The actress is showing off for Granny.

At the beginning of November, a dramatic event occurred in our family — on one day Tom gazed into the cage for a while and talked at our hamster, Brownie, who was only cowering and shivering in a corner and would not respond. I pushed the kids out to school and went back to investigate our desperate rodent. I found out that he was paralyzed and apparently did not feel well at all — sunken eyes, body in a crouching position, which signalizes a state of pain in hamsters; simply one heap of a disaster. I tried to offer him some grains under his snout, later switching to ground apple from a syringe — and nothing worked.

I considered a veterinarian, but given Brownie's advanced age (hamsters live for about two years and Brownie had surpassed this milestone in summer), I was afraid that the only solution they would offer me is termination. For tiny animals, injections are very painful and stressful, but I did not want to let him simply die. In the end I bought him a nutritional mix for rodents in the veterinarian section of Petco, and cajoled them to give me some miniature syringes — and proceeded to feed our hamster with grassy mush. Two days passed at a level; on a third day Brownie pushed the syringe away energetically. Being afraid to see him dehydrate, I offered him a slice of cucumber — and he devoured it. So I gathered that he was able to take further therapy in his own paws, and I put him back with his little house into the cage, where he could eventually wander out.

Sugar Baby walking with Lisa.

He actually began to leave his bed on the next day, visiting his sandbox. Just as I was pondering how to re-arrange his drinking tube so that he could reach it without knocking himself out, Brownie came with his own solution. He curled his paralyzed rear paw under his body to reach the drink tube. The immobilization is still apparent, one rear paw is out of commission, and his head remains tilted. We had suspected already in summer that he lost his sight; now we are certain. Nevertheless, our hamster with the endurance of a legendary soviet hero traverses his cage, squeezes through his tubes, keeps his food and bedding organized, comes out to drink and to his latrine. The other day our kids had commented that he seemed to grow younger again — which is true, to a point. His eyes turned bright again and his pelt grew shiny; apparently he grooms and suffers much less.

On fourth of November came the long awaited day — our Granny flew in again. The kids had shyly offered to skip school and participate in picking her up at the airport, but we did not indulge them. Granny's visit was carefully planned to coincide with Lisa's theater performance, two-day vacations and a stretch of reduced school-days, on account of parent-teacher conferences, which is done individually here, and to fit it all in, for one and half weeks, afternoon school is canceled.

Tom is OK commanding the cocky Charlie.

Granny showed a measure of personal courage, and attended all three Lisa's performances, while the rest of us took turns. This way, Lisa always had several friendly souls and admirers in the audience. In one case, I assisted in the back stage. I had naively through that it would allow me to see the play up-close; instead, I was merely exposed to the chaos of confused actors, who pushed each other out to the stage, and immediately thereafter hissed, no, not yet, someone else has to go first. I still don't understand how the organizers of this whole circus always succeed in pulling off the show without greater accidents or snafus. It must be some magic.

We visited various favorite spots with our granny. Beaches, a redwood forest, even Monterey. I had further exploited her for accompanying the children to the library, and on a visit to an art museum. Lisa had received a free ticket for the whole family, and we went to check it out. I must say that I had expected a somewhat larger institution. An also somewhat less contemporary. Robert Henri was for me the saving grace. And Shopping Mall by James Doolin. Tom ran through the exhibition in the space of about forty minutes and proceeded to be bored. Granny and me walked a bit slower — and Lisa? She wasn't done even one and half hour later, mostly because she made notes.

There is still a pocket for rascal owls at Alabama Hills.

Granny also got taken up to the ranch and the ponies, which finally provided me with another pair of hands that could TAKE PICTURES. When I'm in charge of two ponies and two children, I don't have time for anything else. Charlie is an old hand with the temper of a thoroughly stubborn mule, who only waits for an adult to turn his back on him to cause some mischief with the kids. Baby is a shy little pony, who frightens on every abrupt move — and almost pitifully tries to please his two-legged overlords. When I'm severe with Charlie, I scare Baby, and when I try to calm down Baby, Charlie ignores me in the better case, or plots some revenge in the worse case. The result is, I still must keep the ponies separated, and practice with each of them in turn. Adding granny to the mix simplifies the pony logistics a little bit.

Sierra Nevada in the palm of your hand.

Before we could notice, two weeks had passed and granny was returning back home. She managed to fit in a visit to the kids' school, as they held a Grandparents Day on Thursday — when we had ordered her plane ticket, we had no idea that we would match the date. Fortunately, granny was leaving on an afternoon flight. And the kids thus received their desired early release from school on the account of accompanying granny to the airport. I was hoping that Lisa would get distracted by seeing the ponies again, but it did not work much. As the children grow older, they begin to realize how long it's going to be before they see granny again, and I cannot deflect their attention elsewhere anymore. Well, they would have to feel sad throughout our farewells.

