Becky Hawkins

California Doodlin

Added 2025-03-20 18:11:09 +0000 UTC

I still get a kick out of the buildings when I visit LA. Seriously, why is the post office an amusement park castle, and what in the half-timbered heck is going on next door?

Naomi and I went to SoCal at the end of January, but I just finished some postcards from the trip, so here's everything.

It started with a reluctant shopping trip:

(Luckily there's a hard-shell carry-on that comes in PURPLE so Shoulder Angel's happy.)

We spent a week in LA with Naomi's parents, mostly lounging and catching up.

After we visited Naomi's parents, my family had a late-Christmas vacation, piling into a rental house for a week. We picked San Clemente because we used to pass it on the train when we visited my Great Aunt Edith in San Diego.

It looked like the epitome of "idyllic beach vacation" and that week, it was. Of course, the LA wildfires were still going. And I heard that San Clemente is a really conservative area. And the beach-front train tracks should be moved inland so segments don't wash away with unusually strong waves. Actually everything's on its way to crumbling into the sea. The SoCal dream is a beautiful lie. Wait, where was I going with this?

We had a (final) visit with Aunt Edith on that trip. She'd just turned 104, and today would have been her 82nd anniversary with my late great uncle. I'm really glad we got one more afternoon to spend time with her. Speaking of whimsical architecture: