Orange Winter Storms Butterfly Birthday on Trampolin
ALERT: Winter Storm warning. A strong storm is approach the area.
Luckily (and unlike most locals) I have lived in Switzerland and New Hampshire, so I knew what the word ‘Winter’ meant. But…
“… I cannot associate that word in the context of Santa Barbara,” I thought. “Do you know where we stored the sweaters?” I asked Nazy.
Snow is expected at elevations higher than 5000 feet. Since we’re about 50 feet above sea level, I’m not concerned.
I have, however, become more than a little annoyed by Apple — which, in an overnight coup, ‘upgraded’ the Operating System on my MacBook Pro. I call it a coup because they didn’t ask me before embarking on this hazardous expedition. As a result, a couple of my applications stopped working. The system ‘forgot’ that I had license agreements for all of the non-Apple applications and the login credentials for anything not sold by Apple have been misplaced. I’m still trying to fix things.
This week, for her birthday, Mitra and Stefan, braving the ‘storm’, drove up to celebrate in Santa Barbara.
“I don’t know about the winter storm, Dad,” Mitra asserted. “But we had to navigate through a herd of migrating butterflies.”
“It’s not a ‘herd’ of butterflies, Mitra.” I replied.
“A swarm?”
“A kaleidoscope of butterflies. That is the official name for a group of butterflies.”
“These were Monarch butterflies.”
“I’d bet otherwise. I think they were Painted Lady butterflies.”
“How do you…”
“I looked it up on the web.”
“There were millions of them flying across the 101, Dad. It was impossible to avoid smashing into them.”
“Painted Ladies aren’t known for their intellect,” I replied.
Coincidentally, the local museum of Natural History opened a temporary exhibit of live butterflies this week. BTW: There is no truth to the rumor that they scooped them off the freeway. Mitra joined me, Tiger and Arrow at the exhibit.
Tiger was remarkably careful with the butterflies. Arrow was a little more excitable.
Meanwhile, back at Melika’s everyone had prepared for the birthday celebration. Mitra was very specific about her requests…
“… so, she wants a carrot cake with..” I began.
“… with orange cream cheese frosting and a yellow sun. She wants ‘Mitra’ written on it with a red heart (❤️) as the ‘dot’ on the i.”
“Wow!”
“And she asked Tiger to draw a picture that Melika and I can use during the ..”
“…. construction process?” I asked.
“During the baking and decorating process,” Nazy concluded.
“Hmm,” I replied. “I wonder if Mitra has considered the fact that Painted Lady butterflies are orange,” I thought, thankfully forgetting about the other orange entity that is currently residing in the White House.
In the end, two cakes were constructed, eh, baked and decorated. At Mitra’s request, Nazy made Albaloo Polo, a Persian rice dish with sour cherries. Mitra and Stefan prepared the lamb chops. Tiger and Arrow helped pick Rosemary from Melika’s yard. And Azelle watched everything from the comfort of her perch high on my shoulders — when she wasn’t being carried away by Tiger, who was anxious to demonstrate how strong he was.
Arrow continues to enjoy MyGym every week. He is getting very confident with the equipment and is joining the group challenges. This week, for example, he zoomed through the obstacle course about 15 times. The fixed obstacles were, eh, no obstacle. The movable obstacles — i.e. other children who were, well, slower, he tried to brush out of his path. Occasionally, I had to intervene.
“You can’t just push people out of the way, Arrow.” I explained.
“What are you talking about, Dan?” Arrow thought as he tried to push me out of the way.
I shifted the discussion by showing him the trampoline.
Don’t tell his Mom, but we stopped for a few M&M’s before heading home.
This week I took Tiger to the Zoo for a school field trip. The children were to..
“… look at the bugs,” the flyer informed me. “And answer the questions below.”
“Bugs?” I thought. “Bugs?!” I said, marking a rare agreement between thought and speech. “If I want to look at bugs, I can move back to Tennessee. And, I saw enough bugs to last a lifetime at Ayers Rock,” I thought.
Luckily, we had time to ride on the train and play in the giant spider web.
Well, in fact, Tiger played on the spider web, but I got to join him on the train.
At the end of the weekend, Nazy joined Mitra as she returned to Los Angeles. Mitra was headed home and Nazy was headed, via LAX, to Bellingham to see Darius, Christiane, (the lovely) Leandra and (the astonishing) Auriane. She was also carrying a Persian carpet in an enormous duffel bag that is…
“… sure to be overweight,” I thought as I tried to hoist it out of the trunk and into the Uber’s truck. When the Uber, which was taking Nazy and Mitra to the airbus departed the fact that the front wheels did not touch the road made confident that my supposition was accurate.
“I wish I was going with you so that I could help.” I said as Nazy departed. “I hope that Allegiant Airlines has a strong agent to help at LAX,” I thought.
For last week's letter, please click here
Tiger holding Azelle