Doggie Walking and Elvis!!!

It doesn’t matter how much sleep you get on the aeroplane, the jet lag always gets you; so I felt somewhat blurry and generally out of sorts for the first 4+ days back. I also felt homesick, as I’d seen so many people and packed so much in, it all seemed a bit of an anti-climax coming back. Of course it is ridiculously hot here as normal. We entered the house where there was no air and it was like a sauna only to find the air conditioning had packed up. We had to wait a week before it was fixed. Fans do not cut it here and it was too hot at night to sleep which didn’t help with the jet lag and this was exacerbated by my hot flushes – all good fun! It was lovely to see Lulu and I think that although she’d had a wonderful time at Wagon Tail Ranch, she was genuinely glad to be home as was I of course.

There were a few changes here, one of which were the roads. They are notoriously bad in West Hills with massive bumps and pot holes, but while away they had closed the roads (which must have been chaotic) and laid new tarmac down. They are a dream to drive on now.

There were also new Pawn shop adverts, where they show their big gun section. These include hand guns and assault rifles – all quite shocking especially in light of recent events.

I met up with Choir Elaine who had also gone back to the UK for the 2 weeks before me to see family. We talked for 3 ½ hours – it was lovely to catch up and she re-inspired me about the choir, as I had started to feel it was all too difficult. We also had an inspired chat about plans for our US adventures too.

I also met up and had lunch as well as walked Teddy and Lulu with neighbour Marla this week, which was fun and made me feel much more at home.

On a trip to the Mall this week I also noticed that as it is so hot outside, people have taken to ‘hiking’ all around the Mall in all their exercise gear (power walking really), as it is wonderfully cool there.

I went back to the Animal Sanctuary and did a dog enrichment class which was about making up vegetable broth and yoghurt ice cubes as well as the Kong’s. We delivered them into the dog cages and also used bubbles to play with the dogs. Charla the lady in charge of the volunteering also wants us to read with the shy dogs 😊

We finished at 2.30pm and then I went back at 4pm to do the dog walking class – glutton for punishment. I made up the boards again for the dogs and updated the new dogs who had come. The centre is still over capacity even though 50 dogs had been rehomed while I had been away. I was glad that Larry the large wolf/Husky dog had gone as well as Abby. I found that Bella had been moved from the small Puppy cages to the larger cages which was good to see.

We started the training at 4.45pm and went on until 8.20pm, which was pretty exhausting. The group consisted of a mum and her 2 children, a lady about my age, 2 men who’d had previous experience and 3 older teenagers. The trainers Charla and Steph discussed which dogs to give individuals and they went to get each dog with us in tow. When a dog is taken out of its kennel the other dogs go nuts, barking madly and so once the dog had been handed to you, you have to move sharply to the volunteer room, which takes you into the back garden. I had Charlie who was a black pit-bull cross. He was so strong; it was a real effort to keep him to heel. I, of course had forgotten to bring the gloves they’d suggested, so by the end of the evening my left hand was covered in blisters. I put hand sanitiser on my hand ½ way through the evening and regretted it – ouch!!!

We walked the dogs around the grassed area and were told that they couldn’t go near each other, so it was a bit of a dance around as its not a large garden. We then went a played a form of musical chairs with yoga mats where we walked in a circle, mat to mat and then did ‘sit’, ‘down’ etc when the music stopped. I was given a different dog for this part. She was called Shelby and she was a very timid German Shepherd cross. She was beautiful but scared of her own shadow. I walked very slowly and wasn’t allowed to make any sudden moves. At least she didn’t pull. The last dog I walked was called Zoe ( a lovely name 😊). Charla had suggested her, but after I had managed to get her out (on my own this time) with Steph, Charla had second thoughts as she said it was the wrong Zoe! We’d looked at the board and that was the only Zoe. This Zoe apparently was notoriously bad at pulling….great….my fingers were screaming at this point. Anyway, I managed it and she got better over time. Whilst I enjoyed it and am planning to do it again each Friday, I felt I was told off all the time…. I said the dog’s name too often; I was too encouraging; I walked too fast; I walked too slow; I stroked the dog too much; I wasn’t attentive enough…….it was somewhat demoralising. I know they were trying to make sure we did it right, but I felt like they treated me like a child. Anyway, I’m there for the dogs and when I swallowed my pride, I realised that they were doing the same to the others too. I just hope they are less critical and I get it right next week.

