We've come a long way, baby.

Today's blog title has a multitude of meanings, only a few of which I will discuss here. Moving from Los Angeles to Long Island is the most obvious...

But today was a very special/emotional day. Grandma's are very important in our little world and Abuelita finally got that kidney we have been praying about for so very long. As of this minute, the surgery went well (she JUST got out), and now we wait and watch her, our Saint Teresa, fight for function. Daddy left on the first available flight to Florida for the weekend, so I am flying solo parenting, but I have no complaints because really, a kidney match is a beautiful thing!! And from what I read on the information superhighway, transplants WORK pretty well these days - so, yes, we have come a long way, baby.

Secondly, when I was a kid - say 1st grade or so, the JETSON's was my absolute favorite cartoon. It used to come on at 3pm, just when I was getting off the school bus and I would race inside to watch it. Trouble is, we only had one TV and my Mama was addicted to "Guiding Light" at the time which also came on at 3. She was a waitress at a local lunch spot and would get home around the same time... We would race each other to the tv and who ever got there first, got to watch their show... But I digress, the point I am trying to make is on the JETSON's they had these amazing VIDEO telephone things - "impossible!" we used to think. Judy, the wife, would be looking all haggard when the phone rang and would dawn a mask that made her look fresh and made up and perfect. Well, we here in 2010 have yet to perfect the mask part, but we certainly have the video conferencing part down as I spent the most blessed evening on Skype with Auntie Cold in LA - she occupied my fragile Friday night mind with hubby away by entertaining my kids as I gave them a bath, then for another hour after they went to bed while we caught up. "We've come a long way, baby." and THANK YOU to the Jetson's for dreaming up that little ditty!

In the midst of all of today's drama, we managed to enjoy the beach as a family for a chunk of time this morning. Thankfully the beach nearest us is not so much SAND (which you all know I sort of DISLIKE) but lots of smoothed from the surf PEBBLES and ROCKS. Both children spent the entire time throwing rocks and Daddy and I got to just breathe in deep the fresh ocean healing air. VERY NICE.

I spent the late afternoon with my buddy, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and a very HOT bucket of water. Our balcony is fenced in with a nice vinyl piece which makes for easy cleaning, but is also shaded just enough with the surrounding forest that the vinyl never totally "dries" which leads to unscrupulous mold growth. I decided this late afternoon was the time to tackle that job and, to be honest, it was easy with those magic erasers (what the heck are they made from???), just gross and time consuming. (But the deck now looks even more AWESOME!) Again, we've come a long way, baby, from scrubbing for hours with bleach and comet to get things clean!