June 26, 2006: Altadena, Pasadena, & Palm Springs

This was, for the most part, a day off. We exchanged a few gifts with my sister Peggy, the boys played outside and watched a DVD with their mom (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe), and I blogged and did laundry until it was time to pick up my mother from her apartment building in Pasadena, just south of Altadena.

Mom lives in a residence that serves seniors both independent and in need of assistance. She falls somewhere in between, but she's moving closer and closer to the latter camp. We've recently noticed her becoming much frailer and more prone to disorientation, which worries us, as you might imagine.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Pasadena and then made the two-hour drive to Mom's time-share condominium at Lawrence Welk's Desert Oasis in Cathedral City, a neighbor to Palm Springs. It was warm, cloudy, and muggy in Altadena, but clear, dry, and hot as blazes in the desert, where we'll spend the next few days.

Mom's time-share is available only from March through October. Why, you may ask (since I certainly do), did my mother and father not choose to buy a desert time-share in the winter? Los Angeles is already hot - why trade it for a place that's even hotter? And why not a more exotic location with a sea breeze, like Hawaii?

But then I'm thinking like an outsider, like a Northwesterner, who hates the heat. Angelinos have learned to embrace it, as my sister does. When she has time off, she heads for her property on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

The simple answer to my questions is this: my father was and my mother is notorious for their habitual frugality. Palm Springs is quickly and cheaply accessible, and the low season is less expensive than the high season. Yet another aspect of my personality I can blame on someone else...