Today I am wearing a t-shirt given to me by my daughter Carolyn. It is a light blue shirt that simply says, Easy Breezy. I suppose that it might be a statement about the weather here on the hilltop. Today, a day in early February, it’s scheduled to be in the high 70s, which usually means it will end up being in the low 80s. Right now at 8am its sunny and 65. From the look of the garden Palo Verde, which will usually show movement in the slightest of winds, its as still as a ghost out there on this mild, but not yet warm morning. I see that our friend Melissa, of Melissa & Deb, our dear friends from Salt Lake City that are here with us for a week, has gone out to my garage gym for her morning workout. She is quite disciplined in getting in her morning exercise per a schedule she has to stay fit. I’ve been super impressed by the figure Melissa is cutting these days, she is as slender as I have ever her known her to be. That was no easy breezy feat from the I can tell. Melissa has had bariatric surgery and is now on the second generation of GLP-1 drugs and has worked hard to do everything she can to get to this place and she seems damned determined to stay here…and maybe even get better yet by being even more fit.
I’ve known Melissa for perhaps 20 years, but I’ve known Deb for over thirty years. It was back in my Park City days that I met her as a massage therapist with a very likable demeanor. We became friends and I asked her to be my majordomo for the motorcycle rides I began to run through southern Utah every May. She started doing that with me in 1996 and we have been great pals every since. I think Deb was the inventor of the concept of easy breezy. Everything about her screams easy breezy. I have never known anybody who is happier all the time than Deb. We all know that is never really the case for anyone, but I will say without question that she embodies easy breezy whenever I see her. In fact, the best thing about her easy breezy is that she makes me feel easy breezy. I am sure that if you sat down with Deb for an in-depth discussion of her life you would find that she has suffered the slings and arrows of the same degree of outrageous fortune that any of us has, but easy breezy has less to do with what the world dishes out to you and everything to do with how you react to what the the world gives you and how you give that back to the others around you. That is the biggest reason I like hanging out with Deb. Just being around her makes me feel easy breezy and good.
We are planning a week of nothing in particular…just having an easy breezy time. Kim has maybe one or two directorial obligations with her singing group and I have will probably have a few expert witness calls about potential new cases, but this was the week when we were all going to be taking the California Zephyr from Salt Lake City to Sacramento through the snowfields of Donner Pass and Truckee in the high Sierra Mountains west of Lake Tahoe. As such, our collective dance cards are wide open and none of us has many obligations to attend to, so we are all in an easy breezy frame of mind. Where Melissa is all about her morning workouts, Deb is into her coffee in the mornings, but she has a big interest in competitive sports and that means that pickleball is at the top of her athletic preferences. Luckily, we have some neighbors (the Kellermans) that have a lovely pickleball court that’s available for use and within easy walking distance. But all we have to do is decide when we want to play and let our local friends know to meet us there for a little pickleball round-robin. I suspect we will go test that program out today some time and then do that a few more times this week as well. Easy breezy.
The great thing about living in this area is that we have a whole array of choices of things to do for fun. Given that Melissa & Deb live in the Utah high desert, their preference is to spend time at the shore, so we will probably go tomorrow to Oceanside for a walk on the boardwalk and pier and then perhaps to the Del Mar dog beach for a romp with Buddy on the sand near the San Dieguito River outlet. Then, on Wednesday we will probably plan a day down on Coronado beach and a lunch at the Hotel Del to give them the full taste of San Diego (they’ve been there before, but what the hell). The point really is that with good friends, flexible schedules and nice weather, everything can remain easy breezy.
We’ve just come in from a two mile walk down to the bottom of one of our neighborhood hills and back up. The four of us met up with Faraj & Yasuko, our regular daily walking partners, and then briefly with Mike and Melisa, who often join for part of our walk, Rex being the limiting factor given that he and Buddy do not see eye to eye (literally and figuratively). Working up a sweat coming up the hill doesn’t put a dent in the easy breezy program given that the walk is less for Buddy than it is for our own exercise, so a little sweat and huffing and puffing is to be expected and even appreciated.
While we were walking, its inevitable that someone will mention what great weather we are having…that we are always having out here on the hilltop. That caused Melisa to use one of my long-time favorite expressions, “Just another perfect day in Paradise!” I can recall in the early 1990’s when I owned my house in Quiogue near the beach in the Hamptons, I would start my day walking out to the pool with my Sunday New York Times and plop myself down on a chaise lounge along side the shimmering pool with the summer sun beating down. I always said the same thing as I came out onto the deck… “Just another perfect day in Paradise!” Hearing that this morning made me think about my t-shirt. I have decided that with all the issues faced by our world these days, I’m less inclined to think of Paradise and more ready to settle for a simple Easy Breezy.