August 15, 2007

Part of My Life, and Welcome to It

It must be because I am a Gemini. Naw, I had better not go there because I don�t believe in astrology. It seems to many of my friends, and at times, even to myself, that I am a constant contradiction. I can be courageous one minute and scared half to death the next. I think I am generally viewed as a leader, but I feel like (and would rather be) a follower. I can be very quiet in a group of people, and talk the ears off a stranger in a store. I am a thinker and apologist who loves to write about or discuss ethical subjects. I could give many examples, but I�m going to stick with two sides of �me� that may surprise some of you who think you know me well.

Since my thirteen year old grandson has become a member of our three generational household, my thirteen year old side has reemerged. Or maybe it is early senility, but whatever, I am having fun. One day when he and I were goofing around about something, his mom said �Well Christopher, you finally have the little sister you always wanted.�

We simply get down and silly together. In fact one of his new favorite names for me (and they are myriad) is �Silly Grandma.� He means it lovingly of course. Another time, we were going somewhere in the car and he turned to me and said, �Grandma, lets see if we can make each other laugh.� Whereupon I just burst out laughing. He shook his head and said, �Well that was easy.�

For Father�s Day we drove to Solvang, a Danish �Village� a couple of hours� drive from here. On the return home, traffic was horrendous as it is a heavily traveled stretch of the 101 coastal route, on a holiday weekend.

I am �famous� for my �Let�s Make A Deal� purse�which is bottomless. And everything falls to that evasive bottom. It is almost traffic stopping when I begin to excavate to locate some much needed item.

This is just what happened as we crept slowly along in the line of traffic. My grandson grabbed my camera and repeatedly started snapping pictures of �silly Grandma� and her purse. I started laughing, and it got worse and worse. I don�t know if I ever found the object I was digging for, but the photos are forever.

Then there is this other alter-ego. This is also very much due to my family. It seems that my younger son and the same grandson are both �train aficionados�. (Well, I WOULD call them �train geeks�, but they become highly offended and say that is NOT a good term.) but the weirdest part is that I (little old grandma) have become the kookiest of all. Grandson now, really knows his trains. He can rattle off the maker of each engine, it�s model number, when it first came out (or became obsolete)�and on and on. He is a member of a local train hobbyists club, consisting mostly of retired men who have renovated the historic Santa Susana Station, and restored it to appear as a functioning station, complete with a large room of model trains.

And here is an unusual stroke of fortune. We �just happen� to live in a small valley through which the main UP/Amtrak route runs from San Diego to Seattle. How we lucked out in having this line run through the center of our little town is amazing.

Here are some photos taken in this area. The first is a photo taken of an Amtrak on the sidetrack at the �Strathern curve�, being passed by a freight. There is a whole science in why some trains have priority over others. It seems that Amtrak is low man on the totem pole many times in this stretch of RR.

The next two photos are trains crossing Rocky Peak pass between our valley and the San Fernando Valley.

And the last photo is the small Amtrak station in our town. We know the schedule and have become expert at �stalking� the arrival of �The Surfliner�, or the �Starlight Express�, or�

We have a scanner in the car that picks up the voices of the dispatcher, the engineer and conductor. We can hear them announce which �block� they are in as they approach the station. We can check the �lights� in the track blocks around the station and see if they are red or green, indicating that a train is approaching, or not.

We act like complete yokels at times running alongside an arriving train with cameras, waving at the engineer, and loving it when he gives a couple of blasts on his horn. �Silly Grandma� is right in the thick of it. I think I get as excited every time we �do our train thing� as any time before.

Oh, there is more. But I have embarrassed myself enough. I think I just wanted to show you how much fun it is living with a thirteen year old grandson named Christopher.

Text � copyright 2003 - 2008 The Homespun Philosopher

This site designed by

2008