Children have gone back to school this week after an extremely long break. This is normal, in fact people were moaning that it had been shortened in the last few years. They broke up on 6th June! No worries here about learning stopping although they do have summer camps and summer schools.

There are electric scooters everywhere on bike lanes and these are run by BIRD, which is a start-up company which only started a couple of years ago. There is an app which shows you where the nearest one is and it is only $8 a day. Angeleno’s are choosing it for local travel over ubers. I’d like to have a go, but not sure I could keep my balance. I would love to do a Segway too. I saw Policemen on these in the Singapore Airport, which looked really cool.

Latest news is that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department revealed that a 21 year old ‘rookie’ deputy who claimed he was shot in the shoulder at the Lancaster Sheriff's Station "completely fabricated'' the incident and would be relieved of his duties. It caused major incident teams scouring the area looking for the shooter.

There was also an alert at Westfield Mall where bystanders said they thought they heard gunshots. It turned out it was glass breaking where 2 men had tried to rob a store. This caused the whole Mall to close as well as all the shops connected which included my pottery. Today they were telling me all about the evacuation. People are terrified and expecting to be shot – it is scary!!!

Another news item told us about Medi-Cal which is a system used by low wage earners. Trump’s new rule is that if any immigrants who are waiting for green card use Medi- Cal, they will not be allowed to get the sought after Green Card. This means that immigration lawyers are advising people to come off this charity assistance and they are stopping going to doctors and dentists. Yet more proof that Trump is a git!!! He also missed the meeting about climate change at the G7 and then lied about who he was meeting with.

At the weekend we took a road trip down to Santa Ana and Orange county.

It really is beautiful on the Pacific Coast Highway as it hugs the beaches and you get spectacular views. We passed Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Long Beach and Huntington Beach which had a large dog area filled with doggies frolicking in the waves. All these beaches were long gorgeous white sands with surfers riding the large blue waves. On the journey we travelled past a massive port at San Pedro which had awesome endless stacks of multicoloured containers and huge ships. There were also rows upon rows of Cadillacs ready to be shipped.

We love road trips as you talk about everything and put the world to rights as well as having a good sing song and seeing wonderful sights.

We stayed in Costa Mesa in a lovely hotel called Avenue of Arts Hotel, which was rather splendid. We had a very tasty meal and talked about all the places we would love to live along our route that day.

The next day we set off at 8 am to ensure we were guaranteed a parking space at the Elvis Festival in Historic Main Street in Garden Grove near Santa Ana.

We spotted a sign for $1 car wash. Probably a bloke with a bucket of water who just chucks it at the car we thought.

We arrived and parked and walked to a café on the street for breakfast. We sat amongst brightly coloured classic American cars and watched as the street started to fill up with people, a number of Elvis lookalikes as well as ladies dressed in red and black, many with red roses in their hair….I can only assume this was a Pricilla look, or maybe something from his films….I realise I should know this. Elvis music was playing everywhere, then a motorcade of very large and very American motorcycles roared into the street and drove slowly down with everyone cheering. We also waved at Elvis and Pricilla walking round the street on stilts!

Next we went to get our seats under a pavilion, away from the already raging sun to see the start of the show, gospel Elvis sung by the MC who had a near perfect voice. I really did have tears in my eyes when he sang ‘Peace in the Valley’…. I can assure you, you would have too if you’d have been there! He also sang a fast gospel song which got a number of ladies very excited and they jumped up waving their arms around. 😊 We were given fans in the shape of guitars and just like a movie scene set in a gospel church were all fanning ourselves. It was soooo hot!

Next up we watched a series of performers with interpretations of Elvis songs, many were dressed as Elvis and most had fantastic voices. There was a lady accordion player who played 'Its Now or Never' which we all sang along to as well as 'Wooden Heart'. We also saw a 6 year old boy sing, ‘You’re the Devil in Disguise’ and 3 sisters (the youngest was also 6) each singing their favourite Elvis songs. I think Americans are just born performers.

We walked out of the street to find a real American bar filled with loud American workers watching sports and had have a hotdog and a couple of beers. Then walked back looked at all the Elvis memorabilia stands and watched a fantastic Blue Grass band playing not only Elvis, but also a couple of Beatles numbers. The only one I was disappointed not to hear was 'American Trilogy' (so we played that on the way home).

I can honestly say, I didn’t stop laughing or singing all day….what a brilliant time!!! I’m already looking forward to next year. Maybe I'll dress up next year. Mark would look good in an Elvis jumpsuit, don't you think?