At least, our children got a whole week of vacation around Thanksgiving, and they could enjoy not having to go to school. First we had considered one or two-day trip to ski, but Kirkwood did not even open yet. Thus we went to see the ponies and climb in the gym, and on Thursday, when even Sid got his holiday, we drove out on a trip.

Most stores and restaurants are closed on Thanksgiving Day, but we had still found the Odyssey open in Paso Robles, a peculiar cross between a cafeteria and a diner — but they fed us well. And while the majority of people sat at home around a roast turkey, we had made a stop in Los Padres National Forest, to shoot. Dinnertime found us in Tehachapi, and we made it to our hotel in Lone Pine by nine in the evening.

A seasoned raven is sizing up tourists for some snack opportunity.

Despite having a reservation, thanks to our late arrival we received the most horrible and noisiest room right next to the front desk, which was also missing a table. The situation had no reasonable solution (there are two decent hotels in Lone Pine, both sold out) — we postponed dealing with it till next morning. We put the kids to their bed and went to see Švajdas at the other hotel, to have a chat about plans where to spend the next day together.

It is naturally also possible to walk on the regular Mosaic Canyon trail.

In the morning, on my way to breakfast, I went to complain about the room, and the receptionist promised to try to move us. And she really later called that she had a vacated and cleaned-up room for us, and whether we wanted to move our stuff there right away. That was nice, for I was already resigned to having to move out of the awful room, and being able to move into a new one only in the afternoon.

On our way to the climbing area Candy Store, we passed an old VW Golf going in the opposite direction — Pavel's car. He had slept in a campground, so we just turned him around and arrived to climbing in a complete company. We scaled everything there was at Candy Store, some of us several times. The children mostly ran around. Sid and I, unlike all the other adults, were not surprised at all anymore. We know that releasing kids into some sort of nature is a logistically simplest activity. Especially then in a spot where one can climb on rocks, discover caves and other interesting rock shapes, or dig in the sand. The kids show up back when they become hungry, thirsty, or fall into cacti — and disappear again in the moment their needs have been addressed.
Lisa and Olík pretended to be dogs; Mirek claimed that in a desert, they must be dingos, so since then we have a dingo at home. Dingo speaks with Mickey Mouse voice and flawed grammar, calling her father Jiggly Belly. A born comedian.

We are headed for the tallest dune.

While our families were relaxing, Pavel and I climbed a bunch of routes — in Candy Store and then some more in two other locations. My new climbing shoes were tight and eventually my worn-off fingers started burning, but at least it gets dark soon enough, so I did not have to cowardly ask for an early retreat. Then everybody converged onto the Carousel, a local variation on a Chinese restaurant, where we caused some chaos. It would seem that this tiny establishment was not ready to deal with nine people in one group, but in the end we all fit in, gradually disentangled issues with our order, and ate.

On Saturday, we drove out, this time only with the Švajdas, to Death Valley. Pavel snubbed our family program and went hiking up Mount Whitney. We (the two families) met again at the western park office and then proceeded to Mosaic Canyon. As the kids have grown older, we had run through it in a short while, which made me almost uncomfortable, since I had imagined a somewhat longer walk. Yet the pack was being obnoxious about wanting to go to the dunes and we had no choice but to turn back.

Downwind side of the tallest dune is a helter-skelter slope.

For the dunes, our children were issued little backpacks with an extra t-shirt and a bottle of water each, and instructions that we would go to the tallest dune, and if they get lost, they should return back to the car and wait there (we emphasized that as we still remembered our last trip to the same spot, when Lisa got lost). A problem ensued when, while all the adults took time gathering at the parking lot, ALL children (ours and Švajda's) had disappeared in the desert without saying a word. Švajda's kids did so without the water and instructions, and we could only hope that they would all stay together. Heading for the tall dune, after some twenty minutes even I was nervous — our kids were nowhere to be seen. Our camera has a far zoom, so we scoped various figures roaming the surrounding hills, always dismissing them on sight. Eventually we spotted them on the tallest dune, alas, only three of them; Julie was missing.

Whole family in Death Valley.

Fortunately Tom, Lisa and Oliver waited on the top, until I reached them. Luba found Julie after a while, and in the end we had all found each other and got together, now being able to scold our offspring for not sticking in one bunch and leaving without announcing where they were going.

We separated in the evening. Švajdas were driving home, while we still had one night booked in Lone Pine. I think we benefited from sleeping properly before the long journey home. It may not be obvious, but a day of strenuous climbing, followed by another day in the desert, wore me rather out (wading ankle-deep in the sand is relatively hard). We had worried a bit about Sunday traffic jam on the highways, but with a small detour through our favorite Thai restaurant in Paso Robles, we managed it well. It started raining on the way back, which was a pleasant change; it had been really horribly dry here — and this way it looks like some skiing may be possible!