Journal of an Urbane Gorilla

a September day 32 years ago

Grammy just gets so mushy when she looks at these old pics. Go figure. This was the Principessa's birthday in 1972. I get the feeling that she still sees the girls as this. Anyway, I found her humming this tune, "Orange you going to tell me that you love me?" She wrote it for Bookah.

I prefer her when she's sardonic, frankly. Oh well, we can't all be perfect, right?

later.
moochas smoochas, Gweeds

Guadalupe dunes

Henri has started to watch Huell Howser's 'California's Gold' series on PBS. Last week they had an old show on about the movie set buried in Guadalupe dunes. Seems Cecil B. DiMille built a set for a silent movie of the "Ten Commandments" and couldn't afford to take it down. So, they just knocked over the 10-storey set and let the dunes cover it up. Off we went to find it. Turns out that this is snowy plover nesting season and the area where the old movie set is buried beneath the dunes is off-limits 'til next week. But we did see where is is located off the road.

We continued down the road to the beach. Henri was thrilled that we had remembered his digging tools. Off he went to to dig in the sand. I sat on the hood of the car. Don't like to get sand in my fur. And then there's the water . . .

Grammy, 21st century Grams that she is, whipped out her camera mobile phone and took pics of Henri on the beach and sent them to his Mama back in New York. She was so thrilled at the process. Typical. She does get caught up in this stuff. The water was stirred up by a storm from the south. There waves crashing on waves. It stirred up the oil deposits: the foam was yellow with oil. Henri and Grammy were tempting fate by running out as the water receded and then running back as a new waves crashed. Grammy told Henri qbout counting the waves. She said every 9th wave was the biggest. Hmmmm, suburban myth, if you ask me.

Next Friday we take Henri home. We're going to "do" NYC. Henri has all the excursions planned. But, in the end we will come back home and Henri will be there. I'm going to miss the Hankster.

Started reading "The Journey West" again. It's a yearly thing for me. There's always something new in it. That and "100 Years of Solitude." My 2 favorites books, well, next to my own books.

later.
Mooochas smoochas, Gweeds

Sailing sailing, over the ocean blue

First of all, I want you to know that I did not take the picture. I don't do water. The Gramcrackers took it. Henri has learned to sail this summer and he takes the tiller of the Lido when he and Big Guy and Grammy go sailing.

They sailed out to the mile buoy in Santa Barbara on Friday. Said Hello to the sea lions. Grammy always makes me say that we suffer to live here, whenever anyone asks what it's like. Yeah, suffer. Right. It's paradise for goodness sake!

We are going to take Henri back to NYC on Friday, so we have to think about what we're packing. Life comes down to that sometimes: what will fit in a suitcase. That's the easy part. It's what won't fit in the suitcase that's hard.

I just read "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" I feel so much better about apostrophes now.
Later.
Moochas smoochas, Gweeds

Finally we can relax

The picture is la Principessa - she's Henri's mom. Ciao bella!

Well, everyone in the family has run through this place in the past 2 months. Now we can relax. First, there were the gorillas from my Simian Liberation Effort (SLE). These apes have eaten us out of tree and shelter.
Then, the non-fuzzy types came through. Big Guy and Grammy seem to have more relatives than I can count.
Anyway, it's just, Big Guy, Grammy, Henri and me now. Henri is busy planning subway stations and sailing. I do not go sailing with these folks. Sometime I'll have to tell you about our trip to Venice - Grammy assured me that we wouldn't have to go over water. And then, in the middle of the night sirens went off: it had flooded! You don't give a gorilla blow-up hangers and tell him they're water wings, you now what I mean? Everyone knows that gorillas cannot swim!
But it's best that I don't think about that.
Ah the quiet, I'm just enjoying it.