Retirement Party, Cook your Own Dinner and Spending time with Family in Santa Maria, California

     

    

    So yesterday, my sister Lisa and I were honored to attend the retirement party of our cousin Vera, short for Elvira, she was named after our grandmother and her dad and my dad are brothers. So we are sister/cousins, kind of sisters, kind of cousins. The party was held in Santa Maria, which is about 2 1/2 hours from where Lisa and I live, so we left work at noon so we could take our time getting there.

      The party was held at the Santa Maria Elks Lodge during their Friday Night "Cook Your Own". Now this is one of the most unique, scary, dangerous cookouts I've ever seen. You purchase what type of meat you want, Rib Eye ($30), New York Steak ($25), Fish ($25), Chicken ($25), Pork Ribs ($25) or you can get just the salad plate ($15), no meat. They gave us a ticket for our meal, Lisa and I both chose the New York Steak...GO BIG OR GO HOME, right?

    We had our own private party room and it was set up with a  full bar and tables just for our party. Lisa and I both had a glass of wine and enjoyed the appetizers which consisted of 7 Layer Dip with Chips, Spinach Dip with Bread and/or crackers, Chips and Salsa, and Chicken Salad. We could have been satisfied just eating that spread!

Picture of the Guest of Honor, our cousin Vera and her daughter Anna

    It was so nice to see Vera so happy to be done with the daily drudge of going to the office and having to deal with the drama and stress of a job. She's got great plans in her future to do more gardening and yardwork, to go camping with her children and grandchildren and hopefully to spend some time visiting me and Lisa!

L-R: Lisa, Me, Vera and Anna

    We met several of her coworkers and they all had wonderful things to say about her, they are truly going to miss having her around.

    Finally it was "Cook your Own" time and it was confusing but next time we will do better. First you stand in line with your ticket by the table that handles what your meal is going to be. We were having New York Steak so they had this huge tray of the most gorgeous steaks I've ever seen and you get to pick which one you want and they put it on a foam plate for you and give you a glass plate. We asked them at this table if we really and truly had to cook our own dinner and they said yes! But they gave us a tip, they said look for one of the guys in a red shirt and let them know it's your first time and they will help you.

    We found a very handsome and sweet man in a red shirt, I wish I had gotten his name but he was just the best. The photo below is of the "seasoning table". This is the first step, they have a spray bottle with brine and shakers with salt, pepper, something that just said seasoning...we added a lot of everything!

Red shirt Hero!

    Mr. Red Shirt then took us over to the grill which you can see in the background behind him. I was lucky that Lisa decided to man (woman) the grill, here's a shot of her standing there watching our steaks.

Brave Lisa standing next to that burning hot grill!

Dangerously hot! You could feel the heat!

    Since Lisa was doing such a good job at the grill, I decided to go and get her a Margarita and they had a very friendly bartender that was really sweet and gave me a free drink to try, he said he had just invented it. It was delicious with the flavors of peach, very tasty and refreshing!

Lisa's Margarita in the background and my free Peach Drink

Friendly bartender, gray haired man in the black shirt.

    On the walls they had several plaques with names on them. I'm not sure what they signified, but as I was standing there sipping my drink, I noticed the one below and had to get a picture because I follow a YouTube channel called Arne and Carlos. They are two knitting and yarn designers living in Norway, absolutely love them and how weird that the name on this sign is almost the name of their channel!

Arne and Carlos sign

    Finally our steaks were done and we made our way out of the grill room to the next station where they had several side dishes, baked potatoes, chili beans, salad, macaroni salad, French fries, garlic bread and various salsa and sauces. I loaded my plate and it was all delicious, so delicious that I didn't even think to take a picture. 

    We were stuffed and I only ate 1/3 of my steak. Luckily they give you bags to take your steak home. We continued to visit with cousins that were arriving late and finally it was 9pm and Lisa and I had planned to leave no later than 8:30 pm as it's a 2-hour drive home, but it was hard to leave as we were having a good time.

    We arrived home safely and we had a fabulous time and we wish Vera every happiness in the new chapter of her life. We love you cousin!

Camping for Halloween - Pismo Coast Village and Lunch with the Cousins

    I know! I know! I have not done the second part of my post regarding the funeral for my brother in law Sean. I will, because it was one of the most amazing and special funerals I've ever attended. 

    Since his passing on August 4th, I have been spending the nights with my sister. She has never been alone, from living with our parents she went to live with her husband and I knew it was going to be difficult for her to be alone, especially in the beginning. 

    So my routine since then has been that I wake up at her home around 5:45 a.m. and get dressed and head to my house which is probably four blocks away. I do my normal morning routine and since I work from home and have since Covid began, I put in my eight hours of work. After work I spend a bit of time with my mom and then head over to Lisa's house where we have dinner, talk about the day, on Monday's we go to Grief Share, a grief therapy group that meets for two hours, then we start the routine all over again the next morning.

    Lisa and Sean LOVED camping! It was their greatest passion, after their children and grandchildren. They own a beautiful 5th Wheel motor home which they store at the coast and when they want to go camping, they make a reservation and the RV park picks up their RV and moves it to the campsite they will be in, they set it all up and hook up the water, sewer and electricity, they just come in and organize the inside and relax. 

    They had an annual tradition of coming the week of Halloween as all the RV's are decorated for the holiday. Because of the popularity of the event it books up fast so they had made and paid for their reservations months ago. Lisa wanted to go ahead and come, I was not so sure. I felt it was too soon, but if she wanted to do it, then I was coming with her.

    We left on Friday morning and her son Sean Jr came by to see us off, he's such a great young man and I'm so proud of him. You can see by the smile on their faces how much they still hurt for their dad and husband.

    We always stop at TJ Maxx in Paso Robles to shop. Lisa doesn't really enjoy shopping and even less now that she is grieving, but she made the effort. We didn't buy much, but Lisa did buy me a beautiful coffee mug with Nutcrackers on it, I'll share that when I put up my Christmas decorations sometime in December.

    We headed to Pismo where we had lunch at The Sidewalk Cafe where we each had the most amazing Asian Salad. It was huge too, we actually had it that night for dinner and I still ended up throwing about 1/4 of it away. 

    We got to the campsite soon after and I was so worried that Lisa was going to be devastated seeing the RV and walking inside for the first time without Sean, but the people that were supposed to set up the sewer, water and electricity had done nothing and all the hoses and pipes were strewn about in the back of the RV! Lisa was LIVID!  I think it was a blessing in disguise, she was so focused on getting everything fixed that she didn't remember to pay attention to the fact that this was the first time she was back in the RV without Sean. Death sucks so much, this is such a hard time for her.

    After all that drama we decided to walk to the clubhouse and then to the small store next door where Lisa bought two beers and some pretzels and we headed to a small table where she and Sean used to go when they came together. We said a toast to Sean and sat there drinking our beer. We then realized that we are Arizona girls and we don't do beach weather well (it was cold) and we headed back to the RV.

Beer in a can in a brown paper bag. Sean's favorite beer would have been Bud Light but they were out of that so we had Michelob Ultra. It was a beautiful spot but way to cold to stay long with the wind blowing.

    We set everything up and organized ourselves and decided where we each were going to sleep and then we watched some TV and played some cards and finally decided to get some sleep as we had plans to go to lunch the next day with two cousins that live close by.

    The next morning we slept in for a bit and woke up and had coffee, we planned our day because we knew we were meeting our cousins Diana and Vera at 1pm for lunch. We ran a few errands and cleaned up some more and then met them for lunch at this lovely place, Marisol at the Cliffs Restaurant. You can see the ocean in the background in the picture below.

Enjoying a Jalapeno Melon Margarita with the cousins. My sister Lisa in front taking the photo. Left to Right is our cousin Diana, daughter to my dad's sister Leonor and Elvira aka Vera daughter to my dads brother Manuel, then me.

    We had such a great time, there was a lot of laughter, a few tears and many shared memories. 

    For dinner I had the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps, which were fabulous!

    Lisa had the bacon and eggs, the bacon looked really good, but she didn't share! 

Cousin Vera I believe had fish tacos with potatoes.

Cousin Vera deep in conversation.

    Cousin Diana had the nachos which she shared with us all and still had enough to take home!

Cousin Diana enjoying her nachos.

    Afterwards they wanted to come and see Lisa's motor home, so here's a picture of the four of us. We had such a great time and can't wait to get together again!

Great shot of the four us and Lisa's motor home. Left to right: Vera, Diana, me in the front and Lisa behind me.

    There is nothing like family. We never spent a lot of time with my dad's side of the family, but my mom and dad both used to say to us all the time that "blood calls" and it does. Even though we seldom see these cousins there is a bond that we can't break, our ancestors blood runs through our veins and calls for us to be family even though we are literally strangers.

    I'm not going to lie and say that this has been a great trip, Lisa is here in body, but not in spirit or in mind or heart. Her spirit, mind and heart is with her husband and she is going through an agony that is unimaginable. Earlier that day we were driving through a busy part of town that has a lot of little shops and I had a memory while passing a bead store of my sister in law Connie and I bringing mom right before Covid to Pismo and taking her to several bead shops and there is one we particularly enjoyed with her and as we drove by I remembered that day and how happy my mom was and how special she felt and I also realized that someday my mom is going to be gone and my heart clenched in pain and it was brief, maybe a few seconds, but I then knew exactly how Lisa is feeling, it's an incapacitating pain and you feel as though your heart will explode  and there is nothing that you can do....except to be brave like my poor, dear sister is being brave. 

    More to come as I'm writing this several days later. Dinner with the cousins was Sunday afternoon. I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, October 26th and this morning they invited us to get together again with them for dinner and drinks tonight.