take photos of):

En route to LA last week, it was night time when I looked out the window and saw the pale moonlight reflected on the ocean water - it looked like a thousand sapphires on black satin. When we passed by the same stretch on the way back in the afternoon, I saw the line of oil rigs in the distance. Tom told me that Jimi Hendrix had called them crystal ships, don't know why. Most of LA itself wasn't a beautiful place, though. It was hot, dry, dusty and smoggy, mostly.

Met some of Tom's extended family, some of whom I was meeting for the first time ever. The blonde next to me is an interesting character who makes, erm, daring fashion choices for a woman over seventy. She's quite a character indeedy.

Was shopping in Irvine Spectrum, an outdoor mall in Orange County, when we spotted a looooooooong line of people. By the foldable chairs and picnic spreads, we figured they'd been there a while. It turned out to be a line for the iPhone, which later sold out within the day. Geeks.

Sean was so tired at the end of that shopping trip that at dinner, he kept dozing off while chewing halfway on pizza, his favourite food.

Sean had his first sleepover that trip! The family we stayed with included two boys, the older one, Griffin, is about Sean's age. When we were all saying goodbye, Griffin gave everyone the biggest hugs ever. And man, does that boy give good hugs. Awwwwwww! Another hug from a cute young man.

We visited Tom's uncle Harold and aunt Aline who are this very old-world conservative couple. Harold is an old-fashioned Jewish man who says things like, "It would seem to me that protocol would dictate...". His thank-you email to us included this line: "In closing allow me to truthfully and openly say that your (pl) visit was a memorable event." Yes, he included "(pl)" to indicate that "your" was in the plural. All the same, he was a very nice and hospitable guy.

As Sean was watching some kids play hockey at a skating rink, he kept referring to "the balls". My sister was very tickled when I very enthusiastically corrected him: "They're not balls, they're PUCKS!"

We've seen many Harley gangs scooting around California in their fat, annoyingly noisy bikes (Tom calls them Gnarly Harleys). Harley bikers invariably seem to be overweight, bearded and wearing leather in ANY weather. Oh, and tassels. We mustn't forget the tassels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was looking at Sean and Caitlyn the other day and it struck me again how close the family resemblance is. Those on my side (and my dad's) of the family tend to have very similar features, especially in childhood. If you compare baby and toddler photos of my sis, me, Sean and now Caitlyn, the resemblance is uncanny. Whenever I look at them both, I marvel at the strong resemblance, and how it creates a closer sense of kin, as if we're all part of the same organism somehow.

I'm almost ruddy now after almost a month here, in spite of the cold, foggy weather last weekend through early this week. I also have multiple tan lines, since I can't go everywhere in naught but my bikini.

The Fourth of July was fun. As mentioned in the earlier post, we went for a community parade - small but interesting. All week we had been hearing the odd firework as people geared up for Independence Day, but it was nothing like the actual day. In the evening, even before the sun had set, we could hear people setting off fireworks while we were having dinner. As the sky slowly darkened, we started seeing the colourful sparkles from the nearby houses. We went out to have a better look, and by 9pm, there were fireworks in almost every direction. I'd never experienced home fireworks before and it was amazing. For hours, the entire neighbourhood sounded like a war zone, with booms all over the place. Some people had obviously splurged on their fireworks and there were some impressive and prolific displays. Of course, every now and then, we'd hear the sirens of fire engines. By the end of the night, so many fireworks had gone off that there was a thin but visible layer of smoke-cloud in the night sky. That was a memorable night.

Tom's cousin Danny and his wife Simone came to stay over the weekend. They're the most jovial people I know, and endlessly chatty. I stress on "endless".

Tom and Danny.
Danny laughs all the time. ALL the time, even when he's upset with something, I hear. He's an extremely likable guy with the infamous Ginsburg corny sense of humour, and his claim to fame, other than knowing nine languages (all self-taught), is having the second-largest collection of bottle caps in the world, which makes sense, given that he distributes specialty sodas for a living, almost all bottled. Many of their sodas are really funky, such as XTZ (wink to Candice), Unknown Dred (dedicated to their truck driver who sports dredlocks), and even Kickapoo!

Us with Simone, Danny's Brazilian wife.
Thanks to Simone, I now know how to say "fart" in Portuguese. I also found out that saying that you want to queue for bread in Portugal would mean being gay and getting a blowjob when said in Brazil. Or something like that.

Having an international family rocks.