Dante comes for 2 days: Ethan to be here for lunch

I am always glad to have grandsons pay a visit. Dante's mother has gone to work and was also moving, so was very harassed as she has been trying to work double shifts to get the extra money she needed. Her BF, father of her two younger children, is not working and his unemployment benefits have run out, so he is not contributing other than taking care of the children while she works at the moment. The real estate bust in Phoenix has hit them hard because her BF was a heavy equipment operator, and it is hard to tell when there might be work for him again. He has been running a big machine for some years so he is very reluctant to take just any job. I think all these financial problems are causing her to think of separating from him. She is moving to where her best friend will be able to take care of her children while she works. She wants Dante to wait until after his birthday on June 28 to go to California for the summer.
Dante is computer starved since he is a great lover of the computer and video games and gets to go on it when he visits his dad. His mother doesn't have online, naturally, right now. I don't even know if she has a working computer.
Raymond needed Dan to get to Utah as soon as possible to help him with the set and special effects for his show Saturday night. Since Dan's employment at the Sheraton hotel running entertainment equipment was dropping greatly for the summer, he hopped a ride to St. George with someone he found on Craig's List offering a ride for less money than the bus costs for sure and fast. His cousin Cheryl picked him up and took him to Boulder where she now lives. The latest entry in Cowboys and Bohemians on my blog list is an entertaining account of what they have accomplished in just two days, which was quite a bit. They will have a lot to do with the festival coming up in July and one more date for his show at the Hills and Hollows. The first one is on top of Thompson's Ledge.
My daughter Ronda called this morning and is going to bring her son Ethan over for lunch. He has not seen Dante for a long time. She is picking up pizza. Dante has crashed in my recliner and new ottoman which has now become his bed when he visits. We tried to make a video but the battery went low. Doc changed it this morning, but I don't know whether Dante will get one made or not. I want him to get used to having a plan and thinking about what he wants to say.
My daughter is having a struggle with a very demanding nurse's job. She still hasn't gotten used to going so fast and getting as much done as required. She says having to chart everything takes so much time. This is all a new kind of work for her, so she is is still having adjustment problems. I told her she is a perfectionist, and can't stand making any mistakes, besides with patients just out of intensive care, mistakes are not to be desired, so she also feels tension and anxiety. I hope as she does it more, things will get better for her. Or atleast she will feel more at ease and sure she can do the tasks required.
I always feel more useful when I can help out with my grandsons once in a while. More like there is a good reason for living. As you get more feeble with age, you tend to feel more useless.
P.S. On a funny note, I said to Dante, are you putting on weight, you look kind of fat around the middle. He said oh no, that is muscle. I said, oh, I'll bet, so he let me feel and sure enough his torso and arm muscles are hard as can be. A few years ago my son Dan had him doing a lot of push-ups every day to play basketball, saying if he did not have upper body strength he would never be good at it. So Dante still does his push-ups every day! Amazing. Even though he did not go out for basketball. He says he plays now and then.

Farewell lunch to Sister Linda's for Raymond

Raymond took me over to my sister Linda's where he is storing some of his belongings until he finds an apartment in Los Angeles. He and I and Linda had a wonderful talk for over two hours, and then Linda served us some delicious vegetarian burritoes. And Raymond started off on his trip to Los Angeles in as good as spirits as I have seen him for a long time. His mood was far different than when he came to Phoenix thinking he would stay here. I think Los Angeles is just the challenge for him right now. Linda's son Scott has been down there a number of months meeting interesting people and exploring what Los Angeles has to offer. On all my moves to Los Angeles I never stopped marveling at the variety of experiences to be had in this huge sprawling city, and yes, disasters were always a part of our experience, including firestorms, torrential rain and ensuing mud slides, and the San Fernando earthquake which I will never forget it shook us up so badly. Thank God they have not found anyone dead in this last firestorm, but a lot of people are left with no homes and that has got to be a terrible experience.
Linda lived in Los Angeles around ten years straight, when she married her husband down there and they made it their home and had their two children, Tano and Carissa. Now Linda is trying to decide whether she should move to San Francisco where her daughter now lives, so she can take part in taking care of her two grand children. Her house is full of her art work and books, and her second husband was an antique and junk collector, so the back yard is full of 'stuff.' Stuff does tend to slow down those who would move, so she debates with herself back and forth.
I just read a wonderful memoir written by Isabel Allende, a transplanted Chilean, called "The Sum of Our Days." She has lived with her second husband and her 'tribe' in San Francisco for years. She wrote "House of Spirits" and many more novels and has lived the kind of life I once envisioned for myself. She has gone on a number of tours selling her books, but all this I finally realized was beyond my stength with a body that had become so allergic to stress. But sadly she lost her daughter to a genetic condition called poryphia which caused a fatal pneumonia at 28, and this memoir is addressed to her. She has grieved for years over her death, and fears for her son who also inherited the condition, but in much less severe form. She has the trait of the Spanish of wanting her family all around her, living with her if possible, but she knows she cannot take her mother away from her beloved Chile so she settles for faxing her a letter every day! Isabel Allende has a wonderful sense of humour, too, and I loved reading about her relationship with her second husband Willie, a lawyer mostly for the down and out, and how they made their marriage work when they are so different. I must tell my niece Carissa in San Francisco about this book, as I just loved reading some of Isabel's take on that fascinating city, one of the most picturesque in the world to my mind. Carissa buys books by the ton. She gobbles books.