Vacation at Home – Part 9 

Home Weekend: Rob’s Birthday, Summer Gardens and Mixed Tapes 

My poor husband! It’s his birthday and he has the stomach flu. It’s been a home kind of weekend; lots of comfort food, lots of movies, lots of sleeping and lots of tender loving care. We cancelled the birthday plans and instead watched a double feature and ate soup and saltines. It was actually kind of fun. What a treat getting each other all to ourselves all weekend. We are quietly happy. .. the best kind. 

I got going early on his birthday morning, (around 10:00 am), and was moved to flower the deck. Off I went to ACE Garden Center and a mere $55 and a half hour later found me motoring back home with the top down on Little Red so they would all fit. I’m trying a bougainvillea plant I'm hoping will climb on the deck railing, sweet william, a plethora of yellow and white daisies, purple, pink and white petunias and a huge white foxglove shooting out to the sky.

 

 

 

I took a shortcut through the Oakland Rose Garden and it was magnificent. Nancy’s roses were in full bloom when I was at her house last Thursday and I thought the rose garden would be really spectacular and it did not disappoint. We have our very own Bois de Boulogne right here in Oakland, California!

 

 

 

 

Mixed Tapes 

Rob is finally upright this Sunday afternoon making CDs of my mixed tapes from the 70’s. I spent hours on those tapes, trying to get just the right sequencing of The Band, Bonnie, Warren Zevon, Robert Palmer doing Little Feat, John Prine and some more obscure, out of print records, (Willis Allen Ramsey). 

I went through a bit of a country phase in the late 70’s when I started my first professional job as an economist in San Diego. I was aching for Wyoming and my carefree college days and listened to Hank Williams Jr., Waylon and Willie, David Allen Coe, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Emmy Lou, Gary Stewart and my very favorite, Hoyt Axton. It gave me goose bumps dancing in the living room today to Fearless. I haven’t heard that album in years and now it’s out of print. I am so happy I taped it and even happier my good husband is technically proficient and patient enough to get it all on CD for me.  

I feel so very tender toward that younger Karla making those mixed tapes. I always wanted someone to appreciate my love for music and really see that part of me. You know how your IPOD music just makes you feel good about yourself and about life in general? How was I to know, thirty years later, my dear husband would listen patiently to all of the music that was such a part of my heart and record it for me.

[He did however, say that it was a true labor of love sitting through Johnny Paycheck. (I particularly liked Take This Job and Shove It. I have a vague memory of dancing to it at the corporate Christmas party. .oh, Karla!)] 

And take a look at his birthday present! Hopefully this will get to go to our next trip to Paris.